Edmund Burke on Social Contract Theory

[Chris]

In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke reacts to the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke. He says...

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure—but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule, because this necessity itself is a part, too, of that moral and physical disposition of things to which man must be obedient by consent or force; but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.

[RMNIXON]

I once got into a very heated argument with someone who thought he could justify Welfare statism as being our duty under implied Social Contract. I argued that while we should be concerned with the plight of our fellow man there is an obvious point where such policies are doing more harm than good and creating a permanent and generational condition of public dependence. Franklin himself observed this is the failing of the British welfare system.

[Peter1469]

I once got into a very heated argument with someone who thought he could justify Welfare statism as being our duty under implied Social Contract. I argued that while we should be concerned with the plight of our fellow man there is an obvious point where such policies are doing more harm than good and creating a permanent and generational condition of public dependence. Franklin himself observed this is the failing of the British welfare system.

I believe in a safety net. Not a safety hammock.

[Mister D]

I once got into a very heated argument with someone who thought he could justify Welfare statism as being our duty under implied Social Contract. I argued that while we should be concerned with the plight of our fellow man there is an obvious point where such policies are doing more harm than good and creating a permanent and generational condition of public dependence. Franklin himself observed this is the failing of the British welfare system.

State welfare is justified simply by the fact that there would be a lot of unrest or even a revolution without it. It's an evil capitalism created and must coexist with.

[carolina73]

There is no clear definition of the scope of what they call a Social Contract.

Also, when did I sign it?

So it is just a self-defined desire that varies person to person. So there is no contract.

We don't even have people agreeing on mutual defense which is the primary reason for the formation of any government through history.

[Chris]

This is the problem with social contract theory. The theory was invented, by Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, and others, during a time, the early Age of Enlightenment--I'm currently reading Mickael Oakeshott's essay on Hobbes' Leviathan--when science began to explain psychology in terms of the world impacting the senses and informing a blank slate mind wherein reason worked on memory. These great philosophers reached that point, albeit differently, and realized they had somehow to account for man in society and did so by inventing, albeit differently again, social contract theory. The problem is this, man has never existed as a solitary individual but only and always within society. These theories are ass-backward. And that, basically, is Burke's reaction to those theories.

[Peter1469]

State welfare is justified simply by the fact that there would be a lot of unrest or even a revolution without it. It's an evil capitalism created and must coexist with.

Bismarck came up with it as a counter to the rising of socialism.

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was a Prussian statesman and diplomat of the late 19th century who played an important role in world affairs. He became the first Chancellor of the German Empire in 1871 and is regarded as the creator of the first modern welfare state. Ironically, Bismarck created his welfare system to prevent a radical socialist take over.