John Locke

Social Contract Versus Political Anthropology

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6400930
AutoresJeremy Waldron (0000-0003-4083-1119, autor de correspondencia)
Año1989
Volumen51
Número1
Páginas3-28
Fecha de publicación1989-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670500015837
OpenAlexW1965957041
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas20
Referencias citadas12

In theSecond Treatise, John Locke presents two stories about the development of political society: (1) the dramatic story of the state of nature and social contract; and (2) a more gradualist account of the evolution of political society “by an insensible change” out of the family group. The relation between these two accounts is analyzed in order to deal with familiar objections about the historical truth and internal consistency of contract theory. It is argued that Locke regarded story (2) as the historically accurate one, but that he believed historical events needed moral interpretation. Story (1) represents a moral framework or template to be used as a basis for understanding the implications — for political obligation and political legitimacy — of story (2). Even if the whole course of the evolution of political institutions out of prepolitical society cannot be seen as a single intentional or consensual process, still individual steps in that process can be analyzed and evaluated in contractualist terms. The task of political judgment is to infer the rights and obligations of politics from this representation of political development as an overlapping series of consensual events

Consistency (knowledge bases · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Legitimacy · Moral obligation · Obligation · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · Social contract · Sociology · State (computer science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics