Social contract - Wikipedia - 20 views
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Carolyn Eccleston on 25 Oct 16What does this mean?
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Grotius posited that individual human beings had natural rights; Hobbes asserted that humans consent to abdicate their rights in favor of the absolute authority of government
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The Lockean concept of the social contract was invoked in the United States Declaration of Independence.
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Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate
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What does it mean to submit tacitly? Does the US Declaration of Independence require tacit submission?
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Not the Declaration of Independence because that did not establish a social contract, but yes the Constitution and the system of law, The submission is tacit because each generation does not revise the social contract that is spelled out in the Constitution and the corpus of laws. Therefore, each generation that wants to live in the US must accept the existing social contract.
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According to Hobbes, whenever we benefit from the conditions of security and the goods that are only possible through the social contract, we have consented to the social contract, which includes obedience to the sovereign, even though we did not give explicit consent.
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