Social contract theory is nothing more than a noble lie, Professor of Philosophy and Religion Nathan Schlueter said during a debate with Professor of Politics Thomas West March 30.
“The two great challenges we face in American politics today are the administrative state and expressive individualism,” Schlueter said. “I think highlighting social contract theory might exacerbate those issues.”
Social contract theory was generally defined by Schlueter as the idea that people must come together and unanimously consent to a form of government, because without political authority the state of nature is highly unstable.
West is one of the leading scholars on social contract theory. He is the author of “The Political Theory of the American Founding,” in which he makes the argument that the American founding is an example of social contract theory, according to junior Merrit Pope.
Last year, Schlueter wrote an article for the Witherspoon Institute’s journal Public Discourse, critiquing some of those views. Pope said faculty and students alike decided it was time to hear a defense of both positions.
“They completely underestimated the number of people who would show up,” freshman Adeline Kaufman said. “I was really impressed with the number of students who came.”
The event was held in a lecture hall in the basement of Lane, and just over 100 students and faculty were in attendance. Both professors were given 20 minutes for opening remarks.
Schlueter spoke first and introduced social contract theory as the establishment of a political society with clear moral rules.
Much of the argumentation centered around 17th-century British philosopher John Locke, who first introduced social contract theory.
“I think Locke is pretty clear that for the political society to be legitimate it has to be constituted by the express and unanimous consent of the persons who are part of it,” Schlueter said. “Yet we cannot identify any historical point in which people expressly and unanimously agreed to constitute a political society, and I just think that raises all kinds of very difficult questions and problems for us.”
Schlueter also made the “dead hand of the past” argument, which he defined as the inability of “one group that expressly and unanimously agrees to form a political society to then bind a future generation who did not expressly and unanimously agree to it.”
West said tacit or implied consent is the reason a call for a political society can truly be unanimous.
“The loyalists who decided they didn’t want to be citizens of America in the 1770s said no, and they became non-citizens, but the rest of the society unanimously consented,” West said. “If you are in the majority who decides to be in a society, then the consent will automatically be unanimous.”
Pope said the professors also varied extensively in their approach to the issue, and Schlueter took a very philosophical approach.
“Dr. West, on the other hand, would bring a lot of relevant political examples and connect them to both modern and historical politics,” Pope said.
According to Pope, there was significant common ground between the two professors.
“I think at the end of the day they agreed a lot on what social contract theory really was,” Pope said. “Schlueter also didn’t craft his argument from the same grounds as his article critiquing Dr. West, which made the debate a lot less fierce than it could have been.”