In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes writes some of the most well-known and famous text on the social contract theory. According to Thomas Hobbes, a covenant is a contract in which one, or both, of the sides making the deal must carry out their end of the bargain after the contract has been made.
Also, according to Thomas Hobbes, a contract is a “mutual transferring of right”, meaning that each party to a contract incurs an obligation to transfer their right to something to another party in exchange because the other party has done the same.
Contracts involve mutual surrenders of rights. Covenants are the most important case of contracts because they involve promises of action in the future. It is the covenant itself that is supposed to make the difference between the performance of the action and its failure to be carried out, to ensure and guarantee it will be performed.
The main way that a covenant is made invalid is reasonable fear that the other party won’t do his part. In the state of nature, where there is no state to punish those who back out of covenants, there is a lot of quite reasonable fear of cheating.
It is important to note that covenants and contracts are different from just simple gift exchanges in which no one is obligated to fulfill a “side” of a deal. Contracts can be made either expressly or by inference. Express contracts are those that are made explicit by words or actions.
The origin of the covenant lies in Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the social contract. For example, in the social contract, people give up their right to govern themselves to a “sovereign” or leader, who will govern for them in exchange for running a commonwealth to ensure protection for their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Hobbes relied on the old metaphor of body politic, the classic metaphor in which a country is compared to a human body, with the sovereign as the head, and thus the head of state. All political and societal problems can be likened then to diseases or symptoms of other problems, with responsibility leading back to the head of state, or the sovereign leader, who has accepted the duties of ensuring the proper commonwealth to his country and fellow countrymen.
Meanwhile, Edmund Burke is considered the philosophical creator and founder of what is known as conservatism. Conservatism was a reactionary ideology to counter against the rising new ideology of liberalism. While Edmund Burke conceded human equality in the eyes of God, he did not believe in equality here on earth, and respect for a higher power was essential to his conservatism. Church and State were inseparable, since both were derived from God.
Most importantly, for Edmund Burke’s philosophy of conservatism, government finds its authority and power to rule not in a social contract, but in virtuous principles and trying to be the best or most moral.
Edmund Burke supported the American Revolution, but opposed the French Revolution on the grounds that it was too swift, rapid, and bloody, attempting to establish too dramatic of change way too fast. For these reasons, Burke was a constitutional monarchist, believing that a monarch’s powers should and could be limited to the bare minimal powers necessary for sovereignty. He was, however, opposed to unrestrained power in the hands of a king.
Edmund Burke believed that the existence of society itself implied certain implications of social contract, but unlike Thomas Hobbes, he firmly believed that it was a contract between God and man and between all the generations of men within history—the past, present, and unborn generations to carry on and guarantee the existence and survival of society under God’s rule.
Edmund Burke defined the politician as “the philosopher in action.” As a philosopher, the politician should adhere to moral natural law, but as a man of action, he should to be guided by prudence in practical affairs. Burke regarded prudence in all things a virtue, but in politics it was the first of virtues.
Prudence provides the practical means by which moral natural law and constitutional law are fulfilled in the various concrete circumstances of man’s life in society. Prudence, for reference, is the political moral virtue of governing in politics by using reason and rationality to guide one’s decision making. Prudence is the principle by which virtuous discretion informs politicians when they should decrease their demands for justice in favor of moderation in resolving social problems.
In the end, Edmund Burke’s ability to combine natural law and constitutional law with practical prudence make his political philosophy thoroughly consistent but almost wholly disorderly.
Both renowned political thinkers of their time, Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke offer two different angles from which to view social contract theory, one of these angles being liberal while the other angle is conservative, both in the classic meanings of the words.
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SLOAN KETTERING 