Contractualism Overview
📜 Contractualism is a modern current in political and legal philosophy positing that the individual precedes the state.
🏛️ The state is not of natural or divine origin but arises from an agreement or convention among individuals.
🌳 Contractualists theorize the existence of a state of nature that precedes organized society and the state.

Key Contractualist Thinkers
⚔️ Thomas Hobbes believed humans in the state of nature are inherently self-interested and bad, leading to a "war of all against all."
🛡️ To escape chaos, Hobbes argued individuals must renounce all rights and freedoms to a sovereign in exchange for security.
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Jean-Jacques Rousseau held that humans are naturally noble and cooperative.
🗣️ Rousseau advocated for a social contract based on the "general will," asserting that the people cannot be represented or delegate authority to a ruler.

Key Points & Insights
➡️ The core difference among contractualists lies in their conception of the state of nature and the terms of the social contract.
⚖️ For Hobbes, the trade-off for security is the surrender of individual liberty to an established sovereign.
🤝 For Rousseau, obedience to the general will means the individual is simultaneously obeying themselves, thus remaining free.

📸 Video summarized with SummaryTube.com on Nov 05, 2025, 22:16 UTC