Definition
The Social Contract tradition contends that society is established through a collective, mutually binding agreement or contract. Moral expectations and duties are shaped by the contract and its implications. Ethics is, therefore, primarily socially constructed and regulated. In a pre-political state, referred to as the state of nature, rational individuals accept to enter a reciprocal agreement because it is mutually beneficial. The contract is hypothetical in that its existence cannot be validated historically; however its moral legitimacy derives from the assumption that rational, self-interested individuals would likely forge this agreement because they have more to gain from joining in a mutually beneficial association than from staying out of it. In the Hobbesian version of the Social Contract, morality, rooted in social reality, is a pragmatic, self-interested response to sustain...
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References and Readings
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The author wishes to thank Dr. Ann Kerwin for her insightful comments on a draft version.
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Rozuel, C. (2013). Social Contract. In: Idowu, S.O., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Gupta, A.D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28036-8_525
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