Tenth Period | What Do We Owe Each Other? Social Contract Theory from Past to Present

0:01 hello and welcome everyone to this new series of the Bill of Rights Institute’s 10th period webinar series my name is Kirk Higgins I’m the senior manager for education here at the Bill of Rights Institute and I’m Rachel Davison Humphries the director of outreach here in our our offices in Arlington Virginia and this week we are joined by dr.

0:23 Jeffrey Morrison dr. Morrison is a professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News Virginia and director of academics at the federal government’s James Madison Foundation in Alexandria Virginia he graduated with distinction from Boston College and from Georgetown University where he earned the MA and PhD in government he has published as

0:44 author or editor five books on American political culture including the political philosophy of George Washington and the raiga manifesto welcome dr. Morrison thank you very much I’m delighted to be here well we’re excited to have you so this week we’re talking about social contracts so we figured it’s towards the beginning of

1:05 the school year although it’s already October but we wanted to start with a foundational conversation and so by way of sort of a bell ringer in our virtual classroom here we thought we just think for a moment about how the three of us are kind of in a social what brought us here and what are the rules that we’ve already established by being in this

1:26 conversation together what do you think right so I think there’s some tacit rules and some that we’ve agreed upon so we got in contact with dr. Morrison and he willingly wears usually Horatius Lee agreed to join us at a specific time right in a specific place and there are butch rules that we have that are implicit to what we’re doing that we

1:47 didn’t have to make explicit like like you and I aren’t gonna talk over one another we’re gonna make space doc because we’re the interviewers dr. Morrison is gonna answer questions and not ask us as many we’re gonna ask him the questions right so we just kind of already stepped out of our state of nature right and found ourselves in some sort of a political medium we’re able to

2:08 interact and get along with each other and hopefully have a productive conversation and then they’re hoping to that are for the audience too so we are expecting that the audience is our teachers or individuals out in the world who are interested in this topic why would you be logging in otherwise and also that you’re going to ask us questions and prompt us in a direction

2:29 that makes sense for you the way you can do that is we have a number of different channels if you want to reach out to us on Facebook right now it’s Facebook slash Bill of Rights Institute if you want to reach out to us on Twitter its Twitter slash be our Institute or if you just want to use the comment box feature on this live webinar that’ll be tracked live as this is replayed by people who

2:50 watch it in the future and can add to those comments so we’re expecting that when you do that you’re gonna ask questions that are relevant and we have a set of rules that we don’t have to explain because they’re already there about how those comments will go so in all those ways we we’ve entered into a number of arrangements on a number of different levels which I think foundationally comes down to consent right absolutely so I think that we

3:14 think it’s sort of an interesting way to set up a classroom because I think it’s useful for students to be in a position where they are directly experiencing with their own physical being what it means to be in that relationship without it being abstract because social contract theory does seem like a very lofty idea I mean that’s what makes it interesting is that it is this very deep

3:35 philosophical principle which we’ll get to but it also is kind of an explanation of how we interact in a free society yeah right there are these rules that we follow that are laid down but not really because we didn’t enter into a formal contract there’s a social contract so what does that mean what is absolutely so and I’m sure there’s different ways

3:55 of looking at it yeah but dr. Morrison can you help us sort of understand what what what worse what is social contract theory and sort of where does it come from sure well that word theory which you just mentioned occurred that tips us off to the fact that it is a political theory it it is a way of trying to

4:17 understand how we arrived we humans arrived at the state where we find ourselves now namely in a state of Society and also in a state almost all of us of government anarchy just doesn’t seem to work very well so human beings tend to relate to one another in in

4:39 patterns of authority and Submission and legitimacy and so forth so those are those are kind of distinct actually the state of society and the state of government you might say but it’s an attempt to understand a theoretical attempt to understand kind of how we got to where we are today and it’s just seem

4:59 to be true or doesn’t of human beings worldwide and across the centuries and it truly is a human it’s a it seemed to be a human characteristic that we associate ourselves together we’re social creatures we’re creatures who need government to survive order as as

5:22 the great 20th century political philosopher Simone vial once said you know order is the first need of all so how is it that we got to this state that’s that’s kind of what social contract theory is it’s a it’s a theory trying to answer some of those questions yeah I think that’s interesting and yeah again sort of getting the foundational

5:44 elements of this right I mean it’s a it’s a way almost a way of thinking about our surroundings so that we can better articulate what government might look like it sort of lays down that foundation that we can then build upon in order to have a free society yes so in addition to being theoretical and and that branch of study we generally call

6:06 political theory or political philosophy it’s also kind of the theory of history actually and and the Enlightenment practitioners or theoreticians of the social contract and their names that probably will be familiar to those in our audience who are educators and by

6:29 the way I should say as an aside I love teachers we really appreciate what you do I know I’m speaking for Bri and and I myself and Kirk you mentioned I’m the academic director of a federal foundation that works with high school secondary school teachers and so I suspect that you all

6:51 in the audience are familiar with some of these names names like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and David Hume these are all British Enlightenment thinkers and German Enlightenment thinkers like poof and or and in France someone like jean-jacques Rousseau all

7:12 of these Enlightenment era thinkers were also trying to craft a theory of history and and evidently they literally believed that there was a time if we could go back far enough in human history or prehistory because it technically means history technically means the advent of writing doesn’t it

7:34 and then going forward that we would find individuals who were not really associated in social groups in communities and that at some point in our human history individuals made a conscious decision we’re going to leave

7:54 that state of society I’m sorry that state of nature state of nature because it’s intolerable or violent or inconvenient all these different words are used brutish Thomas Hobbes has maybe the most famous formulation in which he

8:15 says life in the state of nature is solitary poor nasty brutish and short in fact acquaintance of mine joked one time I think there’s actually a DC law firm this that named solitary poor nasty brutish and short but for no matter how you characterize

8:36 it we don’t want to stay there you know our ancestors didn’t want to stay in that kind of a state of nature it was one in which they had complete freedom and a whole every right you can imagine was was held by those ancient ancestors of ours but there’s no

8:57 way to live right without government without community even without society and so they made a conscious decision to move out of that and to make a bargain with one another and to say we’ll give up some of our rights some of the rights we have in a state of nature which are called a variety of things but natural

9:19 rights is one of them and so we’ll give up some of those to buy some security so it’s a kind of it’s a kind of balancing of security and liberty and you were asking a little bit earlier we’re suggesting anyway and YouTube to Rachel in that thought experiment right at the

9:40 beginning where the bellringer as you called it you know we’re always trying to balance those two aren’t we security and liberty maybe we got to give up some of our rights you know from time to time to purchase a little more security and that’s according to these social contract theorists at least the modern ones the ones sort of from the

10:01 Enlightenment to the present by the way it’s it’s not going away in this social contract the the recently late John Rawls utilized it in some of his writings and so theory and the theory of history but also trying to understand again how we got to where we are today a

10:25 little bit period and why this theory captivated or why it was part of the milieu of the discussions happening so what what made social contract theory is such an important foundational theory for those thinkers at the founding yes I think it was really important during the

10:46 sort of revolutionary phase of our founding I myself happen to think that that the Revolution and the constitutional Revolutionary and constitutional moments are related to one another they’re in two integrally related to one another but academic historians tend to separate them out a little bit

11:07 and so if we follow their lead particularly in the revolutionary moment of the founding social contract theory is very important because you both alluded to it earlier consent is a concept that almost necessarily goes

11:28 along with that social contract so it is equality by the way equality of persons everybody is equal in a state of nature before there’s a society before there’s a pecking order you know before there’s an aristocracy titles or anything like everybody is

11:48 equal in a state of nature radically equal can you go dive a little deeper for that because I think that many students would say that in will the state of nature might makes right so the way you are so what do you mean by equal when you say that they are equal in the state of nature nobody has any more

12:10 rights than anybody else nobody has any more authority than anybody else there’s no caste system there are no classes there’s no there’s no anything really except for this raw individuality right so that’s what I mean our people equal in the sense that we’re

12:31 that they were all in the state of nature the exact same height or weight or athletic ability or that no course not and we never have been not identical but equal and it’s a good question Rachel equal in terms of as I say authority and rights in particular so if

12:54 you’re all equal to one another then the only way the only legitimate way to move into some kind of society would be through consent everybody would have to agree to that wouldn’t they and so consent becomes very important in the social contract equality of all

13:14 people that’s very important and the social contract and of course those are two things aren’t they that our front and center in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 in much of the rhetoric the pamphlet rhetoric and so forth that precedes in the run-up to the revolution so in the revolutionary

13:38 moment in particular and if we want to name some names here John Locke is very important in the Revolutionary period he’s not quite as important in the constitutional period or a moment and there have been some very good and careful studies done by historians and political theorists actually citing the

14:01 number of times that certain individuals or groups are referred to as authorities the Bible would be one you know the Enlightenment thinkers would be another and then they start to even break them down by name and it turns out John Locke is cited and mentioned many many many times during the Revolution and not nearly so often in that constitutional

14:24 period why is that because Locke is talking about yes equality consent he’s also talking about a right to resistance once you’ve moved from that state of nature into a state of society and then into a state where there’s a government

14:44 within within society is there ever a time when you have a right or maybe even a duty to resist that government if it becomes tyrannical in his phrase if there is a long train of abuses and so the draftsman of the Declaration of Independence lifts that language

15:05 word-for-word out of John Locke and put it into the declaration so there’s one instance I think of how the social contract theory plays out in our American Founding it’s on the ground you know it’s not just merely this kind of ivory tower theory or semi myth you know about the distant past all those

15:28 Enlightenment thinkers really believed that that that is how humana moved from its earliest stages into into this sort of state which we find ourselves today I think that’s really interesting and it seems though that that that influence of Locke doesn’t go away I’m thinking now of the preamble of the Constitution right we the people of

15:49 the United States but even more so in the rhetoric of the Federalists during the ratification debates so first Federalist paper ran by Alexander Hamilton comes to mind he says you were invited to deliberate upon a new constitution in the United States and it seems to me that invitation itself seems to be elucidating this thought of consent right it’s it’s we as a society

16:11 in some sort of representative form are going to deliberate upon this so it seems like his influence is still tacitly there if nothing else maybe that foundation of the Declaration is now influencing the construction of the Constitution yeah that’s a nice point and if we just refresh our memories for a moment the Constitution was written in

16:32 secret wasn’t it and the convention was held over for very hot months in the summer of 1787 literally with the window shut in what we call Independence Hall maybe even nailed shut sometimes with the curtains drawn so it was done behind closed doors and closed windows but then once it was protracted

16:54 it was then made public wasn’t it it was sent out to each of the governors of the then thirteen states with instructions that those states call special elections hold special elections to delegate a convention a ratifying convention to hash it out in public to fight about it

17:17 to write about it and there are pamphlet wars and all kinds of things and that’s what the Federalists context is it’s part of this pamphlet war and in essence the framers of the Constitution say we did our work we did the best we could behind closed doors but we’re not forcing this down anybody’s throat you’re going to vote on it and you’ll

17:38 you are free to vote it up or vote it down we’ve done our best now it’s up to you the people because for our founders this is a this was to be and always should be a regime of popular sovereignty the people are sovereigns so consent you bet

17:58 consent in the ratification process and that’s I think one reason Hamilton mentions it right away in that first Federalist paper as you pointed out well that’s a lot to think about already in our first couple of minutes here on the on the webinar I want to remind everyone that you can send us your questions so please type them into the comment section on our youtube channel or if you

18:18 want to reach out to us on facebook or twitter we have Facebook / Bill of Rights Institute and our Twitter account is slash BR Institute so moving on I think at the founding period there were the social contract was part of the milieu as part of the foundational kind of conceptual framework in which the

18:38 Revolutionary period was happening how did it influence I think we’re starting to touch on this how did it continue to influence into modern or into today into into where we are culturally today how can we how can we think about it as relates to now well let’s let’s move

18:59 forward as you suggested we do maybe even chronologically we have a constitution drafted in secret it goes out to the states and each of the states then writes well in fact during the Revolutionary period each of the states former colonies now newly newly

19:20 independent states and we should say by the way that that word state meant a little bit more like nation state to us today each of them was given instructions or urgings at any rate by the Continental Congress Second Continental Congress soon to become the

19:41 Confederation Congress to write the constitution of their own if they didn’t have one some kind of internal governing document because once you’ve declared your independence from maybe the most powerful and extensive empire in the history of world to that date you don’t think

20:02 they’re gonna let you walk away without a fight they’re you and most people didn’t consider America American till 1812 or so it wasn’t really solidified in people’s minds so this urging goes out write your own constitution make your own sort of

20:24 political society there or if in the case that it’s there already as it kind of was you need some code you need a legal code you need to codify your political Society and you need to have a governing instrument because a world of hurt is about to descend on you and you need

20:46 order we’re back to Simone vial right order is the first need of all so you need to order your communities communities are groups of people in common and some of those early states in fact adopt the language of Common Wealth Commonwealth which they kind of borrow

21:06 from a little earlier period of English history there was a Commonwealth period in England if you remember that your your English history in between in the interregnum period in between the Kings in between the the Charles’s English cut off the head of the first one and and

21:26 Oliver Cromwell establishes a Commonwealth Commonwealth what does that word mean common we know what that means that’s easy what people have together but they share well doesn’t mean in that context money like it does goes well cos from an old English word wheel WEA L that means good

21:49 it’s the common good the common good that’s what that society is there to foster and protect and promote and then so some of our states call themselves Commonwealth’s where you are in Arlington Virginia where I am right now in Williamsburg Virginia in the in your in your senior fellows

22:10 gorgeous library here I’m filled with books about social contract there I think I see one they are there here trust me Virginia is a Commonwealth technically it’s not a state technically it’s a Commonwealth Massachusetts is a common

22:32 will Pennsylvania I believe is a common well maybe another somewhere in the Midwest I think somewhere in the heart but so a handful of our state’s our Commonwealth’s technically that is itself I think that an acknowledgement of a kind of social contract Arian understanding of what what a community

22:54 is to be even in its naming now it becomes a little bit more of a sort of academic presence you might say and I mentioned John Rawls a little bit earlier and as historians have tried to understand how that theory has played

23:14 itself out in practice in American history and there are debates the doctors disagree about this some of them say well it’s obvious that there never was a time you know in human history when it wasn’t community or or the social state but others have pointed out

23:35 but by the way I mentioned this before I’ll say it again I think all of the Enlightenment thinkers Hobbes Locke Rousseau the Protestant reformers slightly before them all believed literally that there had been a state of nature out of which humanity moved into a state of society but one thing

23:57 everybody agreed on was there only seems to be a state of nature in play even in 2019 what’s that it’s the international state of nature right we have all of this this whole family of Nations you know always coming into existence or

24:18 changing and its role but every one of them is in a state of nature visa vie the others which is sometimes a state of war isn’t that this Thomas Hobbes said yeah and the social contract Aryans in the 1700s and the 1600s acknowledged this and even

24:38 people today admit there isn’t there isn’t any kind of well social contract is there between all the the individual nation states in the world today there’s not and there’s not a a government over us we don’t have a an international government we we take stabs at it now

24:58 and then you know NATO or whomever or an EU and Europe but we’re all in this state of nature visa vie one another and we make alliances and pacts and you know what we have some allies it’s hard to conceive of us going to war with the United Kingdom for instance but I

25:19 understand that we do have a war plan even for those people so state of war state of nature is a state of war and that concept I think has carried even to this very present moment at least an international relations theory I think that’s an interesting point I think too it makes me think of sort of what’s

25:40 implied in a social contract so we’ve been talking about you know how government is formed out of that through the consent of individuals but it also makes me think of the role of the individual within that right so the title of our webinar I think was what we owe to each other and I think I think that’s interesting and I wonder if we could just kind of touch on what what is the sort of call it the responsibility

26:01 of the individual within a social contract framework right if we consent to a government I guess to what extent are we now responsible for ensuring that that government that’s an outgrowth of our society is is staying on a just course or doing what it ought to do in protecting our rights and in keeping us

26:21 in that state of order yeah that’s a that’s a a good question and the answer is a complex one I think because the social contract theory can take lots of different shapes you know can go lots of different directions what’s take two names we’ve been tossing around

26:42 the thought that maybe a little bit little too loosely so Thomas Hobbes and John Locke instance they they’re alive at the same time so they’re contemporaries but Locke is a full generation younger than Hobbes and they live and write in the 1600s in the 17th century John Locke lives just into the

27:04 fairly into the 18th century I think he dies in 1704 but so let’s think of them as 17th century 1600s then and they lived through the English Civil Wars right they lived through the the commonwealth period they lived through the restoration and and they come to

27:24 their theorizing with that as a background and so thomas hobbes for instance the older of the two publishes his work great work Leviathan which maybe some of our educators even mentioned or teach in their classrooms in high school what is what is the

27:46 sovereign like in in the Leviathan well the very title of the book right it comes from this biblical sea monster Hobbes conceived a very powerful almost omnipotent sovereign or government look very very different from you know modern the United States much less United

28:07 States say before the Civil War but on the other hand John Locke I mentioned this is often seen as a kind of grandfather of the American Revolution the spirit of independence from government tyranny an overweening government over are overstepping government so it concepts like

28:29 republicanism often cluster around the social contract but they don’t have to Thomas Hobbes comes up with a very very powerful overall in sovereign government based on a social contract he says that initial social contract that moves people humans from this state of nature

28:51 that brutish and short violent state of nature where everybody sleeps with one eye open you know afraid they’re literally their throat is gonna get slit in the night their children will be taken or their stuff will be taken there’s one contract between the individuals who will make that society

29:13 but there is often seem to be a second contract and that’s between the government and the people and that’s that second stage so that’s why I said it’s a little more complex there’s a kind of bilateral nature to it right so there’s the there’s the there’s the contract between the people mm-hmm but then there’s the contract between the

29:34 people in the government and those are sometimes synchronous and sometimes asynchronous but I’m actually wondering we only have a few more minutes to go and I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about some of I don’t know if I want to talk about their two options we could be there talking about some of the critiques of social contract theory or how social contracts evolved hmm so

29:55 I’m what I hear you saying is that there was this a little bit that social contract theory is according to Hobbes even there was this original contract and it evolved into something else but I’m thinking about our current climate in our current contacts and thinking about how people are perceiving that what is normal what what are relationships to one another are are

30:16 shifting yeah and so is that a shift in social in the social contract is that a shift in how we think about what our duty to each other is I don’t know I think it’s interesting I mean I think what it comes down to in a lot of ways is how how much do we feel as though our

30:38 consent is being felt or how how volunteer or how how much are we tacitly consenting or how much do we feel is that we have choice of that right and it’s I think been a lot of the movements toward populism in other things where people are looking for ways of expressing that right I think that’s a that’s a nice way to think about this

30:59 question of evolution Rachel first thing to note is that some notions of a social contract are very old very ancient they can be traced all the way back to the natural law thinkers like Cicero for example and in the Roman Republican period and that is the period before

31:21 Rome becomes a decadent Empire so up to about the first century BC from roughly 500 BC to the birth of Christ roughly that kind of timeframe so the roots are very deep and you wouldn’t say I don’t

31:41 think that you know Rome was perhaps quite as liberal as the United States was before the civil war but there’s a notion that some things are natural and that there is a even a political morality that that applies and there are some things that governments just may not do to to their subjects or better get their

32:03 citizens so the evolution is a very long one that would be the first point it goes back maybe about to 500 BC or so maybe even further back than that but this notion of consent that does seem to be very persistent notion within the social contract whether it’s the ancient or or the reformed that is the

32:25 Protestant reformers there’s a lot of social contract hammered out in the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in the 1500s for example but that notion of consent it’s very persistent it stays with us to this very day and Americans and it might be worth

32:45 maybe asking in a classroom of your students do you feel like you give your consent to this government and if you do how do you do that yes we well we can both you can’t vote if you’re 14 and you’re in you’re in a middle school

33:06 classroom you know or in your high school freshman you can’t vote yeah there must be some way right that you give your consent other than voting and we deny the vote too tens of millions of US citizens write liners and felons than others so and

33:26 there must be some way and Kirk I think I heard you say tacitly right tacitly to consent to your government do you consent to it when you receive benefits from it or maybe your parents do you know or your family members do maybe your grandparents are on Social Security

33:46 right and that’s better today is that a way of consenting do you consent merely by remaining here not leaving not expatriated the fancy word for leaving you no but but it does seem to be that that concept of consent really integral

34:06 doesn’t it to the social contract and it goes right back to that theory if everybody is equal at least born equal or created equal as the Declaration puts it yeah then the only legitimate way to get things done will be through consent somebody can’t now say I rule by the grace of God as they said in the old

34:30 days when people could speak Latin no this is you still see this on coins in the 20th century in Great Britain Dei Gratia Regina because but for almost the whole century Queen Elizabeth has been the monarch over there or Dei Gratia Rex king by the grace of God Queen by the

34:50 grace of God even in that even if even in a monarchical situation like that there were social contract theorists like Hobbes and Algernon Sidney another man by the way we should have said this earlier Thomas Jefferson was once asked and where’d you get the ideas for the

35:10 Declaration of Independence and he said well they were just in the air sort of this the harmonizing sentiments of the day but if you want some authors he said look at Aristotle and Cicero and Locke and Sydney Aristotle Cicero law in Sydney repairs to ancients agree

35:32 Roman Aristotle and Cicero to modern liberals Locke and Sydney and to martyrs actually so Cicero and Sydney both have their heads cut off because of their stance for liberty for a social contract for saying consent is the only legitimate way for governments to come

35:53 about well that doesn’t get your students attention but I will mention because I do think that that idea of consent in getting students sort of found into that is something we do think about a lot here at the Bill of Rights Institute and one of the lessons that that we discuss a lot that we put together one of our lessons asks students to get together and sort of come up with their own rules for the

36:14 class for consent so their own rules for the classroom that’s really because then you know it allows them to have buy-in and it also gets them thinking about how it is that they are in fact in a social contract even even in their classrooms find that in the in the comment section of this video which will or send you over to our website yeah but unfortunately we are out of time

36:35 but dr. Morrison thank you so much great conversation for joining us my pleasure I’m an admirer the Bill of Rights Institute so thank you for having me well thank you and thank you to everyone who joined this we greatly appreciate all the work that you do and for taking time out to be with us today we will be back in two weeks with yet another 10th period webinar so

36:57 we’ll look forward to having you then so we’ll say so long for now and we’ll see you next time take care so much