Question
Answered step-by-step
belvigadarciane
UNIT 3: SOCIAL CONTRACT ETHICS, CHAPTER 7 So, how’s the world…
UNIT 3: SOCIAL CONTRACT ETHICS, CHAPTER 7
So, how’s the world been treating you?
This is a question I’ve heard way of greeting, one similar to “What’s up?” or “How’re you doing?” or “What’s happening?”
Perhaps people respond by saying something like, “Can’t complain.” Maybe instead they say that they would like to complain but there’s no one listening.
However, in the contemporary United States, we could argue that there are a number of people listening because they want to run for political office. Hence, they want to know what’s on your mind, what’s bothering you about the way our society operates, what needs of yours are going unmet, and how we might make this a fairer world – or society – for those who have to live in it.
Simply stated the “social contract” is the law of the land. It includes the speed limit on Broadway by which you must abide as you approach SMCC (for your non-online classes). It’s why you’ll need a lawyer if you decide to get divorced. It’s why you have to register your car and get it inspected (though I hear you don’t need an inspection sticker in Florida). It’s why you also need a license to drive a car and why you can lose that license if you drive too fast too often or drive drunk. It’s why gays can get a marriage license – even in Kentucky.
So when you seek to answer the question of how the world’s been treating you, it may involve evaluating the effects of the social contract on your life at present. Does it cost too much to attend a state institution while pursuing a college degree? The most tuition I ever paid was $350 one semester in which I took 15 credits. I attended both under-graduate and graduate school and never once had a student loan. Maybe America was kinder to me than to students now.
On the other hand, if you were a young man when I went to college in the fall of 1966, you had to be sure to keep your grades up. If you flunked out of college, you would be drafted and sent to fight in the Vietnam War. The average age of the Vietnam soldier was 19 according to Stanley Karnow’s book Vietnam: A History. In my home state of Pennsylvania you could be sent to southeast Asia to get shot at, but you couldn’t, under the law, go into a bar and order a beer. However, you could cross the state line and order all the beers you wanted in West Virginia.
So perhaps we might say about the social contract that, “You win some and you lose some.” I didn’t’ pay much for my education, but the specter of early death hung over young men of that era. Also, the boys from my high school who didn’t go to college did go to war, and not all of them survived. It wasn’t until later that the nation decided it wasn’t fair to exempt college students from battle, and so the draft lottery system was instituted instead.
As Waller says on p. 133, “No one thinks the social contract is perfect. The question is whether it is sufficiently fair and decent that we would choose to live under this social contract rather than in a state of nature.”
John Locke, a British philosopher Waller mentions briefly in this chapter, suggested that if we don’t like the social contract of the society into which we are born, we can pack up and move when we reach the age of adult consent. We can even, he said, move to some uninhabited part of the globe and start our own society with its own social contract. Of course, he was writing in a different century; there isn’t much available space these days on which to start your own society, but then Long Island did secede from the city of Portland some years ago, and Peaks Island has had at least one referendum on that issue. Again, not everyone is happy with what their social contract is currently providing or demanding. Back in my college years, there were some guys who moved to Canada or Sweden so they wouldn’t get drafted into the military, but there were no cell phones or computers then. You would have missed the World Series and the Super Bowl, two cultural events which I might bring up again in another unit.
SO WHAT IS MEANT BY THE “STATE OF NATURE”
I tossed out that Waller quote above without having yet explained one of the key terms he employs though he has addressed it by that point in the chapter. In short, the “state of nature” is that time prior to the creation of the social contract. However, most textbooks take pains to tell us that the origins of various social contracts can’t be documented since these events took place in what is sometimes called “pre-history.” Waller puts it this way:
“Social contract theory is not meant to be a historical or anthropological account of how systems developed.”
A common assumption for some philosophers, Thomas Hobbes being perhaps the most noteworthy, is that the state of nature was a time of great strife. Human beings, according to their view, were inclined to predatory and selfish behavior which caused constant worry and required constant vigilance against attack. We will discuss this idea further when we get to the chapter on egoism.
John Locke, Waller notes, didn’t think the state of nature was as bad as Hobbes portrayed it. Still, I can cite passages in Locke’s writing in which he suggests life is easier with a social contract since at least some of us are too biased by our own self-interest to be able to always deal fairly with others. We enter the social contract, Locke, says for the “preservation of our property.” As Waller notes on p. 131 without the social contract and in the state of nature “there are no rules.”
SO WHAT’S THE ATTRACTION OF SOCIAL CONTRACT ETHICS?
While Waller indicates its attractiveness may be fairly limited, the social contract does serve some practical purposes, and, he claims, it has “solid natural appeal.” He puts it this way on p. 132:
“It constructs ethics with no aid from metaphysics or divinities, bases ethics on agreements requiring neither mysteries nor faith, and places ethics squarely within the natural world. Social contract theory does not depend on any religious sanction or divine human spark or profound rational powers or special intuitions.”
The United States is composed of many different kinds of people. There are Irish-Catholics, like me, Unitarian-Universalists like my colleague down the hall, Orthodox Jews like my neighbors up the street, Muslim émigrés from Iran like two of my former students from a few years ago. There are LBGTQ people. There are people who like hockey, heavy metal music, sushi, Pad Thai, Cohen brothers films, the opera, cats, dogs, parrots, paddle boards, the Red Sox and even the Yankees. The social contract, especially with its provisions for regular elections and referendums, provides a way for all of us to co-exist (as the bumper sticker recommends) regardless of our various and sometimes wide religious and political differences.
SOME SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES AND THEORISTS
Rousseau – He uses the word “pity” which might in this context seem like a good synonym for empathy. Rousseau didn’t view human nature as darkly as did Hobbes. Rousseau believed that humans in the natural state are “basically good.” He wouldn’t be the one to write a novel like Lord of the Flies
John Rawls – This much-admired American philosopher is often associated with the phrase “Justice as Fairness,” which appears as a heading on p. 135, since he came up with the idea of the “veil of ignorance.” It’s the concept of people creating the social contract before they know who they will be once they are born into the world. You might think of it as something like a game. Right now, I may be a white, male, senior citizen, someone more worried about his 401K and Medicare. However, I might emerge from behind the “veil of ignorance” as a twenty-something white woman in a wheel chair, like one of my former students. For her, it was important that the elevator in Preble Hall always be working since she had no other way of reaching or exiting the second floor. While I may not have given much thought to elevator maintenance and safety, I might now consider it when, indeed, I could become someone who needs it every day.
David Gauthier – Waller puts it like this on p. 135: Gauthier’s social contract theory is designed to provide a rational justification for least a minimal set of moral principles. It’s the idea that even people motivated by self-interest should embrace the idea of what Waller calls “at least a minimally cooperative moral system.” He then goes on to explain a lengthy thought experiment in which we see that if people were to cooperate they might fare better.
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT MYTH AND ITS UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS
This is the last major heading in the chapter. Waller repeats the earlier claims that the “social contract myth” is a story that we use to explain fundamental things about human relations. Like many authors of ethics textbooks, Waller isn’t afraid to proffer his own opinions on occasion. Here, as elsewhere in the book, he takes issue with the idea of “radical individualism” or what is also called “rugged individualism.” On page 137, he says “We are a profoundly social species.” He posits the notion that if we were as bad as Thomas Hobbes claimed we were, it would have been unlikely for us to have survived long enough to come up some kind of social contract to preserve our lives.
He also brings up a criticism that some feminist ethical philosophers have raised. The social contract treats us as isolated individuals without much connection to one another. We adhere to the social contract because it is “the best deal we can get.” Annette Baier, a philosopher we will take up during the Care Ethics unit, says that this kind of deal can actually be pretty bad and result in a desperately unhappy society in which no one cares about anyone else.
A SUMMARY OF THE CRITICISMS
I’ve already mentioned Waller’s take on “radical individualism” as opposed to a more community-minded orientation.
He also cites the notion of “narrow obligations.” If you get sick but don’t have health insurance, that’s not my problem. If you are begging on the streets, I have no legal obligation to throw some change in your hat.
Under the heading “Choosing Morality,” he reminds us that the social contract is based merely upon mutual self-interest and does not involve feelings.
He also speaks of those who live “outside the social contract.” Hungary may be willing to transport migrants to the Austrian border, but it will be up to Austria and Germany as to how many they will receive or how much aid is available to them. The word “aid” often connotes the idea of charity as opposed to duty. If you are part of the social contract, then the state is obligated to provide for you. But how much? Waller, again drawing upon some feminist critiques of the social contract, notes that “those having unusual needs or impairments or disabilities” may face greater problems and greater risks. Have some people migrated from the United States to other nations where health care was more available and aging was less expensive? I know of at least three such persons.
Questions:
What is a good aspect – or good aspects – of our social contract, whether at the national, state, or local level?
Should people, as a matter of law, be required to use the bathroom which corresponds to their gender at birth? In other words, though someone might identify as male but was born female, must that person be required to use the “Ladies’ Room?”
