What Are the Divine Rights and Social Contract Theories

Patriarchal control of women is found in at least three paradigmatic contemporary contracts: the marriage contract, the prostitution contract, and the surrogacy contract. Each of these treaties deals with the control of women by men or the control of a particular man over a particular woman in general. Under the terms of the marriage contract, a husband is granted the right of sexual access in most states in the United States, which prohibits the legal category of marital rape. Prostitution is a typical example of Pateman`s claim that modern patriarchy requires equal access from men to women, especially sexual access, access to their bodies. And surrogacy can be understood as more of the same, albeit in terms of access to women`s reproductive abilities. All these examples show that the contract is the means by which women are dominated and controlled. The Treaty is not the path to freedom and equality. Rather, it is a means, perhaps the most fundamental, by which patriarchy is maintained. The concept of social contract was originally proposed by Glaucon as described by Plato in The Republic, Book II. Rousseau has two different theories of the social contract. The first is found in his essay Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Peoples, commonly called the Second Discourse, and is an account of man`s moral and political development over time, from a state of nature to modern society. As such, it contains his naturalized presentation of the social contract, which he considers highly problematic.

The second is its normative or idealized theory of the social contract and aims to provide the means to mitigate the problems that modern society has created for us, as set forth in the social contract. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) advocated a conception of the social contract in which no individual ceded sovereignty to others. According to him, the social contract was not between individuals and the state, but between individuals who fail to constrain or govern each other, each retaining complete sovereignty over itself: the principles that people in the original position, behind the veil of ignorance, would choose to regulate a society at the most fundamental level (i.e. Rawls rightly calls the two principles of justice. These two principles determine the distribution of civil liberties as well as social and economic goods. The first principle is that every person in a society should have as much fundamental freedom as possible, as long as everyone is granted the same freedoms. That is, there should be as much civil liberty as possible, as long as these goods are distributed equitably. (This would exclude, for example, a scenario in which there is a larger set of civil liberties than in an alternative scenario, but in which these freedoms are not evenly distributed among citizens.) The second principle is that, while social and economic inequalities can be fair, they must be equally accessible to all (i.e. no one should be denied access to greater economic benefits in principle), and these inequalities must be beneficial to all. This means that economic inequality is only justified if the most disadvantaged member of society is even better off than would be the case with other arrangements. Only when a rising tide actually carries all boats upwards can economic inequalities be addressed in a just society. The method of the original position supports this second principle, which is called the principle of difference, because if we stand behind the veil of ignorance and therefore do not know what our situation will be in society when the veil of ignorance is lifted, we will only accept those principles that are to our advantage.

even if we find ourselves in the least favored position of society. In Plato`s best-known dialogue, The Republic, the theory of the social contract is again represented, albeit less favorably this time. In Book II, Glaucon proposes a candidate for an answer to the question «What is justice?» by presenting a contractual social explanation of the nature of justice. What men want most is to be able to commit injustices against others without fear of reprisal, and what they most want to avoid is being treated unfairly by others without being able to do evil in return. Justice, he says, is the conventional result of the laws and covenants people make to avoid these extremes. Unable to commit injustices with impunity (as do those who wear the ring of Gyges) and fearful of becoming victims themselves, men decide that it is in their interest to submit to the convention of justice.