<P> In both moral and political philosophy, the social contract or political contract is a theory or model, originating during the Age of Enlightenment, that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual . Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights . The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory . The term takes its name from The Social Contract (Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique), a 1762 book by Jean - Jacques Rousseau that discussed this concept . </P> <P> Although the antecedents of social contract theory are found in antiquity, in Greek and Stoic philosophy and Roman and Canon Law, the heyday of the social contract was the mid-17th to early 19th centuries, when it emerged as the leading doctrine of political legitimacy . The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent any political order that Thomas Hobbes termed the "state of nature". In this condition, individuals' actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience . From this shared starting point, social contract theorists seek to demonstrate, in different ways, why a rational individual would voluntarily consent to give up their natural freedom to obtain the benefits of political order . </P> <P> Hugo Grotius (1625), Thomas Hobbes (1651), Samuel Pufendorf (1673), John Locke (1689), Jean - Jacques Rousseau (1762), and Immanuel Kant (1797) are among the most prominent of 17th - and 18th - century theorists of social contract and natural rights . Each solved the problem of political authority in a different way . Grotius posited that individual human beings had natural rights . Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a "state of nature", human life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". In the absence of political order and law, everyone would have unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to plunder, rape, and murder; there would be an endless "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). To avoid this, free men contract with each other to establish political community, i.e. civil society, through a social contract in which they all gain security in return for subjecting themselves to an absolute sovereign, one man or an assembly of men . Though the sovereign's edicts may well be arbitrary and tyrannical, Hobbes saw absolute government as the only alternative to the terrifying anarchy of a state of nature . Hobbes asserted that humans consent to abdicate their rights in favor of the absolute authority of government (whether monarchical or parliamentary). Pufendorf disputed Hobbes's equation of a state of nature with war . </P> <P> Alternatively, John Locke and Jean - Jacques Rousseau have argued that we gain civil rights in return for accepting the obligation to respect and defend the rights of others, giving up some freedoms to do so . The central assertion of social contract approaches is that law and political order are not natural, but are instead human creations . The social contract and the political order it creates are simply the means towards an end--the benefit of the individuals involved--and legitimate only to the extent that they fulfill their part of the agreement . According to Hobbes (in whose view government is not a party to the original contract) citizens are not obligated to submit to the government when it is too weak to act effectively to suppress factionalism and civil unrest . According to other social contract theorists, when the government fails to secure their natural rights (Locke) or satisfy the best interests of society (called the "general will" in Rousseau), citizens can withdraw their obligation to obey, or change the leadership through elections or other means including, when necessary, violence . </P>

Who created the concept of a social contract