contractarianism

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the moral and political philosophy that grounds principles of justice and right in a social contract — an agreement that rational agents would make from a position of equality or impartiality; Thomas Hobbes grounded political authority in a contract to escape the state of nature; John Locke grounded natural rights in a contract preserving pre-political liberties; John Rawls's veil of ignorance thought experiment — in which rational agents choose principles of justice without knowing their place in society — is the most sophisticated contemporary contractarian theory; Thomas Scanlon's contractualism grounds moral wrongness in principles that others could not reasonably reject; contractarianism faces objections about the moral status of beings unable to participate in contracts — children, non-human animals, severely cognitively disabled persons