A) What is the best result of a social contract, in terms of ethics?

Social Contracts and Rawls on Justice

A social contract is a set of rules that a society as a whole functions under. Though these may often be codified as laws, it is better to think of the social contract as an agreement among the denizens of a culture about what “good” is. The social contract provides a definition of goodness, and is the subject of inquiry in ethics when we evaluate the foundations of the contract itself.

Social contractarians refer to these foundations as the state of nature, the hypothetical origins of social contracts as a whole. Though the state of nature is not a historically “real” time or place, it can be thought of as the supporting ethical system(s) that establish and perpetuate a social contract. The social rules of etiquette, for example, are not as codified as a SC rule, but seem to have an underlying assumption about what it means to treat others in a particular way. Viewing the rules of etiquette through an ethical lens gives us insight into the underlying values that transform etiquette into the rules of law.

For example, in the hypothetical state of nature, there is no prohibition against killing another person. It becomes in the groups self interest to agree on rules, either for teleological (virtue ethical) or for purely sociological reasons. The social contract begins to form, but the explanation for why murder is prohibited, as well as the definition of murder (does it include animals? Children? People who cut you off on the freeway?) is constrained by the ethical foundations before being fully integrated into a social contract. The contract contains then both the explanation of what actions are right, but also why, as opposed to the rule in the “state of nature”, which existed for purely practical purpose. Thus, many contractarians such as John Rawls, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Immanuel Kant argue that the Social Contract is the only situation in which “good actions” occur. The contract itself is “good,” if it is based on well-formed ethical principles, because those principles are now informing our actions.

Contracts require an exchange of power in order to function. An individual gives up some of their autonomy/freedom (for example, the ability to decide what punishments are acceptable) to the contract itself, however it manifests, in exchange for protection, access to the social good and participation in a smooth running society. The state gains some powers, generally that of determining law and punishment, but is subject to the citizens remaining within the boundaries of the physical state and is always vunerable to revolution of the citizenry, which inherently dissolves the social contract.

This exchange is ideally balanced between the state and the citizens, with restrictions of power on both sides creating a type of equilibrium, but how this balance manifests is dependent on the underlying ethics of the particular contract.

As an example of a particular social contract, which does not exist except in theory, is that of Justice as Fairness created by John Rawls, a neo-Kantian who discusses social contracts in the context of fairness being the primary goal as opposed to equality. Fairness does not demand that every person subject to a social contract be treated exactly the same way; rather, that every person within a social contract should have access to the same social concept of Good (which in Rawls's case is based on deontology and the concept of agency).

Rawls uses a series of principles to argue for the best possible social contract, which he believes to be rooted in Kantian personhood and actually, practically achievable. First is the Liberty Principle: that people only be limited in freedom in terms of specifics (ie, that you cannot own all the property in the society) but that there are intrinsic rights to action that cannot be infringed upon without creating deep inequalities. The second is the Equality Principle, that all persons under the social contract are fundamentally equal in worth, even if they do not have equal abilities. The inequality of abilities is addressed with his difference principle. His idea of difference regulates inequalities, both natural and those created by the society: it only permits inequalities that work to the advantage of the worst-off.

Rather than using the idea of a state of nature to determine which values ought to be present in society and which inequalities are permissible, Rawls instead hypothesizes a “Veil of Ignorance”, where we attempt to create a society from principles that we would adhere to if we had no knowledge of our own social position or influence. If we do not “know” whether we ourselves are physically disabled, we are more likely to create a society where physical disability is not an impediment to using transportation, for example. This type of theory is also called a “First Position” theory, in order to separate it from the historical and linguistic implications of the State Of Nature. Using this, Rawls wants to show that there are intrinsic values (which are very similar to Kantian personhood) which must be present in any Social Contract for it to be Good (at least from a Kantian perspective...)