This House Believes that the Social Contract is a viable political theory

I will address two main points by my opponent: firstly, that political theory cannot rest on empirical facts, and secondly his discussion of viability. I wish to have addressed his third point, but it simply was not brought up, and so I won’t have the ability to respond. However, keep in mind that, no matter how nice an idea is, that does not make an idea true. To respond to my opponent defining viability, of course I accept viable as being synonymous with feasible - I never knew the word was so contentious! The debate arises when he says that ‘empirics’, or evidence, is irrelevant to political theory. As someone in the field, I can promise you this is simply not the case. Plato, Aristotle, Marx, Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Hegel, Augustine, Nietzsche, Bakunin, and more all discuss psychology – they discuss human nature. Locke, Hobbes, Grotius, Bodin, Rousseau, Hooker, Filmer – they all discuss the origins of society – history. Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, Marsilius – they all discuss natural law, using biology to inform their political opinions. These are all points which can be factually analysed. Hobbes for example says people without ties are naturally prone to selfish short-termed decision making. Aristotle says people are prone to forming political societies. Augustine says people are prone to form societies yet are selfish short-termed decision-makers. Filmer says people are born within society. These are all able to be tested. To give an example, suppose we meet Augustine who says human naturally do only evil without God. We can test this claim, by seeing atheists do good. This concept was alien to Augustine, yet his entire political philosophy is based on this empirical fact. Similarly, Hobbes based his political philosophy on the claim that humans are ruled by passions, and use reason to pursue their passions. And in that respect, we have animalistic desires, and a lack of care for forming society willingly. However, by contending that reasoned creatures have different ‘passions’ than reasonless creatures – in other words, reason changes our passions – we can contend Hobbes’ claim that we are just made up of animalistic desires. To Social Contract Theory: if it wishes to claim that society was originally made up of individuals, we can point to (as Filmer does) how people are born naturally in families with authority already existing. So it can be shown factually erroneous to say that authority stems from the contract only, when families indeed are the primary generator of authority. Hume further notes that the contract requires either tacit or explicit consent. Yet those who have not conceived of the contract in this way – either by being too young, or not educated in the social contract theory, or not believing in the contract – cannot possibly be argued to have consented. How does one consent when one cannot conceive of consenting? Both Filmer and Hume object persuasively to the contract’s factual basis. These facts can of course be debated: Rousseau contends that children in a state of nature (i. e. before the contract) leave their parents forever as soon as they are able, and the parent had no authority over them. Yet this seems extremely unlikely – Rousseau even noted this was a fictional understanding. However, simply denying facts their place in this debate is an unreasonable claim. My opponent’s only burden would be to show the contract is a nice idea. Whether it is nice or not though is irrelevant – the question, as always, is whether something is true. Utopianism is a nice idea, but we live in the world of reality, not fiction. Social contract’s factual claims on the origin of authority is dubious at best, ludicrous at worst, and with that I urge against the resolution.