Natural Law, Rationality and the Social Contract

Each day, billions of people throughout the world affirm their commitment to a specific idea; to be part of a society. While this social contract is often overlooked by most citizens, their agreement to it nevertheless has far-reaching consequences. Being a member of society entails relinquishing self-autonomy to a higher authority, whose aim should be to promote the overall good of the populace. While making this decision to become part of a commonwealth is usually performed without explicit deliberation, there is a common consensus amongst philosophers that something unique to the human experience is the driving force behind this decision. Contained within this something are highly contested points of debate amongst both past and contemporary political philosophers. Two such philosophers are Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Aquinas. Each of these political writers provide detailed arguments regarding the concept of natural law, the role that reason plays in this law, whether some laws are considered truly rational, and why some people choose not to follow certain principles even when they recognize them to be rational. By analyzing each of these arguments, we will arrive at the conclusion that even though the rational principles that reason provides us can easily be disregarded by the populace, that we can still find a common good within promulgating rational doctrine.

While Hobbes’ and Aquinas’ theories hold the same basic boundaries of recognizing inherent human knowledge, they have different opinions regarding the specifics contained within these boundaries. The foremost difference rests in the concept of natural law. Aquinas sees natural law as the second link in the chain of laws that originated directly from God. The foundati...

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...g, the exchange was still worthy of discussion because it provided an empirical examples of the catastrophic consequences of ignoring rational principles. Hobbes recognized this same tendency for some to act irrational. He stated that “…men’s actions proceed from their wills and their wills from their hopes and fears…” (Hobbes, page 69). Much like a gambler at a casino who knows that odds are heavily in favor of the house, each man’s hope drives their will toward irrational acts. Examples provided by these misguided souls serve the common good, by quelling the hopes of the masses that they somehow will achieve the unachievable. Whether it’s the collapse of an empire in Greece or the squandering of a paycheck at a card table, these products of irrational behavior cause the remainder of the populace to solidify their commitment of being a rational part of society.