The Social Contract by William A Edmundson

The Social Contract by William A Edmundson

We are all parties to a social contract and obligated under it. Or is this mere fiction? How is such an agreement possible in a society riven by deep moral disagreement? William Edmundson explains the social-contract tradition from its beginnings in the English Revolution, through Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau to its culmination in the work of John Rawls. The idea that legitimate government rests on the consent of free equals took shape in the seventeenth century and was developed in the eighteenth but fell into disuse in the nineteenth century even as democracy, toleration, and limited government gained ground. Edmundson shows how Rawls revived the idea of a social contract in the mid-twentieth century to secure these gains, as the then-dominant moral theories, such as utilitarianism, could not. The book also defends Rawls's conviction that political equality is integral to the idea of reciprocity at the heart of the tradition.

'This book sheds new light on a powerful and inspiring idea that has shaped modern political philosophy: the idea of a social contractCarefully argued and engagingly written, it takes a fresh look at the works of the giants of the social contract tradition – Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls – and presents them as part of a conversation that starts with the Putney Debates.' , Fabian Wendt, Virginia Tech

William A. Edmundson is Regents' Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Georgia State University. He is the author of Three Anarchical Fallacies (Cambridge 1998); An Introduction to Rights (Cambridge 2nd ed. 2012); John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (Cambridge 2017); and Socialism for Soloists (Polity 2021). He has written on democracy, animal rights, distributive justice, moral responsibility, coercion, political obligation, moral relativism, capital punishment, privacy, civility, and other topics.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781009395267
ISBN 10	1009395262
Title	The Social Contract
Author	William A Edmundson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2025-05-31
Number of pages	257
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.