It is a contract of each with all, a surrender by the individual of his personal right to fulfil the commands of the law of nature in return for the guarantee that his rights as nature ordains them--life and liberty and property--will be preserved.
Laski describes Locke's social contract as a mutual agreement that protects individual rights within a community.
Share
More from Harold J. Laski
From no accusation were its statesmen more anxious to be free than from that of a belief in democratic government.
Wilkes was a sign that the populace was slowly awaking to a sense of its own power.
The contract is thus not general as with Hobbes but limited and specific in character.
He realized that freedom is born of a certain spontaneity for which the rigid lines of doctrinaire thinkers left no room.
Other voices in this conversation
