Contract Theory in Historical Context

Abstract

The social contract is usually regarded as a quintessentially modern political idea, which telegraphs the root modern principles of popular sovereignty and governmental accountability to the people. By setting classic contract theory in historical context, these essays present a diff erent view. Seventeenth-century contractarianism was a parochial genre, they argue, that addressed problems which disappeared with the advent of modern, electoral politics. A further theme is the parochial nature of the texts, several essays relate Hobbes’s texts, in particular, to the ‘history of the book’ in the seventeenth century.