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In some versions of social contract theory, there are freedoms, but no rights in the state of nature; and, by way of the social contract, people create societal rights and obligations. In other versions of social contract theory, society imposes restrictions (law, custom, tradition, etc.) that limit the natural rights of a person.
Individuals in the state of nature were apolitical and asocial. This state of nature is followed by the social contract. The social contract was seen as an "occurrence" during which individuals came together and ceded some of their individual rights so that others would cede theirs. [11]
Portrait of Thomas Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes’s moral and political philosophy is constructed around the basic premise of social and political order, explaining how humans should live in peace under a sovereign power so as to avoid conflict within the ‘state of nature’. [1]
The stated aim of The Social Contract is to determine whether there can be a legitimate political authority, since people's interactions he saw at his time seemed to put them in a state far worse than the good one they were at in the state of nature, even though living in isolation. He concludes book one, chapter three with, "Let us then admit ...
Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), it argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could be avoided only by a strong, undivided government.
Aside from social contract theory, Leviathan also popularized ideas such as the state of nature ("war of all against all") and laws of nature. His other major works include the trilogy De Cive (1642), De Corpore (1655), and De Homine (1658) as well as the posthumous work Behemoth (1681).
In social contract theory, citizens in a state of nature contract with each other to establish a state of civil society. For example, in the Lockean state of nature, the parties agree to establish a civil society in which the government has limited powers and the duty to protect the persons and property of citizens.
The family as a model for the organization of the state is a theory of political philosophy. It explains the structure of certain kinds of state in terms of the structure of the family (as a model or as a claim about the historical growth of the state), or it attempts to justify certain types of state by appeal to the structure of the family.