Social Contract Theory and Its Critics
In its early years, the Center’s research efforts were focused on the issue of the social
contract, which is one of the fundamental issues of the philosophy and political thought of
classical liberalism and republicanism. The opposition “the social contract - its critics”, allows
to situate on a spectrum virtually all influential doctrines and trends of socio-political thought.
The project participants examined both the positions of representatives of the idea of the
social contract and the positions of its main critics. The starting point for the project were the
concepts of the Old Testament, the visions of the Greek sophists and the medieval idea of the
contract of power. Then, the subject of interest of the excellent team of researchers
participating in the project became the concepts of the representatives of the Salamanca
School, the school of natural law and the seventeenth-century concepts of Thomas Hobbes
and John Locke, as well as the eighteenth-century doctrines of Jean Jacques Rousseau and
Immanuel Kant. The scope of the project also included the most significant contemporary
visions: the concepts of John Rawls, James M. Buchanan, the doctrine of moral
contractualism of David Gauthier and the economic approach of Kenneth Binmore. Among
the concepts of critics of contractualism, the research included the concepts of: Robert Filmer,
David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Michael Sandel, Alasdair
MacIntyre, Charles Taylor.
The project was financed by the Polish National Centre of Culture (NCK), the University of
Lodz and Grupa Atlas, strategic partner of Alexis de Tocqueville's Center for Political and
Legal Thought.
Publications
Rau. Z, Chmielinski M. (monografia redagowana wieloakturska) 2010, Umowa społeczna i jej krytycy (Social Contract and its
Critics),, Warszawa, Scholar.
Chmieliński M. 2010, Umowa społeczna jako idea praktycznego rozumu w koncepcji Immanuela Kanta (Social Contract as the Idea of Practical Reason in the Conception of
Immanuel Kant), [in:] Umowa społeczna i jej krytycy, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warszawa .
Chmieliński M. 2010, Umowa społeczna jako ideologia. Davida Gauthiera kontraktualizm moralny in: Umowa społeczna i jej krytycy, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, Warszawa. .
