“Contractarianism” names both a political theory of thelegitimacy of political authority and a moral theory about the originor legitimate content of moral norms. The political theory ofauthority claims that legitimate authority of government must derivefrom the consent of the governed, where the form and content of thisconsent derives from the idea of contract or mutual agreement. Themoral theory of contractarianism claims that moral norms derive theirnormative force from the idea of contract or mutual agreement.Contractarians are skeptical of the possibility of grounding moralityor political authority in either divine will or some perfectionistideal of the nature of humanity. Social contract theorists from thehistory of political thought include Hobbes, Locke, Kant, andRousseau. The most important contemporary political social contracttheorist is John Rawls, who effectively resurrected social contracttheory in the second half of the 20th century, along with DavidGauthier, who is primarily a moral contractarian. There is nonecessity for a contractarian about political theory to be acontractarian about moral theory, although most contemporarycontractarians are both. It has been more recently recognized thatthere are two distinct strains of social contract thought, which nowtypically go by the namescontractarianism andcontractualism.

Contractarianism, which stems from the Hobbesian line of socialcontract thought, holds that persons are primarily self-interested,and that a rational assessment of the best strategy for attaining themaximization of their self-interest will lead them to act morally(where the moral norms are determined by the maximization of jointinterest) and to consent to governmental authority. Contractarianismargues that we each are motivated to accept morality “firstbecause we are vulnerable to the depredations of others, and secondbecause we can all benefit from cooperation with others”(Narveson 1988, 148). Contractualism, which stems from the Kantianline of social contract thought, holds that rationality requires thatwe respect persons, which in turn requires that moral principles besuch that they can be justified to each person. Thus, individuals arenot taken to be motivated by self-interest but rather by a commitmentto publicly justify the standards of morality to which each will beheld. Where Gauthier, Narveson, or economist James Buchanan are theparadigm Hobbesian contractarians, Rawls or Thomas Scanlon would bethe paradigm Kantian contractualists. The rest of this entry willspecifically pertain to the contractarian strain wherever the twodiverge.

• 1. Fundamental Elements of Contractarianism
• 2. The Metaphor of Contract
• 3. Answering the Moral Skeptic
• 4. Critiques of Normative Contractarianism
• 5. Subversive Contractarianism
• 6. Disability, Animals, Reciprocity, and Trust
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Fundamental Elements of Contractarianism

The social contract has two fundamental elements: a characterizationof the initial situation, called variously the “state ofnature” by the modern political philosophers, the“original position” by Rawls (1971, 17–22,118–193), or the “initial bargaining position” byGauthier (1986, 14–16, 131–134, passim), and acharacterization of the parties to the contract, particularly in termsof their rationality and motivation to come to agreement. The initialsituation posits what in bargaining theory is called the “noagreement position,” the situation to which the individualsreturn in case of failure to make an agreement or contract. Thissituation may be more or less hostile, and more or less social,depending on how the theorist characterizes human life in the absenceof rules of morality or justice. But crucial to all contractariantheories, there is some scarcity or motivation for competition in theinitial situation and there is some potential for gains from socialinteraction and cooperation.

In contemporary normative contractarian theories, that is, theoriesthat attempt to ground the legitimacy of government or theories thatclaim to derive a moral ought, the initial position represents thestarting point for a fair, impartial agreement. While contractualistsjustify the requirement of a fair, impartial agreement by reasonsexternal to the contract, contractarians hold that the success of thecontract in securing cooperative interaction itself requires that thestarting point and procedures be fair and impartial.

Some of the more recent literature focuses on how contractariantheories can ensure the fairness and impartiality of the initialbargaining situation without appealing to any external, independentmoral norms as the contractualist does. For the contractarian, allmoral norms are supposed to be the result of agreement by rationalagents, but if the contractarian has to appeal to prior moral norms inorder to secure agreement then it’s not clear what sort of workthe agreement is actually doing in establishing the content of themoral norms. At the same time, if there are no constraints at all overthe initial situation then the outcome agreed to may fail to be amoral outcome, and may instead be an outcome according to theprinciple, as Rawls puts it, “to each according to his threatadvantage” (1971, 141). Two potential strategies are to arguethat assumptions designed to ensure the fairness and impartiality ofthe initial situation, such as the assumption that the contractors aresymmetrically situated, either follow as a condition of rationality orare justified on strategic grounds. The idea that certain assumptionslike symmetry follow as implications from the exercise of rationalityhas attracted recent criticism on grounds that such assumptionsrepresent substantive constraints theoretically inaccessible tocontractarians (Thrasher 2014). Others have attempted to defend thepresence of such assumptions in contractarian theory (Thoma 2015).

Some points of controversy among contractarians concern the role ofthe initial situation in the theory: is it to be considered an actualhistorical situation, a possible historical moment, or is the contractsituation completely hypothetical? David Hume (1987/1777, 470–1)was the first to raise the decisive objection to any normative moralor political theory based on a historical contract: the consent ofone’s ancestors do not bind oneself. Contemporary politicalphilosophers have raised similar concerns about a hypotheticalcontract: insofar as the agreement ishypothetical then itcannot be said to represent agreement at all (Dworkin 1975). Inresponse to these sorts of objections, some contractarians defend thehypothetical contract on heuristic grounds by insisting that the pointof the contract device is not to directly bind the contractors butrather to provide a kind of thought experiment by which to discoverthe requirements of practical rationality (Gauthier 1986, ch. VII).That is, they argue that if one is rational, and among rational othersin circumstances in which agreement is both possible and beneficial,then rationality requires that one abide by the terms of the contract.While mainstream contractarian theories are hypothetical contracttheories, an interesting and powerfully subversive use ofcontractarianism (Mills 1997; Pateman 1989; Pateman & Mills2007—see section on Subversion of Contractarianism below) readsthe contract situation as historical agreements to erect and maintainwhite supremacy and patriarchy or male dominance. These lattercontractarian theories are not justifications of the status quo, ofcourse, but rather explanations and condemnations, and therefore donot face Hume’s objection. Other questions that dividecontemporary contractarians include: What are the ideal conditions andwho are the ideal contractors that will make obligatory the outcomesof the contract for actual persons? What is the content of thehypothetical agreement?

The second element of a contractarian theory characterizes thepotential contractors. There are two subparts to this: first,contractors have minimal other-directed desires or preferences, andsecond, contractors have a capacity for rational interaction withothers. Contractarian (as opposed to contractualist) theories embracea high standard for motivating making (and keeping) agreements. Theyavoid assuming that persons have preferences for moral behavior assuch in order to ground rules of morality or justice in rationalself-interest. Since persons’ interests do not necessarilyinclude the well-being of others, the main challenge forcontractarianism is to show that even without such other-directedpreferences, it would be rational to be moral. Such self-directedpreferences are called “non-tuistic” (Gauthier 1986, 87).However, there are reasons to think that narrowing the preferences ofcontractors to include only non-tuistic preferences is neithernecessary nor helpful in grounding morality. One reason is becausesuch a restriction of preferences means that actual persons will notbe willing to comply with the bargain that is made, under theassumption that they do not have such narrowly construed preferences(Hubin 1991). On the other hand, allowing positive tuistic preferencesto play a role in bargaining on morality and justice may create thepossibility for individuals to be exploited for their fellow feelings(Dimock 1999). This is especially a problem for women, as Dimockpoints out, since in most cultures women are trained from childhood bysexist norms and gender roles to prefer the well-being of others totheir own. Negative tuistic preferences pose a different challenge asa type of moral skepticism for either theorists who would exclude themor those who would include them in a contractarian theory (Superson2009). The former group include Rawls and Gauthier, who have arguedthat negative tuistic preferences (envy, jealousy, spite, vengeance)make cooperation for mutual advantage impossible and therefore areirrational (Rawls 1971, 142–150, 530–534; Gauthier 1986,311, 329). But this response significantly narrows the scope ofapplication of the theory, since such emotions are common. The lattergroup faces the challenge of showing how mutual advantage overcomesthese negative, other-directed emotions.

Second, persons are presumed to be instrumentally rational and socapable of understanding how the satisfaction of their desires can behelped by cooperative social interaction. Contractarians characterizepractical rationality instrumentally, subjectively, andpreferentially. Acting rationally entails maximizing satisfaction ofone’s own subjective preferences. Contractarians rely on thecrucial fact about humans that we are able to cooperate to producemore than each working alone, thus making it rational to cooperateunder at least some terms. Self-interest and rationality imply adesire to cooperate provided that cooperators can do so withoutsacrificing their self-interest. The desire to benefit fromcooperation in turn makes persons rationally concerned about theirreputations for adhering to the moral norms that make cooperationpossible and rational. (Seefeminist perspectives on the self (Section 1, Critique) for a critique of this conception of therational person.)

Contractarians seek to show that without rules of justice forcooperation, persons are worse off by their own lights. Hence it isrational to adopt some rules for morality and justice. These twoaspects of the contractarian individual—self-interest and theability to benefit from interaction with others—along with theconditions of moderate scarcity imply what Rawls following Hume calledthe “circumstances of justice”: the conditions under whichrules for justice could be both possible and necessary (1971,109–112). Justice, and a social contract, is only possible wherethere is some possibility of benefit to each individual fromcooperation.

Contractarian social contract theories take individuals to be the bestjudges of their interests and the means to satisfy their desires. Forthis reason, there is a close connection between liberalism andcontractarianism. However, that is not to say that all contractarianthought is liberal. Hobbes, for example, argued in favor of what JeanHampton has called the “alienation contract” (1986, 3,103, 256–265), that is, a contract on the part of a people toalienate their rights to adjudicate their own disputes andself-defense to a sovereign, on the grounds that that was the only wayto keep the peace given the nature of the alternative, which hefamously characterized as life that would be “solitary, poore,nasty, brutish, and short.” Thus, given a bad enough initialsituation, contractarianism may lead to the legitimation oftotalitarianism. Another point of criticism that arises from thecharacterization of the parties to the contract is that they must beable to contribute to the social product of interaction, or at leastto threaten to destabilize it. This is because each individual has tobe able to benefit from the inclusion of all those included. But thisthreatens to leave many, such as the severely disabled, the globalpoor, and animals outside the realm of justice, an implication thatsome find completely unacceptable (Kittay 1999; Nussbaum 2006).

Social contract theories also require some rules to guide theformation of agreement. Since they are prior to the contract, theremust be some source of prior moral norms, whether natural, rational,or conventional. The first rule that is normally prescribed is thatthere must be no force or fraud in the making of the agreement. No oneis to be “coerced” into agreement by the threat ofphysical violence. The reasoning for this is quite straightforwardlyprudential: if one is allowed to use violence, then there is no realdifference between the “contract” arrived at and the stateof nature for the threatened party, and hence no security in theagreement. However, there is a fine line between being coerced by thethreat of violence into giving up one’s rights and beingconvinced by the threat of penury to make an unfavorable agreement.For this reason contractarians like Gauthier are able to argue for afair and impartial starting point for bargaining that will lead tosecure and stable agreements. The second rule of contract is that eachindividual who is a legitimate party to the contract must agree to therules of justice, which are the outcomes of the contract.

2. The Metaphor of Contract

The metaphor of the social contract requires some interpretation inorder to apply it to the situation of morality or politics. Theinterpretation can be specified by determining answers to threequestions. First, what is the agreement on? Possible answers includethe principles of justice (Rousseau, Rawls), the design of the basicsocial institutions (Rawls), the commitment to give up to a sovereigngovernment (some or all of) one’s rights (Hobbes, Locke), theadoption of a disposition to be (conventionally) moral (Gauthier,Hampton). The second question is how the agreement is to be thoughtof: as a hypothetical agreement? An actual historical agreement? Animplicit historical situation? The third question is whether thecontract device is to be used as justification or explanation. Asdiscussed above, normative contractarianism uses the contract deviceprimarily as justification, but it may be that Hobbes and Lockethought that there was an explanatory element to the contract device.As will be discussed below (Subversive Contractarianism), an importantcontemporary contractarianism uses an implicit contract to explain theorigin of oppression.

3. Answering the Moral Skeptic

A brief sketch of the most complete and influential contemporarycontractarian theory, David Gauthier’s, is in order.Gauthier’s project inMorals By Agreement is to employa contractarian approach to grounding morality in rationality in orderto defeat the moral skeptic. (However, Anita Superson (2009) pointsout that Gauthier attempts to answer only the skeptic who asks“why should I be moral?” but leaves both the motiveskeptic, who argues that it is enough to act morally but need not bemotivated by morality, and the amoralist, who denies that there is anysuch thing as morality, that is, that there are true moralstatements.) It is generally assumed that humans can have no perfectnatural harmony of interests (otherwise morality would be largelysuperfluous), and that there is much for each individual to gainthrough cooperation. However, moral constraint on the pursuit ofindividual self-interest is required because cooperative activitiesalmost inevitably lead to a prisoner’s dilemma: a situation inwhich the best individual outcomes can be had by those who cheat onthe agreement while the others keep their part of the bargain. Thisleads to the socially and individually sub-optimal outcome whereineach can expect to be cheated by the other. But by disposingthemselves to act according to the requirements of morality wheneverothers are also so disposed, they can gain each others’ trustand cooperate successfully.

The contractarian element of the theory comes in the derivation of themoral norms. The compliance problem—the problem of justifyingrational compliance with the norms that have been accepted—mustdrive the justification of the initial situation and the conduct ofthe contracting situation. It is helpful to think of the contractsituation as a bargain, in which each party is trying to negotiate themoral rules that will allow them to realize optimal utility, and thishas led philosophers to apply a number of bargaining solutions to theinitial contract situation. Gauthier’s solution is the“minimax relative concession” (1986, ch. V). The idea ofminimax relative concession is that each bargainer will be mostconcerned with the concessions that she makes from her ideal outcomerelative to the concessions that others make. If she sees herconcessions as reasonable relative to the others, considering that shewants to ensure as much for herself as she can while securingagreement (and thereby avoiding the zero-point: no share of thecooperative surplus) and subsequent compliance from the others, thenshe will agree to it. What would then be the reasonable outcome? Thereasonable outcome, according to this view, is the outcome thatminimizes the maximum relative concessions of each party to thebargain (Gauthier 1986, ch. V).

In a more recent article and in contrast to his previous view,Gauthier rejects the idea that the problem of grounding morality inrationality should be framed as a bargaining problem at all (2013).When the problem is framed in this way, the solution depends onassuming that the parties participating in the contract negotiationsare all rational maximizers. Under his revised view, however, heneither sees the problem as a bargaining problem nor the parties as(constrained) rational maximizers; instead, he conceives of them asPareto-optimizers. As Pareto-optimizers or rational cooperators, theparties seek to produce a Pareto-optimal outcome, which is an outcomewhere it is not possible to increase the payoff to one party withoutdecreasing the payoff to another party. If it is possible to move toanother outcome to increase the payoff accruing to one party withoutdecreasing the payoff to another party, then the current outcome isnot Pareto-optimal. It is important to note that this change is notmeant to attach additional motives to the parties in addition to themotive of self-interest. Rational cooperation, according to Gauthier,provides an alternative conception of what constitutes rationalaction. Rational cooperators do not want to leave the additionalbenefits of cooperation on the table. How do these changes solve theoriginal problem of grounding morality in (this conception of)rationality? The answer is to calculate the payoffs for each outcomein terms of cooperative benefits or the absence of cooperativebenefits. For example, the cooperative minimum is a payoff whichprovides one party with none of benefits generated throughcooperation. In contrast, the cooperative maximum is the payoff whichaffords a single party all of the possible benefits generated throughcooperation. The potential cooperative gain is the difference betweenthese two. The actual cooperative gain is then the difference betweenits payoff and the party’s cooperative minimum. Next, the actualcooperative gain is then to be divided by the party’s potentialcooperative gain. This generates the party’s proportionate gain,which shows the actual gain as a proportion of the party’spotential gain from cooperation. Each outcome is then represented as aproportionate gain from cooperation. Finally, the goal is to selectthat outcome generating the maximum minimum proportionate gain to anysingle party. This principle, which Gauthier calls maximinproportionate gain, selects a Pareto-optimal outcome that would berational for parties to select.

Equally important to the solution as the procedure is the startingpoint from which the parties begin. For some contractarians (likeGauthier) there is no veil of ignorance—each party to thecontract is fully informed of their personal attributes and holdings.However, without the veil of ignorance, contractors will be aware ofthe differences in bargaining power that could potentially affect theoutcome of the bargain. It is important, then, that the initialposition must have been arrived at non-coercively if compliance to theagreement is to be secured. A form of the “Lockeanproviso” (modeled after Locke’s description of the initialsituation of his social contract): that one cannot have betteredhimself by worsening others, may turn out to be beneficial in caseswithout a veil of ignorance. In sum, the moral norms that rationalcontractors will adopt (and comply with) are those norms that would bereached by the contractors beginning from a position each has attainedthrough her own actions which have not worsened anyone else, andadopting as their principle for agreement the rule of minimax relativeconcession (Gauthier 1986, ch. VII).

On one line of thought, contractarianism produces liberal individualswho seem well suited to join the kind of society that Rawls envisioned(Gauthier 1986, ch. XI). On another line, the Hobbesian contractarianargument leads towards the sparse government of libertarianism(Narveson 1988). The controversy here turns on the primary motivationfor individuals to make agreements and cooperate. As we said before,there are two such motivations for the Hobbesian contractarian: fearof the depredations of others and benefits from cooperation withothers. Libertarianism results when the first of these is primary,whereas when the second is primary, the kind of reciprocity andsupportive government that will be discussed in the final sectionbecomes possible.

4. Critiques of Normative Contractarianism

Many critiques have been leveled against particular contractariantheories and against contractarianism as a framework for normativethought about justice or morality. (See the entry oncontemporary approaches to the social contract.) Jean Hampton criticized Hobbes in her bookHobbes and the SocialContract Tradition, in a way that has direct relevance tocontemporary contractarianism. Hampton argues that thecharacterization of individuals in the state of nature leads to adilemma. Hobbes’ state of nature as a potential war of allagainst all can be generated either as a result of passions (greed andfear, in particular) or rationality (prisoner’s dilemmareasoning, in which the rational players each choose to renege onagreements made with each other). But if the passions account iscorrect, then contractors will still be motivated by these passionsafter the social contract is drawn up, and so will fail to comply withit (Hampton 1986). And if the rationality account is correct, thenrational actors will not comply with the social contract any more thanthey will cooperate with each other before it is made.

This critique has an analog for theories (such as Gauthier’s)that claim that without the contract individuals will be stuck in somesocial sub-optimal situation that is bad enough to motivate them tomake concessions to each other for some agreement, yet the reason fortheir inability to cooperate without the contract cannot continue tooperate after the contract is made. A potential solution to thisproblem is to argue that individuals will choose to dispose themselvesto be constrained (self-interest) maximizers rather thanstraightforward (self-interest) maximizers, that is, to retrainthemselves not to think first of their self-interest but rather todispose themselves to keep their agreements, provided that they findthemselves in an environment of like-minded individuals (Gauthier1986, 160–166). But this solution has been found dubitable bymany commentators (see Vallentyne 1991). Michael Moehler argues thatthis move by Gauthier to constrained maximization moralizes theaccount of practical reasoning, and in doing so, moves outside thebounds of traditional contractarianism (Moehler 2020).

Hampton also objects to the contemporary contractarian assumption thatinteraction is merely instrumentally valuable. She argues that ifinteraction were only valuable for the fruits of cooperation that itbears for self-interested cooperators, then it would be unlikely thatthose cooperators could successfully solve the compliance problem. Inshort, they are likely not to be able to motivate morality inthemselves without some natural inclination to morality.Interestingly, Hampton agrees with Gauthier that contractarianism isright to require any moral or political norms to appeal toindividuals’ self-interest as a limitation on self-sacrifice orexploitation of any individual.

Two further critiques can be raised against contractarianism(Southwood 2010). According to the normativity objection,contractarian morality is not sufficiently other-regarding because itmotivates morality by appeal to one’s self-interest rather thanany concern of others. Because of this, the theory gives one no reasonto feel guilt or remorse for wrongdoing, but rather, at most,self-directed anger or disappointment at acting irrationally.Southwood’s objection can be seen as one way of filling outSuperson’s claim, mentioned above, that Gauthier’s theorycannot respond to the motive skeptic. This objection overlooks thefact that some appeal to others’ concerns is built into both theLockean Proviso and the bargaining theory from which the content ofthe moral norms are derived. Furthermore, Kantian moral theory wouldseem to be subject to the same objection insofar as it appeals toautonomous rationality as the motive for acting morally. Gauthier canbe seen as providing a response to the objection in the final chapterofMorals by Agreement, where he describes the “liberalindividual,” whose moral psychology is shaped by living themoral life that mutual advantage contractarianism prescribes.

According to the impartiality objection, all human persons are owedcertain duties regardless of their powers or abilities, and because itrelies on an instrumental and subjective conception of practicalreason, contractarianism cannot explain how this would be so.Contractarianism, on the contrary, holds it to be irrational to treattruly powerless persons equally, since it is not mutually advantageousto do so. This problem, which is similar to the exclusion problemdiscussed above and in section 6 below, is a serious problem.Gauthier’s Lockean Proviso was meant to rule out takinghistorical patterns of dominance into account, but even if all suchdominance relations were eliminated and bargaining were conditioned onundominated assets, the inequality in natural talents and abilitieswould reintroduce the possibility of dominance.

Contractarianism has also been criticized on racial grounds (Williams1991). Contracts require independent agents who are able to make andcarry out promises without the aid of others. Historically, whilewhite men have been treated as these pure wills of contract theory,Blacks and women have been treated as anti-will: dependent andirrational. Both ideals are false; whole people, she says, aredependent on other whole people. But by defining some as contractorsand others as incapable of contract, whole classes of people can beexcluded from the realm of justice. This point has been explored byother critics of contractarianism, first by Allen Buchanan (1993) andmore recently by Eva Kittay (1999), who points out that not only aredependents such as children and disabled people left out ofconsideration by contractarian theories, but their caretakers’needs and interests will tend to be underestimated in the contract, aswell.

5. Subversive Contractarianism

A descriptive use to which contractarianism has been put is to exploitthe exclusionary, in-group/out-group nature of the contractarianproject to illuminate the phenomenon of oppression. CarolePateman’sThe Sexual Contract (1989) uses contractariantheory to argue that there has been an implicit contract among men toenforce patriarchy. She calls her approach a “conjecturalhistory,” which she uses both to illuminate the actual historyof patriarchal oppression of women and the ideology of social contracttheory. Similarly, Charles Mills argues inThe RacialContract (1997) that whites have had an actual, historical,sometimes explicit, though often only implicit, contract to enforcewhite supremacy. The arguments are similar in their contractarianoutlines, though they differ in the historical and factual details.According to both philosophers’ theories, there are moral,political, and epistemological terms of the contract, and its effecthas been to allow one group of persons effectively to dominate,subordinate, and exploit another group. The moral terms require thedominant group to evaluate the lives of their group more highly thanthose of the subordinated, the political to deprive the subordinategroup of effective political power, and the epistemological termsrequire the members of the dominant group to see themselves asintellectually superior to the dominated. The social contract then canbe seen as a justification by the parties to the contract of theirinteraction, and of their exploitation of those who are not parties tothe contract, but only if the fundamental division of in-group andout-group is accepted. If the racial and sexual contracts were to beshown to be rational, they would constitute prima facie critiques ofnormative contractarianism, since they would then seem to justifyracism and sexism. Pateman and Mills have more recently teamed up inContract and Domination (2007) to explore their similaritiesand ways in which they diverge. Pateman extends her critique of theideology of contract to the case of colonial appropriation of nativepeoples’ lands with what she calls the “settlercontract.” Mills also extends his analysis both in scope toinclude gender and class, and to give a normative application of thedescriptive contract to the issue of reparations for slavery. He callsthis more general contract the “domination contract.”While Pateman holds that contractarianism essentially permitsdomination, Mills holds that contract theory can be salvaged bybeginning with a more realistic non-ideal starting point and askinghow existing injustice ought, rationally be eliminated. However, hispositive theory is contractualist rather than contractarian, as itbegins with the premise of moral equality.

Several of the critiques surveyed above, then, center on thequestions: who is allowed to be a party to the contract, and how arethose who are excluded from the contract to be treated? On thenormative contractarian view, it is only rational to include all ofthose who can both benefit and reciprocate benefits to others.Normative contractarianism, then, on the assumption that non-whitesand women can both benefit and reciprocate benefits to others, showsthe sexual and racial contracts to be fundamentally irrational.Gauthier, in fact, explicitly argued that his contractarianism aidsthe feminist project of ending exploitative intimate relationships.Contractarian morality disapproves of relationships that are notmutually advantageous without assuming ties of affection. He writes,“sociality … becomes a source of exploitation if itinduces persons to acquiesce in institutions and practices that butfor their fellow-feelings would be costly to them” (1984, 11).This theme is taken up in some defenses of feminist contractarianism(Hampton 1993). In the debate over contractarianism in feministthought, there is a concern that contractualists beg the question ofintrinsic value, and it is thought, in contrast, that (Hobbesian)contractarianism can underwrite feminist claims about the exploitativenature of caring relationships without the intrinsic value assumption(Sample 2002). Lastly, in the hands of some philosophers socialcontract theory becomes a device for combating oppression, especiallygender oppression, by uncovering adaptive preferences formed underconditions of oppression (Walsh 2015).

6. Disability, Animals, Reciprocity, and Trust

Disability rights activists, however, would still seem to have aserious complaint to lodge against normative contractarianism, sinceit is surely the case that there are persons who cannot reciprocatebenefits to others. Such persons would be, on the normativecontractarian view, beyond the scope of the rules of justice. Recentliterature on disability argues that, to the contrary,contractarianism can be inclusive of the disabled. For example, it maybe argued that in fact most disabled persons and all caregivers wouldbe included in the bargaining group for clear strategic reasons(Becker 2005). The basic contractarian insight that cooperation ismutually advantageous implies that whenever someone can be included asa contributing cooperator there are gains to be realized for all. Manydisabled people are either already capable of contributing or could beso with accommodation or rehabilitation, and thus it is to theadvantage of society to provide accommodations or rehabilitation atsome level, requiring reciprocal contributions from those thusbenefited. For those disabled persons who cannot be rehabilitated,contractarianism provides a different solution, namely a“mutually advantageous” social insurance scheme thatoffers a dignified standard of care for anyone who needs it (Becker2005). One might object that the currently healthy contractors wouldnot see the need to pay premiums as high as the already disabled,since they have a lower probability of needing the care. For thisinsurance scheme to work (and to avoid adverse selection problems),everyone would need to agree to equal premiums without prior knowledgeof their condition. But it is hard to see how a contractarian canjustify this agreement. A contractualist, on the other hand, couldargue that such an agreement could not be reasonably rejected. Thisline of argument would have to show that a similar argument could notbe made for any form of bad luck, on pain of this view devolving intoegalitarianism.

Such a view thus raises the objection that there is a level of needfor rehabilitation or accommodation that goes beyond any possiblefuture expected contribution for a given disabled person. And disabledpersons are not well placed to hold out a threat to destabilizesociety, so the motivation to contract with them must be the expectedbenefit. Relying on only ideas of mutual advantage and reciprocitywould continue to leave these people—the“outliers”—outside the contract, languishing belowan acceptable level of functioning which they could, given anothermoral theory, rightfully claim. According to some, contracting neednot be essentially adversarial (Francis & Silvers 2005). Since thebenefits of mutual agreement are best achieved by “promotingstable compliance with mutual expectations” (Francis &Silvers 2005, 60), the essential element of contract is thedevelopment of trust, and the deeper and more widespread the trust,the lower the enforcement costs to contracting. Granting theimportance of trust development, then, the disabled are as capable ofcontributing to this climate, perhaps more so because of their greatervulnerability, as the able-bodied. By this they mean that disabledpersons who rely on others for care can decide to put aside fears ofbetrayal or neglect and remain positive and forward looking, andthereby bring about a positive affective climate in themselves andtheir caregivers. This affective work toward trust building becomestheir contribution to the social good. Thus by focusing on themotivation of cooperation for mutual advantage rather than fear of thedepredations of others, a more inclusive and positive contractarianpolitical theory comes into view. This view depends on the assumption(similar to one made by Gauthier) that our moral psychology is suchthat, once we develop our disposition to cooperate, we lose thedisposition to cheat on agreements we have made or harm others tosatisfy our immediate self interest. As mentioned earlier, thisassumption has often been questioned by critics ofcontractarianism.

The case for including animals within the scope of the rules ofjustice produced by the contract is more difficult to make because,unlike the disabled who may only require and depend on appropriateaccommodations in order to reciprocate, animals may be consideredincapable of reciprocating benefits to others and are also incapableof rational interaction. If contractarianism is at all able to accountfor the moral standing of animals, then it has to do so in a moreindirect way than in the case of the disabled. It may be possible toground the moral standing of animals as part of a contract agreed toby other contractors who are capable of rational interaction (Cohen2007, 2009). Suppose that Bob agrees to form a contract with Jane onlyon the condition that Jane also attributes direct moral standing toBob’s pet dog, Rosko. As a result of the contract between Boband Jane, Rosko gains intrinsic moral standing that imposescorrelative moral duties on Jane. If Jane were to harm Rosko in someway, she would not only violate a duty to Rosko’s owner, Bob,but she would also violate a duty that she hasto Rosko whopossesses intrinsic moral standing of his own. In this way bilateralagreements between contractors could potentially extend the scope ofthe rules of justice to apply to beings both incapable of rationalinteraction and arguably incapable of reciprocating benefits toothers.

Deriving the moral standing of beings from agreements reached by othercontractors not only assumes that contractors have tuisticpreferences, an assumption rejected by many contractarians, but italso potentially makes the moral standing of those beings contingenton the nature of the tuistic preferences and interests held by others(Tanner 2013). Contractors may agree to protect only certain kinds ofanimals, and they may make agreements to protect animals only whendoing so does not conflict with their own, more narrowly construedinterests. As a result, the status of those who cannot participate inthe initial situation for various reasons, such as the disabled andanimals, remains a contentious issue in contractarian thought.

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