Editing Social contract (section)

===Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (1651)===
{{main|Leviathan (Hobbes book)}}

The first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed contract theory was [[Thomas Hobbes]] (1588–1679). According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the [[state of nature]] were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a state in which self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts prevented the "social", or society. Life was "anarchic" (without leadership or the concept of sovereignty). 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 [[natural rights|individual rights]] so that others would cede theirs.<ref>E.g. person{{nbsp}}A gives up his/her right to kill person{{nbsp}}B if person{{nbsp}}B does the same.</ref> This resulted in the establishment of the state, a sovereign entity like the individuals now under its rule used to be, which would create laws to regulate social interactions. Human life was thus no longer "a war of all against all".

The state system, which grew out of the social contract, was, however, also anarchic (without leadership). Just as the individuals in the state of nature had been sovereigns and thus guided by self-interest and the absence of rights, so states now acted in their self-interest in competition with each other. Just like the state of nature, states were thus bound to be in conflict because there was no sovereign over and above the state (more powerful) capable of imposing some system such as social-contract laws on everyone by force. Indeed, Hobbes' work helped to serve as a basis for the [[Political realism|realism]] theories of international relations, advanced by [[E. H. Carr]] and [[Hans Morgenthau]]. Hobbes wrote in ''[[Leviathan (Hobbes book)|Leviathan]]'' that humans ("we") need the "terrour of some Power" otherwise humans will not heed the [[Golden Rule|law of reciprocity]], "(in summe) doing to others, as wee would be done to".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hobbes|first1=Thomas|title=Leviathan|url=https://archive.org/details/leviathanpenguin00thom|url-access=registration|date=1985|publisher=Penguin|location=London|page=[https://archive.org/details/leviathanpenguin00thom/page/223 223]|isbn=9780140431957}}</ref>