Social Contract and Morality

Kyle Cupp has a brief post describing the dehumanizing moral effects of seeing human dignity and rights as springing entirely from a social contract (implied or explicit):

This reduction occurs when we understand and act upon our moral obligations to one another only within the framework of a social contract--when we limit our obligations to those who have entered into such contracts and consider ourselves obligated only to those who share our citizenship, have signed a treaty we have signed, or participate with us in some other contractual arrangement. I make this reduction when I don't care about torturing terrorists because they're not signers of the Geneva Conventions, when I wish to alienate the immigrant who enters my country against my country's laws, when I ignore my obligations to those not yet born because the laws of the land do not recognize their personhood, or when I insist that others shouldn't be given Constitutional rights when the rights I wish to withhold from them are basic human rights.

I think that he's right as far as he goes, but I don't think that his point that basic human rights and duties are inherent to humanity (rather than assumed via some sort of contract/relationship) is actually the point usually at dispute in our society. Rather, what seems often to be disputed is what the extent of basic human rights are -- and which "rights" are merely agreed civic rights which we grant explicitly via the social contract.

For instance, on the torture debate, it seems to me that the two camps hold different views about the extent of basic human rights -- not that one camp only believes in the social contract while the other believes in basic human rights. Essentially, those who are defending the use of "enhanced interrogation" on terror suspects assert that it is in keeping with basic human rights to user certain forms of physical punishment as coercion -- punishing someone for refusing to provide information which the interrogators think they need in order to achieve some common good. What this people are saying (and I disagree) is: "It is morally acceptable and in keeping with basic human rights to waterboard (or beat or keep in the dark, etc.) someone who refuses to answer questions which might save lives. However, we as a society have made an agreement both internally with respect to our citizens and externally with certain treaty signing powers that we will forgo this morally acceptable means of coercion when dealing with criminals or POWs because we consider this to be to the overall common good."

I would propose that the way of testing this claim of mine would be as follows: If those who support "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects really believe that human rights come only from the social contract and not from basic human rights of some sort, then clearly this would apply to things even more clearly in violation of basic human rights. Would they support:

- Selling them into slavery.
- Cutting out their eyes and tongues and then turning them loose.
- Having them drawn and quartered in the public square.

If not, we must assume that this camp does indeed believe that all people have basic human rights, and indeed their conceptions of basic human rights are more generous than those of many (if not most) societies throughout history.

Now, I do think that Kyle points to a real moral danger. Human societies have a natural tendency towards having one set of rules for "our people" and another for "other people". And so it's important to challenge people to think about what rights are human rights and which ones are civic rights extended only via the social contract.

At the same time, among those prone to hysteria about rights violations, there is a great tendency to assume that all civic rights are basic human rights. So, for example, in the US a trial by a jury of peers is a civic right when accused of a crime -- a right that we as citizens are given via the explicit social contract of our country. However, while being treated justly (and not being punished injustly) are basic human rights -- trial by jury is clearly not. And yet in our society, which so often confuses our legal system with morality, it is quite common for people to consider any other means of dispensing justice than a jury trial to be "denying people their basic rights".

While the social contract is clearly not the only thing that gives us rights, it is by no means unacceptable for certain rights and duties to be explicitly stemming from the social contract and available only to citizens or legal residents -- not to those who are not members of the country.

The Contradiction of Religious Freedom

Perhaps one of the most cherished freedoms of liberal democracy (in the sense of classical liberalism, not modern progressivism) is the freedom of religion. Much though I admire many elements of Western Civilization prior to the modern era, I cannot help thinking that the end of the formal confessional state has generally been a good thing not only for the state, but even more so for the Church. It has given the Church, no longer tied down by the need to support explicitly Catholic regimes, the freedom to speak more openly and forcefully on the demands that Christ's message puts upon us in the public and economic realms.

That said, it seems to me that there is a built in contradiction in the place of religious freedom in classical liberalism: While religious freedom is a central element of classical liberalism, the ability of a state to function as a liberal democracy will collapse if a large majority of the population do not share a common basic moral and philosophical (and thus by implication theological) worldview. Thus, while religious freedom is a foundational element of classical liberalism, only a certain degree of religious conformity makes it possible.

Why do I argue this? If there is a basic agreement throughout society about what is right, what is wrong, what constitutes the common good, under what conditions people are meant to live, etc., then it is possible for the institutions of a liberal democracy to be used to allow people to sort out how to achieve these ends. Disagreements may be passionate, as people will not agree on the pragmatic questions of how it is best to run a country. But compromise will at least be possible, and the democracy is likely to survive.

If, however, there is fundamental disagreement among the populace about basic issues of right and wrong and what the purpose of the human person is, the victory of the other side will increasingly look to the defeated like an unacceptable tyranny, and the state will risk coming apart at the seams.

A Republic of Masters

Over the last few months, I've been gradually working my way through a set of lectures on the history of the United States by professors Staloff and Masur of the City College of New York -- emphasis on the gradually as several months and 22 lectures in I'm around at around 1800.

One of the things that has been striking me is the discussion on the ideas about how a republic ought to function current among the colonists and the Founders' generation. In early America, it was generally only male property owners who could vote -- sometimes with an additional limitation on how much property you had to own. This was not, however, out of a desire to exclude the poor and empower the rich. (Though one could certainly see it that way, and I'm sure that some people did.) Rather, it's purpose was to assure that only "masters" had a voice in the running of the republic(s). I use the term "master" not in reference to slavery, but in an almost feudal sense. A master was a man who owned property in the sense of owning some means of support: an estate, a farm, a business, etc. But this wasn't just a position of power, it was also one of responsibility. A master was expected to assure the well-being of all those who worked for him or lived in his household/estate. Sometimes, these were one and the same. A master craftsman might well have one or two apprentices living in his house, with his family. Journeyman laborers might live in the shop, or also in his house. Even if his workers lived under another roof, a master was not merely an employer, he was also a patron and head of household to all who depended on him.

Thus, only masters were permitted to vote as a way to minimize the power of the wealthy masters over poorer masters (or farmers or craftsmen who owned property but weren't rich enough to employ anyone.) It was assumed that all those in a master's household would follow the master in his politics, and so if you had universal male suffrage, you would have been giving more votes to the masters who had more workers.

Further, since someone was not a master was in a state of dependence, it was assumed that allowing such a person to vote would present him with too much of a temptation to vote self-servingly: to support policies which would better his own condition rather than policies which would be to the common good. Masters, it was believed, would be able to be able to set self interest aside when guiding a republic, because they already had their basic needs assured. (Clearly a somewhat optimistic idea, but there it is.) This is one of the things which led the founders to recoil from "democracy" (which they equated with mob rule) while embracing the idea of a republic.

Now, one could theorize that this was always a fiction, that the idea of a republic ruled by masters with the common good in mind was a story that people told themselves in order to justify giving power only to the relatively well-off. But I'm not sure that this would be a believable claim. The revolution itself (and the escalating series of protests which led up to the actual revolution) gave ample opportunity for an oppressed and numerous underclass to gain power and demand universal suffrage (and through that suffrage, policies to economically limit the masters and better themselves.) This did not happen. And I think one fairly decent explanation for why is that the idea of masters taking care of their dependents worked -- at least enough of the time that a majority of non-masters were not ready to create social disturbance and disrupt the system.

That this set of obligations within society worked moderately well at the time would explain, in part, why the Founders placed such great emphasis on political liberty -- because non-state mechanisms were already functioning to assure the basic well being of society. It was over the coming decades, as employers grew larger and began to abandon the idea of being masters in the feudal sense, that those without property turned increasingly to the state for protection. Industrialization, a mass society, and a breakdown in traditional social obligations would lead future revolutionaries to seek a direct relationship between the individual and the state in order to assure basic needs -- something which at the time of the American Revolution it was assumed would be met through existing social structures of mutual obligation, and through escape valve of a massive and sparsely settled continent spreading out to the west of the colonies, where those feeling dispossessed could go seeking to become their own masters.