User:J wroldsen/sandbox

Article Evaluation
I looked at the article "Social contract," and found it to be quite comprehensive with regard to political theorists and varying theories and practices of social contracts. However, there are some areas for improvement, chiefly expanding the section "Critical theories."

The article is divided into three main parts: history, philosophers, and critical theories. In "History," the article explores the manifestations of social contracts in antiquity and how it developed during the European Renaissance. Key social contract theorists, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were explained and quoted in the "Philosophers" section, while broad theoretical critiques of social contract theory were discussed in "Critical theories." I found the sources for all of these sections to be a mix of primary citations and more contemporary analyses of the works, which indicates to me that a healthy range of sources and ideas were incorporated into the sections. Furthermore, the fact that primary sources were cited is especially promising, as it shows the authors of the sections considered the actual texts in writing about them.

The two sections which most align with our class are "Philosophers" and "Critical theories." There was little room for improvement in "Philosophers." While more can definitely be added to Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau's understanding of the social contract as outlined in the article, I feel like these sections are succinct and deliver the main points of their ideas and theories. These three authors also had the most written about them in the section.

However, I think "Critical theories" can be further developed. The current section only looks at theories which criticize social contracts, and does not look at individual theorists or writers who critiqued the theory. This detracts from the purpose of the section. While it is titled "Critical theories," its intention, per later discussions the Talk page, is to explain issues with the social contract. Broadening the section to just be "Criticisms" and including theorists who have criticized social contracts (e.g. Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill from class) can develop the section more comprehensively. Furthermore, one of the principal issues, in my opinion, with the social contract theory is tacit consent, yet this concept as it relates to social contracts was barely discussed; only three sentences were included, and it seems two of those three were opinions without sources.

The talk page of the article was very enlightening. The article was given top-importance classifications for the WikiProjects on Philosophy and Politics, and mid-importance on History. It is also included in the Sociology WikiProject. The article was also peer-reviewed in 2017, with the reviewer giving the article a C-class rating (this rating was also given to the article by all the WikiProjects it is part of) but not providing specifics on how the article can improve. The talk page primarily included discussions from pre-2010, and many of the changes suggested were included in the article later.

Overall, the "Social contract" page is pretty good. It does a good job of remaining broad yet concise when discussing main social contract theorists, but its section on social contract criticisms can be expanded to include theorists and not just theories.

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Changed:

Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be bound morally, by the Law of Nature, not to harm each other in their lives or possessions, but without government to defend them against those seeking to injure or enslave them, people would have no security in their rights and would live in fear. Locke argued that individuals would agree to form a state that would provide a "neutral judge", acting to protect the lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it.[citation needed]

To: (with changes in bold):

Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be bound morally, by the Law of Nature, not to harm each other in their lives or possessions, but without . Without government to defend them against those seeking to injure or enslave them, Locke further believed people would have no security in their rights and would live in fear. Locke argued that Individuals, to Locke, would only agree to form a state that would provide, in part, a "neutral judge", acting to protect the lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it.

Article Draft
To add to Tacit Consent:

John Locke was a notable theorist who described how the governed tacitly consent to government, saying:

“[E]very man, that hath any Possession, or Enjoyment, of any part of the Dominions of any Government, doth thereby give his tacit Consent, and is as far forth obliged to Obedience to the laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under it.”

To Locke, enjoying the benefits of civil society constitutes tacit consent to its government. Resident aliens are obliged to obey laws of the state in which they reside for that reason. However, political philosopherJohn Simmons considered tacit consent in Locke’s eyes to be “stretching the notion of consent far beyond the break.” Simmons agrees with Locke that real consent is required to establish government, but diverges on whether people have actually given that consent; it is one thing to consent through actions and not words, but it is another to have done so without being aware of it. This idea, giving consent unintentionally, is a “patent absurdity” to Simmons. Continued residency is not free and voluntary when people must forsake their property and emigrate to avoid giving tacit consent.

Locke’s argument for tacit consent acutally makes it more unimportant in government legitimacy than expected to some experts. Theorist Hanna Pitkin describes legitimate authority of a Lockean government as coming from the consent of its subjects, and never from force or coerced/forced consent. It seems in Locke’s work that remaining in a state’s territory is tacitly consenting to its government just as accepting money as a medium exchange is tacitly consenting to property inequalities. However, Pitkin considers this conception to mean that even “being within the territory of the worst tyranny in the world constitute[s] tacit consent to it and create[s] an obligation to obey it,” as only emigration and forsaking property removes one’s consent to a state’s government. Instead, Pitkin claims a better reading of Locke is: “what you consent to tacitly is the terms of the original contract which the founders of the commonwealth made, no more and no less. You append your ‘signature,’ as it were, to the original ‘document'". Pitkin considers consent to be automatic, and instead you are obligated to obey not because of consent but only if the government acts within the social contract. Consent is undermined by Locke’s argument and is actually not necessary, per Pitkin, in maintaining a legitimate government.

Create new subsection of Critical theories titled "Natural rights":

18th century Irish theorist Edmund Burke criticized the social contract theory as misapplying natural rights in society. He writes:

''“Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to ever thing they want everything.”''

Burke contends social contracts create natural rights which are rationally-created and individually-focused; these qualities are not compatible with human nature and human desires for sociability. Instead, natural rights should be grounded by emotion and morph into social and political rights to strike a balance between an individual and society. Burke first claims, “the pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned." He later argues humans become "creature[s] of prejudice, creature[s] of opinions, creature[s] of habits, and of sentiments growing out of them. These form our second nature, as inhabitants of the country and members of the society." The discernment of rights, to Burke, occurs in the heart and are built on the second nature of human emotion instead of the abstract state of nature of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. When rights are abstract, as they are for some social contract theorists, they are defected and corrupt moral sentiments binding society together.