<P> Hugo Grotius ( 1625 ) , Thomas Hobbes ( 1651 ) , Samuel Pufendorf ( 1673 ) , John Locke ( 1689 ) , Jean - Jacques Rousseau ( 1762 ) , and Immanuel Kant ( 1797 ) are among the most prominent of 17th - and 18th - century theorists of social contract and natural rights . Each solved the problem of political authority in a different way . Grotius posited that individual human beings had natural rights . Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a `` state of nature '' , human life would be `` solitary , poor , nasty , brutish and short '' . In the absence of political order and law , everyone would have unlimited natural freedoms , including the `` right to all things '' and thus the freedom to plunder , rape , and murder ; there would be an endless `` war of all against all '' ( bellum omnium contra omnes ) . To avoid this , free men contract with each other to establish political community , i.e. civil society , through a social contract in which they all gain security in return for subjecting themselves to an absolute sovereign , one man or an assembly of men . Though the sovereign 's edicts may well be arbitrary and tyrannical , Hobbes saw absolute government as the only alternative to the terrifying anarchy of a state of nature . Hobbes asserted that humans consent to abdicate their rights in favor of the absolute authority of government ( whether monarchical or parliamentary ) . Pufendorf disputed Hobbes 's equation of a state of nature with war . </P>
<P> Hugo Grotius ( 1625 ) , Thomas Hobbes ( 1651 ) , Samuel Pufendorf ( 1673 ) , John Locke ( 1689 ) , Jean - Jacques Rousseau ( 1762 ) , and Immanuel Kant ( 1797 ) are among the most prominent of 17th - and 18th - century theorists of social contract and natural rights . Each solved the problem of political authority in a different way . Grotius posited that individual human beings had natural rights . Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a `` state of nature '' , human life would be `` solitary , poor , nasty , brutish and short '' . In the absence of political order and law , everyone would have unlimited natural freedoms , including the `` right to all things '' and thus the freedom to plunder , rape , and murder ; there would be an endless `` war of all against all '' ( bellum omnium contra omnes ) . To avoid this , free men contract with each other to establish political community , i.e. civil society , through a social contract in which they all gain security in return for subjecting themselves to an absolute sovereign , one man or an assembly of men . Though the sovereign 's edicts may well be arbitrary and tyrannical , Hobbes saw absolute government as the only alternative to the terrifying anarchy of a state of nature . Hobbes asserted that humans consent to abdicate their rights in favor of the absolute authority of government ( whether monarchical or parliamentary ) . Pufendorf disputed Hobbes 's equation of a state of nature with war . </P>
who created the concept of a social contract
who created the concept of a social contract
Hugo Grotius ( 1625 ) , Thomas Hobbes ( 1651 ) , Samuel Pufendorf ( 1673 ) , John Locke ( 1689 ) , Jean - Jacques Rousseau ( 1762 ) , and Immanuel Kant ( 1797 )
Hugo Grotius ( 1625 ) , Thomas Hobbes ( 1651 ) , Samuel Pufendorf ( 1673 ) , John Locke ( 1689 ) , Jean - Jacques Rousseau ( 1762 ) , and Immanuel Kant ( 1797 )