The liberal tradition has been under considerable scrutiny of late, with wide-ranging debates over its present and future condition. Paul R. DeHart, professor at Texas State University, adds a powerful voice to this conversation with his book, The Social Contract in the Ruins: Natural Law and Government by Consent.

The title of the book anticipates his conclusion. DeHart believes that our moral and political culture is in a perilous state because we have deprived social contract theory of adequate foundation: “Social contract theory, as we have received it, is wedded to nominalist metaphysics and to a voluntarist ontology of obligation. … In its secularized form, this involves a denial of any standard or measure of human acts independent of human will and normative for human willing. Consequently, ethics and moral obligation are nothing other than human conventions.” Readers will be reminded of arguments offered three-quarters of a century ago by Richard Weaver and Russell Kirk, and current arguments of natural law thinkers such as Hadley Arkes and Robert P. George.

This argument is then elaborated through a comprehensive, exhaustive examination of the classic statements of contract theory (in particular Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rawls) and major modern commentaries on these thinkers, supported by a comprehensive bibliography of twenty-one pages. This will be especially useful to those who wish to enter deeply into the history and philosophy of the social contract.

He concludes: “A voluntaristic account of obligation asks us to distinguish some instances of will from others. … Yet it is impossible intelligibly to distinguish instances of will on the basis of nothing but will.” Moreover, “government by consent requires a moral basis—moral norms not created by but normative for human willing and behavior.” 

His argument is compellingly made, demanding that we undertake a new examination of natural law as inherited from the classical and Christian tradition. Readers of this work will see the fundamental importance of assessing social contract theory in relation to the philosophic-religious context out of which it emerged—a tradition which Hobbes and Locke engaged with—not dwelling only on what modern scholars have decided must be the implications of social contract theory. It is clear that Hobbes and Locke were conversant with, and responding to, their predecessors, engaging them in a kind of dialogue. 

Hobbes expressly was responding to Plato and Aristotle, and to the Scholastics. He was examining the natural law tradition given the consequences of the English reformation. It is true, as DeHart shows, that Hobbes adopted a nominalist view, claiming that we reason about the names of things only. Yet he also elaborated a view of natural law which involved precepts of conduct which, he thought, would be evident to human beings when they reflect on their experience of interaction with each other. Moreover, these precepts are universally accessible to reflective intelligence, reflecting a common predicament. Locke’s reflections on natural law are similar quite apart from differences with regard to the formal organization of political authority. Locke says, in the Second Treatise, that God intended human beings to live in society with each other; he also says that the efficient cause of covenanting with each other is to preserve individual liberty.

Looked at in this way, one could argue that these thinkers were seeking a reasonable response to the unmistakable expansion of individual self-consciousness that characterizes the liberal tradition. DeHart says, “The price of metaphysical nominalism is oughtness. Correlatively, the price of oughtness is moral and metaphysical realism.” Is it really the case that thinkers like Hobbes and Locke had no conception of oughtness?

The emphasis on will, which has become more and more dominant in modern liberalism, was in significant measure a response to the breakdown of civil order which characterized the world of Hobbes and Locke. It is worth considering that, when Hobbes emphasizes the will of the sovereign, he is responding to the crisis of civil war. Yet he also says that his goal is for all, both sovereign and subjects, to gain a common understanding of the requirements of civil order. The covenant to establish a sovereign carries with it a common understanding of the reason for political authority, clear not only to the holder of office, but as well to those who will be subject to the rules commanded by that authority. Hobbes did say that, properly constructed, laws will implement the principles of natural law in practice. Hobbes thought he had advanced beyond Plato by accounting for subjectivity in a way that Plato’s Republic did not, depending as it did on the “noble lie.” Hobbes’s ambition was to create a common understanding of the basis of order in both sovereign and subjects. It is at least arguable whether Hobbes rested morality entirely on will thereby discounting the significance of his treatment of the precepts of the natural law. 

In short, there is a way in which the requirements of traditional natural law, and the demands of modern individuality, might be reconciled. I say all this in agreeing with DeHart’s diagnosis of the derangements of our time, and his insistence on reacquainting ourselves with the classic understanding of natural law. 

Whether the early contract theorists are responsible for the modern crisis of liberalism is an important question. We should consider that those theorists did not necessarily advocate relativism even if they did confront the proliferation of ideas of the good inevitably resulting from the expansion of individual opinions and the freedom to express them. 

What they felt compelled to address was the complex question of learning how to be both social and individual, and they explored the requirements of a government appropriate to people who increasingly understand themselves to be free, equal, and independent. Social contract theory did not create modern individualism; it was a response to it, seeking to describe the right form of political order for people who increasingly insisted on their emerging self-consciousness. 

The moderate realism of St. Thomas Aquinas would, it seems to me, be the best approach to reestablishing a proper ground for the liberal tradition without repudiating the achievements of the liberal tradition which are significant. He knew there were precepts of conduct naturally accessible to us, but also recognized that it was necessary to exercise practical judgment about honoring them in variable circumstances. This, as Aristotle said, is the requirement of practical wisdom.

DeHart is to be applauded for an analysis of our present discontents which, in my view, should encourage efforts to renew our dialogue with the full range of our inheritance. There is an alternative to proclaiming the death of the liberal tradition. He sums this up, in my view, convincingly:

The upshot is that we need a moral norm or ground of obligation that transcends human will, including instances of human will such as consent or agreement, in order to ground any intelligible account of political authority and obligation, including any intelligible consent-based theory of such authority and obligation.

On the other hand, DeHart’s critique of voluntarism/nominalism is severe to say the least. The chapter “Moral Constructivism in the Dock” concludes: “Antirealist, conventionalist, and constructivist accounts of justice all fail … political contractarianism and moral contractarianism … are in fact logically opposed.” I note that Hegel’s name does not appear in the index. It would be of interest to consider Hegel’s recognition of the oppositions DeHart describes, seeking to reconcile them. Also, the conversation between Jurgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, “The Dialectics of Secularization,” offers an effort at dialogue rather than mutual condemnation. 

Is dialogue actually possible? Is it worth pursuing? It was St. Thomas himself whose method was, without compromising, to seek dialogue in search of reconciliation. DeHart argues that social contract theory and classical natural law are compatible, that the former ultimately requires the latter. This book is thus an invitation to a serious inquiry of the sort that is sorely needed in our time.