The Social Contract in the Ruins: Natural Law and Government by Consent - Hardcover

by Paul R. Dehart (Author)

Most scholars who write on social contract and classical natural law perceive an irreconcilable tension between them. Social contract theory is widely considered the political-theoretic concomitant of modern philosophy. Against the regnant view, The Social Contract in the Ruins, argues that all attempts to ground political authority and obligation in agreement alone are logically self-defeating. Political authority and obligation require an antecedent moral ground. But this moral ground cannot be constructed by human agreement or created by sheer will--human or divine. All accounts of morality as constructed or made collapse into self-referential incoherence. Only an uncreated, real good can coherently ground political authority and obligation or the proposition that rightful government depends on the consent of the governed. Government by consent requires classical natural law for its very coherence.

Author Biography

Paul R. DeHart is Professor of Political Science of Texas State University in San Marcos. He is author of Uncovering the Constitution's Moral Design (also with the University of Missouri Press) and editor (with Carson Holloway) of Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order: Political Philosophy and the Claims of Faith (Northern Illinois University Press). He has published articles in journals such as Polity, Critical Review, Locke Studies, Perspectives on Political Science, the Catholic Social Science Review, and National Affairs.