Abstract
The contract theory of political obligation which Reid espouses in an unpublished manuscript (Aberdeen University Library MS 2131/2/II/10) is of considerable interest for the use made of the idea of taking upon oneself a character or office to which rights and duties attach. But before turning to this, it may help to place Reid’s contract theory of political obligation in context if we consider it in relation to three developments of historical and intellectual significance for eighteenth-century contractarian thought. In more or less chronological order, these are the double contract theory of Pufendorf, the Whig Ideology with Hume’s response to it, and the publication of Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.
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Notes
Cf. Gough (1936, p. 118).
A list of principal ‘adherents of Pufendorf’s trichotomy’ i iven by Bernard Freyd in Gierke (1939, pp. 104 & 128-9).
Pufendorf (1934, p. 975).
See Hutcheson (1755, p. 227).
AUL MS 2131/8/IV/9.
The contract theory has its own particular seventeenth-century pedigree in Scotland where it is deeply enmeshed in the theology of covenant. See, for example, Torrance (1981, pp. 225-243).
In so far as the Whig Ideology has roots in Locke’s Second Treatise which is influenced by Pufendorf, there is an inner connection to be traced.
Hume (1963, p. 454).
Hume (1963, p. 454).
Rousseau (1973, p. 39).
Corr, letter to Lord Karnes (Works, p. 56).
MS 2131/3/III/6.
“In the most savage state that was ever known of the human race, men have always lived in societies greater or less” (AP, V, vi, Works, p. 666).
AP, V, vi (Works, p. 668).
Ibid.
Hobbes (1968, p. 270).
Rousseau (1973, p. 170).
MS 2131/4/111/9.
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© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Dalgarno, M.T. (1989). Taking Upon Oneself a Character: Reid on Political Obligation. In: Dalgarno, M., Matthews, E. (eds) The Philosophy of Thomas Reid. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 42. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2338-6_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2338-6_23
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