social contract theory

is an idea containing the contradiction that if individuals enter into a polity to protect their lives, the polity should not be able to ask them to sacrifice their lives on its behalf.

Schmitt relies on the threat to the individual's own physical life to draw out the 'existential' quality of the political. But this threat is hardly identical with the threat to the collectivity's 'way of life' or 'form of existence.' In order to bridge the gap between the two, Schmitt must present the Lebensform as in some way prior to the individual. This is why Schmitt never acknowledges as his own the problem that bedevils Hobbes: if individuals merely enter into a polity to protect their lives, how can that polity ever demand that they risk or sacrifice their lives' As Schmitt explicitly states, 'the right to demand from its members the readiness to die' implies that the state has a priority over the individual.(n19) (Norris 1998: .pdf)

social contract theory, n.All

social contract theory