Ted Apter

Ressun lukio, Helsinki

The agreement between the individual and society
The society critics who lived in the 17th century believed that some instances in a state have to have the right to use power over individuals, so that a safe living environment can be built. The times when the leaders of a people claimed a god had made them leaders over their own nations were in the sense of justice ended. So the society critics who lived during the 17th century tried to come up with arguments to give ground to legitimacy of the power the leaders in a society could use. That is when the concept of an agreement between the individual and society was invented. The idea was that society may use different levels of power because its goal is to build up a democratic society with a juridical system that distributes justice.

The quotation from Thomas Hobbes refers to the concept of an unwritten agreement between the individual and society. It means that if there is no agreement between the individual and the society, that gives society the right to use power as long as it takes care of its own people, the world is a place of total chaos without any injustice acts.

The world without a law system and therefore justice would remarkably remind of the time when the people lived in caves and the strongest person dominated the society. Creating the image of the world as a place where humans were little more than beasts, Thomas Hobbes as a society critic tried to justify the right of society to use common power. Hobbes believed that a law system was required if people wished to even think about a concept called justice. The next step in his reasoning was that common power system was needed, so that the law system could distribute justice. So a state must have some level of a concrete power system. For instance an army or the police. Hobbes tries to reason that the individual has accepted this in exchange for a safe democratic living environment, where he could live his life without some caveman trying to kill him.

Now Thomas Hobbes and quite a few other society critics tried to prove that society had the right to use power over the individual as long as its goals were to make society a place where one could safely live and justice would be practiced. Now in their time a society quite often meant almost the same as the state. So, in a way, they tried to prove that the state had the right to use power. The golden idea behind everything was that every individual should receive the maximum possibilities to do what he wished to do as long as he did not harm another individual. Shortly said, they tried to build a peaceful living environment for everybody in a state. Of course there were other motives than the ideological one, but the main idea was to build a peaceful democratic society.

Now when we consider the agreement between the individual and society, we need to remember that a state is lead by individuals who have their own personal goals. To ensure that the ideological idea in the agreement really is realised many things need to be ensured. First of all, the state must guarantee the same rights to everyone. No religion should for instance be connected to the leading system so that its followers receive privileges. Secondly, the people need to have the means to affect the matters concerning their own state. The best way to ensure this is to let the people themselves choose their leaders. Another factor required in a democratic society is open media. Liberty of speech must be ensured, so that if someone is noticed to be unfit to represent the state, he will not be voted president in the next election.

The agreement between the individual and society requires furthermore some things. For instance, the juridical system must update itself all the time. It must follow its own time, so that laws which do not fulfil the requirements of justice may be changed.

Furthermore the power that society has to use must be divided to several parts, so that a small group may not use all the power that is granted to the society simultaneously. For instance, the legislative power and the executive power must be separated.

Last but not least, a huge system is required that will guard the states themselves. No single state may start terrorizing the world because it believes it’s doing it in the best interest of everyone. In a way, a huge democratic forum is required where preferably all states may find ways to live peacefully together in the world. A key factor that a forum of this sort, the United Nations, has come up with is the human rights. These rights are something that every society owns its citizens. And big bodies as the UN are required so that these rights can be ensured to every single human on Earth.