Contractualism and Contractarianism

Abstract

The contract offers an attractive basis for moral judgments of contractors’ acts: acts which are compatible with the agreed are acceptable, while those that trespass them are unacceptable. This assumption is common to all the authors throughout history, starting in ancient Greece and extending to the present time, who have referred to a contract or consent as the source of the political or moral obligations of individuals. The purpose of this article is to throw light on the most relevant common premises of this group of theories and on some main differences between them. Special attention will be devoted to two distinctive way of understanding agreement in contemporary normative philosophy, represented by Rawls' and Gauthier's theories. The difference between these two ways of appealing to agreement is so deep, that for each of them a special denomination has won recognition: contractualism for the Rawlsian and related theories and contractarianism for that of Gauthier.