Explain the Relevance of the Prisoner's Dilemma to Hobbes' Social Contract Theory.

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Gabriela Belmar-Valencia 13CA                                       6th September 2003

Explain the Relevance of the Prisoner’s Dilemma to Hobbes’ Social Contract Theory

Hobbes’ social contract theory is based on the premise that people are naturally frightened. This does not mean that Hobbes thinks people are essentially highly strung nervous wrecks, terrified of their own shadow; he simply believes that people have a natural and rational aversion to danger. Hobbes has an atomistic view of the natural state of humans. He maintains that in the state of nature, individuals are essentially isolated from each other, occasionally colliding into and reacting against each other. The state of nature, when the structure organising people into civil society is removed, is in Hobbes’ words “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

“The Prisoner’s Dilemma” backs up Hobbes’ argument of how individuals react to each other in the state of nature. Individuals are concerned with their own self interest and the focus on that means that they produce less beneficial results to themselves than cooperation with others would produce. Aversion of the state of nature, and cooperation with others in civil society is a rational preference to the state of nature.

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To avoid the perpetual fear of living in the state of nature, Hobbes argues that people possess the natural and rational impulse to enter into a social contract, which involves the individual giving up the right to govern oneself. This right is given up to a sovereign. The sovereign may be an individual or a ruling body, and citizens are required to obey it because it is the sovereign that keeps society from degenerating into the state of nature. The sovereign is therefore the authorised representative of the people and decides what is right and wrong on their behalf. While ...

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