What's new
The texts, paths and debates published most recently, month by month.
October 2026
- The Social Contract Debate
What makes political authority legitimate?
- What makes a distribution of wealth and income just?
Whether justice judges the pattern of outcomes or the history of how holdings came about. Rawls asks what the basic structure of society should secure for its least advantaged members. Nozick answers that any pattern, however attractive, can only be maintained by continually interfering with free exchanges between people, and so violates their rights.
- A Theory of Justice
Seed draft: Rawls' A Theory of Justice revives contract theory through the original position, veil of ignorance, two principles of justice, equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle.
- Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Seed draft: Nozick defends a minimal state, entitlement theory, self-ownership, historical principles of justice, and market-based holdings. The book is the most famous libertarian reply to Rawls' theory of distributive justice.
- Leviathan
Seed draft: Leviathan grounds political authority in fear, self-preservation, covenant, and sovereign power. Hobbes offers one of the decisive modern accounts of why individuals leave the state of nature and authorize an absolute sovereign.
- Perpetual Peace
Seed draft: Kant's Perpetual Peace argues that republican constitutions, federation among states, cosmopolitan right, and public reason can make lasting peace possible. It is a foundational text for liberal internationalism.
- Second Treatise of Government
Seed draft: Locke's Second Treatise argues for natural rights, property, consent, limited government, majority rule, and the right of resistance. It becomes a central source for liberal constitutionalism and rights-based political thought.
- The Racial Contract
Seed draft: Mills argues that modern political order has been structured by a racial contract that determines personhood, rights, space, knowledge, and domination. The book critiques ideal theory and race-blind liberal contractarianism.
- The Sexual Contract
Seed draft: Pateman argues that classical social contract theory hides a sexual contract that structures men's power over women. The book rereads contract, consent, citizenship, marriage, and civil freedom through feminist critique.
- The Social Contract
Seed draft: Rousseau's Social Contract asks how political authority can be legitimate while preserving freedom. It centers popular sovereignty, the general will, civic freedom, lawgiving, and the problem of dependence.