This text is about a practice of contracting certain moral obligations (where "contract" is used as it is in law today). It argues that Hobbes, Locke and many of their predecessors were more serious about the contract part of social contract than today's hypothetical contract theorists suppose.

Dr. Davis is one of the generation of philosophers that came of age during the decade that spanned the interval between the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and the resignation of President Nixon in 1974. Between its dramatic endpoints, this period included the achievements of the civil rights movement and the travails of the Vietnam War. It was a time when questions of legal and political obligation possessed an intense practical urgency.

Commendatory Preface [to be added by Press]... Acknowledgments...i Introduction...iii Part I. The Prehistory of the Actual Social Contract...1 1. Where to Start?...3 2. Hebrews and the Biblical Covenants...19 3. Athens: Crito, Republic, and Politics...23 4. Romans: Cicero, Augustine, and Justinian...39 Part II. Contract Begins...47 5. Feudal Oath and Consent in Person...49 6. Early Consent: The Thirteenth Century...61 7. From Consent in Person to Consent by Proxy...73 Part III. The Third Principle of Consent...79 8. Modus: Consent in Parliament about 1320...81 9. Majority Vote and Other Refinements, 1320-1600...91 10. From Proctor to Picture...111 11. The Reformation, Hooker, and Consent by Legislators...119 12. Revolutionary Ideas of 1647...135 13. Civil State, Political Obligation, and Representation...153 Part IV. Contract Theory Before Hobbes...169 14. The Question...171 15. The Reformation, Religious Wars, and Modern Theory...177 16. Calvin, Ephors, and Resistance...181 17. French Theory, Governmental Contract, and Junius Brutus...187 18. Brutus: Rights Inalienable by Nature...197 19. Brutus: Rights Inalienable in Practice...203 20. Buchanan and Hooker...209 21. Althusius and Grotius...213 Part V. Hobbes, Locke, and Actual Contract...221 22. Hobbes' War on Contract...223 23. Locke's Very Practical Problem...239 24. Property and Locke's Civil State of Nature...249 25. Locke's Political Society...263 26. Three Hundred Years After Locke...279 Bibliography...293 Index...305