1. University of Helsinki
Faculty of Social Sciences
Is the Social Contract a
Transition from a State of
Nature to a Civil State?
Essay
Viliyana Mutafova
SN: 014389623
“The state of civil society, which necessarily generates this aristocracy, is a state of nature; and
much more truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of life. For man is by nature reasonable;
and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but when he is placed where reason may be best
cultivated, and most predominates. Art is man’s nature. We are as much, at least, in a state of
nature in formed manhood, as in immature and helpless infancy", is how a highly eminent figure

2. in the course of political history summarized in a few sentences a problem, which marked forever
the history of humanity. How does it happen that we come alone on this earth, but until the end of
our lives we are destined to live among others; who are the others and why should we be
together; what is that which one calls society and how do we form it; what binds people together
in a state; what is a state of nature and how we get to the state of affairs; is there really a
transition from the one to the other what is the true essence of government, are all questions
which this paper would try to address through the perspective of one of the greatest political
writers of all time.
The purpose of this essay is to provide a deeper insight on basic notions in political philosophy
which have been discussed and largely debated for centuries when it comes to forming societies
and living in a community. to pro why this theory has its still relevance in the present modern
world.
Contractarian tradition has a long and quite disputable history. Prominent philosophers starting
from Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant all the way to
the contemporary social contract attempt of John Rawls. All of the above-mentioned names,
except of John Rawls, had given different answers to a specific issue that was bothering all of
them and namely: what is that which drives people to step into society and when do we get the
authority from. The reason I am excluding Rawls, is that, to my mind, although talking about a
social contract, his contract has nothing to do with the compact the above-mentioned
philosophers were preoccupied with. As a whole, he rather failed to introduce an adequate
political philosophy due to the fact that he absolutely banished from his theory what troubled all
of the contractarians; and namely- nature.

3. Let us leave Rawls aside as he is not the subject matter of this essay. The rich personality,
whose writings we would be examining in the following pages, is an Irish-born statesman.
Edmund Burke was an Irish statesman and eminent political theorist of the 18th
century who since
the 20st century is considered “the father” of modern Conservatism. He was also a distinguished
writer and philosopher, whose ideas helped in shaping the future direction of British politics and
deeply influenced thinkers up to a present day. Burke’s interpretations had two key aspects: one
was an orientation towards religion, politics and improvement, the other a philosophical method.
The latter derived from his education, the former as a reflection on the Irish situation at that time.
Whether Burke is the thinker of the 21st
century and are his works an achievement that challenges
presumptions held by many of our contemporaries is still a tough question to be simply answered
without a rigorous analysis.
After leaving Trinity College, Burke started to speculate deeply upon questions closely
related to our present-day life. What does it mean to be a part of a commercial society, how
politics should interact with that new society that is coming about and how the civilization
progresses. Considerably influenced by the pioneer of political economy, Adam Smith, Burke
also had notions of economics and talked about free trade. Human nature and society, organic
state, prejudices, equality – are all subjects of his observations. Nowadays, we can discuss almost
each of the pointed out issues, but not the way Burke really saw and explained them.
“But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophists, economists and calculators has succeeded,
and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever” was Burke’s legacy. In his book “Account of the
European settlements”, Burke puts a strong emphasis on the coming of Europeans to the New
World. Moreover, he depicted them as a “civilization of savage” who are not far noble and judged
them as being rather primitive.

4. Essentially, all societies are based on different views of human nature. Today’s view is not
much alike Burkean’s one. Today people are regarded as equal and interchangeable to products of
production and consumption. Differences of race, culture, nationality, gender are seen as
obstacles to social harmony that shall be removed. Burke witnessed the emergence of this illusion
and immediately condemned it. According to him people are imperfect. He observed that they
naturally are not abstract “men”, but Renaissance, French, America and the like. He did not even
think to invent a model of perfect, equal society, but started to examine human nature. Burke
reckoned human beings possess distinctive identities and they love and put in first place their kin
above strangers and this must certainly affect the type of society we create. The society should
even try to create one as individual in order to benefit the collective life. In 21st
century we are
living in times of globalization and integration of various races and ethical minorities. All
boundaries between societies and their mixed cultures are intensively endeavored to be removed.
What is more, in putting all these efforts to live perfectly as one whole we, we are somehow
losing this distinctive identity which Burke passionately advocated. That was what exactly Burke
was describing and explaining - the uniqueness of every society and the struggle that it should go
for to preserve its traditions. Tradition is what gives us a sense of historical affiliation. It is a fact
that although Burke may have believed in inequality to make a society run smoothly, he did
believe that all human should have equal rights.
Edmund Burke recognized the state to be natural, organic. He opposed to an artificial one based
on planning. He firmly believed people are not machines. While machines are rigid, repetitive
and tend to break down, organic life is flexible and adoptable. Burke preferred to base the society
on evolutionary nature, representing it as “a permanent body composed of transitory parts”.
Edmund Burke is among the greatest intellects that England has ever produced. He was a rich
mind which main aim and belief was that reality should be reflected the way it is, not the way we
wish it to be. Despite his enormous contribution to political philosophy, it would be rather
inaccurate and misleading to refer to Burke as a philosopher or anything different than a political
writer. Generally, his writings would comfortably suit people who are in search of political vision
with a foundation in the order of reality, not simply an ideology or mere abstractions. As a matter
of fact, not by accident all of his writings, speeches and letters, deal with the occurrence of a
political event, turbulent time or crisis. All that was an object of his observations was a subject to

5. his writings which he tried to expose in their most practical side. Politics, first and foremost, for
him, should reflect reality. He managed to see clearly that the purpose of politics is purely
empirical and the "legislator should be not truth, but expediency." Furthermore, the realm of
politics is a deep sea of practicality and empiricism. This, I believe, is what Edmund Burke tried
to do in his works and did accomplish quite successfully.
To begin with, in order for one to understand fully the greater whole which represents the
subject of matter, one ought to start by rigorously examining the particles that constitute it.
Essential to grasping the idea of state of nature and further expand on what the civil state is and
how it differs or why it tends to overlap with the former, is first and foremost looking at man and
his nature as man is the particle from which the whole stems. Does Burke consider man good,
evil or morally indifferent by nature? Is the man center of egoistic tendencies or is in natural
harmony with his fellow men?
The topic of man’s nature is evidently highly complex. Traditional contractarian philosophers,
like Hobbes and Rousseau, compared to Burkean approach, suggest quite different viewpoints on
human’s nature. For Hobbes, man is driven primarily by the desire of self-preservation, insecurity
and fear of violent death. Consequently, he seeks power and thus all men have thirst for unlimited
power and are in opposition to one another which at the end turns each person to an isolated state
seeking his own self-interest. In the Hobbesean state of nature, man is locked in a constant state
of continual war. However, this condition for him could only be cured by the remedy of a state.
Equally famous is Rousseau saying in the very first lines of “The Social Contract” – “Men is
born free, but everywhere is in chains.” 1
The initial import of this statement is the natural
condition of men is liberating while the unnatural condition is enslaving and corrupting.
Another approach to human nature, which Burke embarks and which stands in the core idea of
this paper, is that every human is lead by its human nature and this nature everywhere is the
same. He believed that:
“The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and
therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man’s nature or the
quality of his affairs.” 2

6. For Burke, God has created the universe and has placed man there with a nature that is both fixed
and alterable. However, God gave man not only his nature, but means to its perfection as in God’s
eyes man is an intelligent being rather than simply a bundle of passions. In referring to ways of
perfection, he willed therefore the state. Without a society and on his own, man lacks the ability
to develop and perfect his personality. Man, however, is composed at the same time of body and
soul, reason and passions. Albeit man is a reasonable being by nature, he may allow his
passionate nature to enslave his reason. Man comes to being neither totally corrupt and flawed,
nor ultimately good and virtuous. Though this being the case, Burke certainly considers it has the
potential for good. What constitutes his nature is rather an intricate and complex variables
surrounding his environment like religion and habits. A proper development of his potential for
goodness, man finds through the realization of his social nature. His nature and God’s will
construct what we call sociability. The concept and need of sociability Burke explains with the
argument that men are not tied to one another by the mere bound of paper and seals. They are led
to associate by resemblance, by conformities, by sympathies. Man’s social nature is inescapable
and indisputable. The question of significance is how mankind would be united to one another by
a common nature witnessing so much pluralism among customs, traditions and laws.
For Burke, man’s so called first nature, his human nature, entails simultaneously his second
nature, his activity as a citizen of a society. Furthermore, man’s social or second nature, helps to
make him adaptable rather than a rigid being. Man as man has a common nature, yet each person
develops uniquely in a society. Human nature is expressed in a social nature which flourishes
and realized itself uniquely in each person. What is extremely important for Burke is that man
does not simply renounce certain freedoms to obtain the security of affiliation. Instead the
freedoms man possesses are social freedoms, not freedoms representing some mythical entry
into society through a social contract. Suffice to say, the possibility of the passions giving away
to chaos remains. For social order to prevail as is meant, man must freely choose to cooperate in
society. Suffice to say, like Aristotle; Burke believed that man is a social animal by nature. Man is
naturally a rational and social animal. He makes this clear from the following statement:
“For man is by nature reasonable; and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but when he is
placed where reason may best be cultivated.” 3

7. This means that at the end man is with all his flaws and weaknesses, is a rational animal.
Nevertheless, he is not only characterized as such on the ground that to claim that man is only a
rational animal is to deprive him of other characteristics. His rationality affirms his essence, but
his essence is to be a human being of flesh and blood not to exist as a pure intellect. Burke
believed, as stated in 1766 of Greenville’s Stamp Act that “politics ought to be adjusted not to
human reasoning, but to human nature: of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the
greatest part.” For him “man is made for speculation and action; and when he pursues his nature
he succeeds best in both.” It is both the speculative and the practical side of human nature that
serve a purpose in the realization of the individual and society. The freedom of an individual, or
analogically a nation, is obtained through activity in accord with one’s nature, as he puts it
“actions follows the nature”. What is more, Burke believed that in every particular society human
nature was the same. What is more, Burke would say we cannot understand the notion of what it
is to be human an independent human of society. He would argue that man’s nature is to be in
society.
Two concepts emerge that are crucial for the understanding of Burke’s philosophy of human
nature and his political philosophy as well; the first one being Burke’s vision of freedom and the
second his concern on equality. Let us begin with defying freedom.
Freedom to Burke is natural to man. It flows from his very nature as an intelligently God-
created being. Not only is freedom natural to all men, but it is further their right. Created to be
free by God, to enjoy liberties as social beings, we are not created to be free without restraints.
Burke remarks that: “Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.” From this argument
we may conclude that though freedom is naturally given to mankind, our freedom is not infinite,
but rather finite and structured. Burke’s conception on liberty is one of limited freedom. If
freedom is being left without limits and structure, it would inevitably induce license and chaos.
Furthermore, for Burke, derives from the Natural Law as our birthright. Nonetheless, even so
liberty is not granted to us to act from sheer self-will. It is a “social freedom”, as he puts it, which
could only flourish in “the state in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint”, with no
individual or group able to violate the liberty of any other. Even though being quite beautifully
written, Burke was well aware of man’s capacity of evil. All in all, liberty without wisdom and
virtue, he warned, “is the greatest of the evils; for it is folly, vice and madness without tuition and

8. restraint.” Liberty could only exist and be fully beneficial in an orderly society of moral and
religious people. Moreover, a life of intemperance where all reason and lawfulness are discarded,
leads to the loss of freedom and personal enslavement. In short, man must “put moral chains
upon their own appetites”.

9. Even thought being an eloquent and profound defender of Natural Law, claiming that God rules
exist through an eternal, universal natural law, which makes man-made laws morally valid only
insofar that they conform the natural law, Burke was not compelled from the idea of state of
nature. Enlightenment philosophers and revolutionaries theorized a “state of nature” without
laws, government and society. What philosophers as Locke and Rousseau were also speaking
about is some abstract to Burke rights of man which supposedly they obtain in the absence of
formal state. These abstract rights for Burke sound also extremely unrealistic. Let us take the
right of men to act according to their pleasure without any moral tie. That condition for Burke is
not only hardly imaginable, but non-existable. Men are never in a state of total independence of
each other as our actions affect others and we, like it or not, are responsible for our conduct.
Nothing illustrates the point made better than the following lines: “
“In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such
as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man,
all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficience; and
law itself is only beneficience acting by a rule.” 4
In Edmund’s opinion a state of civil society was the absolutely necessary means of fulfilling the
law of nature and nothing could be more foolish than to confuse the state of nature with the moral
law of nature. In his early already mention of the above satire “Vindication” , Burke describes the
“artificial division of mankind into separate societies” and the evils that developed because men
left “simple” nature and started a life under a complex artificial institutions. However, he further
refused to take into consideration the nature of man or the origin of government in terms of any
non-civil or prehistorical “state of nature”. He rejected such a point of view above all on the basis
that politics is a practical not a speculative science. By distancing himself from the issue of state
of nature and its relevance, its readers could sense how far he actually stood from the political
thought of Hobbes and Locke in terms of their revolutionary conceptions of “natural rights”.
Theories based upon a supposed state of nature were to Burke “the fairly land of philosophy”.
They were highly dangerous because they more often than not seemed to ignore the history and
open the door to abstract speculations. However, most of the speculations substituted for facts of
history fictions that were taken for reality in a practical politics. Burke did not absolutely denied
the existence of a possible state, but was more skeptical of it and concentrated on different matter.
Because he defended the institutions of civil society, one should not conclude that he rejected all

10. considerations of the state of nature. The belief that Burke refused to accept the probability of
pre-civil society probably arises from mistaken interpretations after reading of his “Vindication of
Natural society.” In this text he ironically demonstrates that mischief and misery were decisive
against the institutions of the civil society. As a matter of fact, clearly nothing was written or
argued in the text so it could be constructed to deny the state of nature as either historical or
hypothetical fact. On the evidence of this text, the Irish politician had rather no intention of
returning or looking back to such a condition of mankind mainly because he believed that the
state itself is its natural state.
To Burke civil society, not a state of nature was man’s natural state. Civil society is our true
nature not a “savage and incoherent life”. He neither imagined that man could lead a solitary and
unsocial life, nor the utopia that civil man should strive to attend. Man is by nature reasonable, so
our nature state is where reason could be best cultivated.
Conclusively, from all said of the above on the issue of state of nature and human nature,
Burke’s social contract would be evidently different to the logical construct and what it really
constitutes than other writers. His contract is permanent, binding and unchangeable. Burke hold
the opinion that man’s relationship to civil society is a moral necessity; it is more than
“agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee” or a “gross animal existence”. He is the first to
describe the social contract as a “partnership in all science,a partnership in all art, every virtue.”
The initial consent in his opinion was that between God and men and to be more precise between
all the generations of men within history - “the past,the present and the unborn.” This was the
original covenant which predestined the nature of all social contracts. The real social contract is
not Rousseau’s contract between the sovereign and the people or “general will”, but a bounding
partnership between all generations. Thus, government had a positive duty to provide a moral
framework for the cultivation of a virtuous society.
Burke viewed society as a convention, an artifice which constricts natural freedom of man.
Being artificial, or in other words unnatural, the social differences that exist within society do
violence to man’s nature. The rule of one class over another imposes a hegemony by convention
that does not obtain in a state of nature where man is naturally free. There was a specific class of
people in the face of aristocracy, that provided for the natural leadership for a nation. Society
should protect and preserve the aristocracy in this role, while aristocracy should offer principled

11. direction for the nation, relying on wisdom that tradition has delivered intact to society. And it is
this natural leadership which reflects the dictates of reason over passion and of man’s higher
nature over his lower nature. It is not only just but necessary for there to be a hierarchical
arrangement for society. This hierarchy should not be one of increase in privilege and status
alone, but one in which higher status brings increased social responsibility. It is an inequality that
is equitable for it reflects the nature, not only of man, but of an ordered universe whose order is
the design of the Creator.
Civil society exists for the sole purpose of providing man with the means and conditions of
enjoying his natural rights. This, according to him, is the ultimate purpose of civil society.
Burke’s use of such terms as “natural rights” illustrates his concern for society as living organism
and also his concern for our duties and obligations to this living organism. These duties,if
fulfilled, would make for a happier society both in the whole and in its parts. Alternatively, ivil
society is natural to man; more than that; it is demanded by man’s nature in order to attain the
purposes and ends of which it exists.
Last but not least, Burke’s philosophy is interesting and provocative, avoiding high level of
abstractions in his writing due to the importance for Burke to concentrate his attention on the
practicality rather than theorizing too much. If comparing his social contract theory to the
contractarian tradition of philosophers like Locke and Hobbes, one would definitely see how
differently Burke stands in his position. Like Aristotle, Burke believed that man is by nature both
a rational and social animal. On that ground, it is natural for human reason to be best cultivated
within the realm of civil society and the state. To unravel the paradox and the fact which this
essay tried to prove: it is in man’s nature to be nurtured within civil society. In this way Burke
Burke collapses the distinction between the state of nature and civil society drawn to differing
degrees by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. In this sense the social contract is not the bridge which
links the natural state with the civic state because no such linkage is needed indeed. According to
Burke, a person’s relationship to family,society and state is not a matter of protecting abstract
natural rights with contracts of convenience, but rather a matter of upholding the moral duties
demanded by the natural law. The true significance of Burke’s conception of the state as at once
divine, natural and artificial cannot be understood apart from his principle of the social contract.

12. One of the most essential and misunderstood of his statements is exactly his passage on the social
contract:
“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may
be dissolved at pleasure—but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a
partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low
concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the
parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things
subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a
partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all
perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes
a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who
are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in
the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures,
connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the
inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place.” 5
This conception of the social contract expressed in this passage proves again to be world apart
from Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau, and the revolutionary “rights of man” theorists, who
accepted the pre-civil state of nature and conceived the social contract either as irrevocable or as
revocable at the pleasure or arbitrary will of the monarch or the people at large. Burke’s social
contract is absolutely inclusive for all the people who are living at present, who lived and who
will live after them. His social contract is a brilliant expression of the traditional conservative
view of society and the state which nowadays we seem to not take into consideration at all.
Edmund Burke’s numerous writing were not only relevant for the time being, but are more than
ever resounding in the world we live in today. Faced with a predominantly short-term
government’s decision, which cares only how to survive the “now” , we neither take any
account of our history and tradition, nor we think about the future of our children which are in the
generations to come.
To put it in a nutshell, for one thing, human beings are not self-interested calculators but
creatures of habit, custom, and tradition. And, for another, political society is not simply a heap of

13. isolated individuals,but a living and changing organism greater than the sum of its individual
parts. Individuals may come and go, but the society of which they are members endures.
Notes:
1. Jean Jacques Rousseau, “ The Social Contract”, Book I, “The Subject of the First Book”;
http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon_01.htm
2. Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the French Revolution”, p.156
http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm
3. Edmund Burke, “The Rights of the Majority”, http://www.bartleby.com/209/866.html
4. Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the French Revolution”, p. 67
http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm
5. Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the French Revolution”,
http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm
Bibliography:
1. Russel Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered(Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate
Studies Institute, 1997);
2. Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society, The Online Library of Liberty,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/burke-a-vindication-of-natural-society;
3. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution; Penguin Classics, 2009.