The Social Contract and Negative Rights | The State and Coercion

In this relatively succinct yet broad lecture, I discuss the idea of the social contract and where I think it falls short. The social contract has long been used as a way to justify the position of the state by accepting an implicit agreement on the part of all citizens. We will delve into surrogate motherhood, contracts in general, the police, and abortion to examine what the relation is between coercion and the state (and culture more broadly) taking a Heideggerian approach to rights and the place of social pressure in our understandings of contracts and the role of the state.

Music is Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 8, mvt. 1, performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony hr-Sinfonieorchester.