ABSTRACT
"Political obligation", which is the basis for citizens' obedience to laws, is similarly based on the idea of individual agreement, at least in Western democracies, and is particularly founded on the social contract. Consent theory begins from the premises most commonly attributed to Hobbes and Locke that all "men" are naturally free and equal. This "consent theory" comes more or less from the early social contract theorists, most popularly Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Social contract theorists recognized some previously obscured human qualities-namely the notion of will, the ability to act voluntarily, and the capacity for choice and self-creation-that indeed founded contemporary feminism and that many feminists are rightly reluctant to abandon. Feminism suggests that we need to consider what happens when we take connection and relationship as a starting point for thinking about politics, rather than a problem that politics needs to solve.
