ABSTRACT
This chapter determines the limits within which the idea of Contract can be applied, and does for the most part by employing Michael Polanyi's accounts of the tacit dimensions of our thought and action. Any limits upon choice are therefore limits upon negotiation and contract, and signify things which cannot be the subject matter of negotiation with others nor the contents of contracts with them. The chapter discusses the essential limits upon choice and contract. If all social relations were to be matters of individual choice and mutual contract, then that would presuppose that most things can be made explicit and thus negotiable, that the world and ourselves are utterly transparent to us. Contract therefore has the presuppositions and conditions which themselves are not, and cannot be, a matter of choice by the individual nor constitute the contents of contracts among individuals is a set of values and standards of conduct by which one chooses.
