ABSTRACT
After Locke, there was a break with the theory of the social contract, at least as a theory of society. Social theory developed in a less rationalist and less individualist direction. In France and Scotland, there emerged the insight that social institutions are not conscious inventions, but have developed gradually and unintentionally. In the terminology, recently made popular by Friedrich von Hayek, most social institutions are ‘spontaneous orders’. Following the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), he maintains, that they are the result of human action, but not of human design (Hayek, 1948: 7). Among the most important critics of the theory of the social contract was another Scottish philosopher, David Hume (1711-76), who dismissed this idea as a mere fiction invented for political purposes ([1741/2] 1963: 452ff).
