ABSTRACT
This chapter argues about two claims. The first is that all human beings, or all human beings living alongside others in social groups, are unavoidably confronted with a serious practical problem. The second is that human beings can effectively ameliorate this problem by means of universally-enlisting and penalty-endorsing subscription to some basic standards of conduct. The problem of sociality, then, is the standing propensity in human social groups to breakdowns in cooperation and outbreaks of conflict, arising from the contingent but permanent circumstances of rough equality, limited sympathy and moderate scarcity of resources. Objections to contractarianism focus on three types of people who are each thought to pose a threat to the justificatory enterprise: nihilists, free-riders and the infirm. The threat to contractarian justifications of morality posed by the infirm is of a rather different kind.
