Serhii Proleiev is a philosopher and writer. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree and serves as Head of the Department of Philosophy of Culture, Ethics, and Aesthetics at the H. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is also a professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He is a recipient of the State Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology (2018), the Book of the Year Award (2020), the Serhii Krymskyi Prize for the Most Innovative Philosophical Concept (2021), and other distinctions. From 1998 to 2019, he served as President of the Ukrainian Philosophical Foundation, and from 2007 to 2019, as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophical Thought. He is the author of approximately 300 scholarly publications, including five individually authored monographs and twenty-two collective monographs.

Viktoriia Shamrai is a Ukrainian philosopher. She holds a Candidate of Sciences degree in Philosophy and is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Philosophy at the H. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She is a recipient of the Serhii Krymskyi Prize for the Most Innovative Philosophical Concept (2016).

This publication is a brief summary of an article by the philosophers Serhii Proleiev and Viktoriia Shamrai. The article was included in a collection of essays by leading Ukrainian thinkers compiled by the Aspen Institute Kyiv for participants in the seminars “(Re)thinking the Social Contract for Ukraine,” held within the framework of the “Social Contract for Ukraine” project.

The Problem from Which It All Begins

The idea of the social contract did not arise by chance. It emerged in order to resolve a deeply uncomfortable contradiction within human nature itself.

On the one hand, every person wants to live and possesses a natural right to life. On the other hand, a person is free and, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, “every man has a right to everything by nature.” If everyone has a right to everything, sooner or later their interests will collide and conflict will begin: a “war of all against all.”

It follows that human freedom itself threatens the human right to life. This is precisely the contradiction that the social contract is intended to resolve. Without it, humanity is simply doomed to self-destruction.

Weaknesses in the Theory of Hobbes and Other Modern Thinkers

At this point, the scholars do not merely retell the classical theory, but subject it to critical analysis. They identify three “gaps” in its reasoning.

First, the desire to live is not yet a right to life. It is simply an instinct inherent in every living being, and turning this instinct into a “right” is, in essence, a theoretical device.

Second, if the right to life follows simply from the fact that one is alive, why is it recognized only for human beings? An ant or an antelope is also alive, yet Hobbes says nothing about their right to life. The authors note that contemporary ecological consciousness has begun to correct this omission. For example, there is a legal precedent in which the River Ganges was granted legal personhood, effectively giving it a status comparable to that of a living being.

Third, human freedom is simply postulated in this theory. It is accepted as an axiom without substantial justification, unlike Christian thought, in which freedom of will was explained through the idea that the human being is created in the image of God.

And yet, as the scholars observe, despite these weak theoretical foundations, this unstable basis gave rise to an extraordinarily powerful model of society—one characterized by the greatest developmental dynamism in human history.

What Is the Purpose of It All? Peace

The scholars emphasize that the main purpose of the social contract is not to regulate everything in the world, but to secure one specific condition: social peace, meaning the complete absence of violence among people.

It is not a matter of determining what people may or may not do in everyday life. It is a basic agreement not to use force against one another.

Importantly, the authors stress that refraining from violence is not a restriction of free will. On the contrary, it is one of its manifestations, because freedom includes not only the capacity to act, but also the capacity to refrain from acting.

According to the authors’ logic, it is at the moment of reaching such an agreement that people cease to be merely “human beings in the state of nature” and become citizens.

Only free persons can conclude the contract—not groups, communities, or institutions, but particular individuals possessing wills of their own. The researchers regard this as a unique feature of modern society. Nothing similar had previously existed in history, with the partial exception of the ancient polis.

Why the State Is Necessary

Because no one can guarantee that every member of society will always observe the peace, there arises a need for an authority that will supervise compliance with the agreement and, when necessary, use force against those who violate it. This is how the state emerges.

The authors, however, make an important qualification. In everyday Ukrainian thinking, the terms “state” and “government” are treated almost as synonyms. In their view, this is a harmful substitution of concepts.

In reality, the only genuine bearer and source of power is the people, while the president, government, and parliament are merely the executors of that power, not its owners. This principle is explicitly enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine.

Moreover, the scholars insist that the state does not possess a “monopoly on violence” in the broad sense. It has the right to use force only in order to prevent violence within society—and for no other purpose. Any other use of force by the state is unlawful.

According to the authors, the Maidans of 2004 and 2013–2014 were grounded precisely in this right: the right of citizens to resist and even rise up against a state that abuses power.

Violence Is Not Only a Physical Fight

The authors broaden the very concept of violence. It is not limited to physical force or threats.

A violation of human rights is also violence, even when no one is beaten or threatened. Ensuring rights is, in fact, what justice means. Therefore, the social contract provides for a separate institution responsible for this function: the court.

Once again, the authors criticize habitual Ukrainian patterns of thought. In the popular imagination, the state and the judicial system almost merge into one, although judicial power is in fact a separate branch.

The separation of powers is necessary not merely to ensure that “no one receives too much power,” but because security, which is the function of the state, and justice, which is the function of the courts, are fundamentally different in nature and mutually complementary.

The Contract Is Not a One-Time Event, but a Process

One of the article’s most important messages is that the social contract is not a document that is signed and then forgotten.

The authors insist that it is constantly “renewed” in every situation of social interaction through dialogue and mutual understanding. If this process stops, the contract becomes an empty declaration.

The scholars also draw attention to the radical novelty of the idea itself. Unlike older conceptions of society as something organic that simply exists “by itself,” social contract theory presents society as a creation consciously constructed through human will—something continually created and transformed by people themselves.

What the System Consists Of

The researchers propose an expanded “formula” of the social contract: a sequence of seventeen elements.

These range from natural human rights to civil society, sovereign individuals, the rule-of-law state, the nation as the sovereign holder of power, the market as a mechanism of freedom, and finally the values of freedom, justice, and solidarity.

According to the authors, all these elements remain effective to some extent even today.

The Genuine Social Contract Should Not Be Confused with Political Arrangements

Finally, the authors warn against a widespread mistake.

What is usually described as a “new social contract” in political debates—that is, a redistribution of influence among interest groups—is not a social contract in the genuine sense. It is merely another system for balancing interests.

A genuine social contract is possible only when free, self-governing citizens exist and when the people genuinely constitute the sovereign source of power.

Why Does Ukraine Still Not Have a Social Contract?

The authors pose this question directly.

They acknowledge that a full answer would require a separate and in-depth analysis, but they clearly identify the principal obstacle: the usurpation of power and property by a closed group of powerful individuals.

In the scholars’ view, it is precisely this that distorts every sphere of public life, suppresses initiative, and makes the country’s development impossible.

The authors therefore conclude that the question of the social contract for contemporary Ukraine is not an abstract philosophical issue or a vague aspiration to “live better.”

It is a question of who will control social initiative: the people or the ruling elite.

And it is precisely for this prospect, the researchers emphasize, that Ukrainian soldiers are now fighting at the front.