12 Social Contracts, Social Covenants, and Constitutions

12.1 What is a covenant? What is a social covenant?

12.2 What is the relationship between a covenant and a contract?

Contracts:

• are fully dependent on interests
• are motivated by individual interests of the parties

Covenants:

• defined by a set of values?

• not based on mere interest

• has a notion of the sacred

When you assume individuals have autonomy, this precludes the possibility that any entity (God; Tsar) can have absolute authority.

This why Catholic reconstructionists and Protestant dominionists are making a massive attack on autonomy.

12.3 The role of reason (in the Enlightenment sense) in the discovery of the covenant

Technology will change. Resources, other things will change.