Abstract
The purpose of this work is to investigate the classical roots of Enlightenment Social Contract Theory. It is not an analysis of Enlightenment philosophy, but rather an attempt to reconstruct the intellectual framework that served as the foundation upon which the Enlightenment thinkers developed their own theories of the social contract. In order to do this, I had to answer two main questions: (1) can an idea exist in practice before it exists as a neatly defined semantic unit; and (2) how can I test such a proposition. I looked for evidence of theories of the social contract developing alongside φύσις and νόμος, two terms I argue merge over time to form a raw concept of Natural Law. I argue evidence of such a dual movement is the backbone of Enlightenment Social Contract Theory. To find such evidence I turned to the Presocratics for evidence of a semantic merger between φύσις and νόμος, the Sophists for a description of the first theory of the social contract built upon these Presocratic notions of φύσις and νόμος, and Plato for a critique of Sophistic Social Contract Theory. Through this process I was able to find strong evidence for such a thing as classical Social Contract Theory. Furthermore, I was able to answer definitively that a raw form of a concept can indeed exist before it has developed into its own semantic unit.