Bahai Philosophy and the Question of the Environment

3. Social Contract and Covenant

In order to understand the Bahá’í position on the question of the environment, we need to examine another central doctrine of the Bahá’í Faith, the principle of the covenant. One of the achievements of modernity has been the notion of social contract and the democratic approach to society and politics. The Enlightenment idea of social contract has been extremely influential in the self-consciousness of modern humanity, acting as the central organizing principle of modern economic, political, and cultural life in many parts of the world. However, the concept of social contract, although certainly a positive moral and political principle, has fundamental limitations and inadequacies. The choice between the current narrow definition of social contract and the complex notion of covenant has a fundamental impact on the attitude toward and treatment of nature. Although an exposition of the limitations of the idea of social contract is beyond the scope of this paper, I will briefly review some of the major problems in this concept. 1) The first problem is that not all contracts guarantee justice. In situations of the difference of power, resources, and information, for example, a contract might seem egalitarian and consensual but in fact it may not be so. Another expression of the same problem is that social contract is based upon a selfish and instrumental approach to social order. It implies that the commitment to the social contract can only be maintained on the basis of the fear of punishment. 2) The second problem relates to the nature of the actual partners in the social contract. From the very beginning, both the philosophy of the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century liberalism excluded certain categories of people from the social contract. Women and the poor are just two common examples. 3) The other limitation of the idea of social contract is the fact that it is confined to living humans. The conservative and Romantic criticism of the doctrine of social contract centered on this issue. Burke argued that a binding social contract should also take into account past generations as well. In that case the doctrine of social contract, when applied to the present and the past, becomes compatible with respect for tradition. xxiii However, the more fundamental problem with the doctrine of social contract is in the opposite direction: it does not include future human beings. The result is that the hedonistic consensus of the present generation can destroy the environment for the next generation. Such a limited concept of social contract is of course inadequate.

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