Please explain the idea of the social contract.

Although Rousseau discussed the Social Contract, the two
most famous proponents of the theory are Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Each agrees that
the purpose was to create a government, they disagree on the motives behind the creation
of that entity.

Hobbes in Leviathan
proposed that people entered into a contract--that is created a government--in which
they surrendered certain rights to preserve them from the
dangers of the "war of all against all" in which "life is nasty, brutish and short." The
important element in Hobbe's theory is that people SURRENDER certain rights for their
own protection and the greater good. The best analogy might be traffic signals; they
prevent everyone from entering the intersection at one time and the resulting chaos.
Can't say that I disagree with him.

Locke's famous work was
his Two Treatises on Civil Government. In the first, he argued
against divine right and absolute monarchy. In the second, he said that all people are
created with certain "natural rights," including "life, liberty and estate." He argued
that people created a government to PROTECT those very rights. He also said that if
government did not protect those rights, it could be altered or even abolished by the
people. Locke's theory is best illustrated in the following words from the Declaration
of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson relied heavily on
Locke:

We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That
whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of
the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness