QuestionsWhat is a just society?No one is born to command
What is a just society?The contract

No one is born to command

Denis Diderot 1713 · 1784Gather all human knowledge in the Encyclopédie.
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What it claims

Legitimate political authority comes from the consent of the people and is limited: if the contract ends, the nation regains the right to make a new one.

Why

No one received from nature the right to command; power comes from force, which makes no right, or from consent.

In short

"No one is born to command" is an argument by Denis Diderot (Encyclopédie, "Political Authority", 1751) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: the contract). Its claim: Legitimate political authority comes from the consent of the people and is limited: if the contract ends, the nation regains the right to make a new one. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 4 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Encyclopédie, "Political Authority", 1751
Valid

In 1751, under Louis XV, an unsigned article of the Encyclopédie dares to say that a king's power does not come from nature. Where then does the right to command come from? Either from force or from the consent of those who obey. And force is not a right. The article was denounced at once.

P1No man has received from nature the right to command others. The only natural authority, that of parents, ends when children can manage on their own.
P2Any other authority comes from one of two sources: the force of the one who seized it, or the consent of those who submit to it.
P3Force does not make a right: if the weaker become the stronger, they overturn the power with as much right as it had. That is the law of the strongest, not authority.
P4Power that comes from consent presupposes conditions that make it useful to society, and limits.
Therefore legitimate political authority comes from the consent of the people and is limited: if the contract ends, the nation regains the right to make a new one.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
The argument is valid and each premise is essential: it works by elimination. Nature, force or consent: P1 rules out nature, P3 rules out force, consent remains, and P4 gives it limits. To reject it, one must find a fourth source (God, tradition) or show that force can become a right.
Analogy. The captain of a football team was not born captain. If he imposes himself with his fists, he stays captain as long as he is the strongest. If the team chooses him, it is for a season, with rules, and the team can elect another.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Bossuet (the divine right of kings) 1709 · attacks premise 2

There is a third source: God. The king holds his power from God and answers to him alone; the people have no right to give it or take it back.

Diderot replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Diderot
God allows men to establish an order of subordination among themselves for the common good. But he wants obedience with reason and measure, not blindly: submitting without reserve to a creature is idolatry.
Hobbes 1651 · attacks premise 4

Consent can be total: to escape the war of all against all, people may hand all their power to an absolute sovereign. A limited, revocable power would bring back disorder.

Diderot replies
Diderot
A man neither should nor can give himself entirely and without reserve to another man: he belongs wholly to a higher master, God. So consent cannot create a power without limits.
Hume 1748 · attacks the conclusion

The contract is a fiction: almost all governments were born of conquest or usurpation, and no one was ever consulted. If only consent made power legitimate, none would be.

Diderot replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Diderot What the article already says
Power born of violence can change its nature: it becomes legitimate when it is maintained by the express consent of those it subdued. The article also speaks of a contract "made or supposed".