In the 17th and 18th centuries, political theorists including Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau developed a model of political legitimacy that subsequently influenced the American founders and retains appeal in theory and in the public imagination. Social contract thinkers characteristically trace legitimate government’s authority to the consent of the governed and determine the nature of such a state through an account of the arrangements that would merit that consent. In this course, we will explore the notion of a social contract through careful reading of these founding authors, particularly in Hobbes’s Leviathan, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and Rousseau’s The Social Contract. In each we will see and consider how different views about human nature, motivation, and rationality point to divergent political arrangements. We will also sample historical and more recent adaptations of social contract approaches to assess their continued impact.