 Historically the idea of a social contract had a more limited role than Rawls assigns to it. In Hobbes and Locke the social contract serves as an argument for the legitimacy of political authority. Hobbes argues that in a pre-social state of nature it would be rational for all to agree to authorize one person to exercise the absolute political power needed to enforce norms necessary for social cooperation. By contrast, Locke argued against absolute monarchy by contending that no existing political constitution is legitimate or just unless it could be contracted into starting from a position of equal right within a (relatively peaceful) state of nature, and without violating any natural rights or duties. For Rousseau and perhaps Kant too, the idea of a social contract played a different role: as part of their accounts of the General Will, the social contract is a point of view that lawmakers and citizens should adopt for assessing existing laws and deciding on measures that achieve justice and citizens’ common good. Rawls generalizes on Locke’s, Rousseau’s and Kant’s natural right theories of the social contract (TJ vii/xviii): the purpose of his original position is to yield principles to determine and assess the justice of political constitutions and of economic and social arrangements. To do so, he seeks in the original position “to combine into one conception the totality of conditions which we are ready upon due reflection to recognize as reasonable in our conduct towards one another” (TJ 587/514).