Final answer:
Traditional Liberalism and Positivism share a rejection of the social contract as perceived by classical theorists like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, instead focusing on reason and observable social behaviors as the basis for the formation of laws.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question examines the similarities between traditional Liberalism and Positivism with respect to their views on the social contract. Traditional Liberals, such as John Locke, and Positivists both explore the role and legitimacy of government, but from differing perspectives. Classical liberals like Locke believed governments were a result of a social contract meant to protect natural rights and private property, while advocating for limited government interference in individuals' lives.
The concept of a social contract is indeed central to traditional liberalism, prescribing the formation of government on the basis of protecting individual rights and fostering free markets, as seen in the works of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith. However, under Positivism, law is seen as an expression of social facts and norms, not as a consequence of a social contract derived from natural rights.
Both traditional Liberalism and Positivism dismiss the notion of governance solely rooted in a divine or natural predetermined order, instead emphasizing the use of reason and observable social behaviors in the formation of laws. The social contract as presumed by classical theorists is thus either re-interpreted or rejected within Positivism, which aligns more with a conception of law and order as dynamic products of a society's empirical and rational consensus. In this way, both ideologies tend to reject the prescriptive, static nature of the classic idea of a social contract in favor of more pragmatic or secular approaches to understanding the relationship between the individual and the state.