Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Areas like philosophy and law actually suffer in my opinion when they overload common words It's more that people take material from our fields and misuse them in casual contexts. >If "contractualism" were just known as "Scanlon's theory" it would be a lot easier.) It would also be wrong as it isn't his theory, he's just a philosopher with a recent in-vogue formulation of it. The source of the theory in modern weste…
See, you're actually making my point. ;) Social contract theory is known as contractarianism . [1] (And the source was first Plato, but is best known through Hobbes. Rousseau was then the next best-known iteration after Hobbes.) But "contractualism" is generally used to refer to T.M. Scanlon's theory specifically. [2] This is my point. They're too easy to mix up. ;) [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractaria…
The preambles of the articles that you're citing do not agree with your position, neither does a number of other definitions found easily online, neither does the academic publication record (you'll easily find 500+ articles on Contractualism penned before Scanlon).
See: "There is no necessity for a contractarian about political theory to be a contractarian about moral theory, although most contemporary contractarians are both. It has been more recently recognized that there are two distinct strains of social contract thought, which now typically go by the names contractarianism and contractualism."
[...]
"Contractarianism argues that we each are motivated to accept morality “first because we are vulnerable to the depredations of others, and second because we can all benefit from cooperation with others” (Narveson 1988, 148). Contractualism, which stems from the Kantian line of social contract thought, holds that rationality requires that we respect persons, which in turn requires that moral principles be such that they can be justified to each person. Thus, individuals are not taken to be motivated by self-interest but rather by a commitment to publicly justify the standards of morality to which each will be held. Where Gauthier, Narveson, or economist James Buchanan are the paradigm Hobbesian contractarians, Rawls or Thomas Scanlon would be the paradigm Kantian contractualists. The rest of this entry will specifically pertain to the contractarian strain wherever the two diverge."
In other words, this isn't about Scanlon the person, it's about two different schools of thought regarding people and their relationship with society. To dumb them down significantly, one's about the selfish, desperate flight from the state of nature, the other is about the crafting of a persuasive encompassing rationality of co-operation.
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Also, just as an aside, while this difference might seem like it's a small nitpick, it's actually one of the fundamental theoretical divides between continental European and American/British legal systems. So yes, there's a reason why the terms are distinct.