A view basing notions such as obligation on the idea of a specific kind of contract. It is particularly associated with the book What we Owe to Each Other (1998) by the Harvard philosopher Thomas Scanlon (1940– ), in which the formulation is as follows: ‘An act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any set of principles for the general regulation of behaviour that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced, general agreement.’