The Difference between the State of Nature and the Commonwealth

VENEZIA, LUCIANO

Londres

Workshop; Fifth meeting of the European Hobbes Society; 2014

King's College London

There seems to be two different ways to account for the differences between the state of nature and the commonwealth. One view states that the fundamental difference between the state of nature and the commonwealth is causal or empirical; this reading highlights the sovereign?s possession of as much power as necessary to force subjects to follow the laws of nature and so act in ways that are reasonable. The other account states that the difference between the two scenarios is fundamentally normative rather than causal or empirical; this interpretation stresses the sovereign?s normative capacity to impose morally binding obligations on subjects. The textual evidence in which Hobbes explicitly mentions the characteristic inequality of the commonwealth may be plausibly construed in either causal or empirical as well as in normative ways. This is not the end of the story, however. Hobbes stresses the strict normativity of contractual obligations in an important set of passages, in a way that grounds the view that the difference between the state of nature and the commonwealth is fundamentally normative rather than causal or empirical. In addition, there are strong conceptual reasons to prefer this explanation of the difference between the two places.