Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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other genuine alternative; for it is still a voluntary act, and like all such acts,

done with a prospect to our own advantage.

Thus, I conclude that Hobbes’s view, as expressed in his reply to the

fool, does not permit room for the ordinary notion of moral obligation (re

promises, e.g.) because this notion involves some concern for fairness (e.g.

re the circumstances under which promises are given) and for honoring

promises even when we might do better. And if we take Hobbes’s account

of practical reason strictly, it seems that both of these are ruled out.

Hobbes Lecture III: Appendix B

Hobbes’s Laws of Nature: Leviathan, Chapters 14–15

Law of Nature = deﬁned as a Precept found out by Reason that forbids

us to do what is destructive of our life, etc. (Leviathan, p. 64).

1st Law of Nature: 1st branch: to seek peace; 2nd branch: to defend

ourselves (64)

2nd Law of Nature: that we be willing, when others are also, to lay

down right to all things, for the sake of peace (64f )

3rd Law of Nature: to perform covenants made (71)

4th Law of Nature: Gratitude: cause no one to reject their good will

(75–76)

5th Law of Nature: Mutual accommodation (76)

6th Law of Nature: Pardon offenses, when repented (76)

7th Law of Nature: To punish only for future good, not revenge (76)

8th Law of Nature: Not to show contempt and hatred of others (76)

9th Law of Nature: To acknowledge others as equals by nature, contra

pride (76–77)

10th Law of Nature: At time of the Social Contract, no one to reserve

any right that he is not willing others to reserve as well, contra arro-

gance (77)

11th Law of Nature: That judges are to judge equally between men (77)

12th Law of Nature: Use of Commons (77)

13th Law of Nature: Use of Lot (78)

14th Law of Nature: Use of lot natural: primogeniture (78) (11–14 re

dist. justice)

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15th Law of Nature: Mediators to be allowed safe conduct (78)

16th Law of Nature: To submit controversies to mediation (78)

17th Law of Nature: No man judge in his own case (78)

18th Law of Nature: No man to be judge who is partial by natural

causes (78)

19th Law of Nature: Judge in controversies of fact, to credit no one wit-

ness than another, etc. (78) (15–19 re Natural Justice)

Summary of Laws of Nature: Do not do that to another which we

would not have done to us. (79)

Laws of Nature bind in foro interno (79)

Def. Moral Philosophy: Science of what is good and evil in society of

mankind (79f )

Argument for Laws of Nature from Necessary Conditions of Peace (80)

Laws of Nature improperly called Laws: they are dictates of Reason,

theorems regarding our conservation (80)

[1983] As to our obligation to obey the laws of nature, Hobbes says

that the laws of nature bind to a desire they should take place (in foro

interno), but not always to putting them into action (in foro externo), because

if a man performs all he promises and no one else does, he is “mak(ing)

himself a prey to others, and procur(ing) his own certain ruin, contrary to

the ground of all Laws of Nature” (Leviathan, p. 79).

He thinks that each of the natural laws is to each individual’s rational

good. So you have an argument, in effect, that the reasonable features of

the social life are justiﬁed by each person’s rational advantage. Hobbes is

making an argument in which he wants to justify all of the precepts that

come under the laws of nature as imperatives of this kind, but only if ev-

eryone else can also be assumed to follow them.

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hobbes iv

The Role and Powers of the Sovereign

I have examined the grounds that led Hobbes to think that a state of nature

must in due course become a state of war so that, effectively, they are the

same thing. The state of war is a state that is mutually destructive, and let’s

assume that it is on the whole destructive for everyone. So far as people are

rational, then, they will want to avoid having things collapse back into a

state of nature. What I have tried to do was to give a more instructive inter-

pretation of Hobbes’s argument by stressing those aspects of it that only

appeal to the normal and permanent features of human life, and by avoid-

ing drawing on some of the more dramatic elements which put emphasis

on pride and vainglory and other elements of that sort. Although, of

course, we have to allow that those are possibilities that have to be guarded

against; even if we don’t know that they are actually the case we still have

to take them into account.

Plainly then, it seems that in Hobbes’s view the role of the Sovereign is to

stabilize, and thereby to maintain, that social state in which everyone, nor-

mally and regularly, adheres to the Laws of Nature, which state Hobbes

calls the “State of Peace.” The Sovereign stabilizes society by effectively im-

posing sanctions that keep everyone “in awe.” It is the public knowledge that

the Sovereign is effective that makes it rational for each person then to obey

the laws of nature. He provides all with the assurance that the Laws of Na-

ture will be enforced. Most people then comply, knowing that the others are

also going to comply with them.

Now I should like to say some things about the formal structure of the

situation in the state of nature, and to do so by comparing it to the Pris-

oner’s Dilemma game, an idea that seems to have been invented in 1950 by

a Princeton mathematician, A. W. Tucker. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a case

of a two-person, non-cooperative, non-zero-sum game. It is non-coopera-

tive because agreements are not binding (or enforceable), and non-zero-

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sum because it is not the case that what one person gains the other loses. It

is often discussed in the context of political institutions, and also in the case

of moral notions. Many of you have perhaps heard of it.

A standard example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is the following payoff

matrix (see Figure 2). Imagine that two prisoners have been apprehended

for a crime, held for interrogation, and brought in separately to the District

Attorney whose aim is to get them both to confess. To achieve this end, the

DA makes each one aware, separately, of the following options and conse-

quences: if neither of them confesses, they are each going to be charged

with some lesser offense and be in jail for two years. If they both confess,

they are each going to be in jail for ﬁve years. If one of them confesses and

the other does not, the one who confesses is to be released, and the other

one will go to jail for ten years. All of this is indicated in Figure 2. In each

square there are two numbers: the ﬁrst number is the number of years in

jail for the ﬁrst prisoner; the second number is the number of years in jail

for the second prisoner.

The prisoners’ dilemma is how to weigh and balance the unhappy out-

comes for each of them in this situation. The action ‘to confess’ is said to

“dominate” the action ‘not to confess’ for both prisoners. What this means

is that the most rational thing for each to do is to confess, no matter what

the other does. So, it pays the ﬁrst prisoner in each case to play the second

row; that is, to confess. For if the second prisoner does not confess, then the

ﬁrst prisoner gets off entirely, as indicated by the ‘0, 10’ pair in the second

row. Whereas, if he does not confess and the second prisoner also does not

confess, then the ﬁrst prisoner would get two years (as indicated by the ‘2,

2’ pair in the ﬁrst row). Moreover, confessing and getting ﬁve years is better

than having the other one squeal and have you get ten years. And it is sym-

metrical for each one. So, they each have then an incentive to confess on

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Figure 2. Prisoner’s Dilemma 1.

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the grounds that the second row dominates the ﬁrst row, and the second

column also dominates the ﬁrst column. The most reasonable course of ac-

tion for them jointly—that neither should confess—is unstable, as neither

of them can trust the other to do the same; and the consequence of plead-

ing innocent while the other confesses is ten years in jail. By confessing, one

guarantees either release or at most a ﬁve-year jail term, as is indicated by

the ‘5, 5’ in the southeast pair. By not confessing, one chances a ten-year

sentence in the hopes of getting only two years. So the action to confess is

said to dominate the action not to confess, for both of them equally.

The outcome that results for both prisoners, if they choose the domi-

nant alternative, is a stable equilibrium. That is to say, either prisoner stands

to lose if he does not confess and the other does. So the southeast pair is a

stable point in the sense that it does not pay either of them to deviate from

that. On the other hand, if they both thus act rationally and confess it will

nevertheless turn out that they are both worse off than if somehow they

could stabilize the most reasonable course of action—if they could make

and then enforce a prior agreement not to confess. The two prisoners are

isolated, but, even if they could get together before they go in and say, “I

promise not to confess,” still neither of them can trust the other to keep the

promise. So, it doesn’t help to promise unless there are some prior ties of

friendship or affection or bonds of trust that have been established between

them. Or if they belonged to a group or a gang, whose leader will make

sure that whoever squeals will be “fed to the ﬁshes.” Otherwise, they are

going to be tempted to confess, and that’s the point.

The relevance of this to Hobbes is that people who contemplate mak-

ing promises in the State of Nature are looking at somewhat the same situ-

ation (although it’s not exactly the same by any means). One difference is

that the state of nature is going to be a recurrent game. In other words, one

is going to be involved in this situation with confederates normally not only

once, but time and time again, and that kind of case is going to be different

than where there is just one encounter. Still, I take it to be Hobbes’s view

that the general condition of mankind is that there are only two stable

states, one of them being the state of nature, which is a state of war. The

other one we might call a “state of the Leviathan,” in which there is, as

Hobbes sometimes says, an absolute Sovereign who enforces the laws of

nature, and makes sure that everyone acts on them.

The reason why the state of nature becomes a state of war, and the rea-

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son that is a stable state, meaning that it is hard to get out of it, is that there

is no effective Sovereign. Covenants do not do any good, for, as Hobbes

said, words of that sort are of no effect because no one can trust anyone

else to keep them. The reason is that the person who performs ﬁrst has no

way to ensure that the other party will perform in the absence of a Sover-

eign. In a covenant, the performance required is ordinarily divided in time.

One person performs earlier, and then some weeks or months afterwards

someone else performs. In between the time the ﬁrst person performs and

the time that the other person is to do their part, the situation may alter,

and that person will then have some reason for not honoring the covenant.

The ﬁrst person, knowing that, doesn’t have grounds for keeping their part

of the covenant in the ﬁrst place. So, normally there would then be no

point to making covenants in that state. The way Hobbes puts it is “There-

fore he which performeth ﬁrst, does but betray himself to his enemy; con-

trary to the Right (he can never abandon) of defending his life, and means

of living” (Leviathan, p. 68).

Now, to understand why Hobbes makes performing ﬁrst in a covenant

a case of betraying oneself, just consider again the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Hobbes’s thesis is that the state of nature, which is a state of war, is a stable

state, much in the same way that the lower right-hand corner of the Pris-

oner’s Dilemma is also stable. It doesn’t pay anyone to depart from that

choice. Therefore, in the absence of some change in the background condi-

tions, it will be a stable state. That is, if there isn’t some external sanction

like those discussed that is outside of the whole situation that the prisoners

are in, then they’re both going to confess, even though both would be

better off if both did not confess.

As an example of an actual situation where the state of nature still ex-

ists, Hobbes mentions the relationship between nation-states (Leviathan,

p. 63). Consider this matrix (Figure 3) to represent that state. In the upper

left-hand corner put inaPforpeace, put in the lower left ‘E, S’ where ‘E’ is

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Figure 3. Prisoner’s Dilemma 2.

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empire and ‘S’ is submission. And put in the upper right ‘S, E’, which is sub-

mission and empire; one reverses it. Then in the bottom right, put ‘W, W’

which should be ‘war-war’, or if it’s bad enough you could put ‘D, D’,

which would be ‘destruction-destruction’.

Now if ‘D, D’ were bad enough that might be the case of [nuclear] de-

terrence. One might never then want to violate the agreement. But other-

wise in the case of an armament agreement, one would have the same situ-

ation as the Prisoner’s Dilemma; that is, the agreement to disarm, or to

reduce arms, is very unstable. If both parties can honor it then you are in

the upper left and everyone would be better off. But there is always the dan-

ger that you cannot trust the other party to do their part. So, it is a case of

where the violator picks up all the marbles and in that situation you are go-

ing to end up, or tend to end up, on the bottom right, with war or even

worse, mutual destruction.

The problem then, as Hobbes sees it, is how to lift ourselves out of the

state of nature and into a state of the Leviathan-society. How are we going

to do that, given the fact that in the state of nature agreements between in-

dividuals are subject to the kind of instability that we have just discussed?

Hobbes views this problem as one of deﬁning what is needed to lift us out

of the state of nature.

What we have to do ﬁrst would be to deﬁne a mutually beneﬁcial social

state, which includes a stable and secure civil peace and concord. What is

that state and what are the precepts that characterize it? On Hobbes’s view,

it would be characterized, ﬁrst, by the precepts of the dictates of reason,

which are the Laws of Nature (Leviathan, p. 63), and second, by the idea

that those laws are effectively enforced by a Sovereign or common power

who has all the necessary powers to do so. So, the laws of nature would

give the background precepts, and then would come the Sovereign with

these necessary and effective powers, and then of course, on top of all that

there would be the Sovereign’s particular enactments, that is, civil law.

Then the third thing that one would have to do would be to move to set

up this mutually beneﬁcial state. This Hobbes thinks of as being done by

the Social Contract, by which is meant the establishment of the Sovereign

by “institution,” or by authorization. Notice that he thinks that a Sovereign

can come about also by conquest, or by “acquisition” as he puts it. This is a

very important point to mention, namely the Sovereign has the same pow-

ers in either case, whether brought about by conquest, or by authorization

or institution via the social contract. Hobbes mentions that if we have two

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countries ruled by the same Sovereign, but in one of them the Sovereign’s

rule is by acquisition or by conquest, and in the other by a social contract

brought about by authorization or institution, the Sovereign has precisely

the same powers in both countries (Leviathan, p. 102). There is no differ-

ence. It will be effectively the same constitutional regime. (I am using the

term “constitutional” here rather broadly, not as implying any bill of rights

or anything of that sort.)

What happens next then, is that this mutually beneﬁcial state must be

stabilized by instituting an agency which then would ensure that every per-

son normally has a sufﬁcient motive to comply with the rules and that these

rules are ordinarily complied with. The Sovereign does not do this by

changing anyone’s character, as it were, or by changing human nature.

What it does rather is to alter the background conditions against which people

reason and against which they are going to make contracts and decide to

honor them and to adhere to the other precepts of reason or laws of na-

ture. In effect, given the Sovereign’s existence, it now becomes rational to

do what, in the state of nature, it is not rational to do, namely to adhere to

the laws of nature. So, to repeat, what the Sovereign does is not to reform

human beings, or alter their character, but to change the background condi-

tions against which they reason.

Perhaps a good example might be a familiar one. Take the case of vol-

untary payment of one’s income tax. I am now making some assumptions

that we think our taxes are spent wisely for things that we all need, also that

the income tax is drawn up fairly, so that people do not have various sorts

of reasons that people might have for not wanting to pay them. Make those

assumptions that the income tax that is being collected is being spent on

things that people need, for the common beneﬁt, and make the assumption

that the schedule of taxation is fair. If you had a voluntary income tax

scheme, it might be that everyone would be happy to pay their tax if they

thought that everyone else was doing the same. But, in the large society

one might reason, “I don’t know that everyone else is paying their taxes and

I don’t want to be taken advantage of by others. I don’t want my honesty

taken advantage of by those who might be going to renege and not pay.” It

is a case where even though everyone is honest, and even though everyone

is prepared to pay their tax if other people do, it still would be a reasonable

thing for everyone to agree to set up a Sovereign with the necessary powers

to make sure that everyone pays their tax. It is perfectly rational for us all to

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agree to do that, agree to a Sovereign, because otherwise none of us has a

way of being sure that everyone else is going to pay the tax.

In this example I have not assumed that there are actually any cheaters.

I have assumed that everyone is happy to pay their taxes, but only if they

know that everyone else is going to. What the Sovereign does, then, is to

stabilize this scheme so that everyone does what is actually to their mutual

advantage. One often ﬁnds in ordinary life many examples of this sort. The

idea is that it becomes rational for each of us to want some kind of coercive

sanction to be imposed, even though there is not anyone who is actually un-

willing to do what they are supposed to be doing. I think that Hobbes is

one of the ﬁrst to have a clear understanding of these situations.

Now let’s look at the notion of authorization and then go on to say

something about just and good laws. The notion of authorization is dis-

cussed in Chapter 16 at the end of Book One of the Leviathan. Here

Hobbes is writing about the generation of the commonwealth as a way of

overcoming the state of nature in which everyone’s behavior is, as we have

just described, self-defeating. Hobbes begins Chapter 16 with a deﬁnition of

“person”: A person, is he whose words or actions are considered, either as his

own, or as representing the words or actions of another man, or of any other thing

to whom they are attributed, whether Truly or by Fiction. When they are consid-

ered his own, then he is called a Natural Person: And when they are consid-

ered as representing the words and actions of another, then he is a Feigned

or Artiﬁcial Person.

The Sovereign, or the assembly, Hobbes thinks of as an artiﬁcial person,

because the Sovereign is someone whom members of society have autho-

rized to act on their behalf. Having authorized them, we own the actions of

the Sovereign and recognize them as our own. Representatives and agents

are said to be actors in those words and actions of theirs which are owned

by those they represent. The Sovereign, then, is a kind of actor, and the

Sovereign’s actions are owned by us, as the Sovereign represents us.

The notion of authority has been introduced in the following way. An

action of the Sovereign is done by authority when it is performed by a li-

censed public person whose right it is. In other words, a certain person, A,

does action x by the authority of B if B has the right to do x and B has au-

thorized or granted the right to do x to A. So to authorize someone as your

representative or your agent is to give that person the use of your rights. It

means that you have given them the authority to act in some capacity on

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your behalf. Now, the Sovereign is going to be the person whom everyone

has authorized to act on his or her behalf in certain ways; in that sense, the

Sovereign is our agent, and acts with authority.

Now I’ll make some points about authorization. First, authorization is

not simply the renunciation of a right on my part. Rather, authorization en-

ables someone else to use my right to act in a certain way. Thus we do not

renounce or abandon our rights in authorizing the Sovereign; rather we au-

thorize the Sovereign to use our rights in certain ways.

Second, the person who has the use of my right and who is my agent

now has a right which that person did not have before. That is, if we autho-

rize the Sovereign to use our rights, then the Sovereign has rights that the

Sovereign did not have before.

Third, authorization can be for a longer or shorter period of time and

that, of course, depends on the grant of authority and its purpose and the

like. In the case of the Sovereign it will, of course, be a long period of time.

As Hobbes says, the life of the authorization will be in perpetuity.

This then brings us to the authorization of the Sovereign. Hobbes says,

“The Essence of the Commonwealth...isOne Person, of whose Acts a great

Multitude, by mutual Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one

the Author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall

think expedient, for their Peace and Common Defense”(Leviathan, p. 88). He

makes certain further points about this, one being that the Sovereign must

be the only actor upon whom these rights are conferred. That is, there can-

not be two or more sovereigns. All parties in the original covenant have au-

thorized identically the same person, or the same assembly of persons, as

the actor who has the authority to use their rights. And this sovereign per-

son or assembly has the use of rights that he or they did not have before the

covenant was made.

A second point is the use of rights of many persons the Sovereign en-

joys has been conferred on the Sovereign by a covenant among themselves.

That is, in Hobbes, this original covenant, or sovereignty by institution, is a

covenant between everyone in the society, but not with the Sovereign. Ev-

eryone covenants with everyone else, except the Sovereign, to authorize the

Sovereign as their agent and to confer on the Sovereign the use of their

rights. The relation that holds between the Sovereign and members of soci-

ety is that of authorization, not covenant. The Sovereign is the actor and

each citizen is the author of the Sovereign’s act, or is the owner of the Sov-

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