ABSTRACT
The last chapter left us with the following question. How does Leviathan’s state of nature help Hobbes to show that political authority is justified? I suggested that his answer needs
to show two things:
(I) people in the state of nature would have reason to choose political authority over the
state of nature; and
(II) the fact that they would choose political authority in the state of nature justifies that
authority
It may well have struck the reader that (I) and (II) leave an explanatory gap. To have
reason to choose to do something is not the same as choosing to do it. So Hobbes needs
to tell a plausible story not just about how people would have reason to choose political
authority but that they would choose it in a way which justifies that authority
Most commentators on Leviathan, though by no means all, think that Hobbes tries to justify political authority in the following way. They argue that Hobbes tries first to show
that people in the state of nature would recognise that they had good reason to get out of
it; and second, that once people recognise this, they would bind themselves to obey the
political authority which came about as a result of their decision. Hobbes is taken to be
offering a story or narrative about how political authority is created.
