ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out a number of arguments for the legitimacy of the state, as articulated by major political thinkers. It reconciles morality and self-interest. Core to the argument for the state is that security – internal (police) and external (army). Hobbes’s most famous quotation is his description of life in the state of nature as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’, but of more significance are the comments immediately preceding that statement, where he lists all the things – largely economic goods – absent in the state of nature. Political institutions must be legitimated but they also legitimate. Once again, there is a sublation of two correct – but in themselves inadequate – ideas: individuals need to make the laws under which they live and in this sense contract theorists are right, but legitimation does not stop once the contract is (metaphorically) signed, but continues as a historical process.
