ABSTRACT
The theory of sovereignty has always been something of a riddle to students of political thought. Jean Bodin's great treatise is celebrated for its confusions, but its riddle is not the product of these confusions; rather the riddle is the explanation of the confusions. Bodin brings only to the threshold of modern political theory. The classical natural law teaching was to be made within fifty years of Bodin's death. Thomas Hobbes was the great modern writers in political philosophy to try to establish politics on the foundation of autonomous natural law. Hobbes makes the first principle and end of politics not "to be good", but "to be" and the preservation of one's being. John Locke presses the principle of the autonomy of nature further than does Hobbes: Human society must be more closely modeled on the social nature of irrational animals who by pursuing their private good procure the common benefit, which does not differ from the private.
