Discussion Starter - Hobbes on Contract through the Laws of Nature

Hobbes identifies express and inferred signs of contract between men on the basis of fundamental characteristics of human nature. Every man is entitled to the “Right of Nature,” which dictates that “each man hath, to use his own, power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life” (100). In others, we have a right to all that advances our own interest, although this poses the issue that one’s advancement of their own preservation may hinder that of another’s. In fact, because the “Law of Nature” indicates that “a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same,” one must confront the scenario wherein each man fends for himself till his death (100). Today, we might call this a “dog eat dog” world in that the scarcity of resources combined with every man’s right to all things necessitates a degree of competition - one man’s achievement compromises another’s. Since therefore “man has a right to every thing; even to one another’s body,” men simply cannot have security in a world where each pursues his own Right of Nature to all things (101). Natural competition therefore approaches a war of all against all. 

This issue implores peace as a fundamental element of a society that aims simultaneously to protect men’s inalienable rights and allow them to defend themselves. Thus derive the first and fundamental law of nature to “seek peace and follow it” and the second, which requires that we defend ourselves by all means that we can (101). The above laws can only coexist when men are willing to renounce their right to all things in the interest of greater peace. Hobbes describes this as the law ‘that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself” (101). This negotiation of rights between men signifies the contact - an agreement of man to “divest himself of the liberty of hindering another of the benefit of his own right to the same” (101). That is, the contract relies on reciprocity of action, for a man would only maintain the liberties that he would allow another man to exercise against him. A man may have the right to the body of his neighbor’s wife given the Right of Nature, but he must make a contract with his neighbor to renounce that right if he wished for his neighbor to similarly lay down his right to the man’s wife. The troubling loss of bodily agency can therefore only resolve itself through reciprocated negotiation of liberties. The contract can be express, through words spoken with comprehension of their significance, or inferred through the consequences of words, silence, or actions.