3. Hobbes makes a sharp distinction of life among men before and after the covenant (later called the social contract). What is that distinction.
Hobbes’ justification of granting the sovereign powers that we see as unfounded and tyrannical in a modern context stems from his desire to avoid the state of nature above all else. The state of nature is a condition characterized by “the miserable condition of war” (111); it is a state in which humans, because they are not controlled by a sovereign power and its laws, are only concerned with their own personal aims. In this environment of “anarchy” (235), war and conflicts among individuals are inevitable, as everyone only has regard for themselves. In order to end the state of nature, the laws of nature must be enforced, resulting in peace. The agent of enforcement is the covenant, in which individuals all agree to give up some of their freedoms and rights and submit to the sovereign. Unless everyone agrees to the covenant, however, no one will, as entering this compact means giving up the right to exclusively pursue selfish interests in a state of “absolute liberty” (235), which Hobbes argues is an impulse that lies at the core of all humans.
I agree with Nina's comments above. To share more on similar points, Hobbes defines the state of nature as a "condition of war of every man against every man" (Hobbes, 84). Later in the text he still focuses his characterization of the state of nature on the language of rights and freedom, claiming that before the creation of commonwealths and covenants, people "had a right to do everything" (Hobbes, 190) so long as they do so in the interest of their own self-preservation and sustenance. Interestingly, as both of these passages demonstrate, throughout the text he characterizes the status of people in the state of nature as a situation in which "all men are equal" (Hobbes, 84), illustrating further that (as Nina wrote above) the goal of his writing is not to create a society whose primary target is equality, but rather to create a society that "[constrains] those that would otherwise violate [the covenant]" (Hobbes, 84). He understands the state of living, and the liberty of living, as fundamentally inapplicable to the lives of real people and beings, and instead suggests that people "[do not] want the liberty, but the power" to move and make their own decisions. Following this theory of power, he justifies the creation of commonwealths and covenants because, in order to sustain a peaceful and inevitable coexistence between power and necessity (survival, sustenance, etc.) it is necessary to create artificial chains and reduce one's liberty willingly.
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