The State of Nature in The Elements

Hobbes specialists have been divided over the question whether Hobbes’s major works on morality, law, and politics—The Elements, De Cive, and Leviathan—constitute a unity or whether there are philosophically significant discontinuities. This book makes a case for a discontinuous reading. The hypothesis is that the analysis in The Elements and De Cive is markedly distinct from that in Leviathan. The present chapter introduces the central elements that comprise the analytical construct of a state of nature in The Elements: the passions, the right of nature, and the laws of nature, treating obligation, covenant, and law as background considerations necessary to elucidate these more central concerns. The subsequent chapters will examine this construct in the context of De Cive and Leviathan.