Contract and the Commonwealth

Abstract

In Part II of Leviathan, entitled ‘Of Commonwealth’, Hobbes shifts his focus directly to the realm of politics. The political framework, which was always implicit in his discussion of morality, now emerges into the foreground and itself becomes the subject of analysis. He reiterates the need he had earlier expressed for some kind of constraint on men’s natural passions to hold them to their agreement since, in his famous phrase, ‘covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all’ (154, 223). His solution is as follows:

The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another … is, to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon an assembly of men, that they may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will … This is more than consent, or concord; it is a real unity of them all, in one and the same person, made by a covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition that thou give up thy right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner. This done, the multitude so united in one person, is called a COMMONWEALTH, in Latin CIVITAS. This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather to speak more reverently, of that mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defence. (157, 227)