Thomas Hobbes’ Law of Justice

Thomas Hobbes’ Law of Justice

Of Thomas Hobbes’ 19 laws of nature, the first three, which add consecutively up to his concept of justice, are by far the most influential and important, with the ultimate goal being an escape from the state of nature. The first law states that we should seek peace, and if we cannot attain it, to use the full force of war. Directly building off of the first law’s mandate to seek peace is the second law that states that we should lay down our rights of nature and form social contracts, if others are willing to as well. From this springs forth the concept of the covenant, in which men can transfer their rights of nature between each other and which forms the basis of moral obligation. With the enactment of each of these laws, which act as impediments towards the full use of an individual’s right of nature, an individual will trade a piece of their right of nature in order to promote cooperation between others. According to Hobbes, these two are not enough to keep human kind from betraying one another. There needs to be another layer of control. This is where the third law comes in to fully form the concept of justice. The third law simply states that men need to perform their valid covenants, which becomes Hobbes’ definition of justice. From this, injustice is defined as not performing your valid covenants. As can be seen by this, with one law building off of another, it is quite clear that Hobbes put great effort into creating a full representation of the world in order to support his political doctrine. Thus, in order to understand Hobbes’ reasoning for his concept of justice, this paper will elaborate on how Hobbes’ laws of nature are rules that every human being should follow in order to give them the best chance of living well as well as investigating the full requirements of justice and Hobbes’ claim that there is neither injustice nor justice in a state of nature. Finally, while Hobbes wove his concepts of the state of nature, the laws of nature and justice into an extremely tight web through the Euclidean method, I argue that his account for justice is too weak to account for social atrocities such as slavery, religious discrimination, animal cruelty, genocide and murder and thus it is my intent to show that his account of justice is inadequate.