19
Right, for Hobbes, signifies freedom or liberty that all humans have to use their natural
faculties (bodily strength, experience, reason, passion), provided it satisfies right reason.
76
The
basis for natural right, according to Hobbes, is that all humans have a right to protect their own
lives.
77
To act according to right reason in the state of nature, for Hobbes, is to act according to
what each person thinks is right.
78
In the Leviathan, he makes the same point somewhat
differently. He claims that acting in agreement with the right of nature is to act according to the
command of our will, using our right to self-preservation.
79
This is where Grotius and Hobbes
differ. As we have seen earlier, Grotius thinks that acting according to right reason is acting so as
to respect our natural sociability, while Hobbes thinks in terms of self-defense.
The state of nature as the state of war cannot last because the effect of equal right to all
things, coupled with equal power, is no right at all.
80
The state of war is a result of mutual fear
humans have, which is partly due to their natural equality and partly due to their mutual will to
harm, even kill others [in self-defense].
81
Consequently, in Hobbes’ view, humans cannot expect
to be safe from others; neither can they promise security to themselves. Their physical and
intellectual faculties diminish and the weakest can kill the strongest. Thus human beings, for
Hobbes, cannot trust their strength to consider themselves by nature above others. Hobbes thus
sees all humans as equal to each other with equal ability to cause harm.
82
To end this unsustainable state of war where everyone has a right to all things simply
because they want them,
83
and where everyone has an equal ability to destroy each other, Hobbes
proposes peace as a solution. He sees seeking peace as a necessary requirement, the fundamental
law of nature, a dictate of reason to facilitate self-preservation.
84
He thus ties the laws of nature
to right reason, claiming that dictates of right reason are the laws of nature.
85
Like Grotius,
Hobbes thinks that reason gives humans “directives whose obligatory force does not depend on
76
Hobbes, Rudiments 118, ch. 1, sec. 7.
77
Hobbes, Rudiments 118, ch. 1, sec. 7.
78
Hobbes, Rudiments 118, ch. 1, sec. 10.
79
Hobbes, Leviathan 79, ch.14, sec. 1.
80
Hobbes, Rudiments 119, ch. 1, sec. 11.
81
Hobbes, Rudiments 117, ch. 1, sec.3.
82
Hobbes, Rudiments 117, ch. 1, sec. 3.
83
Hobbes, Rudiments 119, ch. 1, sec.10.
84
Hobbes, Leviathan 79, ch. 14, sec. 3; Hobbes, Rudiments 121, ch.1, sec.15.
85
Hobbes, Rudiments 115.