The Origins of Government and the Nature of Political Obligation

Abstract

Hobbes held that the earliest states had been families. ‘It is evident’, he said, ‘that the beginning of all Dominion amongst Men was in Families’, and that the father ‘was absolute Lord of his Wife and Children’ (Dialogue 159). He also thought that commonwealths could begin through conquest. But he spent most space on the commonwealth by institution, which he treated as the paradigm case of how government arises. The same emphasis on commonwealths by institution was characteristic of most contractualists or contractarians — that is to say, of thinkers who grounded government upon the consent of the governed. Many such theorists drew the conclusion that rulers are now bound by the conditions of the original contract and may be resisted if they breach them. Among medieval Roman lawyers, however, it was commonly argued that the original contract was an absolute transference of power from the people to its ruler. A number of Hobbes’ French contemporaries — including Cardin le Bret and Edmond Richer — likewise argued that the people originally consented to absolute monarchy, and that kings were irresistible. Hobbes similarly claimed that the people’s consent instituted absolute sovereignty. But he added a novel argument, asserting that government by institution arises through a contract between individuals excluding the sovereign, and not between the people and its ruler.