The Conscientious Sovereign: Public and Private Rule in Thomas Hobbes's Early Discourses

In midcareer political treatises, Hobbes trades humanism for scientific method and minimizes distinctions between conquest and mutual covenant as grounds of sovereignty. From this, many conclude that arbitrary government is the goal, or the likeliest outcome of Hobbes's science of justice. Three early discourses, however, suggest that the perils of transition from the private rule of a conqueror to the public rule of a law-bound sovereign are of primary concern. Whether the change is taken as proof of the independent activity of natural law, or as solely attributable to the skills of exemplary sovereigns, it destabilizes any law-bound ruler who fails to reorient the passions motivating subjects to obey. Lasting stability and comfort can be achieved only when public rule is redefined as the preservation of a cognitive balance, setting fear of the destructive effects of unregulated self-assertion against hope of the possibility of continuous peace through obedience to law.