Hobbesian Internationalism by Silviya Lechner

Author:Silviya Lechner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030306939
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The Right of Nature: Freedom and Felicity

The first premise, about freedom and equality, from the structuralist account of Hobbes ’s state of nature still needs to be examined. Instead of treating freedom and equality separately, the strategy here will be to explore them as related, via the notion of equal freedom that underpins Hobbes ’s right of nature. In Leviathan this type of right is introduced in the opening paragraph of Chap. XIV, on the state of nature. Hobbes no longer sees the state of nature as a joint outcome of the passions and the right of nature as he did in his previous writings. The right of nature suffices to generate the condition of ‘mere nature’, and this, it is claimed here, reveals a structuralist drift in Hobbes ’s thinking.

My point is that infelicity stems from an infringement on the right of nature, and that both concepts express a fundamental problem of freedom. Hobbes defines the right of nature as:The Liberty each man hath, to use his power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto. (L XIV, 189 [64])

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