Trust in Hobbess Political Thought

Trust is not usually considered a Hobbesian concept, which is odd since trust is central to the
technical definition of a covenant, namely a contract in which the parties are trusted to perform
in future. The key to understanding Hobbess concept of trust is to be found in his account of
conquestsovereignty by acquisitionwhich is a heavily revised adaptation of the Roman
justification for the enslavement of war captives. Hobbes introduces a distinction between
servants, who are trusted with liberty, and imprisoned slaves. The relationship of servant and
master comes down to trusting one other to carry out their part and monitoring the others
performance (i.e., in game theoretic terms, it is an assurance game or stag hunt). The
relationship involves an ongoing exchange of benefitsof protection in exchange for service
and obedience; and shows how, for Hobbes, life and liberty are connected goods. Brought to
understanding the hypothetical model of sovereignty by institution, a trust interpretation
explains the compatibility of consent and de facto authority in Hobbess political theory. The
salience of his account of servitude (versus slavery and freedom) to discussions by Quentin
Skinner and Philip Pettit of neo-republican liberty is considered in the conclusion.

Deborah Baumgold
Department of Political Science
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1284
baumgold@uoregon.edu

Prepared for delivery at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the

American Political Science Association Convention, August 30-September 2, 2012

Wheres no trust, there can be no Contract.

--Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, 8.3
Trust is commonly thought to be a Lockean concept and not a Hobbesian one.1 But the
estimation would be revised if we paid more attention to Hobbess account of sovereignty by
acquisition, the realistic corollary to the hypothetical tale of sovereignty by institution. On
its face, sovereignty by acquisition involves an odd, implausible consent argument: those
conquered in warwhether individuals or countrieslegitimize the victors authority via
consent. Doesnt their lack of choice preclude anything resembling genuine consent? Hobbess
answer hardly improves the argument. It seems that consent is signified by a choice on the part
of the victor whether or not to allow the conquered to go free. Every one that is taken in the
War, and hath his life spard him, is not supposd to have Contracted with his Lord; for every
one is not trusted with so much of his naturall liberty, as to be able, if he desird it, either to flie
away, or quit his service, or contrive any mischief to his Lord.2 It appears that it is the victor
who decides whether their relationship is or is not consensual!
But this dismissive interpretive construction is not the last word. More kindly
interpreters, notably Kinch Hoekstra, have given a sympathetic reading to Hobbess account of
consent in the conquest situation. Addressing the textual question of whether the principle of a
mutuall Relation between Protection and Obedience is a novelty of Leviathan,3 Hoekstra
argues it was a consistent feature of the theory from the beginning. Hobbes was always both a
consent theorist and a de facto theorist of authority. If tacit and attributed consent count as
The title of this essay makes reference to John Dunns classic Trust in the Politics of John Locke in
Rethinking Modern Political Theory: Essays 1979-1983 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp.
34-54. My thanks to Leonard Feldman and Burke Hendrix for their comments on an earlier draft of this
essay.
2 Thomas Hobbes, De Cive: The English Version entitled in the first edition Philosophicall Rudiments
Concerning Government and Society, ed. Howard Warrender (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 8.2, p. 118.
3 Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, Pelican, 1968), A Review and
Conclusion, p. 728.
1

consent, then he may be considered a thoroughgoing consent theorist. If they do not, then he is,
after all, a de facto theorist of authority of a particular kind."4 Hoekstra saves Hobbes by
substituting consent for agency as the core issue in the story of conquest and consent: the
identification of the victor as the active agent fades into the background in favor of a notion of
Hobbesian tacit consent.
The general thrust of Hoekstras interpretation is, I believe, correct. My purpose here is
to extend it by unpacking the ideas that he runs together under the term tacit consent. In so
doing, it will become apparent that the substance of what Hoekstra labels tacit consent is
actually a particular understanding of trust. This understanding, we will see, both explains
away the problematic agency issue and, per Hoekstra, links conquest with the institution
covenant. Thus to paraphrase: I argue that Hobbes is a thoroughgoing consent theorist by
virtue of an idea of trust that underlies both contract models.
Hobbess idea of trust grew out of the neoRoman account of slavery which the English
inherited via Brackton and Coke and which Hobbes adapted for his own political and
philosophical purposes.5 My interpretation begins here: with the justification of slavery in the
sixth-century codification of Roman law, the Digest of Justinian, and Hobbess adaptations of it.
The root idea that he took over and elaborated was the rationalization that slavery involves an
exchange of benefits between master and servant. In the Digest, this is explicitly contrasted with
the Aristotelian view that some humans may have a slaves nature: Slavery is an institution of

Kinch Hoekstra, The De Facto Turn in Hobbess Political Philosophy, in Leviathan After 350 Years, ed.
by Tom Sorell and Luc Foisneau (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 69; see also p. 46.
5 Henry of Bratton, De Legibus Et Consuetudinibus Angli (Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England),
trans. Samuel E. Thorne (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Law School Library; Bracton Online, 1968-1977).
Edward Coke, The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, Liberty Library of Constitutional
Classics (http://www.constitution.org/coke/coke.htm), Lib 2, Ch. 11, Sect. 172, p. 116.
4

the jus gentium, whereby someone is against nature made subject to the ownership of another.6
Against this background, I turn, in the second section, to the main subject: how Hobbes
transformed a neoRoman view of service into an account of trust in which, crucially, life and
liberty are seen as connected goods. The final sections take up the political significance of the
account, which played out in Hobbess definition of the political covenant and, in an
idiosyncratic explanation of great immediacy in the Civil War, the nature of political servitude
and freedom. In recent years, Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit have made the last a subject of
note in discussions of republican thinking about freedom. Disagreeing with the views of both,
I offer an alternative take on Hobbess message concerning the freedom of subjects.

War Captivity: Hobbess NeoRoman Reasoning

From the start, Hobbes imported the Roman rationalization of slavery into his political
theory. Even in The Elements of Law, though, he also criticized their failure to conceptualize
alternative outcomes to war captivity:7
when a servant taken in the wars, is kept bound in natural bonds, as chains, and
the like, or in prison; there hath passed no covenant from the servant to his
master . . . This kind of servant is that which ordinarily and without passion, is
called a SLAVE. The Romans had no such distinct name, but comprehended all
under the name of servus; whereof such as they loved and durst trust, were

Theodor Mommsen, ed., The Digest of Justinian, trans. Alan Watson (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1985) vol. I, 5.4, p. 15 (emphasis mine). I discuss the Digests rationalization of
slavery and its English reception in Slavery Discourse before the Restoration: The Barbary coast,
Justinians Digest, and Hobbess political theory, History of European Ideas, 36 (2010): 412-18.
7 It is conceivable that Hobbes drew on Bodin for the distinction. The Republique, whose defense of
absolutism is paraphrased in the Elements, distinguishes in somewhat similar fashion between slaves who
are and are not trusted with liberty (Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale, trans. R. Knolles and ed.
Kenneth Douglas McRae, reprint of 1606 ed. [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962], V.6, p.
627).
6

suffered to go at liberty . . . the rest were kept chained, or otherwise restrained

with natural impediments to their resistance.8
The subsequent versions develop the point into a full-fledged distinction between servants, who
are allowed freedom, and slaves, who are not: after such Covenant made, the Vanquished is a
SERVANT, and not before: for by the word Servant . . . is not meant a Captive, which is kept in
prison, or bonds, . . . for such men, (commonly called Slaves,) have no obligation at all. A
servant, Leviathan further explains, is a captive that being taken, hath corporall liberty
allowed him; and upon promise not to run away, nor to do violence to his Master, is trusted by
him.9 Invoking the authority of the Greeks, Hobbes inserted a digression about the distinction
into a chapter on dmonology (Part IV, chapter 45). The Greeks, he explains, had distinct
names for the roles:
those that are absolutely in the power of their Masters, as Slaves taken in war,
and their Issue, whose bodies are not in their own power, (their lives depending
on the Will of their Masters, in such manner as to forfeit them upon the least
disobedience,) and that are bought and sold as Beasts, were called , that is
properly, Slaves, and their Service, .: The other, which is of those that
serve (for hire, or in hope of benefit from their Masters) voluntarily; are called
; that is, Domestique Servants; to whose service the Masters have no further

Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, ed. J. C. A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994), 22.3, p. 127.
9 Hobbes, Leviathan, 20, p. 255. De Cives version of the passage added a feudal parallel: these serve
. . . within prisons or bound within irons; and therefore they were called not by the common name of
servant only, but by the peculiar name of slave; even as now at this day, un serviteur, and an serf or un
esclave have diverse significations. Edward Cokes 1628 Institutes had assimilated feudal relationships to
the Roman schema, by distinguishing villeinage in which the tenant is a bondman from villeinage in
which the person is free, and the tenure servile (The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England,
Liberty Library of Constitutional Classics [http://www.constitution.org/coke/coke.htm], Lib 2, Ch. 11,
Sect. 172, p. 116).
8

right, than is contained in the Covenants made betwixt them.10

Nor is the distinction merely linguistic, but entails a crucial revision to the Roman
defense of slavery. By failing to distinguish the roles, they had over-generalized the rationale of
an exchange of benefits. In the case of servants, Hobbes concurs that their service is justified by
their lives having been spared:
If a man taken Prisoner in the Wars, or overcome; . . . (to avoid Death) promises
the Conquerour, or the stronger Party, his Service, i.e. to do all whatsoever he
shall command him; in which Contract the good which the vanquisht, or inferior,
in strength doth receive, is the grant of his life, which by the Right of War in the
naturall state of men he might have deprivd him of; but the good which he
promises, is his service and obedience.11
The equivalent political case enjoys the same defense. 12 DESPOTICALL dominion is acquired
to the Victor, when the Vanquished, to avoyd the present stroke of death, covenanteth . . . that
so long as his life, and the liberty of his body is allowed him, the Victor shall have the use
thereof, at his pleasure.13
However, the situation is crucially different with respect to imprisoned slaves. In the
passage regarding the Greek roots of the role distinction, notice that Hobbes explains: slaves
bodies are not in their own power, (their lives depending on the Will of their Masters, in such
manner as to forfeit them upon the least disobedience). In other words, slaves do not receive
the benefit which the Romans had ascribed to the institution because they may be killed by their
Leviathan, 45, pp. 667-68. Tying the subject back to religious worship, he concludes with the observation
that Scripture uses the two terms promiscuously because we are both slaves of God and, in
worshipping him, his servants.
11 Hobbes, De Cive, 8.1, p. 117.
12 Hobbes, De Cive, 8.1, p. 117: for to be a King, is nothing else but to have Dominion over many Persons.
13 Hobbes, Leviathan, 20, p. 255. In the Review and Conclusion (p. 721), conquest is defined as the
Acquiring of the Right of Soveraignty by Victory. Which Right, is acquired, in the people Submission, by
which they contract with the Victor, promising Obedience, for Life and Liberty."
10

masters at any time: a slave is a Captive, which is kept in prison, or bonds, till the owner of
him that took him, or bought him of one that did, shall consider what to do with him; he that
hath Quarter, hath not his life given, but deferred till farther deliberation; For it is not an
yeelding on condition of life, but to discretion.14 The specter of death is never-ending for them.
Being kept in chains, they remain as vulnerable to their masters as they were on the battlefield.
Thus, lurking behind the seemingly simplistic distinction between free servants and
imprisoned slaves is a less-than-simplistic concept of life as a good. The good is not simply to
be alive (as might be read into Hobbess assumption of an innate drive for self-preservation),
but rather consists in being securely alive; this, in turn, is crucially bound up with being trusted
with liberty. Free servants and imprisoned slaves are both alive, but life is truly a benefit only
for those who are trusted with freedom.
Thus, the root proposition is that the benefit of life is receivedand therefore defined
by being trusted with freedom. Life and liberty are connected goods because, to Hobbess
mind, liberty signifies security and imprisonment, vulnerability. Then onely is [a captives] life
in security, and his service due, when the Victor hath trusted him with his corporall liberty. A
captives voluntary surrender will have this outcome only if it is accompanied by a promise of
life from the victor, since surrender, in and of itself, obliges not the Victor longer, than in his
own discretion hee shall think fit.15 We might say that the fact of being alive is morally
insignificant in the case of the imprisoned: liberty is a necessary condition for living to qualify
as a benefit or good.
This is obviously an existential, not a factual, proposition. Being secure means having
some control over ones life. Recall Leviathans explanation that slaves bodies are not in their

14
15

Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 255 (emphasis mine) and p. 256.

Hobbes, Leviathan, 20, p. 256.

own power because their lives depend on their masters will. The benefits exchanged in the
model of sovereignty by acquisitionbenefits which are summarized in the
conceptualization of free servants versus imprisoned slavesare service and obedience in
return for liberty, connoting control over ones body and a secure life.

Trust
It follows why trust and contract are Hobbess third and crucial additions to the Roman
account. Whereas the Digest describes an immediate exchange that rationalizes an enduring
relationship, Hobbesian servitude is born of a promiseon both sidesabout future behavior.
The upshot of the tie between liberty and life (properly understood) is to make this
necessarily a contract story, a compact being defined as the promise of him who is trusted;16
and more specifically, a covenant story, covenants being pacts in which one or both parties are
trusted to perform in the future.17 The benefit of life, in the case of servants, comes down to
being able to count on not being mortally assaulted by their masters; entrusting servants with
liberty means, for masters, counting on their service and counting on them not to flee or attack.
Thus Hobbess more complicated account has an additional moral dimension that was
absent from the Roman original. Where that went no further than rationalizing slavery, Hobbes
adds to the rationalization of servitude a further account of the duties of both parties. This
dimension is dramatized in the observation that naturall liberty puts a servant in a position to
be able, if he desird it, either to flie away, or quit his service, or contrive any mischief to his

Hobbes, De Cive, 8.3, p. 118.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 14, p. 193. The parallel passage in The Elements of Law reads (15.9, p 84): In
all contracts where there is trust, the promise of him that is trusted, is called a COVENANT. . . . Promises
therefore, upon consideration of reciprocal benefit, are covenants and signs of the will, or last act of
deliberation, whereby the liberty of performing, or not performing, is taken away, and consequently are
obligatory.
16
17

Lord. Servants are in a position to be able to kill their masters, but are obliged not to do so,
whereas slaves, who are permitted to do so, have a hard time of it due to imprisonment. Duty
replaces chains.18
The force of the moral story, from another angle, is to raise and resolve the problem of
temporality. Why, it might be queried of the Digest, does a single, one-time exchange of life for
service rationalize a perpetual relationship? It is commonly thought that Locke was the first of
the contract thinkers to address this question; he answered it, as we know, with a concept of
tacit consent, referring to the use of benefits in the present.19 Trust is the less well-known
Hobbesian equivalent. By framing the Roman rationale of exchanging benefits into a covenant
about future behavior, Hobbes accomplished the same end as Lockean tacit consent:
justifying duty over time, in the absence of repetitive explicit promising.
But trust and tacit consent are different concepts.20 The former, as explicitly defined by
Hobbes, pertains to a reciprocal moral relationship, whereas the latter, Lockean concept works
by broadening the definition of consent to extend beyond explicit promising. When two parties
trust one another, it means they have assured one another about a future exchange of some
good which the other values. This coincides, as a descriptor of action, with the familiar notion
of people trusting one another to do their part. Furthermore, Hobbes has a different concept of
trust from the Lockean one. Whereas Hobbesian trust refers to reliance on others to carry out
their part in joint action, Locke associates trust with holding others accountable to standards.
Although less well-known, might the Hobbesian idea not be, in fact, a more common-sense

Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 256: For Slaves that work in Prisons, or Fetters, do it not of duty, but to avoyd the
cruelty of their task-masters.
19 John Locke, Second Treatise, in Two Treatises of Government, rev. ed. (New York: New American
Library/Mentor, 1965), 119-122, pp. 392-94.
20 This is not to deny that Hobbes has a concept of tacit consent. It is clear he does: despotical dominion is
acquired through a covenant either in expresse words, or by other sufficient signes of the Will
(Leviathan, 20, p. 255). My argument concerns the moral core of Hobbesian contractarianism.
18

view of trust that more famous alternative? In game-theoretic terms, Hobbess idea
corresponds to an assurance gamethis being one in which everyones first choice is
cooperation, assuming the confidence that others will also cooperate. Within this situation,
failing to do ones fair share becomes reprehensible.21
The reciprocity of the trust relationship resolves the apparent problem of agency in the
model of sovereignty by acquisition. Despite stressing the masters agency in trusting
servants with liberty, it is the case conceptually (at least) that servants have an independent role
in the relationship. In a full account of the creation of the relationship, Hobbes is careful to note
the servants part: If a Subject be taken prisoner in war; or his person, or his means of life be
within the Guards of the enemy, and hath his life and corporall Libertie given him, on condition
to be Subject to the Victor, he hath Libertie to accept the condition; and having accepted it, is the
subject of him that took him; because he had no other way to preserve himselfe.22 Acceptance
of liberty might be stretched to connote acceptance of the duties of servitude. But this is a
stretch and it is hard to see that, on the battlefield, accepting servitude as the price of life is a
genuine choice, rather than being simplyas the Romans had saidan obvious benefit.
The reciprocity of the contractual relationship resides, more fundamentally, in the
obverse, negative dimension. The key question is not Do servants have a genuine choice in
accepting the relationship? but, rather, Whose action may vitiate the relationship? The
answer is that neither party may end it unilaterally: masters are not supposed to assault
servants (i.e., treat them as slaves) and servants are not supposed to assault or flee masters (i.e.,
Andrew Levine, Engaging Political Philosophy (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002), p. 40. For the
interpretation that Hobbess game is actually an assurance game (or stag hunt), see also Edwin Curly,
Introduction to Hobbes Leviathan, in Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), p. xxviii;
Brian Skyrms, The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), pp. 4-6; Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986), esp. pp. 67-68; Philip Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 111-114.
22 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 21, pp. 272-73.
21

act as slaves are permitted to do). In effect, Hobbess thinking shifts the moral locus of the
argument away from the creation moment to the continuing trust relationship between
independent actors. At the moment of captivity, the vanquished are at the mercy of the victors;
subsequently, masters and servants are at one anothers mercy, so to speak. Only the others
failure to carry out their part can vitiate the contractual relationship. Curiously, however, this
implication is not spelled out in regard to the household relationship. Where it is spelled out, of
course, is in the political analogy. The mutuall Relation between Protection and Obedience
means, precisely, that subjects obligations depend upon their lives being protected by the
sovereign. The Obligation of Subjects to the Soveraign, is understood to last as long, and no
longer, than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them.23 In which case, the
situation resembles that of slaves, whose vulnerability precludes obligation.
The upshot is that we can see that Hobbess concept of trust is less demanding than is
often thought. In game-theoretic interpretations, it is usually taken for granted that iteration is
crucial to the Hobbesian solution to the assurance game. Granted, his reply to the Fool makes
covenant-keeping depend upon iteration, which matters because it supports a forecast of future
behavior.24 But the model of sovereignty by acquisition lays out a different idea of trust:
rather than forecasting the future, trusting others involves monitoring whether they are doing
their part.25 Nothing so vague as reasonable suspicion undoes cooperation;26 it is undone by
identifiable failure with regard to an on-going exchange of benefits.

Hobbes, Leviathan, 21, p. 272. The passage continues: Soveraignty . . . hath in it, from the very
institution, many seeds of a naturall mortality.
24 Skyrms, Stag Hunt, p. 4.
25 For a discussion of the monitoring problem, see Levine, Engaging Political Philosophy, pp. 29ff.
23

26

Cf. Hampton, Hobbes and Social Contract Tradition, p. 68.

10

Political Covenants
Trust unites the creation models of sovereignty by acquisition and sovereignty by
institution, because it is basic to the salient kind of contract. A covenant is a contract in
which one or both parties are trusted to performto deliver the Thing contracted for on his
partin future. In situations in which both parties contract now, to performe hereafter: . . .
he that is to performe in time to come, being trusted, his performance is called Keeping of
Promise, or Faith; and the fayling of performance (if it be voluntary) Violation of Faith.27 Beyond
the obvious point that a covenant creates an on-going relationship, the nuanced account of trust
provided by the acquisition model aids understanding the other covenant story, sovereignty by
institution.
It brings to the fore the essential sense in which the institution covenant comes down to
the exchange of obedience and service for protection. Notice that Leviathans key covenant
passage describes the compact in precisely this way:
The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them
from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to
secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the fruites of the
Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their
power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men.28
The exchange principle carries over into particular applications, including discussions of the
limits of subjection and the need for absolutism. An exiled subject is released from subjection

Hobbes, Leviathan, 14, p. 193.

Hobbes, Leviathan, 17, p. 227. The passage continues: the Essence of the Common-wealth . . . (to define
it,) is One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one with another, have made themselves
every one the Author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their
Peace and Common Defence. The same formulation appears in the covenant passages in the earlier
versions: Elements, 19.7-8, pp. 106-7; De Cive, 5.9, p. 89.
27
28

11

forasmuch as being out of the protection of the sovereignty that expelled him, he hath no
means of subsisting but from himself. I.e., absent the benefit of protection, there had been no
necessity that any man should enter into voluntary subjection, as they do in commonwealths.29
Furthermore, protection requires absolute government: but grant then that thou hadst given
him a power which were not absolute, but so much onely as sufficd to defend thee from the
injuries of others, which, if thou wilt be safe, is necessary for thee to give; are not all the same
things to be feared?30
Therefore, it is a false dilemma to worry about whether Hobbes is a consent theorist or a
theorist of de facto power: false because the Hobbesian political covenant is definedin the
institution model like that of acquisitionby an on-going exchange of goods (benefits) that
justifies de facto authority. Hoekstra is correct that the principle of the mutual relation of
protection and obedience pervades Hobbess theory (although I disagree with his account of the
nature of the connection).31
This is not to say, however, that the exchange rationale fits comfortably in all Hobbess
creation stories. Although the initial version of the institution covenant involves different
parties than the acquisition story, the rationale fits readily into that version. Versus the mutual
compact of conqueror and vanquished, the original non-resistance covenant is made by
incipient subjects only; the incipient sovereign is not party to it.32 However, the nature of the
compact itself is independent of the identity of the parties. Consider De Cive on the limits of
Hobbes, Elements, 21.14, p. 125.
Hobbes, De Cive, 6.13, annotation to second edition, p. 99 (emphasis omitted). The passage carries over
into Leviathans well-known comparison of the dangers of tyranny versus civil war (18, pp. 238-39).
31 Hoekstra, De Facto Turn, p. 39, and p. 72: The difficulty of how Hobbes can endorse both consent
theory and the de facto theory of authority . . . can be resolved conceptually, via an understanding of tacit
and attributed consent. Hoekstra criticizes an earlier work of mine that argues for Hobbess growing
need, over the Civil War decade, to introduce historical facts into the theory (When Hobbes Needed
History, in Hobbes and History, ed. G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell [London: Routledge, 2000], pp. 25-43).
I continue to see that as part of the story, but have come to regard it as less significant.
32 Hobbes, Leviathan, 17, p. 227; and 18, p. 230.
29
30

12

subjection. Hobbes begins by reiterating the terms of the non-resistance covenant: We have
seen how Subjects, nature dictating, have obligd themselves by mutuall Compacts to obey the
Supreme Power. As he continues, it is clear that the fact the sovereign is not a party to the
compact doesnt alter the exchange logic. Subjects obligations end if and when the sovereign
can no longer carry out his part of the bargain.
If the Kingdome fall into the power of the enemy, so as there can no more
opposition be made against them, we must understand that he, who before had
the Supreme Authority, hath now lost it: For when the Subjects have done their
full indeavour to prevent their falling into the enemies hands, they have fulfilld
those Contracts of obedience which they made each with other.33
Accurately, then, the Hobbesian social contract originally was a covenant in which incipient
subjects promised to trust one another to serve and obey, for the indefinite future, that body
whom they had nominated as sovereign. In return, they trust that they will receive on-going
protection. It is inconsequential whether or not the sovereign actually makes a promise; even
when the sovereign does not, the political covenant is defined by the trust that he will do his
part, as they will do theirs.
When Hobbes added an alternative, authorization account in Leviathan, he neglected,
however, to consider its incompatibility with the exchange rationale. Authorization effectively
undoes the limits which are built into an exchange contract. It substitutes identification, which
is seemingly permanent, for impermanent, though indefinite, trust. The new image has the
sovereign standing in for subjects, who are instructed to see themselves as the author of his
actions; where the earlier account had described a relationship between parties with different
goals, who agree to exchange goods in order to achieve them. The contrast appears plainly in a
33

Hobbes, De Cive, 7.18, p. 116 (emphasis mine).

13

Leviathan discussion of the servant/master relationship. By this new account, a servant

holdeth his life of his Master, by the covenant of obedience; that is, of owning, and authorising
whatsoever the Master shall do. Should the servant be harmed rather than protected by the
master, the moral relationship does not end. To the contrary, the servant, being author of the
masters actions, is author of the harms: in case the Master, if he refuse, kill him, or cast him
into bonds, or otherwise punish him for his disobedience, he is himselfe the author of the same;
and cannot accuse him of injury.34 Hobbes faced a conceptual problem: how to strengthen the
tie between ruler and ruled35 and also maintain exchange of benefits and trust as fundamental
political principles? But it couldnt be done. Whereas contract versus de facto authority is a false
dilemma, these two versions of the institution modelauthorization and identification versus
exchange of benefits and trustare genuinely incompatible.
Still, there is one further issue to which the false dilemma directs attention: Does the
contract play an independent role in Hobbesian logic? Since the covenant is defined by an
exchange of benefits of indefinite duration, does the theory reduce to an exchange story (in
either a utilitarian or a conventional version)?36 Once again, it is helpful to return to Hobbess
adaptation of the Roman rationalization of slavery, specifically his introduction of the
distinction between servitude (based on covenant) and slavery (not). What the covenant
accomplishes is the definition of the roles of master and servant and the responsibilities
associated with each. The point of using a covenant to do this is to specify with some precision
what constitutes agreement upon and acceptance of the roles; the duration of the roles; and,

Hobbes, Leviathan, 20, p. 256.

See Hobbes, De Cive, 6.20, p. 105, where Hobbes explains that the idea of a direct tie between each
subject and sovereign is needed to refute the false opinion that a parliamentary majority has the authority
to remove the sovereign.
36 A classic of neo-utilitarian interpretation is John Plamenatz, Man and Society (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1963), vol. 1, ch. 4. Hampton, Hobbes and Social Contract, offers an assurance game version of a selfinterested agreement (pp. 142-43).
34
35

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therefore, what would end them. The roles are inaugurated when, with mutual agreement,
captive servants are let out of their chains; they last indefinitely, until the other party fails to
carry out his part. Thus the independent weight of the covenant lies not so much in giving
subjects an additional motive for political obedience as in specifying what dominion and
subjection precisely entail, and why.

Political Servitude
Subjects in a commonwealth are . . . nothing more than the slaves or servants of the sovereign.
-- Philip Pettit, Made with Words37
In the recent wave of literature on freedom and subjection, Hobbess revisionist distinction
between servants and slaves is down-played and the concept of servitude, narrowly defined, is
under-appreciated. Interpretive work on Hobbess negative concept of libertyby, most
notably, Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinnerconcentrates on the neoRoman dichotomy of slave
versus free-man and neglects Hobbess additional distinction between servants and slaves.
Both interpreters regard these as merely varieties of subjection: two modes of slavery (Pettit)
or two species of servant (Skinner).38 As the alternative phrasings indicate, though, they
interpret Hobbesian liberty differently and therefore arrive at opposing characterizations of his
political message. Defining freedom as non-domination, Pettit assimilates subjects to slaves
inasmuch as both are deprived of their freedom of decision; and this leads him to conclude that
Hobbes accepted the republican charge that subjects of absolute government are not free.39 By
stressing the physical liberty of subjects, Skinner sees Leviathan as an effort, rather, to refute
republicans on their own ground: being free of external constraint, subjects of absolute

Pettit, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics, p. 139.
Pettit, Made with Words, p. 135; Quentin Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, p. 43.
39 Pettit, Made with Words, pp. 138-39.
37
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government as just as free as subjects of a republic.40

Although they draw opposite ideological morals, both interpretations nonetheless focus
on the original Roman opposition of slavery and freedom. Curiously, however, their
descriptions of the condition of Hobbesian subjects actually correspond to his narrow,
revisionist definition of servitude. Pettit uses a negative frame: Those who live under a
commonwealth may be free-men in the sense of . . . retaining corporal freedombut they are
not free-men in the intuitive sense of not being anyones servant or subject.41 I.e., subjects are
the political equivalents of un-imprisoned servants. Hobbes and Republican Liberty concludes in
the same vein, indeed with specific mention of the exchange covenant between conqueror and
conquered. Skinner frames the point with specific reference to Leviathans defense of the Rump:
it deserves to be obeyed in conscience as a fully lawful power because [t]hose who have
accepted its protection, thereby receiving from it their lives and bodily liberty, may be said to
have consented by sufficient signs to be its subjects.42 English subjects continue to trade
obedience for protection, just as household slaves do, despite the change in regimes.
In fact, Hobbes freely admitted the essential similarity of political subjects to household
servants, especially in definitional discussions of the concept free man in The Elements of Law
and De Cive. In the original version, the accent is on their shared servitude: The subjection of
them who institute a commonwealth amongst themselves, is no less absolute, than the
subjection of servants. They differ only inasmuch as a FREEMAN enjoys a state of better
hope than a servant: A freeman therefore may expect employments of honour, rather than a
servant. And this is all that can be understood by the liberty of the subject. For in all other
E.g., Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, pp. 208-10. Skinner gives a developmental account of
Hobbess thinking regarding liberty. I follow Hoekstra in emphasizing the consistency of his account of
conquest through the theorys several versions (De Facto Turn, esp. p. 71).
41 Pettit, Made With Words, p. 139.
42 Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, p. 207, see pp. 198-208.
40

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senses, liberty is the state of him that is not subject.43

De Cive accents the positive: their shared physical liberty (in which sense all servants
and subjects are free, who are not fettered and imprisoned). Still, Hobbess point remains that
privileges are all that distinguish free subjects from servants.
But this priviledge free subjects and sonnes of a family have above servants, (in
every government, and family, where servants are) that they may both undergoe
the more honourable offices of the City or family, and also enjoy a larger
possession of things superfluous. And herein layes the difference between a free
subject, and a servant, that he is FREE indeed, who serves his City onely; but a
SERVANT

is he who also serves his fellow subject: all other liberty is an exemption

from the Laws of the City, and proper only to those that bear rule.
Seemingly in an attempt to dress up subjection, he appends an exaggerated version of the
exchange of benefits rationalization of servitude. Far from being oppressed, servants are
governed and sustained. A servant shouldnt complain about a lack of liberty, unlesse he
count it a misery to be restrained from hurting himselfe, and to receive that life, (which by
warre, or misfortune, or through his own idlenesse was forfeited) together with all manner of
sustenance, and all things necessary to the conservation of health, on this condition only, that he
will be ruld.44
Leviathan continues to accentuate subjects liberty. As Skinner has emphasized, the work
gives a negative definition of a FREE-MAN (he, that in those things, which by his strength and

Hobbes, Elements, 23.9, pp. 132-33. Here, in an aberrant suggestion that is nowhere repeated, Hobbes
associates servitude with conquest and subjection with uncompelled dominion.
44 Hobbes, De Cive, 9.9, pp. 125-26.
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wit he is able to do, is not hindred to doe what he has a will to45) and includes a new chapter on the
liberty of subjects (21). The key issue in his debate with Pettit is the question of whether civil
laws count as impediments to action.46 However, with regard to political relationships rather
than philosophical conceptualization, there is nothing to debate. Hobbes opens chapter 21 of
Leviathan (Of the Liberty of Subjects) with philosophical arguments that had been worked out
in his debate with Bramhall in the mid-40s.47 But he quickly turns to the main subject: laws as
artificial chains. In relation to these Bonds onlymaking reference to Artificiall Chains,
called Civill Lawesit is, that I am to speak now, of the Liberty of Subjects.48 This liberty
comes down, he goes on to explain, to the silence of the law and the inalienable natural right of
self-defense.49 Neither was a new point, although inalienable right does not play out, as one
might imagine, in a ban on military service;50 and the point about the silence of the law had
appeared previously in support of rulers liberties. (In the earlier texts, he had explained that,
aside from the privileges which free subjects enjoy over servants, all other liberty is an
exemption from the Lawes of the City, and proper only to those that bear Rule.51) Although
slanted thus in a novel direction, chapter 21 of Leviathan is fully consistent with the accounts of
servitude and subjection in the earlier versions.
Throughout, Hobbess message was that the English were not political slaves to the
Hobbes, Leviathan, 21, p. 262. This definition was introduced in De Cive, 9.9, p. 125: LIBERTY, that we
may define it, is nothing else but an absence of the lets, and hindrances of motion.
46 Pettit distinguishes two sorts of obstructions to action, contractual (including civil law) and corporal
(Made with Words, pp. 135, 138, 153). Skinner distinguishes these are arbitrary versus external:
Hobbes made room for both, he argues, in De Cive but, crucially, dropped the former in Leviathan (Hobbes
and Republican Liberty, pp. 113-15, 127-28).
47 Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, pp. 129-31.
48 Hobbes, Leviathan, 21, pp. 263-64.
49 The application of this inalienable right to the case of military service is not, however, straightforward;
see my Subjects and Soldiers: Hobbes on Military Service." History of Political Thought 4 (1983): 43-64.
50 I discussed the complexities of Hobbess account of military service in Subjects and Soldiers: Hobbes
on Military Service." History of Political Thought 4 (1983): 43-64.
51 Hobbes, De Cive, 9.9, p. 126. See Elements, 23.9, p. 133, and 27.3, p. 164. This carries over in a margin
note in chapter 21: The Liberty which writers praise, is the Liberty of Soveraigns; not of Private men (p. 266).
45

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Stuarts. Nor should they desire political freedom in the (republican) sense of self-government,
for that would quickly transform into civil war.52 Perhaps he had gone too far in De Cive in
claiming that a government such as the Stuarts governed and sustained them. Still, his
account of the political covenant established that the Stuarts provided a real good and showed
that, until that government failed, subjects were therefore obliged to support it.
In 21st-century jargon, the servant-subjects task was to monitor their assurance game
with Charles I or, later, the Rump. The assurance covenant told them precisely how the game
could legitimately be ended, and how not. Should the ruler(s) fail to play their part, subjects
would be absolved of their part; but so long as rulers protected them, they were obliged to serve
and obey. The precision of Hobbess accountof an exchange of benefits of indefinite
duration--makes his political covenant not so different, in the end, from the Lockean
accountability contract. The latter carefully spells out the contractual terms by which rulers are
to be held to account: their role is to provide indifferent authority and to protect individuals
lives, liberties, and estates.53 Should they fail to do so, they have contravened their role and
subjects may rebel. Much as Hobbesian subjects are never licensed to rebel (which would be an
illicit unilateral violation of the covenant), Hobbesian rulers are nonetheless accountable to
provide specific goods, just as Lockean rulers are. Hobbess specification of the good is much
shorter and he abjures rebellion. But trusting government to play its part is as much a
Hobbesian sentiment as it is a Lockean one.

Hobbes, De Cive, 6.13, annotation to second edition, p. 99: for if men could rule themselves, every man
by his own command, that is to say, could they live according to the Lawes of Nature, there would be no
need at all of a City, nor of a common coercive power (emphasis omitted).
53 Locke, Second Treatise, 226, p. 464.
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