From the Virtue of Justice to the Concept of Legal Order: The Significance of the suum cuique tribuere in Hobbes’ Political Philosophy

Abstract

There is widespread agreement, supported by his own remarks, that Hobbes broke completely with the tradition of natural law he inherited and put political philosophy on a scientific foundation.2 Although this claim has been supported in a variety of ways, Hobbes’ concept of justice has never been analysed in this regard.3 I want to make a contribution to the view that Hobbes was the initiator of a distinctively modern natural law by examining the role the concept of distributive justice plays in his political philosophy. More specifically, I want to focus on Hobbes’ treatment of the classical formula of distributive justice — suum cuique tribue, give to each his own — a formula which has been considered the classical definition of justice. My main concern is to show that Hobbes understands this formula quite differently from the prior natural law tradition and that this reinterpretation depends upon his new concept of natural law.