The Natural Rights Tradition — With or Without Hobbes?

Abstract

The discussion of Hobbes’s theory of rights in the last two chapters has focussed on the content of particular individual rights within the theory, in the context of the Hohfeldian analysis that underlies much discussion of Hobbesian rights. And while I have argued that Hobbes’s theory of rights contains substantive rights for individuals, I have yet to examine in any detail the possibility that it is a natural rights theory. In this chapter I want to examine the relationship of Hobbes’s theory of rights to the theories of natural law and natural rights that were prevalent in the period before and during Hobbes’s lifetime. In terms of the content and political significance of the individual rights described in the theory, Hobbes has often been seen as holding a much weaker or less substantial theory of rights than Locke, who is usually regarded as having put natural rights at the centre of political theory in a way that was to come to dominate liberal political philosophy. And Locke’s theory of rights is a theory of natural rights with a traditional natural law basis.’ But what of the theoretical basis and justification of Hobbes’s theory of rights? Does it owe anything to theories of natural law and natural rights? Could one describe Hobbesian rights as natural rights?