Page "Leviathan (book)" Paragraph 7

The desire to avoid the state of nature, as the place where the summum malum of violent death is most likely to occur, forms the polestar of political reasoning.

It suggests a number of laws of nature, although Hobbes is quick to point out that they cannot properly speaking be called " laws ," since there is no one to enforce them.

The first thing that reason suggests is to seek peace, but that where peace cannot be had, to use all of the advantages of war.

Hobbes is explicit that in the state of nature nothing can be considered just or unjust, and every man must be considered to have a right to all things.

The second law of nature is that one ought to be willing to renounce one's right to all things where others are willing to do the same, to quit the state of nature, and to erect a commonwealth with the authority to command them in all things.

Hobbes concludes Part One by articulating an additional seventeen laws of nature that make the performance of the first two possible and by explaining what it would mean for a sovereign to represent the people even when they disagree with the sovereign.