Hobbes sets out to justify the authority of government through the discovery of the rational principles that provide its foundations. In order to find these principles Hobbes uses a thought experiment; he imagines what human life would be like prior to the existence of government, in a state of nature rather than a civil state. The question is how and why we get from one state to another. Before we can ascertain this, first we must flesh out what life is like in the state of nature.

Hobbes assumes that in the state of nature:

1. Everyone is equal in their mental and physical powers such that "the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself."

2. Everyone is concerned with preserving themselves at all costs, by any means necessary.

3. Nothing is just or unjust, there is no property, men have a right to all things. (This follows from (2) in concert with the fact that there is no law forbidding the extent to which people may go to preserve their own welfare against the encroachment of others.)

The state of nature is "a war of every man against every man" for "war consists not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known." (542)

The result? "There is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

It should be clear why we would want to avoid the state of nature in favour of the civil state. The motivations for the construction of the civil state are:

1. Fear of death
2. Desire for things that are necessary for commodious living, or in contemporary English, a desire for the basic amenities of pleasant everyday life (food, shelter, conversation with your neighbour without fear he's going to kill you and take your wife and possessions).

How contract that gets us from the state of nature to the civil state:

From the points made above, Hobbes concludes that it is a law of nature that all rational individuals ought to seek peace when they can get it, and when they can't, then they have the liberty to seek all the help and advantages of war (544L).

From this fundamental law of nature, Hobbes infers a second, that "a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself" (544L).

This liberty is transferred to the government, what Hobbes calls the sovereign. The sovereign is thereby given the authority to enforce the social contract, with violence if necessary, in order to preserve the civil state and prevent its degeneration into the state of nature. The validity of the social contract is dependent on the existence of "a civil power sufficient to compel men to keep [it]" (548R).