What if we could come up with an account of conflict that had all of the advantages of the rationality and passions accounts but none of either account's disadvantages? Such an account would fit with Hobbes's psychological premisses and yet generate sufficient warfare in the state of nature to make institution of an absolute sovereign necessary to end it. Moreover, it would explain this conflict while still making it possible for Hobbes to argue that people would be able to carry out that institution. I shall try to construct such an account, which I call the shortsightedness account, in this chapter. And I believe there is enough textual evidence to indicate that Hobbes not only would welcome this account of conflict but may even have been confusedly trying to present it himself in both De Cive and Leviathan.

The discussion of conflict in this chapter will also have another purpose. Although Hobbes characterizes the natural state as war-prone, violent and insecure, he nonetheless argues that people in this state will recognize the validity of certain “laws of nature” dictating moral behavior. As noted in Chapter 1, ever since the publication of Leviathan, Hobbes's readers have been mystified as to why the existence of valid moral laws does not render the state of nature relatively orderly and peaceful, rather than chaotic and violent.