Hobbes’s law of nature

Abstract

Contemporary interpretations of Hobbes disagree about the question of status, role and relation between both of his central natural law categories, right of nature and law of nature. Which one of them is more essential in the construction of civil state and how the definition of one determines the status of the other? On answers to these two questions depends the initial orientation of interpretation of Hobbes’s political philosophy. The article presents and analyzes two diametrically opposite answers to this question, Warrender’s and Bobbio’s, and explains why Hobbes could not be read as a successor to classical natural law tradition.