The relationship between natural law and the juridical obligations that arise from contracts lies at the heart of Arash Abizadeh’s challenging and rewarding new book, Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics. Abizadeh sees the seventeenth century as a “watershed in the history of European ethics—a moment in which a eudaimonistic model rooted in ancient Greece began to give way to a distinctly modern, juridical model of morality” (p. 1). In that shift, Hobbes played an important role by considering the relationship between “reasons of the good” and “reasons of the right” (p. 5). According to Abizadeh, the former are attributable to us, but only the latter make us accountable to others. By virtue of mutually recognized signs of our will, “others have a standing to demand our conformity ... to condemn and sanction failures by demanding excuses, justification, or acknowledgment of a wrong and hence apology, compensation, or redress” (p. 6). For Abizadeh, although Hobbes did not abandon the reasons of the good, he nevertheless denied “that juridical obligations derive from or reduce to natural ones but also that the common good is constitutive of one’s own good” (p. 7). Abizadeh argues that Hobbes recognized the potential conflict between an individual’s good and the common good, as well as the potential conflict between the two sets of reasons. To solve these conflicts he focused on peace as the prerequisite for any other good and “built prudential constraints into the content of juridical obligations” (p. 7).

In Chapters 1 and 2, Abizadeh uses precise distinctions from recent work in ethics and metaethics to examine a number of philosophical interpretations of Hobbes’s political theory that have trouble reconciling its normative and juridical aspects. He prefaces these examinations with a persuasive methodological statement as to why this procedure makes sense and holds promise. Although his application of highly technical philosophical concepts and categories is often taxing, it ultimately pays off by revealing some of the ways in which attempts to explain away the normative basis of Hobbes’s theory are ultimately misguided. In Chapter 3, Abizadeh argues that instrumental and prudential considerations are irreducibly normative. In Chapter 4, he examines the complications resulting from Hobbes’s rejection of a summum bonum and his subsequent focus on the instrumental nature of goods. Particularly noteworthy here is Abizadeh’s attention to the difference between considering something good and calling it that, in what he terms “prescriptively subversive” and “prescriptively self-fulfilling” circumstances (pp. 164–79). In Chapter 5, he develops the distinction between reasons of the good and reasons of the right, which he considers “distinct and mutually irreducible dimensions of normativity” (p. 179). In Chapter 6, Abizadeh argues that, even though Hobbes’s normative philosophy “fails to include genuinely moral obligations in the impartialist sense,” it nevertheless includes them “in the accountability sense” (p. 223). He thus sees natural law as the province of reasons of the good and argues that the “apparent puzzle” of the uneasy relationship between natural right and natural law “is an artefact of the failure to discern the two dimensions of normativity in Hobbes’s ethics” (p. 244). Abizadeh argues in Chapter 7 that these two dimensions of normativity are based on Hobbes’s distinction between rational agents and persons, which centers on the fact that the latter are also recognized as such by others, which makes it possible to hold them accountable. In the conclusion, he maintains that Hobbes does not see normative properties as “real,” but rather as “the object of truth-apt, epistemically objective propositions” (p. 263).

Although it is useful to think about the differences between reasons of the good and reasons of the right, I think that Abizadeh goes too far when he argues that reasons of the right “neither reduce to nor are derived from reasons of the good” (p. 228). As he knows, Hobbes argued that God’s right to reign derives from His omnipotence and that breaches of the laws of nature are followed by natural punishments not arbitrarily, but naturally. He also counseled those who had trouble keeping up with his analysis of natural law to think of the Golden Rule instead and put themselves in other people’s shoes. This advice seems as “impartialist” as Rawls’s “original position” and is but one example of the ways in which natural law and juridical obligations are intertwined. Beyond their specific juridical stipulations, contracts are devices intended to engender trust among the parties and render compliance safe and reliable. Natural law informs one’s attitude toward one’s juridical obligations to an extent that makes it hard to agree with Abizadeh when he concludes that reasons of the right are not derived from reasons of the good.

Abizadeh’s account offers valuable insight into the significance of natural law for the individual in Hobbes’s theory, but it often does so at the expense of the bigger picture, where natural law plays an arguably larger role. That role begins with Hobbes’s account of the state of nature. Abizadeh argues that the purpose of the state of nature “is to articulate the rational motivation, limits, positive content, and normative grounds of conventional obligations” (p. 230). Yet, even though Hobbes’s story of the transition from the state of nature to the commonwealth has the feel of a linear history of how societies emerged, Hobbes was quite clear that its purpose was to deter people who lived in commonwealths from the temptation to do things that would land them in the state of nature. The question, then, is less how to get out of the state of nature and more how to avoid it. Without the right institutional framework, normative obligations will not suffice to ensure that individuals comply with the laws of nature. Thus, the sovereign is central to Hobbes’s political theory; his vigilance allows the laws of nature to bind his subjects not just in foro interno but also in foro externo. Equally important are the ways in which these institutions have consequences for the sovereign. As Hobbes put it, a sovereign who governs negligently should expect rebellion and rebels should expect slaughter. In a commonwealth governed in accordance with natural law, it would be hard to imagine how reasons of the right would be either inconsistent with or independent of reasons of the good.

Nevertheless, Abizadeh is correct when he identifies Hobbes’s political theory as the starting point of a major shift in ethics. By bringing the social contract into prominence, Hobbes initiated a serious inquiry into the epistemological and juridical foundations of sovereignty and, thereby, democracy. That inquiry continues and is as pressing as ever. Abizadeh’s attention to the ways in which individuals signal and read others in juridical terms is a welcome aid in the process.