Hobbes on Sovereign AuthorityHow the Right of Nature Becomes Sovereign Right
The right to (private) property in Hobbes’s Leviathan is established by each man authorizing the sovereign, acting in the person of each, to renounce the natural right to unlimited possession in favor of an exclusive claim right (i.e., one that obligates others) to goods acquired and exchanged in accordance with procedures established by the sovereign. Yet this useful way to ground the right to private property and other rights runs afoul of punishment because Hobbes both asserts and denies that a person may authorize his own punishment. This chapter introduces a “Neo-Hobbesian” definition of punishment, which permits authorizing the sovereign to punish oneself if one expects to gain from the system of punishment.