The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic

Hobbes argues that political order requires a sovereign who transforms a multitude of self-seeking individuals into one civil person. He rejects the Aristotelian thesis that humans are naturally suited to political life, insisting that fear and competition drive us toward conflict unless restrained. The work presents this argument as a complete philosophy: Part I on human nature grounds Part II on politics. As one scholar put it, it is 'a work of extraordinary assurance, an almost fully fledged statement of Hobbes's entire political philosophy' .

The Elements of Law contains Hobbes's theory of the social contract but lacks the theory of juridical representation that makes Leviathan's argument work. As one analysis puts it, the versions of the social pact in Elements and De Cive 'do not allow for taking account of the constitution of the civil person, so that the political edifice, no sooner erected, collapses' . Leviathan reconstructs the theory of the state on the 'debris' of Elements by introducing political representation. Without that concept, the sovereign in Elements cannot fully unify the multitude.

Hobbes wrote the work in 1640, but it circulated only in manuscript—eleven copies survive, two containing material in Hobbes's own handwriting . He fled to France soon after, and the work was published in 1650 as two unauthorized separate treatises: Human Nature (chapters 1–13) and De Corpore Politico (the remainder) . Ferdinand Tönnies produced the first unified scholarly edition in 1889, and modern editions include J.C.A. Gaskin's Oxford World's Classics version .

The work focuses on the constitution of political authority within a commonwealth—how a multitude becomes one civil person through covenant. Hobbes does not develop a systematic theory of interstate relations here. However, his state of nature framework has been widely applied to international anarchy: sovereign states, like individuals without a common sovereign, exist in a condition of mutual fear. This analogy, central to realist international relations theory, draws more directly on the logic Hobbes sets out in Elements than on any explicit discussion of foreign policy.

Hobbes wrote The Elements of Law for English parliamentarians and focused on the domestic political challenges facing Charles I on the eve of civil war. Unlike De Cive, which was composed in Latin for Continental savants and the broader European Republic of Letters , Elements was directed at the immediate English political crisis. The decision to write in English reflected Hobbes's engagement with the parliamentary debates of 1640, particularly the question of whether sovereignty could be divided between king and Parliament—a question his theory answers with a decisive no.