No Peace, No Justice

Abstract Despite the signpost prominence of Hobbesian positions in theories of international relations and global justice, the meaning and grounds of Hobbes’s signature doctrine that justice and injustice are non-existent outside the state are poorly understood. This chapter provides a comprehensive explanation of this thesis (‘Statism about Justice’). Hobbes advanced two distinct supporting arguments: the Revised Covenant Argument and the Propriety Argument. Each argument is premised upon a different conception of justice and stresses different implications of the natural right to everything. On the Revised Covenant Argument, the state—with its coercive power to punish pact breakers—needs to exist for norms of justice to become effective. On the more radical Propriety Argument, the state is needed for norms of justice to arise. Distributive civil laws first create the content matter of justice (‘what is due to each’). On the Propriety Argument, humans cannot possess the virtue of justice outside the state.