Hobbes: gládio soberano e fundamentação jurídica do pacto

Abstract

This paper intend to refute the assertion that, on Hobbes, either in natural condition, or in civil society, without the State’s punitive power no covenant have validity. This assertion collapses all the hobbesian contract theory, because if the sword of State is necessary before the foundation of sovereign power of course it will never come to exist. It will consider the Renato Janine Ribeiro’s argument which contends that the seventeenth-century philosopher admits that there are covenants that apply even when there’s not sovereign power.