International Theory 5 demonstrate this argumentative strategy’s ubiquity and influence in political theory. It was perhaps most famously and dramatically employed by Hobbes.18 Hobbes not only argues that people should establish states to escape the horrific ‘state of nature’, but that, to guard against state collapse and a return to the state of nature, sovereigns should be given virtually absolute power.19 Hobbes writes that the point of founding a state (i.e., instituting a sovereign) is to avoid the ‘miserable condition of war’ that would obtain in its absence.20 To achieve this goal, he continues, we must grant the sovereign virtually unlimited discretion ‘to do whatsoever he shall think necessary’ to preserve peace and prevent the state’s dissolution.21 Hobbes warns that limiting the sovereign’s power would lead to state collapse, catapulting the people back into the state of nature (by definition, a condition of statelessness).22 Hobbes also argues that people should submit to absolute sovereigns, since doing so is the surest way to avoid the condition of statelessness, which would be far worse than any injury their sovereigns could do them. He writes: the greatest that in any form of government can possibly happen to the people in general is scarce sensible, in respect of the miseries and horrible calamities that accompany a civil war (or that dissolute condition of masterless men, without subjection to laws and a coercive power to tie their hands from rapine and revenge)…23 For Hobbes, to escape the horrors of statelessness, we must found states, give them virtually absolute power, and ensure they retain it. Even if our sovereigns are deeply imperfect—iniquitous, harsh, and cruel—we should acquiesce to their absolute rule because it is infinitely preferable to the statelessness we would suffer in its absence. Though his political philosophy differs significantly from Hobbes’, Kant also invokes the dangers of living in the state of nature to justify state power and individuals’ obligations to obey states.24 For Kant, living outside a state’s authority may not involve the physical dangers Hobbes highlights, but it does involve the moral dangers that arise from having one’s rights ill-defined and no way to solve conflicts without one party being subjected to another’s unilateral will.25 Thus, people living nearby one another are obligated to form states to govern their relations: ‘when you cannot avoid living side by side with all others, you ought to leave the state of nature and proceed with them into a rightful condition.’26 And people who fail to fulfil this obligation, ‘do wrong in the highest degree.’27 18 I won’t survey the extensive secondary literature on Hobbes. I do not claim to offer a novel interpretation of Hobbes that advances this literature. Rather, I aim to offer one plausible interpretation of Hobbes and to show how the logic he employs is mirrored by later theorists. 19 Hobbes 1994 [1651]. 20 Ibid., 106. 21 Ibid., 113. 22 See ibid., 115–6, 211, 213–4, 216–7. 23 Ibid., 117. 24 As with Hobbes, I don’t offer a novel interpretation of Kant, but rather highlight the role the idea of statelessness plays in his account of a sovereign’s legitimate powers and of citizens’ political obligations. 25 Kant 1996a [1797]. 26 Ibid., 451–2. 27 Ibid., 452. https://doi.org/10.1017/S175297192500003X Published online by Cambridge University Press