Abstract

According to Hugo Grotius’s De Iure Belli ac Pacis, human beings are born naturally sociable, yet it is for the sake of some personal utility that they join a state. To this aim, they consent to grant it rights that may subsequently take precedence over their own whenever necessary for the community. This founding act places the individual’s interest at the very foundation of the state, and concomitantly, allows for restrictions to self-interest for the sake of common utility. Central to this account is Grotius’s juridical conception of the state as a voluntary association equipped with rights of its own to fulfil the functions attributed to it by its members. What the state needs to perform these functions determines the concessions that subjects have to make for the common good. This is mostly determined in reference to the utility that subjects derive from the state – or alternately, when the state’s very subsistence is at stake, to the moral ties that unite the association’s members. Across all these passages, Grotius is keen to highlight the congruence of the individual and common good, against appearances to the contrary.