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This state of nature is hard to picture for us living in the twenty-first century. We have never been without laws and we know right from wrong because it has been pounded into our brains since we were born. But, if there were no rules to follow and no obligations to anyone else as there is in society, as it is in a state of nature, it can be quite easy to understand where Hobbes gets this idea. When you think of having to survive just for yourself and are not working together with other people to form a society, everyone is a threat. They are a threat to how you want to live your life and a threat to your life. If someone steals from you in a state of nature, there are no laws that are going to punish him for doing you wrong. Nor are there any laws that will punish you when you have to kill him to get your stuff back. There is not a "natural law" governing a lonely, poor, nasty, brutish, and short existence.
The laws appear when they are agreed upon by a sovereign or a governing party. It must first be agreed upon that this pact will be made. A sovereign cannot just declare himself as such. There must be a majority of people following in habit of submission or obedience to this common superior. John Austin, a legal positivist, writes about his beliefs that law is a posit of the sovereign. There is no such thing as natural law because the sovereign makes the laws. Austin says that in order for a society to become political, the majority of its members must follow a common superior or body of persons. The people follow the laws that are made by this sovereign so that they can live in a civilized society. Without the formation of this political society, there are no laws by which to govern right from wrong. Before these laws, there are no consequences for actions that are harmful to people because there is no means of enforcement.
There is a modern law theorist by the name of Lon Fuller who does not follow in the same beliefs as Cicero and Saint Thomas Aquinas.