mutual, where there is not security of performance on either side; as when there is no civil power erected over the parties promising; for such promise are no covenants: but either where one of the parties has performed already; or where there is a power to make him perform; there is question whether it be against reason, that is, against the benefit of the other to perform or not. In this first part of the response to the fool, Hobbes claims that in a state of nature, a covenant is beneficial if both people involved comply but dangerous if either does not comply. Hobbes makes this clear in Chapter XIV by claiming that one person cannot count on another to act rationally and that it is not safe for the first party to follow through for risk of irrational non-cooperation by the second party. However, it seems as though Hobbes is also hinting that reason or self-interest could foster a breach of covenant because if one person could gain by violating his covenant then he would. A breach of covenant is what Hobbes defines as an injustice. This would be in agreement with the fool ‘s statement that “to make or not make covenants, keep or not keep, covenants were not against reason, when it conduced to one’s benefit. However, Hobbes’ second statement in reply to the fool appears contradicts his first. In his second statement, he asserts that ‘when a man doth a thing, which notwithstanding any thing can be foreseen, and reckoned on, tendeth to his own destruction, howsoever some accident which he could not expect, arriving may in turn it to his benefit; yet such events do not make it reasonably or wisely done’. Contradicting his previous statement in reply to the fool, Hobbes is now asserting that is unreasonable to break contracts even if there is a possibility that it will be beneficial because people might not gain from the circumstances. Hobbes is now presenting a dilemma that if one makes a cove...
