The primary rhetorical strategy used by Hobbes in Leviathan is logos. He carefully demonstrates his logic throughout the book in order to convince the reader to accept the sovereignty of the state over a lawless life in a state of nature. In this passage, for example, he demonstrates his reasoning in a step-by-step manner as he probes the limits of an individual's submission to the state:
If a man by the terrour of present death, be compelled to doe a fact against the Law, he is totally Excused; because no Law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation. And supposing such a Law were obligatory; yet a man would reason thus, If I doe it not, I die presently; if I doe it, I die afterwards; therefore by doing it, there is time of life gained; Nature therefore compells him to the fact [...] When a man is destitute of food, or other thing necessary for his life, he is totally Excused.
For Hobbes, people come together and voluntarily join the “Artificiall Body” of the state in order to best ensure their own protection. Therefore, this sense of protection is central to the social contract. Hobbes argues that it is acceptable to break a law to avoid imminent death, and he even assumes the voice of a hypothetical individual facing such a predicament in order to illustrate his logic: the state will execute me for breaking the law, Hobbes reasons, but even that is preferable to dying right now. Hobbes uses logos in this passage to acknowledge that there are natural limits to the control that a state can exert over an individual. Nevertheless, for Hobbes, these extreme scenarios—such as a life-and-death situation—ultimately still confirm the importance of the state, affirming the relationship between the social contract and personal safety.
