Part 2 Chapter 28 Summary and Analysis

Here Hobbes introduces punishments and rewards. A punishment is an evil inflicted by the public authority when a subject has committed a crime. The goal of punishment is to get the person to obey and prevent them from breaking the law again. When people are giving up their rights to complete liberty by living in a commonwealth, they are not entering into an agreement to be punished. Rather they are entering into an agreement for the sovereign to protect them and keep the commonwealth in peaceful order. The sovereign therefore has to decide to punish a few subjects when they break the law, in order to keep the rest of the people safe and in order.

Hobbes states that private revenges are not punishments because they are not conducted by public authority. If a person is injured by public...