so-called state of nature, to create an artificial state of social stability, which is the state of the social contract.
The lack of public rules and agencies to resolve them [disputes] means the absence of mechanisms to prevent their violent escalation or reduce their occurrence in the first place. The endlessly escalating blood feud is the perpetual nightmare of the state of nature. And even where it does not occur, its possibility is a threat that undermines freedom and compels people to devote much of their time and effort to self-protection.
This is basically a rationale for enabling a quiet life by means of a settled upon way of reaching that kind of life. The main idea to be drawn from the discussion is that the public person, which is to say one on whom enforcement power has been conferred by the private citizenry, is bound by the contract because he has been given authority according to the terms of the contract. We have agreed, on this view, to relinquish certain rights to agents of responsibility so that we will not be required to assume certain protective responsibilities that the agents do assume on our behalf. This is the general context in which the optional use of force arises. As Reiman puts it, "the remedy for the ills of the state of nature lies in all persons giving up their right to use force as they see fit and depositing it in a public agency that is thereby able to make and enforce rules for the group as a whole and to protect each member against the use of force by others."
The theory of deadly force arises as a specific instance of the test of the theory of the social contract. Recognizing that the question is a difficult one because the social contract "has a normative cutting edge," Reiman argues that the real test of the legitimacy of deadly force "is whether renouncing a private use of force and allowing a public agency to enforce this renunciation results in greater concrete freedom for everyone."...