 This conception of rights leads Green to be skeptical of attempts to explain how rights might emerge from a pre-social state of nature. Hobbes is Green’s primary target here, because Hobbes views the state of nature as an anti-social condition involving the war of all against all (Leviathan XIII 8–9) and claims that individual rights, or at least individual rights to anything other than non-interference, are possible only when individuals agree to leave the state of nature and transfer powers to a sovereign (Leviathan XIII 10, 13; XIV 1; XV 3). Green is skeptical in two ways. First, he doesn’t see how agreement could establish political obligation if there are no moral duties in the state of nature (LPPO §46). If the sovereign is necessary to make promises binding, then we can’t explain how the sovereign could himself arise out of binding pre-political compact. Second, Green’s conception of rights leads him to deny the Hobbesian claim that rights and duties depend on the existence of the sovereign. Rights depend on the common good, and there are facts about the common good prior to political association and positive right.