Hobbes and language

Maybe the social contract is an agreement to define words the same way?

Birds do it, bees do it. Why can’t humans live together peacefully outside a coercive political order? Thomas Hobbes offers as one part of the explanation, that such creatures “want that art of words by which some men can represent to others that which is good in the likeness of evill; and evill in the likeness of good… discontenting men, and troubling their peace at their pleasure.” (L 17) Indeed, the human art of words opens a Pandora’s box of sources of conflict—conflict over what is “yours” or “mine”, “right or wrong”, “reasonable” or “unreasonable”, “orthodox” or “heretical”—as passion-tinged and indexical uses of terms make for a babel that ensures not just a failure to communicate, but a war of all against all. More...