Why the state? Prominent answers to this question in Anglophone contractarian political theory tend to rely on prudential considerations. For Hobbes, for example, the state is necessary because subjects living in a condition of natural liberty face constant fear of death and find it impossible to lead predictable lives. As miserable as they may be under the power of the state, such condition is nothing ‘compared with the miseries and horrible calamities that accompany’ the state of nature ([1651] 1991, p. 129). So, you better consent to it. More recently, and in a similar vein, Robert Nozick avowed that we may accept the state ‘as affectionately as a trip to the dentist’ (1974, p. 5).