Chapter 2 analyses Hobbes’s ‘doctrine of necessity’, which was famously so termed by Hobbes himself in his debate with Bishop Bramhall. It argues that by means of this doctrine’s basis in the natural sciences Hobbes transformed natural law from an idealist to a pragmatic enterprise, from one based on natural rights to one characterized by the pragmatic employment of principles of necessity. The chapter discusses Avicenna’s metaphysics of existence, through which he described ‘nature’, which gives precedent to what exists in the material world and depends on the necessitarian principle that ‘whatever exists is necessitated by another’. Similarities between Avicenna’s metaphysics and Hobbes’s are analysed, and in respect of the former the capacity of the doctrine of necessity to sustain a metaphysical framework for philosophy and politics is identified.

The Republic of Cyprus was founded on bi-communality: it is a unitary state with a single citizenship, but the state is divided on the basis of nationality into two communities, a Greek majority and a Turkish minority. The constitutional breakdown of 1964, the Turkish invasion of 1974, and the subsequent refusal of the Turkish community to participate in the institutions of the state have given rise to a number of unique problems of citizenship and nationality. Turkish Cypriots remain citizens of the Republic of Cyprus, a state that they refuse to recognize, while at the same time residing within a political entity (North Cyprus) that the international community does not recognize. The interplay between citizenship and national descent in the peculiar situation of Cyprus offers an ideal case study for exploring the concept and boundaries of citizenship and its relationship to the concept of nationality.