Some readers may have reacted to the invalidity argument in the last chapter as follows: “Granted that Hobbesian people are unable, given their psychology, to do what is required to create an absolute sovereign, can't they still do something almost as good, namely, create a ruler who is almost absolute in power, even if he is dependent on his subjects' obedience for that power?” This is one of the intuitions we will explore in this chapter as we try to rehabilitate Hobbes's argument. It involves replacing Hobbes's regress argument with a new argument establishing that a less-than-absolute ruler — the kind of ruler Hobbesian people can create — is still sufficient to bring about peace. I call it Hobbes's “fallback position.” But before I develop it, we need to determine if it is even necessary to do so.