Is sovereignty in Hobbes the power of a person or of an office? This article defends the thesis that it is the latter. The interpretation is based on an analysis of Hobbes’s version of the social contract in Leviathan . Pace Quentin Skinner, it will be argued that the person whom Hobbes calls “sovereign” is not a person but the office of government.

Liberal political thought is underwritten by an enduring fear of civil and state violence. It is assumed within liberal thought that self?interest characterises relations between individuals in civil society, resulting in violence. In absolutist doctrines, such as Hobbes?, the pacification of private persons depended on the Sovereign's command of a monopoly of violence. Liberals, by contrast, sought to claim that the state itself must be pacified, its capacity for cruelty (e.g., torture) removed, its capacity for violence (e.g., war) reduced and (...) controlled. A core tension within liberal thought thus arises between containing civil violence by empowering the state and containing state violence by constraining the state. One result of this tension is the highly selective conception of ?pacification? within liberalism, which, historically, has accommodated indifference to endemic violence, both within civil society, and beyond civil society ? as in (past) arguments licensing imperialism and in (present) arguments for disciplining ?rogue? states. (shrink)

My intention is to demonstrate how Hobbes’ attempts to adapt two ancient institutions from Roman Law to his own time and knowledge of theology and philosophy. Treason could be quite significant within the context of Hobbes’ understanding of the figure of the sovereign and sovereignty. The central part of the text is an endeavor to ascertain the source and unconditional condition for treason as such, within the framework of Hobbes’ theory of representation which he writes about in Chapter 16 of (...) the Leviathan. The act or performance in which we could perhaps recognize a traitorous gesture could be found in the so-called paradox of representation. The “traitor” breaks the chain of the transfer of power and empowerment, thus stops representation, and puts an end to speaking in the name of the other. If it is possible to discover whether this is possible and whether speaking and acting in one’s own name always carries elements of treason, then we can conclude that differing forms of “direct” speech and action are “acts of treason.” In that case, what interests me is whether “treason” is found within the heart of representative democracy, and thus if it is de facto an integral part of a democratic order and society. (shrink)

This book is about virtue and statecraft in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Its overarching argument is that the fundamental foundation of Hobbes's political philosophy in Leviathan is wise, generous, loving, sincere, just, and valiant-in sum, magnanimous-statecraft, whereby sovereigns aim to realize natural justice, manifest as eminent and other-regarding virtue. I propose that concerns over the virtues of the natural person bearing the office of the sovereign suffuse Hobbes's political philosophy, defining both his theory of new foundations and his critiques of law (...) and obligation. These aspects of Hobbes's thought are new to Leviathan, as they respond to limitations in his early works in political theory, Elements and De Cive-limitations made apparent by the civil wars and the regicide of Charles I. Though new, I argue that they tap into ancient political and philosophical ideas, foremostly the variously celebrated, mystified, and maligned figure of the orator founder. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI contextualize and interpret the distinction in Hobbes’ Leviathan between the capacities of the sovereign and show its importance for contemporary debates on the nature of Hobbesian sovereignty. Hobbes distinguishes between actions the sovereign does on personal title, and actions he undertakes in a political capacity. I argue that, like royalists defending King Charles I before and during the English civil war, he maintains that the highest magistrate is sovereign in both his natural and political capacities because the capacities are (...) inseparable, though district. This position goes back to the treatment of Calvin’s Case by Francis Bacon and Edward Coke and has further precedents in medieval English constitutional thought. An important reason for Hobbes to include this doctrine in Leviathan, I suggest, is to provide a response to parliamentarians who employed the sovereign’s multiple capacities to justify armed resistance against the king. I show the relevance of this contextualization by intervening in two recent debates, regarding the possibility of constitutionalist limitations on the actions of the Hobbesian sovereign and regarding whether sovereignty is held by the commonwealth or by the person of the sovereign. (shrink)

Neo-republicans position James Harrington as a seminal figure in a tradition that asks what set of institutions grant the individual freedom from domination. This article argues that th...

This lecture presents the text of the speech about the genealogy of the modern state delivered by the author at the 2008 British Academy Lecture. It explains that to investigate the genealogy of the state is to discover that there has never been any agreed concept to which the word state has answered. The lecture suggests that any moral or political term that has become so deeply enmeshed in so many ideological disputes over such a long period of time is (...) bound to resist any efforts at definition. (shrink)

The importance of Thomas Hobbes?s account of personation and representation can hardly be overstated. And his intellectual debt to one of his classical foes, Marcus Tullius Cicero, can hardly be ignored. This paper compares Hobbes?s ideas on personhood of the state with Cicero?s notion of persona civitatis, and attempts to describe how Hobbes reshaped Cicero?s guidelines for presenting legitimate authority into a prop for defending any effective authority. Hobbes absorbs Cicero?s influential argument and builds on the idea of civic representation (...) as guardianship done by role-playing, while tearing down Cicero?s account?s ethical foundations. In contrast to Cicero?s magistrate, the social role of Hobbes?s sovereign is not scripted by ethical constrains: its purpose is not to restrict license, but to present it. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

European Journal of Political Theory, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 230-252, April 2022. The apparent inconsistency between Locke’s commitment to legalism and his explicit endorsement of the extra-legal power of prerogative has confounded many readers. Among those who don’t ignore or dismiss it, the common approach is to qualify the role or scope of prerogative. The article advocates the opposite approach. It argues that Locke’s legalism should be understood within the context of his oft neglected conception of political liberty in (...) terms of self-government. This not only allows for the reconciliation of Locke’s legalism with his endorsement of extra-legal powers, but also provides a fuller, more accurate account of the role of law and of political liberty in Locke’s theory. (shrink)

The apparent inconsistency between Locke’s commitment to legalism and his explicit endorsement of the extra-legal power of prerogative has confounded many readers. Among those who don’t ignore or dismiss it, the common approach is to qualify the role or scope of prerogative. The article advocates the opposite approach. It argues that Locke’s legalism should be understood within the context of his oft neglected conception of political liberty in terms of self-government. This not only allows for the reconciliation of Locke’s legalism (...) with his endorsement of extra-legal powers, but also provides a fuller, more accurate account of the role of law and of political liberty in Locke’s theory. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 1, pp 75 - 92 The aim of this article is to explore some of what Hobbes says in _Leviathan_ about what the Leviathan is. I propose that Hobbes is not finally clear on this score. Nonetheless, such indeterminacy might be revealing, insofar as it points us in different directions regarding how the state can be conceptualized, and what it is thought able to do. The paper is thus deliberately open ended: it does not aim (...) to definitively settle interpretative issues, but rather to use Hobbes as a way of thinking about the differing potentials of state theory. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 1, Page 128-150, January 2022. In this article, I engage with what relevant literature addresses as the ‘paradox of democracy’ and trace it back to the dialectic between authorization and representation established by social contract theories. To make my argument, I take Rousseau’s Social Contract as a paradigmatic example of the paradox and analyse it in light of Hegel’s critical response. My aim is to show that, although Rousseau rejects the idea of representing (...) the popular will, representation resurfaces in his Republic from top to bottom and engenders a structural opposition between citizens and rulers: drawing on the Hegelian scrutiny of contractarianism, I focus on three key moments in Rousseau’s theory, namely the Lawgiver, the majority rule and the executive power. After illustrating how the social contract undermines democratic participation in deliberative processes, I suggest that Hegel’s philosophy of right overcomes the paradox by positively assuming it as a dialectical contradiction that requires a specific constitutional approach to democracy. In this sense, I argue, the Hegelian perspective on democratic deliberation helps us to better frame Rousseau’s ambition to conceive the Republic as a free community of equals and urges us to elaborate a more coherent understanding of participation in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

In this article, I engage with what relevant literature addresses as the ‘paradox of democracy’ and trace it back to the dialectic between authorization and representation established by social contract theories. To make my argument, I take Rousseau’s Social Contract as a paradigmatic example of the paradox and analyse it in light of Hegel’s critical response. My aim is to show that, although Rousseau rejects the idea of representing the popular will, representation resurfaces in his Republic from top to bottom (...) and engenders a structural opposition between citizens and rulers: drawing on the Hegelian scrutiny of contractarianism, I focus on three key moments in Rousseau’s theory, namely the Lawgiver, the majority rule and the executive power. After illustrating how the social contract undermines democratic participation in deliberative processes, I suggest that Hegel’s philosophy of right overcomes the paradox by positively assuming it as a dialectical contradiction that requires a specific constitutional approach to democracy. In this sense, I argue, the Hegelian perspective on democratic deliberation helps us to better frame Rousseau’s ambition to conceive the Republic as a free community of equals and urges us to elaborate a more coherent understanding of participation in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

El propósito del presente trabajo consiste en explicar por qué Hobbes adopta una perspectiva corporativista para dar cuenta de la dinámica social y política que opera al interior del Leviatán. En concreto, intentaremos demostrar cómo el ordenamiento de la sociedad política en sistemas conducidos por representantes le permite a Hobbes establecer ciertas pautas en el desenvolvimiento de los conflictos públicos, fundamentalmente, la asignación de responsabilidades. A su vez, como hipótesis subsidiaria, argüiremos que el rol de la teoría de la representación (...) es central en la medida en que Hobbes no pretende eliminar la disputa política como tal, sino tan sólo deshacerse de su modalidad irregular. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aspires to make two original contributions to the vast literature on Hobbes’s account of the nature and person of the commonwealth: (1) I provide the first systematic analysis of his changing conception of ‘person’; and (2) use it to show that those who claim that the Hobbesian commonwealth is created by personation by fiction misconstrue his theory of the state. Whereas Elements/de Cive advance a metaphysics-based distinction between individuals (‘natural persons’) and corporations (‘civil persons’), from Leviathan onwards (...) Hobbes contrasts individuals acting in their own name (‘natural persons’) with representatives (‘artificial persons’). These changes notwithstanding, Hobbes retains the same corporate conception of the state throughout. On the prevailing ‘fictionalist’ interpretation, the sovereign brings the commonwealth into existence by representing it. I argue, rather, that as an incorporation of natural persons, the commonwealth becomes one person through the authorized (i.e. non-fictitious) representation of each constituent member singly by one common representative (‘the sovereign’). (shrink)

This article raises questions about the nature and status of the persona behind which contemporary capital operates. It does so by developing Marx's comments on personification in a very different direction to that intended by him, taking them, via Hobbes, into the deeper recesses of company law. The argument that develops is that modern law has facilitated the mechanism by which capital dominates civil society, an argument illustrated through the veil of the corporate persona worn by capital. The rhetorical trope (...) around which the argument is organized is the stage of power; the barely-mentioned backdrop is the possibility of real resistance to corporate power; the broader intention is to help develop the Marxist theory of law. (shrink)

Hobbes is often portrayed as a thinker who anticipated modern constructivist ideas of fiction and representation according to which reality is simply a social construction. This article questions t...

ABSTRACT This article traces the considerable development of a language of representation derived from Cicero's De officiis from late antiquity into early modern scholastic political thought. Cicero turned to the term persona, which signified the mask worn by actors of ancient theatre, to describe the particular duty of a magistrate who was understood ‘to bear the person of the city [se gerere personam civitatis]’. Thomas Hobbes's reliance on this terminology for his theory of the state in Leviathan is well known, (...) and we are now increasingly aware of its centrality before Hobbes in parliamentary and humanist discourse. What we have yet to register, however, is the extent and depth of scholastic appropriations and refashionings of this vocabulary. Cicero's language of representation is persistently at work in scholastic writing, from Augustine and Aquinas to Suárez and Bellarmine, and it functions in ways that reveal remarkable continuities and discontinuities with respect to its classical origins. The first task of this article is to expose this neglected channel through which this language was transmitted into early modernity. The second is to begin illuminating the early stages of political representation in the ‘second scholastic’ with an analysis of Francisco de Vitoria's De potestate civili (1528). (shrink)

Due to the persistent rise of extremism, democrats in recent years have been exploring old and new possibilities of democratic self-defence. This article explores an unconventional and little known alternative to militant democracy that places the demos at the centre stage of the struggle against extremism. Through a neo-procedural reinterpretation of ancient ostracism and modern-day recall, I suggest that citizens should have rights of democratic de-selection of elected parties and candidates. I argue that, if properly designed, such a mechanism of (...) de-presentation distributes the burden of democratic self-defence among citizens and creates a bottom-up majoritarian resistance to anti-democratic threats, without compromising free parliamentary mandate or minority rights. (shrink)

The paper examines Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the state and representation in light of the historical development of the idea of the people as a corporation and its use in late-medieval and early-modern theories of resistance. Consequently, it is argued that Hobbes’s use of a corporate metaphor for the state embodied a rejection of the ius gentium reading of the people as a corporate body that legitimised the right of resistance to the sovereign power. By incorporating the state, not the (...) people, and championing a single covenant of a dissociated multitude that leads to its generation, Hobbes undermined the basis on which advocates of popular sovereignty justified opposition to the sovereign; a prerogative derived in their eyes from a covenant between the people and the ruler. (shrink)

This paper shows that while there seems to be more or less a general acceptance for plurality as a condition of world politics and at least a vague commitment to a pluralist ideal, the challenge remains to formulate a fruitful account of international pluralism. While dominating approaches to international theory present international pluralism as essentially a by-product and instrumental, this paper suggest an alternative way to conceive of international pluralism when defending the ancient concept variety as a better guide to (...) approach both the understanding of plurality as the human condition and the notion of international pluralism. The paper concludes that it is preferable to accept a variety of pluralist conceptions rather than go on searching for a theoretical conception standing above the controversy; accepting pluralism in a sense involves rejecting just one version of pluralism. (shrink)

La personificación es un dispositivo central en la lógica de la estatalidad desplegada por el _Leviatán_ de Hobbes. De un lado, aparece como concepto indispensable para la comprensión de todas las maneras de encuentro intersubjetivo, tanto cooperativo cuanto agonal, que pueden darse en cualquier ámbito en general, privado o público. Del otro, interviene en la generación del poder de la soberanía absoluta y en la capilaridad de cada instancia en la que esta se hace efectivamente presente en la vida civil, (...) por vía de sus funcionarios, jueces y emisarios. Como todas las figuras conceptuales que ofrece Hobbes, la personificación connota ambigüedades y complejidades que problematizan las estructuras de dominio a las que pretende legitimar. Nuestro trabajo se propone un análisis del potencial de articulación de dicho concepto con miras a la fundamentación hobbesiana de la soberanía y del edificio estatal que esta preside. También entendemos que el dispositivo representacional ofrece un elemento adicional de consistencia para el modelo político de Hobbes, en tanto lo vincula con la dimensión teológica por vía de la representación de la persona divina que corresponde al oficio de soberanía. (shrink)

There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of personhood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests that the state is a kind of actor – in (...) modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor. If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporary political theorists and philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it. (shrink)

There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of personhood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests that the state is a kind of actor – in (...) modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor. If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporary political theorists and philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 31, Issue 1, pp 30 - 47 In this article, I show that Hobbes’s account of the generation of the commonwealth in both _The Elements of Law_ and _De Cive_ relies on ideas that he would come to theorise in terms of authorisation and representation in _Leviathan_. In this respect, I argue that the _Leviathan_ account is better understood as filling in gaps and resolving equivocations in Hobbes’s theory, rather than marking a decisive break in his thinking. (...) This argument is developed by substantiating two more specific theses. First, while Hobbes only explicitly distinguishes between the “alienation” and “authorisation” clauses of the covenant in _Leviathan_, the earlier versions of his theory rely on a two-clause account. Second, in the earlier versions of his theory, Hobbes equivocates between suggesting that the relation between the state and sovereign should be understood in terms of representation or identity; an equivocation that he would only resolve in _Leviathan_. (shrink)

In this article, we will analyze the redefinition that Hobbes applies to the essential elements of Protestant biblical hermeneutics in the Leviathan. Establishing who is the authorized interpreter, defining the rules for conducting a proper exegesis, and determining the content that results from both tasks, is of utmost importance. The answers to these three questions lay the foundation for a new relationship between civil and ecclesiastical power and fully immerse Hobbes in the theological-political discussion of the 17th century.

This thesis examines some of the contested meanings of what it is to be a self, person and individual. The law of obligations sets the context for this examination. One of the important aspects of contemporary feminist philosophy has been its move beyond highlighting inconsistencies in political and legal theory, in which theoretical frameworks can be shown to rely upon an ambiguous treatment of women. The feminist theorists whose work is considered use these theoretical weaknesses as a point of departure (...) to propose different conceptual frameworks. I start by analysing contemporary work on the self from within both philosophy of science and feminist metaphysics to draw out common approaches from these diverse positions. These themes are then discussed in the context of the law. I then critically examine the concept of legal personhood in the work of Drucilla Cornell and her proposals for the amendment of tort law. This is juxtaposed with an analysis of the practical operation of tort law by adapting François Ewald's work on risk and insurance to English law. I concentrate on women's ambiguous position with regard to both risk and to the image of the individual that is the subject of Ewald's critique. This is followed by an examination of the changing position of women with regard to 'possessive individualism', 'self-ownership' or 'property in the person' in relation to contract law and social contract theory. There are a number of different social contracts discussed in the thesis: Cornell's reworking of John Rawls and the stories of Thomas Hobbes and of Carole Pateman. The final 'social contract' to be discussed is that of 'new contractualism', the employment of contract as a technique of government. I argue that Pateman's critique of possessive individualism continues to be relevant at a time when the breadwinner/housewife model has broken down. (shrink)

By the time Hobbes wrote Leviathan, he was a theist, but not in the sense presumed by either side of the present-day debate concerning the sincerity of his professed theism. On the one hand, Hobbes’s expressed theology was neither merely deistic, nor confined to natural theology: the Hobbesian God is not merely a first mover, but a person who counsels, commands, and threatens. On the other hand, the Hobbesian God’s existence depends on being constructed artificially by human convention. The Hobbesian (...) God is not a natural person; he exists as a person only insofar as he is by fiction represented. Like the state and pagan gods, he is an artificial person by fiction. The upshot is that Hobbes was a sincere theist and that his seventeenth-century critics were right to think that, in their sense, he was an atheist: he did not steadfastly believe in an independently existing deity who precedes human convention. Hobbes was agnostic on this question. He nevertheless believed that God is brought into being as an artificial person. This ‘personal theology’ not only involved a heretical interpretation of the Trinity, it also came to play a significant role in his moral and political philosophy. (shrink)