< Back to previous page

Publication

Leviathan Inc.: Hobbes on the nature and person of the state

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

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’).
Journal: History of European Ideas
ISSN: 0191-6599
Issue: 1
Volume: 47
Pages: 17 - 32
Publication year:2021
BOF-keylabel:yes
IOF-keylabel:yes
CSS-citation score:2
Authors from:Higher Education
Accessibility:Open