REPRESENTATION, CIVIL PERSON AND STATE

The theory of juridical representation – a particular case of which is the theory of political representation – formulated in chapter 16 of Leviathan is not only one of the absolutely new aspects of this work in relation to The Elements of Law and De Cive. It is a centrepiece starting from which Hobbes reconstructs the whole of his theory of the social contract. Indeed, the social contract puts into play the passage from a multiplicity of natural persons in conflict to a single civil person. Hobbes formulates the passage thus in The Elements of Law: ‘a multitude of persons are united by covenants into one person civil, or body politic’. De Cive takes up a comparable formulation again: ‘By what hath been sayd, it is sufficiently shewed, in what degrees many naturall persons, through desire of preserving themselves, and by mutuall feare, have growne together into a civill Person, whom we have called a City.’ Finally, we can read in Leviathan: ‘A Multitude of men, are made One Person, when they are by one man, or one Person, Represented.’ The fundamental difference in relation to the two preceding utterances is that henceforth the notion of representation takes account of the notion of the civil person.

Yet the versions of the social pact from The Elements of Law and De Cive do not allow for taking account of the constitution of the civil person, so that the political edifice, no sooner erected, collapses. The notion of the civil person (persona civilis) that appears in each of these works will never be truly operational. It is thus upon the debris of the theory of the social contract and of the state from The Elements of Law and De Cive that Leviathan is going to reconstruct the juridical armature of a new political edifice with political representation.