The Elements of Representation in Hobbes

Studies in the History

of Political Thought

Edited by
Terence Ball, Arizona State University
Jörn Leonhard, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Wyger Velema, University of Amsterdam

Advisory Board
Janet Coleman, London School of Economics
and Political Science, UK
Vittor Ivo Comparato, University of Perugia, Italy
Jacques Guilhaumou, CNRS, France
John Marshall, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA
Markku Peltonen, University of Helsinki, Finland

VOLUME 2
The Elements of Representation
in Hobbes
Aesthetics, Theatre, Law, and Theology in the
Construction of Hobbes’s Theory of the State

By
Mónica Brito Vieira

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2009
On the cover: Do-Ho Suh, Some/One, 2004, stainless steel military dog tags, steel
structure, fiberglass resin, fabric, 75 × 114 × 132", collection Nerman Museum of Con-
temporary Art – JCCC, gift of Marti and Tony Oppenheimer and the Oppenheimer
Brothers Foundation.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brito Vieira, Mónica.

The elements of representation in Hobbes : aesthetics, theatre, law, and theology in
the construction of Hobbes’s theory of the state / by Monica Brito Vieira.
p. cm. — (Studies in the history of political thought ; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-18174-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Hobbes, Thomas, 1588–1679—
Criticism and interpretation. 2. Hobbes, Thomas, 1588–1679—Political and social
views. 3. State, The. I. Title. II. Series.

JC153.H52B75 2009
320.1—dc22
2009039906

ISSN 1873-6548
ISBN 978-90-04-18174-8

Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,

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Fees are subject to change.

printed in the netherlands

 CONTENTS

Introductory Note .............................................................................. vii

List of Figures ..................................................................................... ix
Acknowledgements ............................................................................ xi
Abbreviations and Editions .............................................................. xv

Introduction ........................................................................................ 1

1. Aesthetic Representation ............................................................. 15

Introduction ................................................................................... 15
Resemblance vs. Representation ................................................. 18
Representations or Perceptual Images ...................................... 20
Images of God ............................................................................... 23
The Sovereign as Image ............................................................... 32
Images of Saints ............................................................................ 38
The Eucharist: Presence or Representation? ............................ 45
Metaphors as Representations .................................................... 53
The Representation of Objects in Perspective ......................... 58
Conclusion ..................................................................................... 69

2. Dramatic Representation ............................................................. 75

Introduction: Hobbes and the Theatre ...................................... 75
The Man and the Person ............................................................. 78
The World as Stage ....................................................................... 83
Dis/simulating with Others ......................................................... 90
Actors and Hypocrites ................................................................. 98
Religious Play-Acting and the Power of Crowds .................... 102
‘Quixotic’ Personalities and Republican Men .......................... 108
Theatre of Politics ......................................................................... 118
The Powers of Theatre ................................................................. 131
The Politics of Theatre ................................................................. 136
Conclusion ..................................................................................... 142

3. Juridical Representation ............................................................... 145

Introduction ................................................................................... 145
vi contents

The Elemental View ...................................................................... 146

Representation by Fiction ............................................................ 153
The State as Person ....................................................................... 158
Representing the Covenant into Being ..................................... 176
The Representativeness of the Sovereign .................................. 180
Parliament as Representation ..................................................... 187
The Dangers of Subordinate Representation ........................... 193
The State’s Many Guises .............................................................. 198
Conclusion ..................................................................................... 206

4. Representation in Theology ......................................................... 209

Introduction ................................................................................... 209
Three Persons as Three Representatives ................................... 211
Three Persons as Three Roles ..................................................... 213
Revisions in Response to Critics ................................................ 219
The Trinity as Political Analogy ................................................. 227

Conclusion .......................................................................................... 235

Bibliography ........................................................................................ 255

Index .................................................................................................... 275
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Monica Brito Vieira’s The Elements of Representation in Hobbes breaks

new ground in the study of that seminal thinker. Using the concept
of representation as a window into his political thought, she shows
how Hobbes’s conception of representation relies not on imitation or
mimesis but on the creative imagination to make one thing ‘represent’
another. For Hobbes representation is not passive but active, requiring
creative imagination and an entirely ‘new way of thinking’. From this
perspective, political reality is actually created or constituted by modes
of representation, whether aesthetic, legal, theatrical or theological. The
‘mortall god’ that is the modern state thus emerges as an imaginative
construct made and maintained by its active citizen-subjects.
The Series Editors
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1. Leviathan, 1st edition (1651), engraved title page. By

permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University
Library. ................................................................................... xvii
Fig. 2. Leviathan, fair-copy manuscript (BL MS Egerton 1910),
title page (faint pencil drawing on vellum, attributed to
Hollan). By permission of the British Library Board. .... xviii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been a few years in the making, and during that time I
was privileged to experience the generosity of both scholars and insti-
tutions, which I have now the pleasure to acknowledge.
First, I would like to mention the financial support of the Portu-
guese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), without which I
would not have been able to carry out my research in Cambridge. My
gratitude extends also to Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, which
funded three years of my research and writing, in the form of a Junior
Research Fellowship, in the course of which I managed to finish a
draft of this and other pieces of work. I have had the great good for-
tune to find in the College President, Anne Lonsdale, and Fellowship
an unfailing source of sound advice, encouragement and support, to
which I owe more than I could put into words. I am likewise much
indebted to the Institute for Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon
(ICS) for financing the last stages of this book.
I owe an enormous debt to David Runciman, for all his forbearance
and guidance. His illuminating observations and clarity of mind have,
time after time, pushed me to a better understanding of what my real
subject was, while pointing the way to important revisions. I would also
like to thank a number of other scholars, who took the time to read
and comment on different portions of this manuscript in draft form:
Quentin Skinner, Noel Malcolm, Kinch Hoeskstra, Richard Serjeant-
son, Magnus Ryan and Melissa Lane. Of this list, there are three names
I cannot fail to single out. Quentin Skinner has scrutinised drafts of
my manuscript with an unmatched acuteness and depth of scholar-
ship. Over the years, his willingness to engage with my ideas, along
with his continued support and counsel, have been exemplary of what
exchanges among peers might be. Noel Malcolm’s most cogent and
insightful comments have been invaluable in replacing muddle with
clarity. The interest he showed in the material in this book encouraged
me to pursue its publication. Finally, I am especially grateful to Kinch
Hoekstra for repeatedly taking the time to read and engage critically
with the material in the book. All the Hobbes experts who have read
and commented on the original drafts of this text have saved me from
xii acknowledgements

many errors, and helped me improve it beyond recognition. Needless

to say, however, none of these individuals should be construed as nec-
essarily agreeing with any particular claim made in the book.
My indebtedness also extends to a number of friends and colleagues
who have offered me comments, and, above all, their forbearance, over
the period in which I have worked on this project. I especially need to
thank Filipe Carreira da Silva, for his excellent comments and intel-
lectual companionship, as well as Elsa Strietman, Eleanor O’Gorman,
Leo Mellor, Sophie Turenne, Houshang Ardavan and Chris Huang,
for their support as both friends and colleagues.
I must also record my gratitude to the kindness and professionalism
of the staff of the rare books room of Cambridge University Library, as
well as of Glyn Salton-Cox and Fiona Sewell, who took on the labori-
ous task of helping me proofread and copyedit the book and Auriol
Griffith-Jones, who compiled an excellent index. Hendrik van Leusen
at Brill enthusiastically witnessed the beginnings of this project and
Hylke Faber, Boris van Gool and Rosanna Woensdregt saw it through
the press with a diligent commitment and attention to detail.
In the spirit of the book’s ability to handle a wide variety of per-
spectives, I wanted to use on my book cover, not the frontispiece of
Leviathan, but a contemporary artwork that, in my view, “spoke to”
Leviathan’s iconic image and the theory of representation underpin-
ning it. My obstinate search for this artwork ceased the moment I set
eyes on Do-Ho Suh’s installation Some/One: a kind of ancient armor,
constructed out of a multitude of men, individually represented by
many dog tags of Korean soldiers, which from a distance look like fish
scales. An artwork whose overall effect is almost ghost-like: a hollow
figure, over which no head crowns. Its multiple possible associations
with Hobbes’s theory of representation became all the more appar-
ent when I read Suh’s description of the way the artwork is normally
experienced by the public: ‘You have to go through the steps and walk
on the piece and then walk around the piece and then finally you face
the front of the piece and then you are able to see the inside of the
piece. And that moment is very important, I think. Not only experi-
encing the piece physically by stepping on the dog tags, but also when
you see the reflection of yourself inside of the piece. Then you truly
become a part of the piece. [. . .] these many dog tags create this one,
larger-than-life figure. It’s ambiguous whether you’re a part of it or
not. Whether you are the owner of this robe when you see your own
 acknowledgements xiii

image over there. So that’s why I had the mirror inside.’1 There could
hardly be a better introduction to my book than this unique aesthetic
experience, which opens itself onto life. My debts of gratitude extend
therefore beyond the world of academia, into the world of the arts.
My special thanks to the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, and, primarily, to Do-Ho Suh, for his per-
mission to reproduce a photograph of the installation Some/One on
the cover and for allowing me to continue, via Thomas Hobbes, the
creative interchange between work of art and its interpretation.
My family have lovingly borne with the many ups and downs of my
involvement with this project over the past years, as well as continu-
ously reminded me that there is life before, during and after a book.
I would not have survived it without them. But my deepest debt of
gratitude is to Harri Hopearuoho. He, more than anyone else, lived
with me through the pains, and the joys, of writing a book.

To all the above go my deepest appreciation and a sincere ‘obrigada’.

1
The full text of Do-Ho Suh’s interview is available at: http://www.pbs.org/art21/
artists/suh/clip2.html.
 ABBREVIATIONS AND EDITIONS

OED stands for The Oxford English Dictionary. No other abbreviations

are used, except for the works quoted from the Molesworth edition
(see below).
Where available, I have used modern critical editions of Hobbes’s
works cited according to the author-date system, which I adopt as a
whole in the book. However, where I have resorted to the Molesworth
edition (The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed.
W. Molesworth (11 vols. London, 1839-45; repr. 1992) and Thomae
Hobbes malmesburiensis opera philosophica quae latine scripsit omnia,
ed. W. Molesworth (5 vols. London, 1839-45; repr. 1999)) of Hobbes’s
English and Latin works, I have adopted a slightly different reference
system, for purposes of clarity. Where the Molesworth edition is used,
I have cited the English works as EW, followed by the volume number
in Roman numerals, and the page number in Arabic numerals. Each
citation is preceded by an abbreviated title of the specific work con-
cerned, for immediate identification. Hobbes’s Latin works are simi-
larly cited as OL, followed by the volume number in Roman numerals,
and the page number in Arabic numerals. Here again an abbreviated
title is used in the footnotes. The list of abbreviations is given below:

Ans. Bram. An Answer to a Book Published by Dr Bramhall, Late

Bishop of Derry, called the ‘Catching of the Leviathan’
App. Appendix ad Leviathan
De C. Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Prima De Corpore
De H. Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Secunda De Homine
Hist. Narr. An Historical Narration Concerning Heresy and the Pun-
ishment Thereof
Lat. Lev. Leviathan. Sive de Materia, Forma, et Potestate Civitatis
Ecclesiasticae et Civilis
Pref. Il. Od. ‘Concerning the Virtues of an Heroic Poem’, preface to
The Iliads and Odysses of Homer
Pref. Thu. Preface to The History of the Grecian War Written by
Thucydides
Quest. Lib. Nec. The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, And
Chance
xvi abbreviations and editions

Sav. Prof. Math. Six Lessons to the Savilian Professors of the

Mathematics
Vita T. Hobbes Malmesburiensis Vita

All translations of Latin quotations are my own unless stated

otherwise.
Figure 1. Leviathan, 1st edition (1651), engraved title page. By permission of
the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
Figure 2. Leviathan, fair-copy manuscript (BL MS Egerton 1910), title page
(faint pencil drawing on vellum, attributed to Hollan). By permission of the
British Library Board.
 INTRODUCTION

Unfortunately nothing is so difficult to represent by

literary means as a man thinking.
Robert Musil, Man Without Qualities
Representation is a notoriously difficult concept to bring under review.
While the inescapability of representation can hardly be doubted, it is
not always clear what is translated by it. Re-presentation is a dynamic
concept which transgresses fixed categories. It implies a paradoxi-
cal interplay of absence and presence, which upsets the commonly
assumed binary opposition between the two conditions. In other
words, representational absence can be viewed as a form of presence,
just as representational presence can be viewed as a form of absence.
This much is conveyed by the word itself, ‘re-presentation’, which
invokes a power of bringing something back to presence. This power
has been variously taken for a power of iteration, citing a previous
presence, as conveyed by the prefix re- of representation; as a power of
making something present to itself, as conveyed by the presentational
component of re-presentation; or, more aptly perhaps, as a mixture of
both of these effects, working together, simultaneously. In this inher-
ent and irresolvable ambiguity of the idea of representation lies its
poiesis: its capacity to produce or bring things into existence. And, as
Thomas Hobbes, one of the major political philosophers engaging cen-
trally with the idea of representation, clearly saw and acutely stated, in
this poiesis lies the unique power of representation. This fundamental
Hobbesian insight is also the point of departure of this book.
As Hobbes was distinctly aware, the terminology of representation is
of Roman origin. The English words ‘representation’ and ‘to represent’
derive via Old French from the Latin words repraesentatio and reprae-
sentare. The Oxford Latin Dictionary lists some of the main original
meanings of the words: (1) a payment ready in money; (2) showing or
presenting in person, especially when presenting oneself to or before
another person; (3) the act of bringing something before the mind;
(4) an image, likeness or representation in art. The first and second
meanings stand closest to our idea of presentation, signifying the
fact, or act, of literal presenting. However, in the legal context of
2 introduction

the repayment of debts, repraesentare meant to make good a sum of

money that had been originally promised, but had not been forth-
coming, and therefore expressed the idea of standing in for the thing
being represented: i.e., the debt. The third and fourth meanings, how-
ever, bear a direct connection to the idea of ‘representation’ as we have
come to know it; that is, the power of summoning something to pres-
ence, of rendering something which is literally absent present anew,
in a different space or a different time. Because of this summoning
power, when speaking of representation we are also inevitably speak-
ing of the power of the media, or the effect of presence performed by
different forms of mediation: visual images, linguistic constructions,
artworks—in a word, representations. Hobbes, I argue in this book,
had a keen interest in all these forms of mediation, and an acute sense
of the power in them. He studied them separately, as well as in relation
to one another, and asked what made them all representations called
by the same name, or the same family of names: image, resemblance,
representation.
What is immediately striking, however, is that none of the original
meanings of representation refers explicitly to human agency, namely
to actions carried out by some agent in the place of another—or, as
Hobbes puts it, ‘a Representer, or Representative, a Lieutenant, a Vicar,
an Attorney, a Deputy, a Procurator, an Actor, and the like’, depending
on the particular nature of the agent’s representational function.1 In
Rome, the term that came closest to capturing such a relationship of
representation between different agents was extracted from the world
of theatre, and in particular from the theatre mask worn by ancient
actors on the stage. This term is persona, which was then metaphori-
cally extended into a social role or a character played by an actor, not
necessarily only on the stage, but also in regular social conversation,
in acts of self-personation or as impersonating others. This is a devel-
opment of the vocabulary of representation to which, as I will show,
Hobbes’s theory of representation, in its web of social, political and
theological dimensions, is heavily indebted. But the classical usage of
the term ‘representation’ concentrates not on actions by actors, but

1
Hobbes 1996, p. 112. In English, the earliest applications of the nouns ‘representa-
tive’ and ‘representer’ to a member of the House of Commons seem to have occurred
in the writings of the parliamentarian opponents of the Stuart monarchy of the early
1640s. As is well known, Hobbes makes a brilliant subversive application of this recent
development.
 introduction 3

on things that stand for other things, in particular mental representa-

tions of the outside world and works of art, which are the concrete
manifestations of the cognitive and aesthetic dimensions of represen-
tation. The centrality of the idea of representation as the picturing of
something to the mind or to the eye is also apparent from the work of
classical authors with whom Hobbes was familiar. This is the case with
Quintilian’s use of the noun repraesentatio to refer to something that
clearly presents itself to the mind, namely the vivid images that the
orator conjures up as he paints a situation in words, by resorting to the
unique powers of rhetorical display. This life-like picturing whereby
the orator persuades his audience of his cause has its external counter-
part in the solid-form realistic images conveyed by art, for which Pliny
used the same word, repraesentationes, in order to capture their under-
lying intent of bringing the world back to us figuratively, and produc-
ing a visual illusion of presence.2 This is not real presence, therefore,
but artificial presence realistically conveyed through a human artefact:
pictorial representation. It is the aim of this book to show the ways in
which Hobbes turns to and appropriates these cognitive and aesthetic
dimensions of representation in the context of his scientific and espe-
cially political programmes. This, we will see, is explained by his belief
that the correspondent phenomena and practices of representation are
matters of direct political importance, and therefore are integral to
his project of legitimising—and generating—absolute political power
through the powers of representation.
To today’s reader, the cognitive and aesthetic connotations of repre-
sentation may seem to have little to do with political practice, and to
lie buried in speculative disciplines theoretically and methodologically
divorced from the science of politics. But if one pauses to consider the
longstanding centrality of the powers of language and image to the
practice of political representation, that initial perception must soon
be displaced. As Hobbes himself insisted, representation in politics
requires the ability to offer a clear and visible projection of what is
being represented. In a competitive, democratic environment, like the

2
For Quintilian’s use of the term repraesentatio as a synonym of a mental picture
or a vivid portrayal, see Quintilian 2001, vol. III, 8.3.61, as well as vol. V, 11.3.156.
Pliny uses the term repraesentatio when reporting the competition Parrhasius, painter
of Ephesus, in the fifth century BC, entered into with Zeuxis, to determine which of
the two was the greater artist, and could produce the most realistic pictorial represen-
tation. See Pliny 1952, 35.36.65.
4 introduction

one which we inhabit, each of these projections is an alternative vision

of ‘the people’, or of the main stakes we have in one another’s lives,
coming into being (or at least into collective self-consciousness) by
the very process of representation. These rival visions of ‘the people’,
or of those interests and demands which might unite us, are then pro-
posed back to us by our representatives, in an attempt to gain our
electoral support and thus the power which makes these visions realis-
able through their embodiment in the set of principles corresponding
to the activity of the state. Image construction and image projection
therefore combine as one of the most important constitutive elements
of representational politics, in both democratic and non-democratic
settings. As one of the main foundational thinkers for modern repre-
sentative politics, albeit in an anti-democratic tradition, Hobbes was
fully aware that it did not suffice for his theory of representation to
achieve its practical aim to explain how political representation worked
and to what effect. He felt equally compelled to show it, to represent it
in public, to place it in clear sight for his readers. And as he did this,
he also instigated his newly coined representative sovereign not only to
assume the representational aspects of his public status, in his practice,
but to go on to project images of his own representativeness, in order
to produce an identification of the people with the image of protective
unity which he threw back onto them.
The centrality of the concept of representation to the political phi-
losophy of Thomas Hobbes has been long recognised and has increas-
ingly drawn the attention of scholars in recent years.3 In Leviathan,
Hobbes famously argues that the sovereign is the representative of
the people, a political actor who has all his subjects as authors of his
words and actions. While commentators have seen that there are more
complexities in Hobbes’s theory of representation than first meet the
eye, they have hitherto regarded representation as a fairly narrow

3
The importance of Hobbes’s contribution to the theory of political representation
was first brought to the fore by Hanna Pitkin, in her 1967 work The Concept of Repre-
sentation. This groundbreaking study awakened generalised interest in Hobbes’s treat-
ment of the concept of representation and in particular the related concepts of person
and authorisation, as shown in Gauthier 1969, Copp 1979 and 1980, Forsyth 1981,
Tricaud 1982, Pye 1984, Jaume 1983, 1986 and 1992, Baumgold 1988, Burgess 1990,
Lessay 1992, Zarka 1995, Weimann 1996, Skinner 1999 and 2005, Runciman 1997 and
2000, and Kelly 2004. The only monograph on the topic is, however, Lucian Jaume’s
Hobbes et l’état représentatif moderne, which starts from the assumption that Hobbes’s
treatment of the theme of representation is textually very limited, confining itself, in
Jaume’s assessment, to chapters 16 to 18 of Leviathan. See Jaume 1986, p. 12.
 introduction 5

political concept, which they have too closely identified with Hobbes’s
theory of authorisation and the correlated notion of attributed action.
Accordingly, the discussion of representation in Hobbes has remained
confined to a few particular sections in his texts and to a fairly limited
range of issues, such as the contrast between natural and artificial per-
sons, the difference between authorising and delegating, the distinction
between authorisation and representation, and the status of the person
of the commonwealth. This dominant state of affairs has been chal-
lenged from time to time. However, the claim that Hobbes’s theory of
representation has been unduly circumscribed in ways that preclude
our understanding of it has never before been supported by a sys-
tematic examination of the relationship between the diverse aspects of
representation in Hobbes which brings together the relevant portions
of his work. The aim of this book is to demonstrate how the different
components of Hobbes’s thinking on representation are tied together
as the constituent elements of his understanding of how man’s natural
power to form representations through the imagination and artifice
underpins his capacity to fashion an artificial world that best suits his
needs. This involves releasing Hobbes’s theory of representation from
the bondage imposed by an idea of what counts as political think-
ing that owes more to contemporary preconceptions than to a genu-
ine appreciation of the dimensions of representation which Hobbes
thought to be integral to his political programme. In this book, I there-
fore claim that the content of Hobbes’s thinking on representation
and personhood has been too narrowly constructed, in result of its
being artificially referred to a self-contained area of his political the-
ory. What follows from this point is that a much fuller account of the
nature and workings of Hobbes’s theory of representation, generally
considered, is needed, and it can only be achieved by reinstating it in
a much wider pattern of Hobbesian theorising about human thought
and action in relation to images, roles and fictions of all kinds. It is this
broader pattern that this book pursues and uncovers.
Besides significantly expanding and enhancing the existing under-
standing of Hobbes’s theory of representation as the kernel of his polit-
ical theory, this study offers a contribution to current debates on the
topic of political representation. Hobbes’s thought on representation is
foundational for modern representative politics. However, the conflation
of his theory of representation with his theory of authorisation, which
produces an unaccountable representative who is free to rule as he sees
fit, while it disempowers the represented, has substantiated claims of
6 introduction

its irrelevance for our own understanding of the workings of political

representation in a democratic setting. Indeed, Hobbes did not use
representation to create a government that was responsive to people’s
opinions or accountable to them. On the contrary, his theory denies the
public any existence independent from the one which is given to it in
representation by the state, and therefore betrays our minimal expec-
tations of what representation must entail. But once we consider the
broader form and content of his theory of representation—especially
the more dynamic understanding of representation as a cooperative,
ongoing relationship which emerges from the aesthetic and theatrical
dimensions present in Hobbes’s discussion of the concept—and work
through their uttermost implications, we might find valuable insights
with which we may bridge political representation and democratic
theory. By attending to the simultaneity of cognitive, pictorial, theat-
rical and juridical elements in Hobbes’s understanding of the politi-
cal role of representation, I not only do justice to the complexities
of Hobbes’s thinking on representation. I also recuperate aspects of
Hobbes’s legacy which are of instrumental value as we are faced with
the task of rethinking the role of representation in response to con-
temporary transformations of the political landscape.
Even a rapid glance at the recent literature on political represen-
tation reveals that the treatment of the subject of representation in
politics is undertaken in two very distinct modes. On the one hand,
there are those who want to reduce representation to its strictly politi-
cal dimension, and equate it restrictively with democracy and elec-
toral politics. Typically, they take democratic representation to invoke
a principal-agent relationship, hinging upon differentiated moments
of authorisation and accountability as produced by regular elections.
The result of this is the enclosure of representation in a single idiom,
which is borrowed from private law and economic theory, and what
its proponents believe to be an analytically empowering simplification
produces as its necessary counterpart a simplifying reductionism. This
consists in the imposition of an artificial uniformity upon a concept so
flexible that it makes narrow definition misleading, in that it hampers
the capacity of the concept of representation to shed light on old and
new practices and old and new problems of representational politics.4

4
The literature that falls into this category is vast—to select but a few examples, see
Manin et al. 1999, Plotke 1999, Kateb 1981, Rogowski 1981, Weale 1981, and Mayo
 introduction 7

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are those who, in recog-
nition of the different meanings of representation which play them-
selves out in representational politics, advocate a theoretically oblique
approach to the significance of the concept and the practice of political
representation in both strictly democratic and non-democratic con-
texts. Most notably, they conjure up the aesthetic roots of the con-
cept in order to countenance the need for rethinking representational
politics in the light of categories developed within aesthetic theories of
representation, ranging from the visual to the performative arts. But
if their assertion of the political value of the aesthetic is sometimes
insightful, it is also often constitutive of a blindness to the distinctive
nature of the political, namely its conflicted character and the critical
role of representation in channelling and subduing it.5
In view of the state of the literature on the topic of political repre-
sentation, a return to Thomas Hobbes is both illuminating and salu-
tary. Hobbes produced one of the fullest and earliest examinations of
the idea of representation in political theory. He assumed the central-
ity of conflict, value disagreement and power to politics, and trans-
formed representation into an instrument of power (rather than its
curtailment). He is rightly considered to be the father of representa-
tive government, in its close association with the rise of state sover-
eignty, and in direct opposition to the notion of popular sovereignty.
Hobbes did not, however, couple representation exclusively with any
particular form of government, nor did he reduce it to a merely instru-
mental or expressive role. All government was, in his view, representa-
tive, or no government at all, and this was true of monarchies as well
as democracies. Representation transcended any particular forms of
government, for its role was more fundamental. It was what made
politics—all politics—possible. It was central to the acquisition and
maintenance of power. It was also, he hoped, what allowed for the
overcoming of endemic factional conflict. Although the roots of the
still partly dominant authorisation view of representation, with its
indebtedness to legal models of representation, and its empowering of
a representative to make decisions in our place according to what he

1960, who totally discard the language of representation in favour of the notions of
electoral authorisation and accountability.
5
For two relatively recent but not particularly successful attempts to reintroduce
the multidimensionality of the concept of representation into politics, see Redner 1994
and Seitz 1995.
8 introduction

thinks is in our interest, are found in Hobbes, my goal in this study is

to demonstrate that this constitutes far from all of Hobbes’s account
of political representation. It is not only the case (as I show) that the
multilateral implications of his political covenant already expand the
idea of representation beyond a series of one-to-one juristic relation-
ships between representatives and represented. He also challenges the
self-sufficiency of juristic models of representation by showing how
the constitutive power of political representation and its ability to
involve us imaginatively in the production of the fiction of our collec-
tive personality cannot be understood without considering its aesthetic
and theatrical dimensions. Hobbes did not curtail the world-building
potential of representation by imprisoning it in a single idiom, or a
single set of practices, as many now do. He rather intertwined the
pictorial, theatrical, juridical and political dimensions of representa-
tion to generate sturdier political institutions, on the scale and of the
power of modern states, institutions designed to embody our most
fundamental interests, and pursue them for us, in our name, lastingly.
Hence, similar to the juridical, the aesthetic in Hobbes was never mere
gloss, word-game, or a playful distraction from politics. It was one of
his ways of realising politics.
Before moving on to a brief description of the chapters that compose
this book, a few words of methodological explanation are in order,
about the level on which my object of inquiry is located and about the
specific nature of my approach. One of the assumptions of my study
is that the idea of representation is one of the main themes around
which Hobbes’s thought organises itself. By this I do not intend, how-
ever, to suggest that whenever Hobbes is engaging with the concept of
representation, or any practical manifestations of it, he is necessarily
using the corresponding term. For instance, when I discuss Hobbes’s
treatment of representation in language, I follow a common formula-
tion at the time in describing the metaphor as consisting in the repre-
sentation of one thing by another. My suggestion is that Hobbes was
applying the same concept in his understanding of how metaphors
work, although he did not use the term ‘representation’ in this particu-
lar context. My interest lies, therefore, not simply in Hobbes’s explicit
use of the word ‘representation’, but in the ways he conceptualises and
employs some of the main developments of the concept—traversing
the domains of the pictorial, the theatrical, the juridical, the political
and the theological—to develop his political theory, under one broad,
overarching view of representation that covers all of these fundamen-
 introduction 9

tally affiliated uses. As I examine these different uses, I hence pay par-
ticular attention to the wider vocabulary Hobbes invoked when trying
to discuss the concept with consistency. This, I show, includes not only
the usual triad of related concepts—representation, authorisation and
person—but also notions such as image, resemblance, fiction, simula-
tion and dissimulation, substance and hypostasis.
My approach is at once textual and contextual. On the one hand, I
look into Hobbes’s own system of ideas in search of the basic struc-
ture of his overall theory of representation, as it is the premise of this
study that the ambit of Hobbes’s thinking on representation must be
determined by investigation, not by a narrow sense of what counts as
his political philosophy. As I sketch out this general outlook, I also
highlight the specificities of each of his particular uses of the concept,
alongside the internal relations that he established between them, or
that emerge independently from my analysis. But while I show how
the different elements of representation in Hobbes fit together, I am
also interested in identifying the particular arguments and historical
developments he is confronting, those arguments or lines of reasoning
he is picking up, and the ways in which he continually moulds them to
his own purposes. Hobbes’s reflection on the objects, phenomena and
actions he recognises as forms of representation are, as I will show, his
way of taking part in some of the most important debates of his time.
These extend from the question of the nature of sensorial images and
personhood, both individual and collective, to the role of images in art
and religion, and from these to the question of the nature of God and
of the representative state. Hobbes had a distinctively performative
understanding of language. He knew political acts can be, and often
are, carried out in and through linguistic construction. In particular,
he was perfectly conscious that the parliamentary resistance to the
king had been grounded on the claim that the House of Commons
bore a unique representational relationship with the people: that is,
that it was in some way like the people it was supposed to re-present.
In writing on representation, Hobbes therefore used concepts and dis-
tinctions not as mere scientific explanatory devices, but also ‘as weap-
ons of political struggle’.6 My study of representation in Hobbes brings
the terms of these multiple, but concerted, struggles to the fore.

6
Schmitt 1996a, p. 35.
10 introduction

This book is divided into four chapters. I shall end these introduc-
tory remarks by offering a brief outline of what I will be discussing in
each of them. Representation is inseparable from vision. It works by
showing, exhibiting or displaying to the eye. Chapter 1 concentrates
on Hobbes’s treatment of what is the most basic concept of representa-
tion, historically as well as conceptually: the idea of visual representa-
tion, in the sense of either the sensorial image of an external object,
or an artwork picturing something absent or non-existent in such a
way as to convey the illusion of its presence. Section by section, I take
on Hobbes’s discussion of different types of ‘images’, and the ways
they represent, or bring their subjects to the viewer’s presence. Because
there is a cognitive dimension of representation, which precedes and
underpins its aesthetic dimension, within this broad category of ana-
lysed images I (following Hobbes) include: mental representations
due to any of the senses; mental representations caused not by direct
perception, but by the workings of the imagination; their solid-form
imitations, in particular sculpted figures used as objects of religious
worship; artificial visual images, both naturalistic and anamorphic;
images of metaphors; and, finally, man-made symbols, including the
religious sacraments. Today, as in Hobbes’s time, the notion of ‘image’
presupposes the existence of a pre-given reality that the image cop-
ies. Hobbes, I maintain, systematically questions this match, and the
assumed order of priority, between image and reality. This question-
ing starts with his non-pictorial theory of perception, but extends into
his understanding of the kind of representation underpinning man-
made images as not strictly bound to resemblance, but actually creat-
ing things anew by way of substitution. As I show, one of Hobbes’s
principal aims in dissecting the processes of representation involved
in visual imaging is to undermine the superstitious tendency to believe
that representations are embodiments or incarnations of the persons
and powers of the represented, a belief which he saw as potentially giv-
ing the church a power higher than that of the sovereign. My analysis
proceeds to the more transitive notion of representation which ema-
nates from Hobbes’s discussion of representation in visual images. I
argue that he takes the intentions of creators, as well as the opera-
tions and assumptions used by viewers in their interpretation of visual
images (their ‘reading skills’), as integral to representation. Because
of the critical importance of the beholder’s share in the creation of
representational meaning, the eradication of this type of superstitious
‘double seeing’, which prevents the beholder from seeing representa-
 introduction 11

tions qua representations is a necessary step in clearing the way for the
generation of Hobbes’s representative state.7
While they have mostly overlooked Hobbes’s understanding of visual
representation as a quintessential problem of politics, commentators
focusing on Hobbes’s political philosophy in the narrower sense—i.e.,
the generation and institutions forming the commonwealth—have
usually rushed to sever the links between the theatre and the state
in Hobbes’s theory of representation. In Chapter 2 I resist this impe-
tus, and turn to the role of dramatic representation, which I examine
in depth. The central claim I put forth in this second chapter is that
Hobbes presents theatricality as a mode of almost all human behav-
iour, in the social and political as well as the aesthetic realm. I start
with an exploration of the full significance of Hobbes’s claim that to be
a person entails play-acting, and his characterisation of the person as
having the protean ability to assume multiple personalities or sustain
multiple social roles. From this I proceed to a discussion of the diffi-
culties involved in the creation of a sustainable personality, namely by
unifying diverse elements—roles, appearances or aspects of oneself—
in one and the same recognisable entity, with whom others may safely
engage, by attuning their perspective to a reliable point of contact. In
view of the fact that the person is, for Hobbes, first and foremost, per-
sonation, and therefore a theatrical fiction, before it is a legal fiction,
and in view of the fact that natural persons are the building-blocks
of the state, I question the simple natural/artificial dichotomy upon
which Hobbes scholarship has traditionally hinged. Instead, I main-
tain that Hobbes’s state is a theatrical artifice premised on man’s natu-
ral capacity for personation, and hence a creation inseparable from the
human powers of representation, or the human powers of play.
To employ, as Hobbes does, theatre as a metaphor for politics is to
suggest that some of the main elements of theatre—the stage, the actor,

7
James R. Martel has recently argued that since, for Hobbes, the representational
relationship depends as much on the object as on the subject’s reading ability, a
radically democratic potential is inscribed in his theory of political representation.
Although I agree with Martel that a critical distinction between reading and misread-
ing underpins Hobbes’s distinction between worship and idolatry, and I too identify
in Hobbes’s theory of representation a strongly emancipatory component, I cannot
accept Martel’s interpretation as compelling. In particular, Martel’s reading of Hob-
bes as a radical democratic theorist, who subverts sovereign authority as something
idolatrous, illegitimate and open to being disowned by its subjects, amounts to a mis-
reading of Hobbes, or, as Martel himself acknowledges, to a reading of Hobbes against
himself. See Martel 2007, pp. 17–19.
12 introduction

the fictional character, the part, the mask, the audience—have corre-
spondences in core elements of the life of the state. I explore Hobbes’s
views on the potency of the theatre, in order to determine what these
correspondences might be, and what lies behind his avowed theatrical
solution to the problem of political order. But I also highlight the con-
tingency which enters Hobbes’s theory of representation through the
back door of theatre: if representation is acting, or action by actors, it
must also be somehow dependent on the assent of an audience, how-
ever much this is presented as being simply assumed. I show too how
the inherent theatricality of politics is, more than that of the stage, hard
to control, and how vital it is for Hobbes’s representative sovereign to
find ways either to bridle or to outperform this theatricality. My analy-
sis of different aspects of Hobbes’s theatrical state is intimately com-
bined with an examination of the importance of mask-wearing to the
stability of the Hobbesian civil society. I show how he challenged Puri-
tan ideals of sincerity, authenticity and the transparency of the self, in
insisting that the successful conduct of social life was contingent on
mask-wearing: that is, on the powers of representation, which enable
us to simulate and dissimulate with one another. Since we do not cease
to represent ourselves after we give ourselves in representation to the
state, I argue that lasting order depends on the theatrical quality of the
Hobbesian state being reciprocated by that of civil society. Hobbes’s
citizens are citizen-actors, not in the classical sense, but in the sense of
actors continually involved in a ritualistic performance of unity, which
is sustained by the ordered theatrical exchange both between subject
and fellow subject, each bearing a mask of sustained decorousness, and
between sovereign and subject, facing each other, behind the mask of
power and the cloak of conformity respectively.
If Chapter 2 shows that the establishment of political order can be
no mere juridical exercise, Chapter 3 examines the juridical armour
without which Hobbes’s theory of political representation would run
the risk of producing no binding effects from which political authority
and political obligation could be solidly derived. And yet it is criti-
cal for Hobbes that whatever is done in the person of the state falls
within the sphere of authoritative action: that is, action that com-
mands obedience, and has behind it the unified responsibility of the
whole political community. This is a result he hopes to achieve by way
of his authorisation theory of representation. I explore the complexi-
ties of this theory in Chapter 3, paying particular attention to the ways
 introduction 13

in which the multilateral implications of the Hobbesian political con-

tract account for the nature of the state as a collective entity. I further
show how the simultaneous twofold perspective which is the hallmark
of representation in Hobbes sheds new light on a commonly noticed
paradox of his political covenant: the fact that it must presuppose the
very power it is supposed to generate if it is ever to be performed
into being. I therefore proceed to examine the nature of the state and
its relationship to the sovereign. Hobbes’s answers to three questions
which lie at the heart of any theory of political representation are
also discussed in Chapter 3: who and what is to be represented by
our common representative, and on what basis can claims to general
representativeness be founded. The extent to which Hobbes draws on
the legal notion of corporation, in particular the legal notion of per-
sona ficta, in working out his concept of the state is also addressed in
detail, together with his account of subordinate corporate life. This,
I argue, is aimed at maintaining the state’s monopoly over corpo-
rate expression, by exercising tight control over the proliferation of
intermediary corporate entities representing individuals according to
different group identities. Whereas previous accounts of representa-
tion in Hobbes typically stop at the representation of the common-
wealth by the sovereign, Chapter 3 finishes with an examination of
how sovereign authority is represented back to the people through
the state apparatus, whose very sizeable mission requires the utilisa-
tion of public ministers. From the sovereign to his public ministers, I
show that representation provides the key to the separation between
the private and public aspects of their personalities, and defines the
duties attached to the latter. The particularities of delegated ministerial
representation are also analysed in this chapter, alongside the potential
problems of representative coordination resulting from the sovereign’s
conditional delegation of representative power, and Hobbes’s attempt
to solve these problems.
Just as the sovereign needs to be represented by his ministers in
the fulfilment of the various purposes of the state, so does Hobbes’s
God require human impersonators to assist him in the fulfilment of
his plan of salvation. Chapter 4 analyses the conceptual difficulties
Hobbes faced in applying his theory of persons and representation
to the explanation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. I start by
examining Hobbes’s changing formulations of the Trinitarian dogma
in the light of the main doctrinal issues involved and the objections
14 introduction

raised by his critics. But since, as I argue, doctrinal orthodoxy was

exactly what Hobbes set out to question, I go on to show how his
peculiar Trinitarianism is integral to his wider project for the reform-
ing of Christian theology in ways that make it cohere with his scientific
and especially his political programmes. Like the civil religions of the
past, Hobbes’s theology of the Trinity functions as a political device, in
the hand of the public person of the sovereign as public theologian; it
is of critical instrumental value for Hobbes’s defence of unified sover-
eignty within the Christian commonwealth. This is a defence founded
on the assertion of the right of the sovereign to be the sole judge of
doctrine in both civil and religious matters: a right which now gets
scriptural backing, in addition to its grounding in rational principles
proving it to be essential to peace.
In the conclusion, Hobbes’s various reflections on the question
of representation are welded into a coherent intellectual whole. The
originality and historical as well as current significance of this unified
picture lay hidden before the relation of representation to Hobbes’s
politics was placed within the wider perspective which is the frame-
work of this book. The result is a revealing and thoroughly new portrait
of Hobbes as a theorist of representation, who understood acutely the
fragility of social and political life, and how man’s power to produce
representations and project political fictions through the imagination
is an essential dimension of the collective enactment of political order,
in which all of us must take an active part.
 CHAPTER ONE

AESTHETIC REPRESENTATION

For sorrow’s eye, glazèd with blinding tears,

Divides one thing entire to many objects—
Like perspectives, which, rightly gazed upon,
Show nothing but confusion; eyed awry,
Distinguish form.
Shakespeare, Richard II, II.2

Introduction

One of the most lasting misconceptions about Hobbes’s theory of rep-

resentation is that it is strictly political, and disregards the centrality of
representation within the visual arts. Responsibility for the currency
of this view can be partly assigned to Hanna Pitkin, whose influen-
tial analysis of Hobbes as a theorist of representation centres on the
claim that he developed ‘too narrow a perspective on representation
by approaching it from only one angle, by taking into account only
one kind of representing’.1
In Pitkin’s own words, the context of Hobbes’s discussion of rep-
resentation is ‘one of political rather than, say, aesthetic thought’, for
Hobbes assumes ‘without question that representation concerns a
human activity’, rather than ‘a state of affairs or condition, resulting
from the characteristics of an object, or from the way it is regarded or
treated’.2 There are two different implications that might follow from
this. First, that Hobbes worked with the notion of representation as

1
See Pitkin 1967, p. 37. Lucian Jaume reiterates Pitkin’s claim that Hobbes’s dis-
cussion of representation is circumscribed to chapters 16, 17 and 18 of Leviathan,
where what Pitkin has labelled Hobbes’s ‘authorization view’ of representation is
articulated. See Jaume 1986, p. 12. Gayne Nerney follows Pitkin in accusing Hobbes
of paying no attention to picture-making and the construction of signs by likeness.
See Nerney 1991, especially pp. 65–72. Quentin Skinner discusses the aesthetic origins
of the concept of representation, but confines his analysis of representation in Hobbes
to the political in Skinner 2005.
2
Pitkin 1967, pp. 14–15 and Pitkin 1964a, p. 338.
16 chapter one

agency or a mode of ‘acting for’ someone or something (i.e., being a

representative of it), while, at the same time, he disregarded the older
notion of representation as a descriptive, metaphorical or symbolical
‘standing for’ a person or object (i.e., offering a representation of it).
Second, that he brushed aside the possibility that both of these modes
of representation could be productively bound together in political
representative claims.
It is hard to see how either or both implications can hold when
measured against the written and visual evidence of Hobbes’s works.
Leviathan, for instance, introduces the commonwealth to its readers
as an artwork that has its aesthetic foundations in mimesis—that is, in
the imitation, or representation, of nature (itself described as a being
of art) and of the way nature functions. Further to that, it offers a strik-
ing metaphorical visualisation of the commonwealth as the offspring
of political representation in its title page. Representation in politics
and in the arts could hardly be more closely related. Surprisingly, how-
ever, it is only now—some four decades after the publication of The
Concept of Representation (1967)—that Pitkin’s reductive rendition of
the scope of Hobbes’s analysis and practical deployment of representa-
tion has started to be challenged.3
To be sure, the centrality of the aesthetics of representation to
Hobbes’s political theorising is now generally accepted, and has been
the object of much scholarly work in recent years.4 But it is one thing
to assert the role of visual strategies, both iconic and rhetorical, in the
representation of Hobbes’s philosophical ideas, another to maintain
that his interest in images is governed by a more fundamental concern
with representation, or the intricate processes of production, dissemi-
nation and reception which make representation so dynamic—power-
ful and potentially unstable—which is the same as saying, for Hobbes,
so quintessentially a problem of politics. It is this second, more specific
claim that I want to pursue in this first chapter.
In this my analysis confirms and broadly extends an original insight
of Noel Malcolm’s. Malcolm was the first to identify important com-
monalities and connections across Hobbes’s various writings on

3
For three recent challenges, see Malcolm 2002, especially pp. 230–4, Panagia 2006
and Martel 2007.
4
See, for instance, Skinner 1996, which concentrates on Hobbes’s rhetorical strate-
gies, and Bredekamp 1999b, which focuses on his visual strategies. These came also to
figure more prominently in Skinner 2008.
 aesthetic representation 17

representation, with an especial emphasis on Hobbes’s studies of per-

spectival images, both naturalistic and anamorphic.5 I too will be look-
ing at this wider pattern of Hobbes’s theorising about human thought
and action in relation to images and visual fictions of all kinds with
a view to exploring Hobbes’s understanding of what goes on in rep-
resentation: by which I mean here, its structural dynamics, its double
dimension of re-presentation and re-presentation, and the complex
type of response—or new kind of ‘double vision’—it solicits from its
publics.6
Alongside this structural analysis, I will also be considering Hobbes’s
keen interest in the powers of visual representation as distinct from
more traditional concerns with the pictorial representation of power.
Art is for Hobbes a form of action. It produces its effects just as any
other form of action does. In effect it has the potential to do so in an
especially efficacious way, as it acts directly on what is, in Hobbes’s
view, the most important catalyst of human behaviour: passion as elic-
ited by the imagination. Any separation between active and passive
forms of representation, which insists on reducing image-making to
an inert form of ‘information-giving’, is, therefore, for Hobbes, fun-
damentally equivocated.7 Images are invested with meanings by their
makers. They do not merely mirror or stand in for the thing repre-
sented. They mould it. They construct it. They make claims for it. They
very often generate the power of the things/persons they supposedly
only represent. For all these reasons, to Hobbes the process of crafting
and disseminating images of what is to be represented is an integral
part of the acting out of power relations, and definitely also an integral
part of what it means to represent politically.
Hobbes’s sensitivity to the political significance of imagery springs
directly from his conviction that the power of images has its foun-
dation in the most basic rule of ordinary human thinking: seeing is
believing. We are naturally inclined to believe in the reality of what
we see, which means there is an intrinsic power to all things we ‘see’—
exactly as they are presented to us. I start this chapter, then, with a

5
Malcolm 2002, pp. 200–29.
6
The importance of engaging with representations, visual, verbal, kinetic (both the-
atrical and political), through a reformed type of ‘double vision’ for Hobbes has been
first emphasised by Noel Malcolm and later developed by Simon Schaffer in connec-
tion with Hobbes’s iconoclasm. See Malcolm 2002 and Schaffer 2002 and 2005.
7
Pitkin 1967, p. 90.
18 chapter one

discussion of what might be called Hobbes’s politics of perception.

Since all imagery is constructed as an object of sight, to strike at the
core of its deceptive use, we must look first behind the most funda-
mental representational screen: sense perception. Representation is the
concept Hobbes uses to refer to the relation between two items in
our experience, the internal and the external, the mind and the world.
The analysis of Hobbes’s reasons for replacing mimesis with represen-
tation in his characterisation of the relationship between the world
outside us and the images it produces in us is, as we shall see, a nec-
essary prolegomenon to the examination of the relationship between
the imagery of our mind and the material images produced after it,
these images and their multiple viewers. In each of these cases, it will
become apparent that Hobbes’s inquiry into the role played by images
and all types of visual fiction in the political and religious battlefields
translates into a disclosure of how deeply men are under the sway of
the delusory effects of visual appearances as manipulated by self-inter-
ested parties profiting from the inculcation of a false belief in the life
of representational forms—above all, the clergy. This denunciation is
followed by Hobbes’s attempt to uproot those delusions by bringing
to the fore the mechanisms of representation which underpin much
of the visual trickery used to encourage man to see double wrongly;
that is, to ‘see’ supernatural creatures or powers invisible as materi-
ally present in representational objects which are but simulacra art-
fully produced by craftsmen. This is an exercise in demystification that
Hobbes thinks heavy with political implications. Where man’s eyes are
taught to see through the deceptions to which vision is naturally sub-
ject, the manipulation of opinion through the manipulation of visual
appearances is made more difficult, and men fitter for obedience to the
only icon deserving their reverence: the image of their collective being
as personified by the Leviathan state.

Resemblance vs. Representation

Chapter 45 of Leviathan has been little mentioned, let alone studied,

in previous discussions of Hobbes on representation. Nevertheless, in
neglecting this chapter, commentators have lost sight of crucial aspects
of Hobbes’s analysis of representation, which are conveyed through a
sustained exploration of the power and limits of the visual, in the wake
of the crisis of representation posed by the Reformation. Amongst
 aesthetic representation 19

these aspects, three figure prominently: Hobbes’s attempt to draw an

analytical distinction between resemblance and representation; his dis-
cussion of the various ways representational meaning is assigned to
objects; and his concern with the ability of representations to suspend
the criteria of truth and be taken for real presences, the represented
objects themselves. This last danger underpins Hobbes’s attempts at
rationalising and demystifying the workings of representation, start-
ing with mental representations, and the commonsense idea that with
sensory perception representation requires likeness.
One core task Hobbes sets for himself in chapter 45 is that of clari-
fying the range of signification of the term ‘image’ in ordinary speech.8
In its strictest sense, he maintains, an image is ‘the Resemblance of
some thing visible’, that is to say, the phantasm or appearance which
remains in the brain from the impression of an external body upon
the organs of the senses.9 In a more inclusive signification, however,
the word ‘image’ is understood as any artificial imitation in solid form
(i.e., a statue, an effigy, a sculpted figure, a portrait) of any such mental
appearance, or of an imaginary combination of them. To this can be
added yet a third, broader sense of the word, whereby ‘any Represen-
tation of one thing by another’ is, by transposition, considered to be
an image too.10
As Hobbes lays down this threefold scheme, he gives examples
appertaining to each of the defined categories, to come to the conclu-
sion that ‘an Image in the largest sense, is either the Resemblance, or the
Representation of some thing Visible: or both together, as it happeneth
for the most part’.11 This remark seems to conjure up a solid nega-
tive ground for the identification of those cases where we are strictly
speaking of a ‘representation’. The qualification ‘strictly speaking’ is
important here, since Hobbes is not denying that both resemblances
and representations re-present, that is to say, make someone/thing
that is literally absent present again (in another time or space); he is
simply stressing that each fulfils its representative function in a dif-
ferent way. Specifically, in connecting both parts of the proposition

8
For the changing meanings of the term ‘image’ see Mitchell 1986, and espe-
cially Frazer 1960, according to whom ‘Hobbes’ sensationalist theory brought the term
image into common use and magnified its importance in the creative process and the
aesthetic experience’. Frazer 1960, p. 154.
9
Hobbes 1996, p. 447.
10
Ibid., p. 448.
11
Ibid., p. 449, my emphasis.
20 chapter one

by a disjunctive conjunction, he is telling us that what distinguishes

representations is that signifier and signified are linked by something
other than a resemblance or descriptive likeness. But if by this we learn
something about what a representation is not, nothing is said about
what it is, what forms it can take, or how it may be produced. To learn
more about these questions we must address the examples Hobbes
offers of each type of image, bearing in mind the difficulty of finding
cases of images that are solely resemblances or solely representations.
This is because, as Hobbes himself insists, the dichotomy resemblance/
representation does not easily do justice to the complexity of actual
images, one and the same image quite frequently straddling the border
between the two.12

Representations or Perceptual Images

According to Hobbes’s sensationalist psychology, all the delusions of

visual representation have their ultimate root in the deceptions of the
senses. It seems therefore advisable to start our analysis of the place
of images in Hobbes’s politics with perceptual images themselves.
The first time the word ‘representation’ appears in Leviathan is with
reference to perceptual images or sensory representations of external
objects. The ideas, concepts or ‘Thoughts of man’, Hobbes writes in
his opening chapter, ‘are every one a Representation or Apparence, of
some quality, or other Accident of a body without us; which is com-
monly called an Object.’13 Representation is here being used in the
general sense of apparent being, that is, as the synonym of a fiction,
pure seeming, or virtual appearance of a real, externally existing thing
to our minds, and not yet in the specific sense given to it in chap-
ter 45, where the term ‘representation’ denotes images of a particular
type, namely those not resembling their objects, but still representing
them by virtue of convention or acquired habit. Yet the understanding
of representation as an appearance not exhibiting a likeness with the
thing it represents fits perfectly Hobbes’s theory of cognition, which

12
As we shall see, it is not only images themselves that straddle the frontier between
resemblance and representation. Hobbes, too, often falls prey to terminological iner-
tia, and comes, in practice, to blur the divide between cases of ‘resemblance’ and cases
of ‘representation’ that he tries to establish in theory.
13
Hobbes 1996, p. 13.
 aesthetic representation 21

has as one of its central tenets that our perceptions of secondary quali-
ties (light, colour, smell, taste, sound, etc.) do not resemble anything
in the object which causes them.
Constructed in opposition to picture theories of cognition, Hobbes’s
account of sense centres on the idea that external objects are rep-
resented non-pictorially in the motions they produce through the
senses.14 The rejection of the thesis according to which our mental
images are signs presenting us with objects as they really exist outside
us informs Hobbes’s virulent attacks on Peripatetic natural philosophy
and its definition of species as similitudes, or thing-like entities, repre-
senting the nature of the external object, which is itself thought to be
the bearer of real sense qualities.
The Aristotelian understanding of sense as the recipient of incorpo-
real images, conceived as the sensible form of an object without the
matter, and of phantasms as perceptual representations that are like,
or similar to, a quality in the object of sense, is derided by Hobbes as
being absurd: ‘the introduction of species visible and intelligible [. . .]
passing to and fro from the object, is worse than any paradox, as being
a plain impossibility’.15 To think of sensation as offering us isomorphic
representations of the world without, and of the things we see as hav-
ing a real existence in the objects themselves, is a gross error. Indeed,
Hobbes warns, it is a particularly dangerous one: for as appearances
dislodge reality, man’s mind becomes infinitely manipulable terrain.
It is therefore critical that the sovereign pre-empts this possibility, by
re-educating men about the nature of ideas.
And the truth behind sense perception is that phantasms are noth-
ing other than local motion in our bodies, caused by the pressure
exercised by an external object or a contiguous medium (e.g. the air)
on the outermost part of the sense organs. This motion is then propa-
gated through all the parts of the organs to the innermost, namely the
brain and the heart, where each pressure inwards faces a like resistance
outwards. The ‘great deception of sense’, Hobbes explains, originates
from the fact that the phantasm is produced from the last/strongest

14
See Leijenhorst 2002b, p. 353. I deliberately employ the term ‘non-pictorially’
instead of ‘symbolically’ (employed, for instance, in Crombie 1996, p. 353) because
Hobbes, unlike other mechanical philosophers, does not admit to the existence of an
immaterial soul, or mind, responsible for translating the bodily motions caused by
sense perception into images.
15
Hobbes 1969b, pp. 3–4. See also Hobbes 1973, p. 420, Hobbes 1996, pp. 14, 19
and 440, and De C. (OL I, p. 57).
22 chapter one

of a succession of small motions rebounded from within, and it con-

sists in our tendency to project sensible attributes onto the external
world, wherein we think them to be inherent.16 The reality, however,
is that those properties men commonly reify inhere nowhere but in
the sentient being. Sensible qualities are simply the way in which the
motion originating in the object appears to or is experienced by us,
and nothing really existing in the things seen. This may be a truth that
runs counter to our natural instinctive beliefs, but it is also a truth
supported by ordinary experience, available to the man of the meanest
capacity, such as seeing that the image of a thing is often in one place
(e.g. a reflective surface), and the thing itself in another.17
But if the cornerstone of Hobbes’s doctrine of the subjectivity of
sense qualities is that the relation between mental image and object is
one of causal dependence, rather than pictorial resemblance, the ques-
tion must be raised of why Hobbes, in chapter 45 of Leviathan, selects
perceptual images as his first example of images that are resemblances
of the visible bodies they represent.18 The answer is that Hobbes is
referring to the psychology (as opposed to the reality) of sense per-
ception.19 In short, Hobbes is not saying what images are, but rather
how they are experienced. The polyvalent and complex nature of sense
has to do exactly with the fact that we never experience it as reactive
motion within us, but rather in the guise of sensible qualities as (seem-
ingly) existing outside us. Complex in nature, perceptual images can

16
Hobbes 1969b, p. 7.
17
For other common experiences showing that phantasms are not accidents of the
objects, but of the mind, see Hobbes 1996, p. 448.
18
It is important to note that by ‘image’ Hobbes does not mean exclusively the
conception we acquire by sight, but also by any of the other senses. See De C. (OL I,
pp. 322–3) and Hobbes 1996, p. 15.
19
In the Short Tract on First Principles (1630–1), a work offering a mechanistic
account of the production of mental images that has been frequently attributed to
Hobbes, the phantasma comes similarly defined as a resemblance or mental picture of
the external object: ‘By a Phantasma we understand the similitude or image of some
externall obiect, appearing to us, after the externall obiect is removed from the Senso-
rium; as in Dreams’ [Hobbes(?) 1988, p. 40]. Although commentators have remarked
that the characterisation of the phantasma as a similitude constitutes an obvious link
to Peripatetic philosophy, and noticed its seeming clash with the Galilean principle of
the subjectivity of sensible qualities, they have also stressed that the contradiction is
merely apparent, for all that the author of the Short Tract meant is that ‘the phantasma
is a mental picture, a similitude of perception’ (Brandt 1928, p. 43), as ‘the similarity
between mental images and their objects is not understood in terms of a formal affin-
ity between the two, but regards the relationship between motions of the species and
motions of the spirits’ (Spruit 1995, p. 393).
 aesthetic representation 23

be looked at in two distinct ways; that is, either as internal accidents

of our mind (i.e., as mere motion within), or as ‘species of external
things, not as really existing, but appearing only to exist, or to have a
being without us’.20 It is precisely in virtue of this second, potentially
delusory character of sensible appearances that we perceive them as
exact replicas of things in the objects we perceive. And yet, as Hobbes
time after time insists, they are ‘onely Images’, that is, mere semblances
of being, which represent the world in terms of causal dependence, but
do not otherwise duplicate external reality at all.21
But if mental images are no resemblances of the world without;
neither are they arbitrary. They bear an immediate causal relation with
objective features of the objects they represent (namely magnitude
and motion). This much cannot be said of the second type of images
Hobbes analyses in chapter 45. For while they also purport to reflect
or imitate a pre-existing reality, these material images are, in most
cases, arbitrary representations, fabricating a reality of their own. It is
to such fictional human creations that we turn next.

Images of God

Hobbes’s second example of images as resemblances is that of artworks

or idols, whereby image-makers represent fellow men, saints, spirits
and ultimately God himself to viewers as either seen or imagined. His
discussion of figurations of God is of particular relevance, because it
presents us with a limiting case, touching upon at least three critical
questions lying at the heart of any theory of representation. First is the
question of what the proper scope and limits of visual representation
are. Second is the distinction between instances of representation and
misrepresentation. And third is the question of what our appropriate
representational relationship to images should be: more specifically,
what separates their worshipful from their idolatrous interpretation.

20
De C. (OL I, p. 82).
21
Hobbes 1996, p. 447. The only resemblance we can speak of with propriety, when
it comes to mental images, is, therefore, not one holding between phantasm and exter-
nal object, but rather one holding internally between image and sensation, for which
the former is a substitute in thought. For the ways mental discourse operates with
these stored images, see ibid., pp. 20–2.
24 chapter one

That Hobbes should pass from the discussion of phantasms, or per-

ceptual images, to that of idols, or fancies of our mind, reproduced by
painting or carving, is far from accidental.22 As we have seen, fantasti-
cal apparitions, spectres, figments, demons, idols and similar products
of imaginary reification are for Hobbes but by-products of sense and
its inherent tendencies. To sense and think at all is, for Hobbes, to be
prone to the danger of mental mis-imaging, and of taking such mis-
conceptions for real existences. This explains the defiant resistance of
human inner and outer idolatry to demystification.
Unsurprisingly, it is in the ignorance of the nature of sight, namely
in our tendency to reify sense qualities, that Hobbes finds the ori-
gins of religious belief.23 The deception of sense, he explains, is the
cause behind idolatry and demonology, pagan practices and other
beliefs that have survived the ages.24 These forms of delusion did not,
however, cling to life exclusively by themselves. If anything, Hobbes
insists, they have been reinforced by the church’s endorsement of the
Aristotelian doctrine of real sense qualities: when tastes, odours and
colours are said to have an objective existence outside our minds, why
should it be any different with the supernatural creatures produced
in our imagination? Solid-form images portraying the imagery of our
minds continue therefore to have dazzling effects upon men for two
mutually reinforcing reasons: first, imaging and image reification are
inbuilt in human thought; second, (as churchmen were fast to realise)
the production of imagery is a covetable medium through which to
gain control over men by the visual loading of their minds.
Hobbes was not alone in this observation. Aware of the awe-inspir-
ing effects of imagery, Protestant reformers downplayed the role of the

22
It was, however, Bacon, not Hobbes, who invented the metaphor ‘idols’ to refer
to errors, or preconceived fancies, obstructing the path of rigorous scientific reasoning
(see Bacon 2000, pp. 18–19, 28, 37, 40–51, 55–6, 89).
23
See Hobbes 1996, p. 440.
24
Ibid., p. 445. Just as the belief in demons (that is, reified phantasms) had given
‘occasion to the Governours of the Heathen Common-wealths to regulate this their
fear, by establishing that DAEMONOLOGY (in which the Poets, as Principall Priests
of the Heathen Religion, were specially employed, or reverenced) to the Publique
Peace, and to the Obedience of Subjects necessary thereunto’, so could the idolatrous
worship of material idols, into which much of the daemonic dread had evolved, con-
tinue to be manipulated by the church to its own profit. Ibid., p. 441.
 aesthetic representation 25

visual in favour of a return to God’s unmediated word.25 This distrust

of the visual as potentially delusory was met in Trent (1545–63) with
the Catholic restatement of the pedagogical value of images.26 Avid to
regain the allegiance of the masses, Rome did not take long to respond
to the Reformed vindication of a virtually imageless church with the
sensuality of baroque visual culture.27 The proclamations of Trent and
its practical aesthetic effects were received as an outrage in England,
where the iconoclast movement was growing ever stronger, and deep-
ening the established crisis of visual representation.28 Determined to
eliminate the material basis of superstition, the English Parliament
was led to pass two consecutive parliamentary ordinances in 1643 and
1644. These concretised an early aspiration of the Long Parliament to
demolish all objects of superstition, both inside and outside church
buildings.29
It is thus at a time when Protestant Europe was affronted by Coun-
ter-Reformation visual propaganda that Hobbes pauses to consider
the power of the optical in religion, namely those inner and outer
idols which claim to present the religious public with representations
of the unrepresentable—God. It is Hobbes’s view that any attempts to
produce likenesses of God by visualising him internally and objectify-
ing this visualisation externally in an art form rest on a fundamental
misconception. They overlook the fact that to have a mental image of
an infinite thing is impossible. Ideas are images, and things imagin-
able necessarily finite. Whatsoever we imagine, Hobbes explains, must
be figured, and have been first perceived by sense.30 By contrast, God,
who is infinite, has no figure of which we could have an imagistic idea.
So despite the proliferation of religious imagery representing entities

25
A detailed account of the growth of iconomachy (hostility towards religious
imagery) and, in particular, iconoclasticism (the defence of its actual destruction) in
England can be found both in Aston 1988 and in Phillips 1973.
26
For the Council of Trent’s unequivocal backing of ecclesiastical and devotional
imagery, see Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent 1978, p. 147.
27
For discussions of baroque culture, see Martin 1977, Bazin 1968, and especially
Buci-Glucksmann 1986.
28
A strongly critical reception of the proclamations of Trent in England can be
found in Matthew Parker’s treatise A godly and necessarye admonition of the decrees
and canons of the Counsel of Trent (London, 1564).
29
These included altars, crucifixes, crosses, and images of the Trinity, the Virgin
Mary, saints and angels, as well as fountains, organs and organ cases. For the text of
the 1643 and the 1644 ordinances see Firth and Rait 1911, pp. 425–6.
30
See Hobbes 1996, p. 448.
26 chapter one

beyond visibility, men should not let themselves be deceived by losing

sight of an elementary truth: ‘there can bee no Image of God; nor of
the Soule of Man; nor of Spirits; but onely of Bodies Visible’.31 To wor-
ship God in the form of an image is tantamount to thinking ourselves
capable of conceiving of him who is beyond all human conception,
and to think of God as inhabiting the finite space of an artwork is to
impose on him limits he does not know.
But if men can have no mental images of things invisible, what
are the representations of God, spirits and angels based on? Hobbes’s
answer to this question comes in the form of a distinction between
simple and compounded imagination.32 Whereas the former consists
in the imagining of the whole object as presented to the senses, the lat-
ter consists in more intricate representations, resulting from a series of
operations performed on the original sense impressions. These opera-
tions are the work of the image-making faculty: imagination. Through
imagination a man can not only re-present simple images by bringing
them into consciousness from memory, but also divide and combine
them anew into fictional entities, thus ‘fancy[ing] Shapes he never saw;
making up a Figure out of the parts of divers creatures; as the Poets
make their Centaures, Chimaeras, and other Monsters never seen’.33
Things thus forged in the mind by the imagination are idols.
Just as poets bring these fabulous creatures to life in their texts, so
have craftsmen, painters and sculptors given matter to their misconcep-
tions of God. The works resulting from the artistry of the image-maker
are, Hobbes observes, commonly called ‘images’, which suggests they
are sculpted or painted resemblances of God. Yet, Hobbes clarifies that
this is not because they bear any visual relation to what they represent,
‘but [rather] for the resemblance of some Phantasticall Inhabitants
of the Brain of the Maker’.34 Those who picture God, angels, spirits
or other such invisible things produce no likenesses. Their artworks
represent only in a roundabout way, by resembling creatures of the

31
Ibid. Reformed belief was unanimous in its condemnation of attempts to visu-
alise God. The Puritan William Perkins maintained that ‘to conceive God, is not to
conceive any form: but to conceive in mind his properties and proper effects. So soon
as the mind frames unto itself any form of God (as when he is popishly conceived to
be like an old man sitting in heaven in a throne with a scepter in his hand) an idol is
set up in his mind.’ Perkins 1601, pp. 107–8.
32
Hobbes 1996, p. 16.
33
Ibid., p. 448. See also Hobbes 1969b, p. 10.
34
Hobbes 1996, p. 448.
 aesthetic representation 27

image-maker’s own making, composed of the ideas of visible things;

that is, images of small children with wings, rather than images of
angels; images of an old bearded man, rather than images of God.35
It would be wrong, however, to rush from this to the conclusion
that for Hobbes all representation that does not keep itself within the
bounds of visibility—that is, all representation that does not confine
itself to literality, or the reproduction of the physical appearances of
things that can be seen face to face—constitutes a case of misrepre-
sentation verging on idolatry. In effect, Hobbes has no more qualms
about portraits that serve to keep us in memory of deceased friends
than about the painting or sculpting of fancies with no prototypes in
nature. Visual representation can be legitimate, and yet non-literal. The
problem arises when we use our imagination to bridge the unassail-
able distance that separates us from the unrepresentable, and conceive
our imaginary creations as resemblances, if not incarnations, of God,
which are then (ab)used for the purpose of idolatrous worship.36
But how are we to square Hobbes’s critique of the imaging of God
with those passages in Scripture that seem to countenance the setting
up of images to worship him? What makes these images consonant
with God’s injunction ‘Thou shalt make thee no graven or carved
image’? The answer, Hobbes maintains, lies in two criteria, which
define what constitutes legitimate image-worship, and which double,
as we will see, as criteria of what makes image-worship safe for sover-
eign politics. First is the authority by which the image was established.
Second is the question of how worshippers understand the represen-
tational relationship between the figure and the object, the image and
the imaged.
With regard to the first criterion, authority, Hobbes maintains that
an image is not idolatrous if warranted by he whose right it is to set
it up.37 In any established commonwealth, the right to determine the

35
See Hobbes in Descartes 1985–91b, II, pp. 126–7.
36
Hobbes 1996, p. 454.
37
Already in the second edition of De Cive, Hobbes felt obliged to comment on the
seeming inconsistency between his claim that it is wrong to think of God in terms of
images and his contention that one ought to obey the commonwealth if it orders the
worship of God in the form of an image. Hobbes’s explanation, although somewhat
evasive, consists of two points. First, he argues that when worshipping such images
under compulsion of the state, subjects are not guilty of sin, in so far as it is not them
but the sovereign who is assigning limits to God. This point is reinforced in Leviathan,
where Hobbes (problematically) argues that when a subject does something for fear
‘it is not his act, but the act of his Soveraign’. Hobbes 1996, p. 450. Second, Hobbes
28 chapter one

form of public worship belongs to the sovereign. Therefore, all public

representations require his authorisation to be legitimate. Conversely,
it is idolatrous for subjects to set up images to themselves by private
authority. The precept applies whether the sovereign is God, who as
king of the Jews commanded Moses (his lieutenant) to set up the Bra-
zen Serpent, making it ipso facto legitimate; or Christian kings, who,
since God receded from the world of men, are sovereign pastors in
their own kingdoms, and thus free to order the worship of God in the
form of an image, if it pleases them. The implications of the violation
of this command come in a pivotal passage, which reads like a concise
statement of Hobbes’s political theory:
For God being King of the Jews, and his Lieutenant being first Moses,
and afterward the High Priest; if the people had been permitted to wor-
ship, and pray to Images, (which are Representations of their own Fan-
cies,) they had no farther dependence on the true God, of whom their
can be no similitude; nor on his prime Ministers, Moses, and the High
Priests; but every man had governed himself according to his own appe-
tite, to the utter eversion of the Common-wealth, and their own destruc-
tion for want of Union.38
The lesson of the passage is clear. The civil commonwealth will not
survive where it does not appropriate representation as its own.39 The
‘re’ in representation is more than an innocuous prefix: it hints at
representation’s powers of constitution and substitution: that is, at the
power representation has to enact and replace what it signifies. Com-
peting representations of God constitute competing focuses of author-
ity, established in God’s name, irrespective of God’s authorisation.
Should therefore the commonwealth allow men to erect representa-
tions of their own devising, especially ones purporting to represent,
and give men unmediated access to God, it would be inviting a return
to nature, where men recognise no will above their own, no ruler
above their own fancies or their self-appointed representatives. Such
was the case, Hobbes explains, with the Golden Calf, which Aaron and
the Israelites produced without God’s, or Moses’, authorisation. And

maintains that though in God’s civil kingdom the worshipping of images was forbid-
den, once God receded from the world of men, the rules for worshipping God are
solely the dictates of human reason, which, where a commonwealth is in place, are
given entirely by the will of the commonwealth. Hobbes 1998, pp. 184–5.
38
Hobbes 1996, p. 446.
39
Ibid., p. 450.
 aesthetic representation 29

as the Israelites took it for God, they established a new sovereign, and
dismissed God’s rule altogether.
As the sole image on earth of both immortal and mortal gods, God
and state, the civil sovereign must at all time maintain control over
what constitutes authoritative representation in public, and the sort
of behaviour it is fitting to exhibit before it. This is something God,
greatest of all civil sovereigns, knew all too well. When he prohibited
his chosen people, the Jews, from setting up any images representing
him, his intention was to debar them from choosing rulers of their
own fancy, while stressing that his chosen representatives (e.g. Moses)
were men whose exclusive mediatory role was not to be disputed. As
Hobbes puts it, by his Second Commandment (‘You shall not make
for yourself a graven image’), God meant that the Jews ‘were not to
choose to themselves, neither in heaven, nor in earth, any Representa-
tive of their own fancying, but obey Moses and Aaron, whom he had
appointed to that office’.40 These men, rather than any images privately
instituted, were God’s authorised mediators on earth: they alone had
been personally commissioned by him to take his place before men
and preside over the life of his civil kingdom.41
Hobbes’s interpretation of God’s Second Commandment leaves no
doubt of visual representations being quintessentially a problem of
politics, and specifically a problem of political representation. The rea-
sons for God’s (or we should perhaps say Hobbes’s) concern about the
uncontrolled proliferation of images are clear. Images are often taken
for gods, whose power of influence upon our lives is superior to that
of the lawful sovereign. To worship an image is to manifest by external
signs one’s opinion of the power of another, and to invite fellow men
to acknowledge the same. Images are thus always potential focuses of
counter-power, a power that reverts either directly to those that the
images represent, or to those who claim authority over, or pretend
privileged access to, the image(d). It is therefore, for Hobbes, no sur-
prise that God, king of the Jews, should have condemned the making
of images apart from his direct command, and taken their worship
with divine honour for a case of rebellion against him, his rule and
his earthly agents. After all, if men are not to make to themselves any
image to worship of their own invention, it is because ‘it is the same

40
Ibid., p. 356.
41
Ibid., pp. 356–7.
30 chapter one

deposing of a King, to submit to another King, whether be set up by a

neighbour nation, or by our selves’.42 Or, one could add, whether the
new king is instituted in person, or in an image.
Even a rapid glance at human history will demonstrate that the set-
ting and breaking up of images are representative acts of momentous
consequences.43 In erecting a representation, we celebrate a new power.
In maiming it or pulling it down, we symbolically destroy the system
of rule to which it belongs. The recognition of the powers of such sym-
bolic destruction explains Hobbes’s bitter reference to the ‘barbaric’
act of the Rump in pulling ‘down the late King’s [Charles I] statue in
the Exchange’, and causing to be written, in the niche where it stood:
Exit tyrannus, Regum ultimus.44 Destruction, the commonwealth men
thought, is needed for oblivion and renewal.45 But for Hobbes the true
sign of the times was in the awe-inspiring image of the monstrous
crowd swarming over the statue’s shattered pieces.
The collapse of the licit worship of images, as commanded by the
sovereign, into a mere ‘Will-Worship of men’ must therefore be pre-
vented.46 But this will not, by itself, close the possibility of idolatry. For
even where an image has been authorised, what starts off as legitimate
image-worship can relapse into idolatrous behaviour as the worship-
pers’ relation to the image itself changes. This is exactly what happened
with the Brazen Serpent. As Hobbes keenly stresses, God commanded
the Brazen Serpent to be set up so that the Jews worshipped him before
it, which meant that they ought to take it for what it was: a mere sign.
However, as time elapsed, and despite the fact that the Serpent did
not dissimulate that it was an image, they started confusing sign and
thing signified, representation and represented, and paid reverence to

42
Ibid., p. 446.
43
This much was observed in the sermon preached by John Williams, Lord Bishop
of Lincoln and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, at James I’s funeral. This
sermon is structured as a lengthy comparison between James I and King Solomon:
‘As Spartianus therefore reports of Traian, that after his Death, he triumphed openly
in the Citie of Rome, in Imagine, in a Liuely Statue, or Repraesentation invented by
Adrian for that purpose: Soe shall this Salomon of Israel doe at this time in the Statue,
and Repraesentation of our British Salomon. Truly me thinkes (Si nunquam fallit
imago) there resemblance is very lively.’ Williams 1625, p. 36.
44
Hobbes 1969a, p. 169.
45
The purge was continued by Cromwell, who sold off the royal picture collection
and ordered statues to be defaced. For a detailed discussion of how portraitists were
used by the Stuarts as a decisive part of the royal propaganda machine, see Howarth
1997.
46
Hobbes 1996, p. 453.
 aesthetic representation 31

the Serpent itself, as if it had divine powers. This was apparent in their
behaviour, as they did not stop at burning incense to the image, which
led Hezekiah to break the image into pieces, in the hope there would
be no occasion for idolatry.47 For where there is an image, there is also
the hazard of idolatry.
As the episode of the Brazen Serpent shows, worshippers can col-
lapse the image into the imaged even where the image does not pre-
tend to have any pictorial similarity to what it stands for. Idolatry is
not, therefore, reducible to a matter of making illusory images—after
all, the Brazen Serpent was a self-confessed symbolic image, not a
lively counterfeit pretending to portray God. Idolatry is rather deter-
mined by our representational relationship to the images themselves.
Are we able to see the image as mere image, that is, as a man-made
representation of something else? Or do we take the representation for
that which it represents? The underlying difference between a figura-
tive and a literal mode of interpretation marks the distinction between
worship and idolatry itself.
In other words, idolatry consists in the worshipping of the images
themselves, by which, Hobbes ironically explains, one is worshipping
either the matter whereof it is made; or the idol for whose resemblance
or representation the matter was figured; or both together ‘as one ani-
mate Body, composed of the Matter and the Phantasme, as of a Body
and Soul’.48 This is done in the belief that the image, quite literally,
embodies or is the entity it purports to represent. It is in this errone-
ous belief, rather than in any particular outwards actions, that idolatry
consists (although the actions may, at times, reveal the worshipper’s
mind). For idolatry to be overcome, the worshipper must be able to
distinguish the image before which the suitable signs of honouring are
to be performed from the recipient of worship that the image is set up
to bring to mind.49 Discrimination, i.e., the ability to distinguish, dis-
cern and judge between thing and thing, image and imaged, is the key
faculty required to read images adequately: figuratively rather than lit-
erally. But it is also a cognitive faculty in very scarce supply: ‘For at this
day’, Hobbes acknowledges with dismay, ‘the ignorant People, where
images are worshipped, doe really beleeve there is a Divine Power in

47
Ibid., p. 453.
48
Ibid., p. 449.
49
Ibid., pp. 449–50.
32 chapter one

the Images’:50 a belief which sometimes extends to the sovereign, or

the seat of power itself.

The Sovereign as Image

Having presented two cases of images as resemblances, however

illusory—sensory images and material idols—Hobbes proceeds to that
larger common use of the word, whereby ‘any Representation of one
thing by another’ can be said to be an image.51 It is in this deriva-
tive sense, he explains, that ‘an earthly Soveraign may be called the
Image of God: And an inferiour Magistrate the Image of an earthly
Soveraign.’52 The first of these examples seems, at first sight, odd, as
we have just seen Hobbes maintaining that there can be no image of
any entity who, like God, is beyond human perception. But Hobbes’s
point is precisely that there can be an image of God by representation,
although there can be no image of him by likeness.
This clarification is not without polemical intent. Through it Hobbes
is striking at the heart of divine right theories, for which kings did
not only rule by the authority of God, but were effectively God-like
figures. So when, in chapter 45, Hobbes reinterprets the diction rex
imago Dei as meaning that the king is symbol rather than resemblance,
he is drawing the political-theological sting of a language which was
most commonly deployed by the theorists of sacral monarchy to arro-
gate divinity to the king himself.
One needs to look no further than the writings of James I to see
the king’s self-fashioning as God’s image working as a suggestion
of his godly nature and limitless power. When referring to kings as
‘the breathing Images of God upon earth’, James I was not so much
reminding his subjects that princes were answerable only to God as
working towards a blurring of the dividing line between God and
king, whom he often presented as a deified being embodying super-
natural attributes.53 So ‘adorned and furnished with some sparkles of

50
Ibid., p. 453.
51
Ibid., p. 448.
52
Ibid.
53
James I 1918b, p. 248, my emphasis. As James I put it to Parliament, ‘if you will
consider the Attributes of God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a King.
God has power to create, or destroy, make, or vnmake at his pleasure, to giue life or
send to death, to iudge all, and to be iudged or accomptable to none: to raise low
 aesthetic representation 33

Diuinitie’ are Christian kings, he claims, that they cannot but ‘exercise
a manner or resemblance of Diuine power’ in the little world of their
dominions.54 The difference between king and divine prototype was
one of degree, not of nature. With his power conceived after God’s
absolute power, the sacral king arrogates for himself a divine aura that
seventeenth-century clerics pushed forward by inciting popular belief
in the miraculous curative powers of monarchs, and court painters
exploited by taking inspiration from religious iconography for their
royal portraits.55
Hobbes’s clarification of the meaning of the motto rex imago Dei
stands against these suggestions that the king is an ‘image’ in so far
as he is a likeness of God, if not a divinity himself. As a strategy for
reinforcing royal authority, the conferral of ‘great abilities’ upon the
king is not only deceptive, but also ultimately ineffective, as easily
vulnerable to unmasking.56 Therefore Hobbes clarifies that when we
refer to the sovereign as the earthly image of God we are no longer
clinging to the concept of resemblance, but rather saying that the sov-
ereign symbolically stands for God by way of substitution. This idea
is reinforced by Hobbes’s coupling of the sovereign and magistrate
qua images with that of an unshaped stone set up to represent Nep-
tune, or of those ‘divers other shapes’ which the gentiles used in cult,
despite their being ‘far different from the shapes they conceived of
their Gods’.57 All these material idols, Hobbes maintains, were called

things, and to make high things low at his pleasure, and to God are both soul and
body due. And the like power have kings: they make and vnmake their subjects: they
haue power of raising and casting downe: of life and of death: Iudges over all their
subjects, and in all cases, and yet accountable to none but God onely’. James I 1994c,
p. 181. For the transference of the dual modality of God’s power—potentia absoluta
and potentia ordinata—into the juristic domain of the king’s power see, amongst oth-
ers, Forset 1606, p. 20.
54
James I 1994b, p. 147 and 1994c, p. 181. Despite his daring portrayal of the king
as a god-like figure, James I alludes in his writings to the distinction between divine
and civil worship. See James I 1994a, pp. 241–2.
55
The role of clerics and James I’s scepticism about his curative gifts is discussed in
Burns and Goldie 1996, p. 373. For the ways royal painters drew on the early Stuarts’
identification with the divine, see Howarth 1997, pp. 120–52. For James I’s criticism
of the worshipping of relics of saints and religious imagery, see James I 1918a, pp.
124–5.
56
Hobbes 1996, pp. 329–30. The problem of the instability of sacral authority is
approached here through the history of the Jews disowning the high priests and kings
when they failed to see ‘great miracles, or (which is equivalent to a miracle) great abili-
ties, or great felicity in the enterprises of their Governours’. Ibid., p. 330.
57
Ibid., p. 448.
34 chapter one

‘images’, though they bore little, if any, resemblance to the idols in

the believers’ fancy. The stone was taken to represent Neptune, whilst
making no claims about his real appearance. If the stone perceived
by the senses managed to call a familiar anthropomorphic conception
of Neptune to the believer’s mind it was in virtue of an intervening
convention. By this, the stone was made a symbol, that is, a vehicle for
an internal conception, a magnet capable of attracting the feelings and
attitudes owed to Neptune himself.
This case, Hobbes implies, runs parallel to that of the sovereign and
the magistrate qua representations of God and the sovereign, respec-
tively. The magistrate is not connected to the sovereign by an actual
physical likeness, but he stands for, as well as acts for, the sovereign.
The magistrate is a substitute for the sovereign’s presence, wherever
the sovereign cannot be or act in person. Where duly authorised by the
sovereign, the magistrate is also to bear the symbols of the authority
placed in him, and can expect his interlocutors to behave before him
with some of the deference they owe to the sovereign himself. As a
figurehead, the magistrate is like the throne before which the subjects
display signs of honouring meant for the sovereign himself. Something
similar happens with any Christian king in respect of God. The king’s
office itself has a divine warrant. This means that in his kingdom, he
may rightly stand for God and have his word obeyed as if God’s own.
But this does not make the king himself a supernatural entity, or give
him godly powers.
Hobbes’s intention in demystifying sovereign power is clear not
only from his emptying of the motto rex imago Dei of any connota-
tions of resemblance or of God’s dwelling in the king, but also from
his sharp distinction between divine and civil worship. The question
of whether the prohibition of the worship of images should extend
to civil images had always been topical in the anti-idolatry campaign,
and reached a critical juncture in early 1649, the year of the publica-
tion of Eikon Basilike (‘Royal Icon’), a purported autobiography of
the deceased Charles I, in whose frontispiece he was portrayed as a
martyred saint.58

58
See, for instance, Perkins 1601, pp. 96–7. Despite being published under the
sanction of being prepared by the king, the Eikon was probably put together by John
Gauden. For the portraying of the king as saint, see therefore Gauden 1649, fold-out
frontispiece following sig. A, 4v.
 aesthetic representation 35

Under the sanction of the king’s (contested) authorship, the Eikon

quickly became a commercial success, going through some 35 edi-
tions in England and 25 in Ireland and abroad in 1649 alone. Despite
its amazingly fast mechanical reproduction, the text did not lose its
sacred aura. It was rather experienced by many of its readers as an
object to be revered: an incarnation text, revealing the king’s sacred
last word. This effect was achieved through an astute manipulation
of various representational codes, both verbal and visual, culminating
in its iconic frontispiece. There Charles emerged as a neo-type of the
crucified Christ, a ‘Martyr of the People’, who, like the Son of God,
did not hesitate in casting aside his crown of glory to wear a crown
of thorns. Unsurprisingly, this transfer of iconography from Christ to
king was criticised by many, most notably Milton, as idolatrous.59
What, if any, were the acceptable forms of civil reverence? Hobbes’s
answer to this pressing question was that civil worship was legitimate,
if it met three conditions: (1) it was prescribed by the prince, by means
of express law or tacitly authorised custom; (2) the image was taken as
a mere mark of memory, bringing the represented to remembrance;
and finally, (3) the honour given to the image for its connection to the
represented sprang from the inward recognition of his human/natural
rather than divine/supernatural power. These were conditions that the
Eikon, an act of literary ventriloquism whose author was probably not
the king but the clergyman John Gauden, violated, with its explicit
representation of the king as imago dei, or a Christ-like martyr.
Significantly, Hobbes’s prototypical civil images are not depictions
of kings, but imageless symbols of power, like the seat of power itself.60
As he explains, for a subject to be uncovered, ‘before the Throne of a
Prince, or in such other places as hee ordaineth to that purpose in his
absence, is to Worship that man, or Prince with Civill Worship; as
being a signe, not of honoring the stoole, or place, but the Person; and

59
Milton 1649. Hobbes refers to this representation of Charles as a Christ-like mar-
tyr in his discussion of mental discourse, where the reasoning behind the analogy is,
however, demystified by being rendered explicit. Hobbes 1996, p. 21.
60
As Hobbes emphasises, in the Epistle Dedicatory to Leviathan, his intention is
not to speak ‘of the men [who occupy it], but (in the Abstract) of the Seat of Power’.
Hobbes 1996, p. 3. The question of the status of the worship of imageless wood repre-
senting the seat of power was still being debated almost twenty years after the publica-
tion of Leviathan. An interesting example of this is the polemic between the Anglican
bishop Edward Stillingfleet and the recusant divine Thomas Godden. See Stillingfleet
1671, pp. 79 and 91–4, and Godden 1672, pp. 84 and 179.
36 chapter one

is not Idolatry’.61 In other words, the taking off of one’s hat before the
seat of power, where the seat is taken as mere symbol of the author-
ity held by the sovereign, is an instance of commanded worship: an
expression of respect dependent on the prince’s pleasure, which con-
sists in external signs of one’s obedience to him, for his capacity to
grant protection.62 But if one takes off one’s hat in the belief ‘the Soule
of the Prince to be in the Stool’, or if one allows a belief in the confla-
tion of symbol and substance to go further by presenting to it a peti-
tion, then it is idolatry.63 It is the inward conception under which the
worshipful action is taken, not the nature of the worshipful act itself,
that, again, determines whether we are dealing with a case of civil hon-
ouring or a case of idolatry. Even if we go as far as to pray or prostrate
ourselves before the prince, as long as this is for things it is within
human power to produce, the action is still within the limits of civil
worship. But if we pay him the same reverence to ask him for what
only God can deliver, or because we think God dwells in him, then it is
divine worship, and idolatry. Regardless of what divine right theorists
may say, ‘Christian Kings, who are living Representants of God, are not
to be worshipped by their Subjects, by any act, that signifieth a greater
esteem of his power, than the nature of mortall man is capable of.’64
The office of sovereignty may be divinely sanctioned, but its temporary
bearers are only human, and so are their powers.65
If Hobbes started by treating the sovereign as the earthly representa-
tion of God, in this last passage we see Hobbes depicting the sover-
eign in the more familiar sense as the representative of God’s person.
In effect, both the notion of representation as ‘standing for’ and the
notion of representation as ‘acting for’ come to overlap in Hobbes’s
last word on the motto rex imago Dei. This comes in chapter 45 of the
Latin Leviathan, where Hobbes explains that if the sovereign and the

61
Hobbes 1996, p. 449.
62
Ibid., p. 249.
63
Ibid., p. 449.
64
Ibid, p. 454–5. The division between civil and divine worship was, indeed, rather
fluid. For instance, in the English translation of Lomazzo’s Trattado dell’arte, pub-
lished in 1598, the expression ‘culto divino’ was simply rendered ‘civile discipline’.
Lomazzo 1598.
65
In his eagerness to stress that there is nothing in the least ‘sacred’ about sovereign
power, which as we shall see in Chapter 3 is depicted by him as the product of our
rational acts, Hobbes remarks, in the manuscript on Hereditary Right, that the cer-
emonies involved in the act of institution (i.e., ‘Enthroneing, Proclameing, Anointing,
Crowning, etc.’) are themselves purely human in nature. See Hobbes 2005, p. 177.
 aesthetic representation 37

magistrate can be rightly called images, it is in the same sense as Christ

is called the ‘figure of the hypostasis of God’ (character hypostaseos
Dei, Heb. i. 3). Hobbes’s sui generis interpretation of this biblical pas-
sage appears in the appendix of that same work, where he maintains
that St Paul calls Christ ‘image’ or ‘figure’ (character) because Christ
is God’s ‘representative face’ ( facies representativa), that is to say, a
‘Representer of speech and action’,66 similar to those other representa-
tives operating in theatres, law-courts or the church.67 As ‘image’, Jesus
is, therefore, the actor of God’s person: he who, in his human nature,
authoritatively represents—i.e., speaks and acts for—his father. Simi-
larly, Christian sovereigns are ‘the onely Persons, whom Christians
now hear speak from God’, although they cannot claim God speaks to
them directly as he did to Christ.68 For theirs is a world which God has
exited from, leaving to the sovereign power the scriptural authority to
interpret his word.
The relation between sovereign and God is not the only instance
where Hobbes sees the two main concepts expressed by the verb ‘rep-
resent’—‘standing for’ and ‘acting for’—working side by side. The same
is, for him, true of the representational relationship between sovereign
and people. Although, when laying out the fundamentals of political
representation in chapter 16 of Leviathan, Hobbes is mainly interested
in the second usage, a sign of which is the absence of the word ‘rep-
resentation’ from that chapter, in chapter 19 he warns that sovereigns
who are already the absolute representatives of their people should be
wary of any other ‘representation’ of the people claiming to be the rep-
resentative of the people as well. He is referring to Parliament’s claim
of monopoly over representation, because of its being the sole entity
that stands for the body of the people by way of resemblance to what it
represents. Hobbes’s answer to the parliamentary claim is that, where
there is already a sovereign in place, and he is a single individual, he
is not only already the representative of ‘the people’ (that is, the sole
person empowered to speak and act for the people as one person),
but also offers a representation of the people (and it does so, not only
by being typical of the class he was called to represent: the individual
members of the people as multitude; but also by having the property of

66
Hobbes 1996, p. 112.
67
Lat. Lev. (OL III, p. 534).
68
Hobbes 1996, p. 405.
38 chapter one

being an unum per se: i.e., an intrinsic unity, especially capable of mak-
ing from the many, one, and therefore of acting like a looking glass
which reflects back to the people the image of its collective unity).69
Acting and imaging are complementary dimensions of what it means
to represent politically.

Images of Saints

After discussing why the sovereign and magistrate can be metaphori-

cally called ‘images’, Hobbes turns to a second instance of images
created by way of representation, rather than accurate resemblance:
the images of saints. Given that contemporaneous images of the same
saint tend to look very different from one another, and very frequently
also different from the way we conceive of the saint, Hobbes pauses to
consider what may explain the spectator’s ability to grasp their repre-
sentational meaning:
And at this day we see many Images of the Virgin Mary, and other Saints,
unlike one another, and without correspondence to any one mans Fancy;
and yet serve well enough the purpose they were erected for; which was
no more but by the Names onely, to represent the Persons mentioned
in History; to which every man applyeth a Mentall Image of his owne
making, or none at all.70
Hobbes’s brief mention of how those images can be justly said to rep-
resent is of interest to us, as it raises a handful of questions central
to any theory of visual representation. How does an image acquire
representational meaning? How do the visual and the verbal parts of
an image, its linguistic and graphic signs, perception and conception
interact? Why is it that one of the surest ways of finding out what an
image represents is by looking at its label? In hinting at these ques-
tions, Hobbes’s intention is to draw our attention to the purely fictional
character of most artificial images. These, he suggests, often visually
create their own originals, or even feign what never existed, on the
pretence of being like that which they verbally profess to (re)present.
As is clear from the quoted passage, the point Hobbes wishes to
make is that, faced with the profusion of disparate representations of

69
See Skinner 2005.
70
Hobbes 1996, pp. 448–9.
 aesthetic representation 39

central personages of the history of Christianity, the images alone can-

not convey the information about who they are or stand for. It is only
when combined with writing that they are able to fulfil a representa-
tional function. Before that they are signs without a clear reference.
That is, if we know that the sculpted woman is St Theresa, and not, let
us say, St Ann or any other female saint, it is not because the image
realistically shows what St Theresa looked like, and invites immediate
recognition, but rather because the legend explains its visual counter-
part, and, in so doing, evokes the historical character with which every
man associates an internal mental image, or indeed none at all.71
Image-makers and their sponsors may well want to assert the irre-
ducible sameness of image and portrayed person in order to conceal
the fictitious nature of their likenesses and enhance their effects. But
having had neither direct visual acquaintance with the religious per-
sonages these images portray, nor access to a definite record of their
appearance on which they could base a likeness, the makers stand in
no better position than the casual observer to determine the faithful-
ness of their artworks. The saint or divinity they craft is, to a large
extent, the product of their compound imagination, which explains
why unmediated by a linguistic code it would have no specific publicly
available meaning at all.
Hobbes’s contention that, in most religious imagery, it is only the
names that make the depicted personages present to the viewing pub-
lic highlights the fact that the grasp of representational meaning is
not reducible to a purely perceptual activity. ‘Seeing’ what the image
represents is rather a fundamentally interpretative activity requiring
the intervention of one’s memory and/or imagination, as prompted
by a verbal aid.
Hobbes’s emphasis on the representational character of names is
made clear by his observation that the Christian worship of images is
a direct survival of the idolatry of the gentiles. This, he argues, is not
only because the practice of worshipping images survived the gentiles’
conversion to Christianity, but also because the gentiles did literally
take the images of their former gods with them when they embraced
the Christian faith. It was with the licence of the church that pagan

71
In other words, without the legend, the figure would be able to represent an
object of a particular kind (a woman or even a female saint), but be incapable of
representing a particular object (St Theresa), and thus fail to give an answer to the
question ‘Which female saint is that?’.
40 chapter one

image-owners were allowed to keep their highly prized icons in the

security of their homes. This, Hobbes claims, they did ingeniously:
upon pretence of doing it in the honor of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and
of the Apostles, and other the Pastors of the Primitive Church; as being
easie, by giving them new names, to make that an Image of the Virgin
Mary, and of her Sonne our Saviour, which before perhaps was called the
Image of Venus, and Cupid; and so of a Jupiter to make a Barnabas, and
of Mercury a Paul, and the like.72
The iconographies having been left untouched, the representational
meaning of pagan images was reinvented solely through the imposi-
tion of new names. This reinvention did not, however, take place at
once. For before the passage of time erased the truth about their ori-
gin and resettled collective memory, the images would not be ‘seen’
as sculptural or pictorial representations of Christian personages, but
rather taken for what they were: the surviving images of their former
gods. To come to ‘see’ the Christian characters now represented by
the statues, observers had first to get into the habit of reading the
sculptural compositions after the Christian names affixed to them.
Eventually this suggested second reading would become the reading
suggested by the images as an unconscious process.73
This striking case of names being used to redirect meanings leads
us directly to the next question: how do names, after all, represent?
According to Hobbes, the essential feature of names is that they, no
less than the crude lump of stone symbolising Neptune mentioned
earlier, are capable of re-presenting something other than themselves
to the mind not as a result of any similitude or natural connection to
things, but as a result of arbitrary human choice or convention. That
names have no natural meaning is for Hobbes proven by the fact that
languages, like the religious imagery we have been speaking of, vary

72
Hobbes 1996, p. 455.
73
Hobbes’s narrative of how pagan divinities found their way into the Christian
iconography has an interesting parallel in one of the oldest surviving visual represen-
tations of Jesus, and assuredly the oldest known in Britain, which seems to have been
modelled after a coin figure of the emperor Magnentius. To make the casual viewer
sure that he was not looking at a secular ruler, but rather at the King of kings, the artist
inserted behind the image’s head the chi-rho monogram (that is, the two letters that
begin Christ’s name in Greek). In this case, the viewer would thus have recognised
the represented face as the face of Christ only in virtue of appended written marks.
For more details on this specific image see Neil MacGregor, ‘Jesus, the early years’,
Guardian, Saturday 19 April 2003.
 aesthetic representation 41

historically, as well as geographically. Spoken and written words are

but audible and visible symbols, which have acquired meanings in the
course of history by convention and use.
These man-made symbols, Hobbes explains, perform crucial mne-
monic and communicative functions. Indeed, names are not simply
used as marks, that is, as devices whereby we register our thoughts
and re-present them to our own mind at will, but also, importantly,
as artificial signs. As signs, they perform a distinctively public or com-
municative role, in that they enable us to represent our conceptions of
things to somebody else’s mind.74 These conceptions, Hobbes stresses,
need not be of an imagistic nature. For instance, we cannot apply a
mental image to the name ‘God’, except by delusion. The name ‘God’
is, in this sense, an empty sign marking man’s inability to form, or
represent, to himself and to others, an idea of what God is like. None
the less, the sacred name of God can still be used significantly, if it is
merely to reason that he exists, or to worship him.
Used singly as marks, names must, according to Hobbes, be
arranged in speech before they can be used by men to signify ‘one to
another, what they conceive, or think of each matter; and also what
they desire, fear, or have any other passion for’.75 In the case of the
religious images Hobbes has been discussing, this signifying function
is also fulfilled, although this time by means of what could be called a
hybrid speech act. This is because, as we have seen, it is Hobbes’s claim
that the artist’s conception of the portrayed personage is conveyed to
a wider audience through the intertwining of verbal and non-verbal
marks, whereby the artist asserts ‘This’ (the sculpted female figure)
‘is the Virgin Mary’ (the name appended to the image to identify its
referent). The name imposed upon the religious image, almost invari-
ably a composite name conveying the idea of the object being worthy
of formal honour (i.e., virgin, holy, saint Mary), is used by the artist to
signify to the observers that they are in the presence of the solid-form
representation of his visualisation not just of any woman, but of a
specific holy figure, and, therefore, to set constraints on their possible

74
Hobbes is adamant that words signify our conceptions of things, not the things
themselves. This, he believes, is proven by the fact that we attribute different names to
the same thing according to our different conceptions of it, as well as by the possibility
of our naming non-existent objects and purely fictitious entities. See Hobbes 1969b, p.
19 and De C. (OL I, pp. 15–16).
75
Hobbes 1996, p. 25.
42 chapter one

interpretations of and reactions to the image itself.76 (There is an obvi-

ous parallel here with the inscription crowning the depiction of Levia-
than on the title page, which refers observers to the biblical context in
which the image is to be read.)77
Where the representations of the same religious character vary
widely, the possibility remains that the visual representation leads to
estrangement. This happens, for instance, whenever the image does
not display all the coded elements that have come to symbolise the
represented character, or simply when these elements have not been
entirely codified yet. In either case, however, Hobbes maintains that
the name appended to the image is likely to succeed in causing the
image to be interpreted as a representation of the named historical
character, independently of there being a divergence between the art-
ist’s and the observer’s visualisations of the character whom the name
marks. That is to say, whereas visually we may be offered the image-
maker’s purely private and therefore self-referential picturing of the
character in question, linguistically we can be anchored to a public,
conventionally cemented, and therefore shared conception of it. This
is because where the image fails as a tool of communication, in that
the thing the artist intended to depict cannot be seen in it, the name
can still make representation possible, in that it can by itself disclose
what the artist who made those marks wanted us to see. Put differ-
ently, if a recognisable image is ever to spring from a simulacrum, it
is not by mere perception, but through interpretation.

The Powers of Anthropomorphic Images

In unmasking the fictional character of most religious images, Hobbes
is trying to undermine the enormous sway representational forms

76
In effect, in names denoting religious figures, the proper name does not appear in
isolation, but rather together with one other name, normally a qualifier, for instance
the above-mentioned ‘virgin’, ‘saint’ or ‘holy’. Though grammatically two names, for
Hobbes, philosophically it is still only one name, as it is the name of one thing. See
De C. (OL I, p. 21). It is, nevertheless, the conjunction of names that raises in viewers
a culturally shared conception of the character as being—in most cases because of its
having been declared by the authority of the church to be so—holy and worthy of
image-worshipping.
77
This being, of course, the two last verses of Job xli, where Leviathan comes as the
divinely appointed ‘King of all the children of pride’ (see Hobbes 1996, p. 221), and, in
particular, Job xli. 24, the quotation from the Vulgate that runs across the engraving:
‘Non est potestas Super Terram quae Comparetur ei.’
 aesthetic representation 43

exert over man, inasmuch as they are believed to render faithfully

present—if not alive—the non-existent, the inconceivable, the absent,
the dead. This is particularly true of three-dimensional anthropomor-
phic images, combining the attributes of the holy with vivid likenesses
of living persons, especially those representing saints, whose prolifera-
tion he attributes, again, to the scheming of the bishops of Rome. The
human statue, it seems, is for Hobbes only to be rivalled by theatre
in the ways it challenges the frontier between representation and rep-
resented thing.78 Anthropomorphic idols, he stresses, are everywhere
thought to be infused with a life and a power of their own: ‘For at
this day, the ignorant People, where Images are worshipped, doe really
beleeve there is a Divine Power in the Images.’79 This belief, Hobbes
adds, is fostered by priests, who insist ‘that some of them have spoken;
and have bled; and that miracles have been done by them; which they
apprehend as done by the Saint, which they think either is the Image
it self, or in it’.80 Convinced of the co-identity of image and imag(in)ed
thing, believers act as if the idol acknowledged their presence, and
had an unlimited power to help or harm them.81 It is to the Virgin
Mary herself, not before her statue, that they come to entrust their
veiled hopes. This persistent failure in preserving the gap between sign
and signified thing benefits the self-purported representatives of idols,
whose ‘vicarious’ commands acquire an authority superior to the
sovereign’s, and justifies Christian sovereigns in following Hezekiah’s
example, and breaking down ‘the Images which their Subjects have
been accustomed to worship’.82
There is good reason, in Hobbes’s terms, to compare the delusions
inspired by statuary to those of theatre. Statues are movable objects,
which can be taken from their pedestals to take part in public per-
formances. Such is the case with their use in liturgical dramas, relat-
ing stories from the Bible or of the saints, or with ‘the carrying about
of Images in Procession’,83 in a sort of theatrical display that Hobbes

78
On the exceptional power of anthropomorphic idols see, for instance, Hobbes
1996, pp. 80–1 and 453–4.
79
Ibid., p. 453.
80
Ibid., pp. 453–4. Hobbes’s friend and biographer John Aubrey referred to similar
manipulations of religious icons; for instance, to images of the Virgin being fitted with
neck-joints, so that her head seemed to shake.
81
Ibid., p. 452.
82
Ibid., p. 453.
83
Ibid., p. 456.
44 chapter one

sees as yet another survival of the religion of the Greeks and Romans.
These, he stresses, ‘also carried their Idols from place to place, in a
kind of Chariot’,84 closely followed by an enthralled retinue. It was not
only idols that were carried about in solemn procession. As Hobbes
stresses, living political actors too allowed themselves to be carried
in this way, in the hope of redirecting the divine power commonly
attributed to idols to themselves. To this end, they appropriated many
of the motifs by which religious images were identified, and displayed
themselves publicly in the staging or representational framework
normally reserved to the images of gods. In framing themselves like
sacred images, they enhanced their aura, and gained a unique presence
amongst their subjects. This happened with Julius Caesar, to whom the
Senate granted the honour of having ‘Thensam & Ferculum, a sacred
Chariot, and a Shrine; which was as much, as to be carried up and
down as a God’,85 or with the popes, who came also to be ‘carried
by Switzers under a Canopie’.86 To this could be added yet a third
example, which Hobbes omits: that of the English kings.87
The English custom of carrying upon the coffin in the funeral pro-
cession a likeness or representation of the dead king or queen, appar-
elled in rich robes and holding both crown and sceptre, is not explicitly
mentioned by Hobbes, but is in tune with his previous examples.88
Besides realistically rendering the face of the deceased ruler, the best

84
Ibid. As Margaret Aston stresses, in the early church ‘the Christian statue could
itself be an actor, play a role in a performance, move and take a part. It was as real
as any masked player who conceals the living reality behind the painted visage.’ See
Aston 1988, pp. 401–2.
85
Hobbes 1996, p. 456.
86
Ibid.
87
Horst Bredekamp establishes a connection between the English custom of parad-
ing royal effigies and Hobbes’s discussion of the artificial eternity acquired by monar-
chical government on account of the right of succession. See Bredekamp 1999b. I
suggest, by contrast, that if the case of royal effigies seems to be somehow at the back
of Hobbes’s mind, it is in his discussion of religious images and their civil uses, which
appears at the end of chapter 45 of Leviathan.
88
On English effigies, see Hope 1907. The account of King Edward IV’s funeral, as
preserved at the Herald’s College, reads: ‘and in yt herce above ye corps was upon the
cloth of golde abovesaid a personage lyke to the symilitude of ye Kinge in habit Royall
crowned wt a crown of his heed, holding in one hand a scepter & in the other hand a
ball of sylver & gylt wt a cross paty’. Herald’s College MS. I. 11, f. 85. Of King Henry
VII’s funeral we are told that ‘Over the corps was an Image or Representacon of ye late
king layd on quissions of golde apparelled in his Riche robes of astate wt crowne on his
hed ball & scepter in his hande environed wt banners of Arms of all his Dominions,
titles, genealogies / and thus the chayre beinge ordered The chapell wt ye prelate went
praing / and all other in blacke morninge wt innumerable torches proceded in good
 aesthetic representation 45

of the royal effigies had ‘several joints both in the arms legges and
bodie to be moved to sundrie accion first for the Carriage in the Char-
iot and then for the standinge and for settinge uppe the same in the
Abbye’.89 Such was, for instance, the case with the effigy of King James
I. Servers at the king’s funeral would thus have been confronted not
with a pagan deity, but with the king’s jointed figure, bearing a face
painted true to life, as if the king were alive.90 And just as pagan pro-
cessions of the images of their gods involved the bearing of burning
torches and candles, as well as the burning of incense and the casting
of flowers, the same honours, Hobbes stresses, came to be received
by the emperors of Rome, or, for that matter, by the effigies of the
deceased English kings, followed as these were by torchlight proces-
sions. Emperors and kings, from being publicly displayed as images or
representations of themselves, gained an intensified presence, to which
their retinues responded with the signs of honour originally reserved
for icons. There could hardly be better proof of the powers of visual
representation than this sacralisation of secular rulers through their
exhibition as images. But there is perhaps an even more acute example
in which the technologies of power can be identified with the practice
of representation. And to this we turn next.

The Eucharist: Presence or Representation?

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the discussion of the role

of imagery was closely connected with changes in the doctrine of
the Eucharist, which divided Catholic from Protestant. Both images
and sacraments were conceived as representations of higher spiritual
truths, and part of the animosity towards images originated in the fact
that they were seen as having taken upon themselves a representative
role which belonged exclusively to sacraments.91
The familiarity of the conception of the sacraments as representations
finds, for instance, expression in Calvin’s depiction of the sacrament

order from Richemond to London / etc. etc.’ Herald’s College MS. I. 11, f. 82 b. For an
extensive account of royal funerary effigies see also Harvey and Mortimer 1994.
89
P.R.O. Lord Chamberlain’s Records, Series I. Vol. 555 as quoted in Hope 1907,
p. 555.
90
The details of King James’s funeral effigy can be found in Hope 1907, p. 558.
91
See Aston 1988, pp. 6–7.
46 chapter one

of the Lord’s Supper as an art form: a painting of Christ’s gift to us.92

Convinced of the intimate link between images and sacraments, Prot-
estant reformers, such as Ulrich Zwingli, spoke of the veneration
of images and of the doctrine of transubstantiation as twin, equally
deceptive Scholastic inventions. The elevated host, they claimed, is
yet another idol, the idol of the altar, and belief in the real presence
of Christ in the Eucharist is another manifestation of the generalised
belief in real contact with saints through their images.93 In the light of
this type of association, the purification of churches of their images,
first by orderly removal, then by frenzied destruction, was inevitably to
be followed by the Puritan denunciation of the spectacle of the Mass.
This, the Puritans maintained, resorted to deceptions resembling those
of theatrical simulation, and both should be put an end to.94
Though far from partaking of the Puritan zealotry, Hobbes too is
wary of the danger presented by all sorts of representations monop-
olised by the church in ritual. To expose the deceptions of repre-
sentation to view, whilst bringing to the surface the plainly rational
dimension of the act of representing, is his way of striking at the heart
of those who depended on the enhancement of superstition to keep
the people in awe of their powers, and divided in their loyalties. It is
with this unmasking purpose in mind that Hobbes turns to the high-
est representation of Christ, the sacrament of the altar, to attack the
most striking case whereby people are asked to take symbols for real
existences. This is, of course, the Catholic doctrine of the real presence
of Christ in the Eucharist, and its purported operative cause, transub-
stantiation.
In answer to what they deemed to be Protestant errors, the spokes-
men of the Catholic church reaffirmed at Trent the reality of the pres-
ence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, together with
the validity of transubstantiation.95 Against the reformed theologians,
the councillors maintained that whilst there was nothing in the words
spoken by Christ favouring their view, Christ’s words were to be taken
figuratively rather than literally. Christ, they contended, had given

92
Calvin 1970, p. 20.
93
See Aston 1988, especially pp. 1–8. Ulrich Zwingli remarked in 1523 that the
Scholastics were responsible for the bringing of ‘the veneration of images [. . .] into
the world along with their doctrine of transubstantiation’. Zwingli quoted in Potter
1989, pp. 97–8.
94
See Jay 1993, p. 43.
95
Council of Trent, Session XIII, 10.10.1551.
 aesthetic representation 47

clear indications that the body given by him to his apostles had been
the very same body that was crucified on Good Friday, and the wine
was the very same blood he would shed on the cross for our sins. This,
they added, was as true of Christ’s Last Supper as of each ensuing cel-
ebration of the Mass, where Christ’s true flesh and blood had always
been, and would always continue to be, really eaten and drunk by the
faithful in Holy Communion. No idolatry, the councillors confidently
concluded, could be said to be involved in the payment of divine hom-
age to both sacramental bread and wine, for the divine was indeed
present in these material objects.
The operative cause of Christ’s real presence, the councillors
explained, was transubstantiation, that is, the substantial conversion
of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ effected through
the utterance of the words of institution. Transubstantiation differs
from every other form of substantial conversion in that one substance
is wholly converted into another while the accidents remain the same.
Though Catholic theologians recognised that it was against the natural
order of things for accidents to be without a subject, they were quick
to add that God, who is the primary cause of all substance and all
accident, had the power to keep an accident in being after the removal
of the substance which originally kept it in being as its own particular
cause. It was therefore by God’s miraculous intervention that, at the
act of consecration, the substance of the wafers of bread was replaced
with the body of Christ, even if the only thing that the communicants
continued to perceive by the senses were the accidents characteristic
of bread.96
Whereas for the Church of Rome the permanency of the Eucharis-
tic species without their natural underlying subject constituted only
a seeming contradiction, for the Protestant world the contradiction
was real and intolerable. To be sure, ever since its introduction by
Innocent III the doctrine of transubstantiation had always invoked
sharp disagreement, even among Catholics themselves. But with the
advent of modern science transubstantiation was untenable, an absur-
dity springing directly from the errors affecting Aristotelian theories of
sense perception, namely their conception of accidents as incorporeal

96
As the Port-Royalists would encapsulate it, on the completion of the speech act,
‘This is my body—this is my blood’, the bread and wine dissimulated as things what
they revealed as signs. See Arnauld and Nicole 1861, p. 422.
48 chapter one

thing-like entities, which, though inhering in a substance, could easily

detach themselves from it to migrate to another body.
This association between bogus epistemology and bogus theology is
clearly made in Hobbes’s own writings. Again, on the question of tran-
substantiation, he writes, they say that ‘after certain words spoken, the
Whitenesse, Roundnesse, Magnitude, Quality, Corruptibility, all which
are incorporeall, &c. go out of the Wafer, into the Body of our blessed
Saviour’, thus treating accidents as if they were wandering spirits.97
In other words, transubstantiation is also for Hobbes grounded on
the misconception of the relation between substance and accident that
underlies the Scholastic doctrine of separated essences.98 This stems
from the erroneous assumption that substances supposedly incorpo-
real can stand on their own, separated from bodies. Applied to the case
of transubstantiation, it means that the taste and colour of bread may
continue to exist independently from their new underlying substance,
the body of Christ.
When accidents are thus stripped away from one object to attach
themselves to another, they cease to be reliable indicators of what
their subject might be. Hence scientists like the Minim friar Emman-
uel Maignan, Drouin or Vitasse did not stop at drawing an alarm-
ing parallel between the Eucharistic appearances, which deceive our
senses, and the mechanisms of perspective, which deceive our eyes by
creating various types of optical illusions.99 Their depiction of tran-
substantiation as a form of phantasmagoria is entirely embraced by
Hobbes, who, with his usual irony, insists on ranking priests below the
Egyptian conjurers with respect to their relative capacities to delude
the senses of spectators with their marvellous effects.100

97
Hobbes 1996, p. 59.
98
Ibid., pp. 463–6.
99
For the extent to which the language of optics permeated medieval Eucharistic
theology, with particular emphasis on John Wyclif’s claim that the body of Christ was
in the consecrated host as an image in a mirror, see Phillips 1987.
100
Hobbes 1996, p. 422. In a letter addressed to Hobbes in 1656, François du Ver-
dus discloses Hobbes’s intention of inserting a new passage in Leviathan where the
analogy would be made between ‘the priest and the person who plays the game with
cups, who shows you that there is nothing there, and then, for five sous, saying the
three words “Hocus Pocus . . .”, shows you that the object is there’. As Noel Malcolm,
the editor of Hobbes’s correspondence, notices, no such passage was, however, added
in Hobbes’s final version of Leviathan, which is, of course, the Latin translation of
1668. Hobbes 1994, pp. 372 and 378.
 aesthetic representation 49

Priests, Hobbes insists, severely misinterpret Scripture when, under

the influence of the doctrine of transubstantiation, they turn the con-
secration of the bread and the wine into a conjuring trick. The true
scriptural meaning of ‘to consecrate’, he explains, is ‘to Offer, Give, or
Dedicate’ something to God by separating it from common use, and
thereby to ‘change, not the thing Consecrated, but onely the use of it,
from being Profane and common, to be Holy, and peculiar to Gods
service’.101 Hence, to pretend, as priests do, that by repeating Christ’s
words they cause a change in the nature or quality of the elements of
bread and wine amounts to nothing less than turning the holy words
into charms, and the liturgy into ‘the Leiturgy of Witches’.102 However
much the ministers of the church may want to convince the faithful
of their capacity for producing a ‘God of bread’, by turning ‘the Bread
into a Man; nay more; into a God’,103 the truth is that their intent
runs up against ‘the testimony of mans Sight, and of all the rest of his
Senses’.104 And yet, the faithful having been blinded to what is clear
even to the senses, they carry on worshipping the elevated host ‘as if it
were our Saviour himself present God and Man, and thereby to com-
mit most grosse Idolatry’.105
This predisposition to take the bread for Christ springs, in Hobbes’s
view, not only from the philosophical endorsement of commonsense
delusions, but also from a cunning exploitation of the illusion of
resemblance. Elements of similitude and symbolism had always been
intertwined in the sacraments. ‘Sacramental signs’, St Thomas Aquinas
wrote, ‘represent what they signify by a natural resemblance.’106 But
what Hobbes detects, again and again, is a deliberate manipulation
of this element of resemblance on the part of the church, with the
intent of undermining the believer’s capacity to judge, and lead him
to feel real presences in what are but artificially produced similarities.
This alienation of the faithful in a realm of resemblances is furthered
by devices such as the stamping of the host with the figure of Christ
upon the cross. When introducing the cross figure into the consecrated
bread, Hobbes remarks, priests act ‘as if they would have men beleeve

101
Hobbes 1996, p. 422.
102
Ibid., p. 78.
103
Ibid., p. 423.
104
Ibid., p. 422.
105
Ibid., p. 423.
106
Aquinas IV Sent., Dist. 25, q. 2, a. 2, qa 1., ad 4–um: ‘signa sacramentalia ex
naturali similitudine repraesentent’. See Aquinas 1586.
50 chapter one

it were Transubstantiated, not only into the Body of Christ, but also
into the Wood of his Crosse, and that they did eat both together in
the Sacrament’.107 The blindness of the faithful has grown so great that
they ‘discerned not the Bread that was given them to eat’,108 as they
ceased to see the figure as a figure, that is, as a thing signified in rep-
resentation only. The promiscuity between representation and reality
having been installed, the way is laid open for the continued practice
of deceit, and for the kingdom of darkness to flourish at the expense
of the civil kingdom.
More worryingly, the belief that priests can make the divine pres-
ent in the material makes the common people ‘think them gods’ and
‘stand in awe of them as of God himself’.109 This generates extraor-
dinary power, power that can be used to disturb peace in the com-
monwealth. The task Hobbes sets for himself is one of merciless
demystification. When priests claim that bread and wine are ‘Divinity
under their species, or likenesse’,110 and explain this miraculous effect
by a divine power lying in them, they lie. If anything, they speak even
more absurdly when they invoke the Peripatetic doctrine of separated
essences to bulk their claim out. For, despite all their claims to the
contrary, the act of consecration of bread and wine to God’s peculiar
service is nothing other than the act whereby those elements are con-
stituted as conventional signs. This is so because, Hobbes explains, in
ways that put us in mind of the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli, the
consecration of something consists in a mere ‘separation of it from the
common use, to signifie, that is, to put men in mind of their Redemp-
tion, by the Passion of Christ’.111
As much would be clear if the literal interpretation of the words of
institution were cast aside, and men were, instead, to understand that
‘the words, This is my body, are aequivalent to these, This signifies, or

107
Hobbes 1996, p. 423.
108
Ibid.
109
Hobbes 1969a, p. 15.
110
Hobbes 1996, p. 423.
111
Ibid., p. 422, my emphasis. Zwingli was a leader of the Swiss Reformation, who
by 1524 developed a strikingly rationalist position about how to ‘read’ the phrase ‘Hoc
est enim Corpus Meum’, from which Hobbes clearly borrows. When Jesus says ‘is’
(est), Zwingli explained, he actually meant ‘signifies’ (significat). The phrase ‘This is my
body’ was an example of biblical metonymy, a figure of speech which meant a change
of name, not of substance, and should therefore be translated into ‘This [bread] signi-
fies my body.’ For the full account of the Reformed theologians’ interpretation of the
words of institution see Pelikan 1984.
 aesthetic representation 51

represents my Body; and it is an ordinary figure of Speech’.112 For as

soon as the metonymic use of words is disclosed, it is apparent that
the sign (the host) is the signified thing (the body) symbolically only.113
All that we are witnessing here is, therefore, a change of words, not a
change of substances. This substitution of one term for another is not
based on similarity, but on arbitrary convention. For there is a notori-
ous sensory dissemblance between the representing object and what it
stands for: the wafer does not resemble Christ’s body or its immola-
tion, but rather stands for it figuratively on the basis of an agreed con-
vention. Many are those biblical places, Hobbes claims, where words
are spoken figuratively, rather than literally, and ‘therefore there is a
proper sense to bee enquired after’.114 For although figures of speech
involving the substitution of a term for another (such as metaphor
and metonymy) are ‘(by profession) equivocal’, they also ‘profess their
[semantic] inconstancy’, therefore alerting us to the fact that under-
lying them is ‘some reall ground, that may be expressed in proper
words’.115 Therefore, when the celebrant refers to the eating of the
bread and the drinking of the wine as the eating of the flesh and
the drinking of the blood of Christ he must be seen as merely entering
the semantic realm of representation, where bread and wine are but
symbols set up to remind us of the worth of Christ’s suffering.116
The question of the correct interpretation of the words of institution
was the topic of an exchange of letters between François du Verdus
and Hobbes, of which Hobbes’s part is unfortunately lost. Uncon-
vinced that the copula ‘is’ should, in the words of institution, be taken
to mean ‘signifies’, du Verdus asks Hobbes for biblical evidence of it

112
Hobbes 1996, p. 423.
113
It should be noticed that Hobbes allows for the fact that the words of institution
might have to be taken literally when referring to the case where Christ himself, with
his own hands, consecrated. Hobbes stresses, however, that the literal interpretation
cannot be extended any further. For, as he writes, Christ ‘never said, that of what
Bread soever, any Priest whatsoever, should say, This is my Body, or, This is Christs
Body, the same should presently be transubstantiated’. Ibid.
114
Ibid., p. 314.
115
Hobbes 1969b, p. 20, Hobbes, 1996, pp. 31 and 314.
116
Hobbes, faithful to his moderate position, neither proposes the abolition of the
host from the Mass, nor forbids its honouring. He simply disallows any worship of
the host based on the belief in its transubstantiation into the body of Christ. Any such
worship, he stresses, would have no scriptural grounds, and therefore would be of
purely human institution. Ibid., p. 451.
52 chapter one

being a convention of common parlance to speak of signs as things.117

As du Verdus receives Hobbes’s now lost reply, he urges Hobbes to let
him include it in the French translation of Leviathan he is working on.
Interestingly for my claim that Hobbes makes an extensive use of the
category of representation, and that he carries it across different fields
of inquiry, du Verdus, most probably following Hobbes’s own exam-
ple, suggests the inclusion of a new explanatory passage whereby the
words of institution are to be compared with the signs used in maps
to indicate geographical places. This explanatory passage, du Verdus
suggests, could read as follows:
My argument that “is” means “signifies” is confirmed by the ordinary
way of speaking about drawings which represent something. Thus, when
looking at a map, one says, “This is Paris, and this is Saint-Denis”—
where the words “is” means “is that which signifies”. For the points on
the map which one indicates when saying those words are the points
which signify or represent Paris and Saint-Denis.118
The passage never entered Leviathan, but its message is clear. Calling
the elevated host ‘the body of Christ’, just like pointing to a mark on the
map of France and calling it ‘Paris’, is only a manner of speech whereby
we mean that the named referents are signified by the respective con-
ventional signs.119 The map is not the territory it represents: it merely
exhibits, on a reduced scale, and in a different medium, a similarity
of structure to it.120 Between map and geographical location, just as

117
The question raised by du Verdus was often put in the context of debates about
religious images. For instance, Nicholas Sander[s], in his 1567 defence of religious
images, argued that ‘albeit that be no proper speech, to say of the image of S. Paul,
This is S. Paul: yet it is used, because the names of the things themselves are often
times in common speech given to their signs and images.’ Sander[s] 1567, fo. 55r; cf.
fos. 106v–107r, 116v–117r.]
118
Hobbes 1994, p. 415.
119
Though the purpose of the analogy is clear, it should be noticed that there are
also elements of asymmetry between the two terms of the comparison. In the words
of institution, the pronoun ‘This’ refers to the elevated host and chalice of red wine,
which are symbols that bear an element of resemblance to that which they signify (the
red of the wine standing, for instance, for the red of blood). In a map, however, the
points signalling geographical locations are, in most cases, not iconographically rep-
resentational at all. To represent they depend solely on the establishment of a precise
correspondence of structure mediated by scale.
120
Maps attracted Hobbes’s longstanding interest, and more so, because he decided
to draw himself the map of Ancient Greece and Sicily that accompanied his translation
of The History of the Peloponnesian War of Thucydides. But whereas of Sicily there was
an available map done by Philip Cluverius, of Greece the available ones did not represent
the Greece of Thucydides. Therefore, Hobbes explains to the reader, ‘I was constrained
 aesthetic representation 53

between host and the body of Christ, the relationship is one of repre-
sentation, not of identity.

Metaphors as Representations

Originally reserved for the description of objects and purely visual

experiences, the term ‘image’ came also to designate the figurative use
of language that Hobbes claims to be at play in the words of institu-
tion.121 Firm in his belief that all knowledge and creative processes
originate in perceptual images bestowed on the senses and then stored
and compounded in the imagination, Hobbes was one of the first Eng-
lish authors to extend the term ‘imagery’ from the realm of pictures,
imitations or descriptions to that of figures and tropes, chief amongst
which are metaphors.122
Much has been said about the apparent contradiction between
Hobbes’s outspoken criticism of metaphors and his incorporation,
particularly in Leviathan, of some of the most conspicuous meta-
phorical language political theory has seen.123 What Hobbes’s critics
fail to notice, however, is that for Hobbes not only metaphorical lan-
guage but all language is potentially equivocal, metaphors often being
more unfeigned than non-metaphorical language, in that they at least
are overtly equivocal (‘equivocal by profession’) and thus ‘openly pro-
fesse deceipt’.124 In this metaphors positively differ from e.g. common

to draw one as well as I could myself.’ This he did with particular care, by, first, tak-
ing ‘the main figure of the country in the modern description’, and, then, assigning
the particular places referred to by Thucydides those map locations which ‘by travel
in Strabo, Pausanias, Herodotus, and some other good authors, I saw belonged unto
them’. Sanguine about his map’s accuracy, Hobbes further explains that he ‘joined
with the map an index, that pointeth to the authors which will justify me where I differ
from others’. Pref. Thu. (EW VIII, pp. x–xi).
121
This evolution is captured in Mitchell 1986.
122
For Hobbes’s employment of the term ‘imagery’ to refer to figures and tropes,
see Pref. Il. Od. (EW X, p. vi); Hobbes 1971b, p. 49; and Hobbes 1994, p. 275. For
a discussion of the impact of Hobbes’s theory of perception and imagination upon
literary theory, see Frazer 1960.
123
This claim is put forward, for instance, in Lakoff and Johnson 1980, p. 190, Kahn
1985, p. 157, Wolin 1970, p. 38, and Whelan 1981. For an insightful criticism of this
reductive view of Hobbes as a hypocritical arch-detractor of metaphor see Skinner
1996, pp. 363–72.
124
Hobbes 1969b, p. 20, see also ibid., p. 21 and Hobbes 1996, p. 52. In this meta-
phors differ from the paradiastole, a further figure of speech that shifts the moral valu-
ation of conduct by renaming it, without making transparent its purposes, i.e., without
54 chapter one

moral language, ‘the names of such things as affect us, that is, which
please, and displease us’, ‘such as are the names of Vertues and Vices’,
whose ‘inconstant signification’ is masked.125 Accordingly, subjective
language uses, reflecting mere individual preference, come to be pre-
sented as indisputable natural meanings, about which men dispute,
often violently, with one another. Metaphors, at least, are true to the
representational character of all human language: they expose to view
the conventionality of the word–thing representational relationship.
By contrast, those names to which we give ‘the signification of what
we imagine of their nature’ draw on the false belief that language mir-
rors a pre-linguistic reality rather than represents it arbitrarily.126 The
truth, however, is that all language is representational, and, instead of
simply reflecting a given object, actively constructs, or calls into being,
social reality itself (which explains why the settlement of meanings is
one of the most important tasks of the sovereign). And although meta-
phors do not, like similes, publicise themselves as figures of speech,
they tend nevertheless to strike us immediately as being foreign to
the context in which they are inserted. This is primarily so because all
metaphor involves taking one thing for another, giving a thing a name
belonging to something else by a sort of calculated mistake.127 Liter-
ally, metaphorical sentences are almost always patently false, odd or
absurd. This absurdity, this semantic inconsistency, Hobbes suggests,
should prompt us to suspend belief, disregard the question of literal
truth, and proceed to a rational elaboration of their significance.
Far from condemning metaphors tout court, Hobbes’s criticism spe-
cifically targets their covert, deceitful and/or injudicious use. Particu-
larly treacherous are those metaphors that hide the fact that they are
metaphors, metaphors that are deliberately employed to mislead, to
make us take things for what they are not, and to entice us to develop
passions leading to obscurantism, contempt and sedition.128 Such is

signalling that it is a figure operating a re-description. For different positions on Hob-

bes’s relationship with the paradiastole see Skinner 1996 and Kahn 2001, p. 19.
125
Hobbes 1996, p. 31.
126
Ibid., p. 31, my emphasis.
127
On this specific aspect of metaphor, see Ricoeur 1975.
128
That is the case with the word ‘conscience’. For Hobbes the politically harmful
notion of an inviolable ‘private conscience’ was invented by means of a metaphor
which applied the word ‘conscious’, originally meaning ‘sharing knowledge’ or ‘know-
ing together’ (that is, public knowledge), to the sphere of secret, individual private
convictions, thoughts or opinions. See Hobbes 1996, p. 48. For a discussion of the
 aesthetic representation 55

the case, for instance, when law is wrongly placed in the role of an
agent by means of a metaphor of personification. For if it were law
that ruled, what would prevent men from opposing a monarch, re-
described as tyrant, in the law’s name?129 Moreover, due to their ambi-
guity, metaphors (unlike similes)130 are not to be made the basis of
activities such as formal reasoning, teaching or advising, as this would
install the risk of delusion in domains that should be ruled by plain
speech and disciplined ratiocination.131
To say this is not to claim that metaphors are worthless or to be
banned altogether. Their aesthetic, playful and illustrative value is
readily recognised by Hobbes, according to whom both common peo-
ple and poets should be free to explore metaphorical ambiguities in
innocent ways.132 Besides being pleasing for their inventiveness, meta-
phors can also be profitably used not to generate new knowledge, a
task for which they are unfit, but to illustrate discourse or illuminate
what are already well-established arguments.133 Metaphors can do so
because they instruct graphically. The power of metaphors, just as the
power of Hobbes’s favoured science, geometry, consists in their ability
to set before the eyes, to provide a kind of figurability to their mes-
sage.134 Furthermore, by being out of the ordinary, metaphors provoke
inquiry, challenge us to go beyond the literal reading and to notice

performative character of metaphor in the construction of ‘conscience’, see Feldman

2001, especially pp. 21–30.
129
Hobbes 1996, p. 471.
130
While excluding metaphor from reasoning, Hobbes joins the Ramist reformers
in admitting that ‘understanding [may] have need to be opened by some apt simili-
tude’. Ibid., p. 52.
131
Special attention should be paid to Hobbes’s formulation of his condemnation
of the use of metaphor for advancing logical reasoning, as it is itself highly figurative
Ibid., p. 36.
132
See, for instance, Hobbes 1969b, p. 50, where dullness is opposed to the quick
ranging of the mind from which metaphors proceed, or indeed Hobbes 1996, pp.
50–1, where having a ‘Good Fancy’, capable of producing ‘new and apt metaphors’,
is considered to be a praiseworthy intellectual virtue. Hobbes 1996, p. 35. He also
upholds our right to ‘please and delight our selves, and others, by playing with our
words, for pleasure or ornament, innocently’. Ibid., p. 25.
133
Ibid., p. 51.
134
This capacity of transforming auditors/readers into spectators is a quality Hob-
bes (via Plutarch) praises in Thucydides, see Pref. Thu. (EW VIII, pp. viii and xxii).
Also the pictorial language of geometry, Hobbes maintains, is to be preferred over
the cryptic symbols of algebra. See Sav. Prof. Math. (EW VII, p. 329). Compare Hob-
bes’s with Rousseau’s dislike of the abstractness of algebraic symbols, a ‘dumb’ lan-
guage that the latter sees as the antithesis of the vivid oral discourse on which his
republic of self-representing citizens depends. See in particular Rousseau’s manuscript
56 chapter one

aspects of things we did not notice before.135 They tell us how things
should be visualised by providing a kind of lens or perspective through
which the relevant phenomena are to be observed. And in making us
see things from curious perspectives, they produce in us an almost
effortless, sudden insight or illumination.
Of particularly interest is Hobbes’s conception of metaphors as
images that cannot be reduced to transparent figures or likenesses that
are mimetic resemblances. Instead, metaphors depend on the interplay
of sameness and difference, reality and fiction. Metaphors characteris-
tically represent one thing as another: in Leviathan, commonwealths
come represented as biblical monsters, mortal gods, (artificial) men,
persons, machines and buildings. Metaphors consist in this transfer of
a name (or descriptive term) to an object that is different, but in some
respect analogous to, that to which the name is properly applicable.
Being the trope of resemblance par excellence, they make us attend to
some likeness between two or more distinct things. But because where
the simile says ‘This is like that’, metaphors say ‘This is that’, they can
as well make us take one thing for another, particularly if we mistake
the metaphorical sentence for an ordinary descriptive sentence mak-
ing a statement of fact. Metaphors are not, however, factual assertions:
if taken as such, they would almost invariably be false or absurd. But
they retain some connection with fact, or ‘some reall ground, that may
be expressed in proper words’.136 This means they lend themselves to
logical elaboration.
This leads us directly to the point where metaphor joins the other
cases of representation we have discussed and are yet to discuss in this
chapter. Because in a metaphor the similar and the different, the real
and the fictional remain in tension, to comprehend a metaphorical
construction one has to possess a ‘double vision’: the ability to enter-
tain different points of view at the same time.137 This ability depends
on the coordinate work of fancy and judgement, the faculties that

‘Pronunciation’ (Rousseau 1959, vol. II), which is thoroughly discussed in Derrida

1967, pp. 416–45.
135
‘A sign of the latter [i.e., to know much] is novelty of expression, and pleaseth
by excitation of the mind; for novelty causeth admiration, and admiration curios-
ity, which is a delightful appetite for knowledge.’ Hobbes 1971b, p. 52. For Hobbes’s
Aristotelian conception of metaphors as deviant uses of language, wandering from its
proper, literal or perspicuous sense, see Hobbes 1996, pp. 26 and 35–6.
136
Ibid., p. 314.
137
See Malcolm 2002, p. 227 and Schaffer 2005, p. 202.
 aesthetic representation 57

enable us to see resemblance and dissemblance, respectively. On the

one hand, one must entertain the picture the metaphor sets before
one’s eyes, or else one will not take any aesthetic delight in it. This is
often a surprising image, as it is typical of metaphors to dismember
the fabric of reality and reassemble it in strikingly new, unexpected
ways. On the other hand, however, one must understand the metaphor
as a mere representation of one thing by another, which hinges on
some insightful similarity between what are two fundamentally dis-
tinct things. From the sensation initially caused by the metaphorical
image, one must progress to the intelligible structure underlying it.138
As often happens in Hobbes’s own texts, this can be captured in a
paraphrase, which annuls the trope by restoring its proper meaning, as
when the awing image of the biblical Leviathan, a huge aquatic crea-
ture whom only God overpowers, is paraphrased into ‘a COMMON-
WEALTH, or STATE (in latine CIVITAS)’, which is but a gigantic
‘Artificiall Man’, representing the union of its subjects. Overpowering
as an image, but absurd if taken literally, Leviathan is a metaphor invit-
ing inspection. And on a closer look, it reveals itself perspicuous, as
its symbolic meanings capture core features of Hobbes’s scientifically
deduced theory of the representative state. Both state and Leviathan
are created powers, made out of many parts gathered into one; both
form unities of unparalleled power and strength; both use their power
to subdue pride. And if these points of resemblance were not enough,
a tradition of biblical exegesis especially close to Hobbes’s intellec-
tual circle in Paris took ‘Leviathan’ to stand symbolically for a ruler
incorporating his subjects.139 It is therefore quite understandable that
Hobbes should have seen in ‘Leviathan’ a powerful cognitive metaphor

138
In Leviathan, Hobbes devotes considerable exegetical labour to exposing what
he considers to be critical misinterpretations of Scripture; for instance, the idea of
Hell as a place for the eternal torment of the damned. His recurrent strategy, when
analysing the relevant biblical passages, is that of conveying the meaning of scriptural
metaphors in ‘proper’ words. One case in point is his discussion of the meaning of
‘Hell Fire’. See Hobbes 1996, pp. 312–13.
139
For Hobbes’s use of Leviathan as metaphor, see Steadman 1967, Mintz 1989
and Malcolm 2007b. Malcolm convincingly suggests that Hobbes’s use of Leviathan
as symbol should be attributed to an extraneous influence, Jacques Boulduc, a Paris-
ian Capuchin, with whom Mersenne was acquainted. Closely foreshadowing Hobbes,
Boulduc wrote: ‘Kings and rulers [. . .] are called “leviathan” insofar as each of them
is the head of one mystical and cohering body, composed of many different parts
[‘limbs’, ‘members’] joined together—that is, he is the chief part, on which the life and
strength of all the others depend.’ Boulduc 1637, vol. 2, p. 298.
58 chapter one

for the modern representative state, while he also used the imagery to
bring his readers into the presence of a new icon of politics.

The Representation of Objects in Perspective

Linear Perspective
The same kind of double vision required by metaphors is, Hobbes
explains, needed for the full appreciation of pictures using perspec-
tive. These rely on the teachings of optical geometry to posit a scien-
tifically correct representation of reality. The reality they depict is not,
however, reality as such, but reality as experienced, as when we see two
parallel lines converging in the distance. This inevitably opens up a gap
between the depicted and the depictum, world and pictorial surface.
Given this gap, how should a suitable spectator look at perspectival
pictures? How does he become visually aware of the thing being rep-
resented? How does he pass from the set of physical marks actually
made in the pictorial surface to seeing the depicted thing in them?
In opening to question the relation between pictures and reality, and
how we ‘see’ meaning in visuals, Hobbes’s discussion of perspectival
painting adds yet another important dimension to his philosophical
discussion of representation.140
Chapter 4 of De Homine contains a brief account of the rules and
procedures whereby the illusion of perspective is created. Hobbes
starts by describing how the perspective scheme which structures the
illusion of depth, and sets the pattern for the dimension and spatial
relation of objects, is constructed. Following the Renaissance theorists
of the perspectiva artificialis, he defines the surface on which the illus-
trator works as an intersection of the visual pyramid between the eye

140
Although my discussion of linear perspective in Hobbes concentrates on De
Homine, Hobbes’s interest in perspectival painting also surfaces in his Preface to
Gondibert (1650), which reads on the whole as a gloss to Horace’s proclamation in his
Art of Poetry that ‘Ut pictura poesis’ (‘As in painting, so is poetry’). See Hobbes 1971b,
pp. 46 and 50. The emphasis Hobbes puts on painting and poetry as analogous forms
of representation in the Gondibert essay brings to mind Quintilian, whose discussion
of repraesentatio in literature reads as a metaphorical commentary on Pliny’s and
Valerius’ treatises on painting as an art of re-presentation. See Quintilian comparing
the development of the art of painting with that of oratory in Quintilian 2001, vol.
V, 12.10.3–6.
 aesthetic representation 59

and the object that is to be conceived as a transparent picture-plane

analogous to a window open to the outside world. Each figure copied
by the illustrator onto the canvas is ‘like the object seen through some
transparent plane interposed before the body’.141
The art of drawing in perspective seeks to create an almost faultless
illusion of optical reality. For this effect to be achieved some pre-con-
ditions must obtain. Notably, Hobbes explains, perspective figures will
not succeed in being taken for real objects if the viewer’s eyes are left
free to ‘wander outside the picture’.142 For the picture to produce a
realistic effect, the point from which it is to be observed is rigidly fixed
in advance. Ideally, the picture will be looked at ‘through a very small
aperture or lens’, and ‘with only one eye’.143 For however much ‘the
proportions, the colours, the shadows produce faith in the recessions
which are imitated, so much the comparison with the things which are
outside the picture removes belief in those things’.144 Should, therefore,
the viewer be allowed to move both of his eyes freely between the space
within and the space without the canvas, or even to move around the
canvas and see it sideways, the perspective illusion manufactured by
the painter would irreparably break down. Perspective images rely on
the passivity of the spectator.
Perspective, John Berger noted, ‘makes the single [sovereign] eye of
the beholder the centre of the visual world’.145 But if it does so, Hobbes
rightly reminds us, it is at the cost of absolute immobility. The fact that
in the convention of perspective everything is made to converge onto
the centre of one man’s retina led some commentators to associate
the monocentrism of perspective with the rising power of the absolute
monarch. In perspective, Berger stresses, ‘the visible world is arranged
for the spectator as the universe was once thought to be arranged for
God’.146 Nevertheless, as anyone can, in principle, occupy the vantage
point arranged for the anonymous spectator, perspective—one can
argue—also has democratic potential.
Such political analogies are absent from Hobbes’s writings on the
science of linear perspective, but in their essence they are not foreign

141
De H. (OL II, p. 30). The Renaissance notion of the canvas as a transparent sur-
face appears first in Leon Battista Alberti. See Alberti 1966, pp. 51 and 56.
142
De H. (OL II, p. 36).
143
Ibid.
144
Ibid.
145
Berger 1972, p. 16.
146
Ibid.
60 chapter one

to his treatment of political representation. As we shall see in Chapter 3

of this book, when Leviathan’s covenant of representation is being
sealed subjects are virtually interchangeable with the (future) sov-
ereign, accession to power being at that very moment theoretically
open to all on equal terms.147 Once the covenant is sealed, however,
they re-emerge as bound to the sovereign’s decisions as much as the
conventional perspective’s observer is bound in place. On a more sci-
entific note, however, Hobbes points out that the illusory impact of
perspective drawing upon onlookers attests to our already familiar
deceptions of sight. If perspectival art manages to reproduce the expe-
rience of direct vision, it is because it eschews perfect resemblance
and turns, instead, to the geometrical forms that better match the
appearances of the visual world. The success of this matching depends
on the observance of the geometric rules of perspective, according to
which parallel lines are more fittingly represented by non-parallel than
by parallel ones, upright lines by prone ones, circles by ellipses, and
ellipses by circles. To these, Hobbes remarks, could be added ‘count-
less other things which are different in the plane from what they are
in the object’.148 For ‘perspective planes do not represent an object by
any similarity to the true figure’, but rather by resembling the object’s
way of appearing.149 What often escapes the observer of a perspective
painting is hence that for the image drawn on the plane to represent
the object more perfectly, that is to say, for it to be more faithful qua
image, it is necessary that structurally it does not resemble the object
at all. Put another way, the fact that two things are experienced as
resembling each other (e.g. that the chair in the painting is ‘seen’ as
resembling ‘a chair’) is perfectly consistent with—more, requires—
actual dissimilarity.
This last observation leads us straight to the heart of Hobbes’s
account of our experience of perspective as a twofold process, involv-
ing two interdependent perceptions: one of the marks in the picto-
rial surface, the other of that which they represent. The observer of
perspective art, Hobbes explains, starts perceiving patterns, which, by

147
This radically democratic possibility underlies Filmer’s anxious questioning in
his 1652 Observations Concerning the Originall of Government: ‘if every man covenant
with every man, who shall be left to be the representative? If all must be representa-
tives, who will remain to covenant?’ Filmer 1991, p. 185.
148
De H. (OL II, p. 31).
149
Ibid. (OL II, p. 32).
 aesthetic representation 61

working as effective sensory stimuli, bring into consciousness from

memory similar stored images. It is only in the light of this experienced
resemblance that the marks on the canvas are made significant, and
become recognisable as that which they are intended to represent.150
To use Richard Wollheim’s apt formulation, to grasp representational
meaning is not so much a matter of seeing as a matter of ‘seeing-in’.
This is because ‘whenever we see something in a surface, this is in
part because of a resemblance that we experience between it and the
something else’.151 This is exactly how Hobbes describes our aesthetic
experience of a perspective painting. Properly speaking, he explains,
the viewers ‘do not see or sense the plane, but the things themselves,
which the painter imitates, are recalled to their sight’.152 Perspective art
is designed to present forms for perception that activate and keep alive
the viewer’s memory of objects directly experienced at some time past.
It is therefore thanks to memory that the transition is made from the
perception of bare forms to the conception of significant ones.153
It should by now be apparent that the pivotal contention of Hobbes’s
discussion of perspective is that it calls for an act of ‘double seeing’,
in which two distinguishable, but intimately interconnected, kinds of
‘fancy’ are involved.154 This is nowhere more forcefully expressed than
in Hobbes’s English Optical Treatise, where he writes:
So that when wee behold a perspectiue and acknowledge nott anything
it represents butt it Selfe, then is ye fancie of ye beholder, vision, namely
ye vision of ye plaine, Butt when wee conceyve by it a Gallery, Landskip

150
This refers us back to Hobbes’s account of sense perception, whereby there can-
not be perception without judgement, that is, without comparison of perceptual ideas,
which enables us to evaluate their (dis)similarity. This comparison presupposes, in its
turn, memory or the storage of ideas previously received from the senses. See De C.
(OL I, p. 320).
151
Wollheim 1998, p. 222.
152
De H. (OL II, p. 39). Hobbes had held exactly the same view in his English Opti-
cal Treatise, where he writes that ‘when we have in memory ye Originalls wch they are
made to represent, ye plaine it self is not (to speake properly) seene, butt ye Originall
remembred, and ye memory thereof mayntained by ye proportions of ye lines drawne’.
BL MS Harl. 3360, fols. 114v–115r.
153
Ibid., p. 39. Hobbes’s insistence on the idea that the good judge of perspec-
tive images, as well as the best painter, must have a well-stocked imagination brings
to mind Quintilian’s claim that the orator who will show the greatest power in the
expression of emotion is he who has a well-stocked imagination. See Quintilian 2001,
vol. III, 6.2.29.
154
In effect, sense perception and memory are not, in Hobbes’s view, two different
faculties. Hobbes 1996, p. 16. To remember is thus nothing other than to perceive that
one has perceived: ‘sentire se sensisse, meminisse est’. De C. (OL I, p. 317).
62 chapter one

or other thing represented by it, then is ye fancy of the beholder to bee

called memorie, though that memorie bee raised and confirmed by the
lines drawne on ye plaine.155
Drawing on Hobbes’s English Optical Treatise, Noel Malcolm has
argued that, for Hobbes, to experience the illusion of representation
‘is never to be entirely a victim of it’, as illusion ‘works by enlisting our
cooperation’.156 It is true—as we have seen—that the onlooker must
meet certain pre-conditions for a successful illusion of optical real-
ity to be produced upon him. Namely, he has to place himself at the
observation point which is most advantageous for the production of
the illusory effect; to have previously encountered objects like those
being represented; and to be willing to see the painting not only as a
painted surface, but also as that which the painter wanted to make pres-
ent through it. To speak, as Malcolm does, in terms of ‘cooperation’
might seem to imply, however, that the viewer is left with the option
of withdrawing from the illusory effect altogether—that is, that he may
refuse to recruit his stored experience to the reading of the plane. This
hardly ever happens. As Hobbes himself stresses, what happens most
commonly is that ‘ye plaine it self is not (to speak properly) seene,
butt ye Originall remembred, and ye memory thereof mayntained by
ye proportions of ye lines drawne’.157 That is, the geometrical patterns
created by the painter are not so much recognised as they are suf-
fered as external stimuli which bring into the observer’s consciousness
a thought of the object of the perspective-image. And even where the
worlds of the marked surface and of our stock of experience threaten
to diverge, realistic elements can be added to force their merging fur-
ther. For instance, if the painter is to represent a very long gallery by
means of four triangles converging in a vanishing point, he can radi-
cally increase the reality effect of his image ‘if shadows, if men, or if
other surroundings’ are added.158 Then, Hobbes explains, ‘this will also
be a representation somewhat corroborated, as it were, by an increased
number of witnesses’.159 The full capacity to see the actual forms repre-
sented on the canvas (i.e., the four triangles) as well as that which they
are a picture of (i.e., a gallery) seems, therefore, to be reserved to ‘those

155
BL MS Harl. 3360, fols. 114v–115r.
156
Malcolm 2002, pp. 226–7.
157
BL MS Harl. 3360, fols. 114v–115r.
158
De H. (OL II, p. 35).
159
Ibid.
 aesthetic representation 63

who are accustomed to comparing the appearances of things with their

true figures’, like the painter himself, ‘whose mind perpetually hovers
around objects of that sort’.160 This is because the artist who wishes to
capture the world on a two-dimensional surface is driven to look at the
world in a two-dimensional way: to abstract reality in his mind, and
see the world itself as a picture. But if only a suitably trained observer
can distinguish between the actual shapes drawn in the picture and
the visual appearance, the common observer of a perspective painting
need not, and certainly should not, in Hobbes’s view, be a mere victim
of its illusory effects. For not unlike the metaphor which professes its
own inconsistency, conventional perspective painting marks itself off
as an object—an artefact, while seeking to simulate nature realistically.
Its representational nature is apparent.

Curious Perspective
Perspective was designed to produce such a perfect fit between visual
appearances and reality that one could be easily taken for the other.
But if linear perspective achieved this by generating illusions of spa-
tial depth, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a new
kind of perspective flourished that tricked the eyes through a radical
distortion of linear perspective. In this distorted perspective, appear-
ances and reality were deliberately set apart, and the normal sequence
of perception of an artwork reversed. If in conventional painting the
recognition of what is being represented precedes the (possible) con-
sideration of the processes and forms employed by the artist, in dis-
torted perspective the view of the unintelligible or of the painting’s
component parts precedes the comprehension of what they are meant
to represent.161 Visual delusion is augmented to such an extent that
the awareness of deception becomes central to the onlooker’s experi-
ence. This ingenious new process of simultaneous image-making and
image-breaking is ‘anamorphosis’, from the Greek ana (again) and

160
Ibid., p. 33. This means that though the appreciation of perspectival art is, to a
large extent, the exact reversal of its creation, the processes differ in that the former is
largely an unconscious process, whereas the latter is a conscious one.
161
The word ‘anamorphosis’ made its appearance in the seventeenth century, but
deceptive perspective was already known before that. The groundbreaking modern
discussion of the phenomenon of anamorphic art is Baltrušaitis 1976, but Leeman
1976 is also worth consulting.
64 chapter one

morphe (form), that ‘curious kind of perspective’162 to which Hobbes

refers expressly in his Answer to Sir William Davenant’s Preface before
Gondibert.163
Typically, in anamorphosis, the onlooker is confronted with strange
pictorial compositions, which, when seen from the viewing angle at
which the rules of linear perspective lead him to expect definition,
present a confusion of meaningless forms, but when observed from
an unconventional angle show him an intelligible figure. As Hobbes
explains, ‘the object itself appears as something unfinished and
deformed, unless the eye has been placed at a certain point; but at
that point it seems what the painter wanted to appear’.164 Ambivalent
by nature, anamorphic pictures have to be entertained in two ways:
as pictures which, rightly gazed upon, show nothing but confusion
to the senses; and as the perfectly normal images into which the ini-
tial visual puzzle, if seen awry, contracts. To catch a glimpse of this
second, reformed image, the observer has to play an active part, by
moving to the eccentric position from where the secret identity of
the initially unintelligible object is revealed. This requirement should
make him aware of the game of perception he is being asked to play.165
Anamorphoses, like metaphors, are avowedly deceitful. They make no
secret that some optical trick is at work.
Anamorphoses can, however, be of three different types—optic,
catoptric and dioptric, each requiring a different degree of collabora-
tion from the spectator in the re-formation of the picture. For if optic
anamorphoses rely on direct vision, the catoptric and dioptric ones
depend on correcting devices, mirrors or lenses respectively. Therefore
in optic anamorphosis the spectator has to move from one place to

162
Hobbes 1971b, p. 55. The expression is clearly derived from Jean François
Niceron, a Parisian of the Order of the Minims, who published in 1638 a work on
anamorphic perspective, entitled La Perspective Curieuse (Niceron 1652). This was fol-
lowed by an expanded Latin version, published in 1646, after Niceron’s death, under
the suggestive title of Thaumaturgus opticus. In the final lines of chapter 4 of De Hom-
ine, Hobbes refers expressly to the anamorphic wall-painting of St John the Apostle
displayed by Niceron at the Parisian Convent of the Minim Friars. See De H. (OL II,
p. 39). Besides Niceron, there were two other main French scholars of perspective,
Salomon de Caus and Fr. Emmanuel Maignan, to whom I referred earlier in this
chapter, in connection with the mystery of transubstantiation.
163
For Noel Malcolm’s excellent analysis of the significance of anamorphosis for
Hobbes’s theory of representation, see Malcolm 2002, pp. 200–35.
164
De H. (OL II, p. 39).
165
On the various possible connotations of this notion of ‘eccentric’ observer, see
Collins 1992.
 aesthetic representation 65

another to experience the distorted and the corrected images, but in

catoptric dislocation is unnecessary, as the optical device shifts per-
spective by reflection. The replacement of the visual angle by the angle
of reflection was of great import, as it brought the experiences of dis-
tortion and resolution closer together, causing well-defined figures to
grow out of a confused tangle in the twinkling of an eye.166 Unsurpris-
ingly, catoptric anamorphosis became the epitome of creative percep-
tion, of perception that creates its own objects, as well as a symbol of
pictorial wit, whose only contemporary rival was the literary wit of the
ingenious metaphor, advocated by theorists such as Emanuele Tesauro.
Whereas Niceron, the chief theorist of anamorphosis, warned against
its naive conflation with witchery or diabolical magic, Tesauro, the
foremost theorist of ingenious metaphor, compared the human ability
to produce metaphors to the creative action of God, and metaphorical
effects to the marvels of theatre.167 By creating their own visual mar-
vels, natural philosophers and poets emulated God’s work of creation.
On the whole, both art forms evinced a new conception of the art-
ist as he who transforms, rather than merely imitates, nature, and of
how human wit could produce artworks of a paradoxical acuteness,
responsible for two concurrent effects: excitement by their strange-
ness and seeming inadequacy; delight by their illusory resolution in a
meaningful image, or in a set of unforeseen correspondences between
objects.168
Thanks to its aspiration to go beyond the reproduction of nature,
Hobbes believed anamorphic art to require collaboration between
the artist and the philosopher, notably the optical geometer.169 Such
partnership was of especial importance in the construction of dioptric

166
Baltrušaitis 1977, p. 193.
167
‘Just as God produces what is from what is not, so the genius of a non-being
makes a being, turns the lion into a man and the eagle into a city, grafts a female on
to a fish and creates a siren as symbol of the flatterer.’ Tesauro 1670, p. 82. Tesau-
ro’s baroque theory of metaphor can be found in his influential work Il cannocchiale
Aristotelico (1654), an impressive compendium where rhetorical figures, conceits and
verbal tricks are placed side by side with their equivalents in painting and sculpture,
as well as with the sudden reversals and never-before-seen sights of theatre. Interest-
ing studies of ingenious metaphor can be found in Proctor 1973, as well as in Mazzeo
1964, pp. 29–43, to whom I am particularly indebted.
168
This parallel between pictorial and literary wit, or, more precisely, between the
effects produced by ingenious metaphor and anamorphic art, has been previously
noticed in Gilman 1978 and Malcolm 2002, p. 205.
169
De H. (OL II, p. 39).
66 chapter one

anamorphoses, the type of anamorphosis specifically mentioned in

Hobbes’s works, as these resort to a sophisticated correcting opti-
cal device, depicted in contemporary treatises, such as Jean François
Niceron’s Perspective Curieuse (1638) and Jean Dubreuil’s Perspective
Pratique (1640–9).170 This, Hobbes explains, consists in a ‘short hol-
low pipe’, which is placed at a certain distance from the plane, and
at whose end is located a diamond-shaped refractive lens.171 As light
traverses the pipe towards the plane, a pattern is projected on it, which
follows the exact geometry of the lens. That discontinuous pattern is
then outlined and filled in with figures that lie open to observation.
Despite often showing a confused appearance on their own, these are
conceived with a view to their resolution in the unified master-image
the painter wants to make appear before the viewer when the image is
seen through the pipe. The idea behind the optical device is to represent
a mass of discrete objects as if one. They are but subordinate phantom
parts artificially reunited in an effect that is greater than that they can
achieve on their own. It is no surprise that Hobbes should have seen
the problem of political representation—how to make a multitude see
itself as a singular thing—as having been artfully cracked by this new
form of optical representation. He had found his way to ‘image’ the
modern representative state.
One of the reasons why anamorphoses exercised such a great fas-
cination over scholars and amateurs alike was that the science of per-
spective was being employed to rival nature by producing a marvel
of art.172 At the same time as it bewildered by its illusory properties,
anamorphic art also offered the perfect example of the ways seeming

170
Niceron proposes that dioptric anamorphosis be used to represent a classical
tale of dismemberment that, in all its political symbolism, was of particular interest
to Hobbes: Medea chopping up and magically reincorporating her brother Absyrtus.
See Niceron 1652, p. 190. Jean Dubreuil’s Perspective Pratique (1640, 1647 and 1649)
includes a schematic representation of the dioptric device. A clarifying short explana-
tion of its workings can be found in Gilman 1978, pp. 47–9. For a fuller account of
the various types of anamorphoses and of how Hobbes may have got to know at least
one filled with political content see Malcolm 2002, pp. 200–22. For Hobbes’s explicit
mention of Niceron’s anamorphic mural of St John at the Parisian Minim convent,
see De H. (OL II, p. 39).
171
Hobbes 1971b, p. 55.
172
This is clear from Niceron’s explanation of why he used the expression ‘curious
perspective’ to refer to anamporhosis: ‘Or j’ay donné çe nom de perspective curieuse,
à cette science, quoy qu’elle mesle l’utile avec le delectable. Ie la nomme aussi MAGIE
ARTIFICIELLE’, which, he adds, is ‘celle qui produit les plus admirable effects de
l’industrie des hommes’. Niceron 1652, pp. 5–6.
 aesthetic representation 67

supernatural marvels could be reproduced by rational art, and human

perception manipulated by human industry. This meant that it could
be profitably used for educational purposes, to expose illusions in the
visual world, undo notions of a direct correspondence between image
and object, and instruct men in the rational principles underlying the
optical tricks with which charlatans and priests continued to abuse
them.173 In short, they were devices of iconoclasm. To Hobbes’s delight,
optical representation was a powerful weapon in the much-needed
reformation of our ways of seeing: it disclosed apparitions, sceptres,
ghosts and other such supernatural marvels as nothing but clever opti-
cal tricks played on us either by nature or by human artifice.174
Another asset of anamorphosis was that it lent itself to being filled
up with various types of imagery, from the illicit and subversive to
more conventional religious and political iconography.175 Their abil-
ity to allow disintegrated pictures of a seemingly chaotic many con-
verge by optical rays into a larger one was pregnant with symbolism.
Hence, it is not surprising that its foremost practitioners, Catholic
priests, chose to have their initial visual riddle resolved in the pic-
torial representation of religious themes, from the Eucharist and the
saints to royal figures symbolising Christian victory over the infidel.
One such figure, representing the submission of the Ottoman Empire
to the French king Louis XIII, was constructed by Niceron himself,
and almost certainly seen by Hobbes in the library of the Minim con-
vent on the Place Royale.176 Another, with no such explicit political
content, but representing noble descent, was observed by the royalist
Sir Richard Fanshawe, who in the preface to his 1647 translation of
Guarini’s play Il Pastor Fido addresses Prince Charles with a political
allegory suggested to him by the sight of anamorphosis. The visual
counterpart of Fanshawe’s allegory could well have been Hobbes’s and

173
Ibid., p. 147.
174
See Clark 2003.
175
Since dioptric-anamorphic images were hidden images, and only to be seen
briefly through some kind of pipe or ‘key-hole’, they lent themselves to being filled
with taboo images, images that their author would not dare to represent otherwise.
This subversive aspect of anamorphosis is discussed in Collins 1992.
176
During his stay in Paris, Hobbes was a regular visitor at the convent, where Marin
Mersenne, his main scientific interlocutor, lived. Hobbes may also have met Niceron
personally. For a description of the figure Hobbes might have seen, see Niceron 1652,
p. 189. Noel Malcolm raises this hypothesis in Malcolm 2002, pp. 217 and 221.
68 chapter one

Abraham Bosse’s hand-drawn version of the frontispiece of Leviathan

as presented to Charles II:
Your Hignesse may have seen at Paris a Picture (it is in the Cabinet of
the great Chancellor there) so admirably design’d, that, presenting to the
common beholders a multitude of little faces (the famous Ancestours of
that Noble man); at the same time, to him that looks through a Perspec-
tive (kept there for that purpose) there appears onely a single portrait in
great of the Chancellor himself; the Painter thereby intimating, that in
him alone are contracted the Vertues of all his Progenitors; or perchance
by a more subtile Philosophy demonstrating, how the Body Politick is
composed of many naturall ones; and how each of these, intire in it self,
and consisting of head, eyes, hands, and the like, is a head, an eye, or an
hand in the other: as also, that mens Privates cannot be preserved, if the
Publick be destroyed, no more then those little Pictures could remains
in being, if the great one were defaced: which great one likewise was the
first and chiefest in the Painters designe, and that for which all the rest
where made.177
Roughly three years after the publication of Fanshawe’s preface, Hobbes
published his Answer to Davenant, a short literary essay that foreshad-
ows Leviathan’s theory of political representation in its account of the
optical illusion characteristic of anamorphic art. The capacity of ana-
morphosis to draw on the complementary strengths of the artist and
the philosopher, fancy and judgement, to imitate, even rival nature, by
creating a marvel of art, responsible for producing unity out of mul-
tiplicity, is used by Hobbes as the exact visual translation of his thesis
about the constitutive powers of political representation: ‘A Multitude
of men, are made One Person’ when by ‘one Person, Represented’.178
The political message is, nevertheless, conveyed subliminally, in ways
highly reminiscent of Fanshawe:
I beleeve (Sir) you have seene a curious kind of perspective, where, he
that lookes through a short hollow pipe, upon a picture conteyning
diverse figures, sees none of those that are there paynted, but some one
person made up of their partes, conveighed to the eye by the artificiall
cutting of a glasse. I find in my imagination an effect not unlike it from
your Poeme. The vertues you distribute there amongst so many noble
Persons, represent (in the reading) the image but of one mans vertue to
my fancy, which is your owne; and that so deeply imprinted, as to stay

177
Fanshawe 1964, pp. 3–4.
178
Hobbes 1996, p. 114.
 aesthetic representation 69

for ever there, and governe all the rest of my thoughts and affections in
the way of honouring and serving you, to the utmost of my power.179
Although the compliment is personal, the intent is clearly political.
Let Davenant be replaced by the state, itself a person who by dint
of a stature and strength greater than that of any man disposes all
to obedience, and we would not be far from Hobbes’s purposes. The
running suggestion is that the master-image, which appears in sight
as the diverse figures concatenate through the mediation of the lens
to create one person, could well be that of Leviathan, itself an artificial
man, created out of the contractual coupling of a multitude of natu-
ral persons.180 For Hobbes, the art of politics, like that of anamorphic
painting, consists less in the successful harmonisation of parts than in
their unification in a whole outside which they would have no ordered
mutual relation.181 The production of this ‘reall Unitie’ is a task for
political representation. Like its dioptric counterpart, political repre-
sentation is to be viewed as a kind of theatrical play in two acts, which
awes its spectators with the master-image of might it delivers at the
same time it enlightens them about its purely artefact(ed) nature.182

Conclusion

From Hobbes’s discussion of religious images to civil images, and

from images of metaphor to perspectival art, we have seen a coherent
view of visual representation emerge, which can be encapsulated in
three main points.

179
Hobbes 1971b, p. 55, my emphasis.
180
Noel Malcolm has convincingly argued that this insight might have inspired
the engraved title page of Leviathan, as hinted at by its puzzling original drawing. See
Malcolm 2002, pp. 200–29. The original pen drawing is dated 1651 and differs from
the celebrated engraved version in that the body of Leviathan is made up of heads
facing outwards as would have happened in a dioptric panel, an effect symbolising
how all wills are now contained in the sovereign’s. The visual effect of the heads is
strange, a kind of lumpy mass, resulting from the heads’ intended three-dimensional-
ity, which makes Leviathan appear (quite literally) as a many-headed monster. This
might explain the change to full-body figures of men gazing up towards the head in
the printed version. See pp. xvii and xviii. See also Brown 1978.
181
As Hobbes explains, the problem with analogising the body politic with the
body natural is that of forgetting that, in the former, any coherence between parts
‘depend[s] onely on the Sovereign’ being in place. Hobbes 1996, p. 397.
182
Hobbes 1996, p. 120.
70 chapter one

First, there is the emphasis Hobbes places on representation as

never being simply a state of affairs relating to the characteristics of
the visual object itself, but always a dynamic process, involving people
(craftsmen, artists, handlers) who make a claim about the visual object
standing for and possibly even embodying something or somebody
else, and an audience which agrees or refuses to interact with the object
in the light of that claim. For Hobbes no images tell their own story.
The designs of their creators, the intentions of the image’s handlers
or self-proclaimed representatives, as well as the competency of view-
ers (i.e., the ways they interpret or see meaning, or real presences, in
visuals) are all to be taken into account in our understanding of what
goes on in pictorial representation. His attention to the role of the
beholder—from the contribution made to any representation by the
images stocked in his mind to the hidden assumptions with which he
approaches the images—provides an immediate lesson for representa-
tion in politics. It is not enough for the state to represent its members.
It is equally, if not more, important that it is seen to do so.
Second, there is the stress put on the productive rather than merely
reproductive character of visual representations. Images are not
confined to being descriptive representations, construed as a resem-
blance, or accurate correspondence, of things existing in the world.
Nor is correspondence necessary for making images representational.
Many images represent despite dissembling their objects, thanks to
learned conventions. Instead of being tied to the authority of a pre-
existent ‘represented’, both verbal and pictorial representation create
for Hobbes the very object of representation in taking the decision to
portray it as such and such. Representation can, for instance, confer a
new status upon an object in so far as it is arbitrarily made to stand,
verbally and/or visually, for something else. It can also invest author-
ity in a subject which it did not possess prior to its being represented.
Hobbes’s deep concern over the power of making and disseminating
imagery is linked to its always being in danger of running away with
itself, of becoming an immersive power of passing off things that seem
as things that are, which endangers whatever power the sovereign
may possess. Image technologies were inseparable from the exercise
of authority in the world.
Third, this concern arises because visual representations often suc-
ceed in fabricating their own reality, and are real, in that they take on
an iconic life of their own, capable of holding power over the minds
 aesthetic representation 71

of men and directing their behaviour in ways no less prominent

than existing things or real occurrences. This is why Hobbes thinks
the political solution to the problem of idolatry is not simply to do
away with all icons, but to replace old religious icons, of superstitious
invention, with a reformed political one, founded on the teachings of
his new science of politics.183 To put it differently, Hobbes’s reformed
politics seeks to appropriate pictorial representation as its own, and
to command the public sphere of visibility, while at the same time it
defines the terms of what constitutes acceptable pictorial representa-
tion under the Leviathan state.
From Hobbes’s analysis of different types of images surfaces the idea
that there is a paradoxical dualism underlying visual representation. A
visual representation must simultaneously be like and not be like its
object. This should not surprise us since the literal meaning of repre-
sentation, the making of something present which is not literally so,
implies a simultaneous presence and absence, a re-presentation and
re-presentation, an identity and a difference, the act of doing as if this
thing that is other were now here and the same. The effectiveness of a
visual representation depends exactly on this ability to ensure the illu-
sion of an actual presence, which leads the spectator to take pleasure
in, or make connection with, the visual experience.
Hobbes sees this capacity to bring things to our presence as an inte-
gral part of all visual representation. But he also wants to distinguish
between two contrasting ways of producing it. On the one hand, there
are those representations which conceal their own representational
character, so that they may be passed off as real presences. This con-
cealment is deliberately exploited so that when X represents Y, X is
seen not only as Y, but as actually being Y. In other words, there is
a making present of Y which implies that Y is literally present, or
embodies, in the representative object X, whose artefactual nature is
masked. This encourages a delusional type of ‘double seeing’ whereby
representations are taken for real presences, and fool common men
into ‘seeing’ imagery as presences of a supernatural kind, of which they
must stand in awe given the alleged capacity of the ghostly to exercise
an unlimited power over their lives. Of this type are, for Hobbes, most
of the visual representations manipulated by clerics, who empower

183
See Schaffer 2002.
72 chapter one

themselves by pretending special access to these images, which they

present as inhabited by phantoms, spooks or ethereal spirits.
Not all fiction of presence need be delusional, however, and ‘make
men see double’ in the hope they come to ‘mistake their Lawfull
Soveraign’.184 There are also representations which profess their own
representational nature, openly reveal the artifice on which they rely,
and solicit the cooperation of the viewer—his willingness to see X as
Y, in the as-if sense of ‘see as’—to produce their expected reality effect.
This second type of representation, in which the spectator is called to
deploy both fancy and judgement to engage in a rehabilitated kind of
‘double seeing’, whereby he sees the image as both like and not like its
object, as both the imaged thing (reality) and that thing in representa-
tion only (artefact), is the one Hobbes takes up when he seeks to give
imagery to the representative state.
With its projection of two perspective planes within one viewing
space, anamorphic art offered the perfect template for the twofold per-
ceptual experience Hobbes thought to be invited by most non-idola-
trous imagistic representations as well as by representation in politics.
The formal resemblance between anamorphosis and Hobbes’s theory
of political representation is conspicuous. Anamorphosis showed how
rational art could produce the illusory effects of optics commonly
associated with works of natural, or even supernatural, magic. It made
it apparent that ‘by the Art of man’ nature could be so successfully
re-created that men could eventually come to surpass nature by pro-
ducing their own marvels, including that ‘Artificiall Man’ into which
Hobbes makes us morph.185 What is more, in ‘magic’ anamorphic pic-
tures an alternate image is embedded within a single image, so that
what looks deformed, or confusingly multiple, from one point of view,
can be seen as forming again, into one single picture, from another
angle, or by a shift of perspective caused by an optical device. Simi-
larly, political representation shows us how plurality can be co-present
with unity; that is, how the many (the multitude) can be seen as one
unified entity in its own right (a state), of which they remain, however,
the real elements.186 Also, anamorphosis posits the resolved ‘picture’,
representing many images as one, as something patently artefactual,

184
Hobbes 1996, p. 248.
185
Ibid., p. 9.
186
See Malcolm 2002, p. 228.
 aesthetic representation 73

and the transition from visual confusion to visual clarity entails an era-
sure of the distance between subject and object, and the almost literal
absorption of the viewer into the picture itself.187 Likewise, Leviathan is
presented by Hobbes as an artificial political construction inside which
we find nothing but ourselves. For not only is the state made by our
coming together, but also when it is represented on our authority we
are inescapably present in whatever it does.
In the many figures of which the torso of Leviathan is made up,
we see ourselves as both setting up and constituting the state whose
very being and power appear as deriving from the anamorphic syn-
thesis of our own power and being. But at exactly the same time as
we are made to see the state as our invention, we are confronted with
Leviathan’s imposing gigantism, which makes it look far greater, and
infinitely more powerful, than the mere adding up of parts. The very
possibility of the Leviathan state being enacted into being depends on
our capacity to entertain both these images—of the state as human
artifice and of the state as terrifying external presence—within one
and the same view.188
The aesthetics of anamorphosis, with its playful, quasi-magical,
double act of distortion and resolution, bears a strong resemblance
to the marvels of the theatre, where the audience is similarly asked
to entertain two ‘views’ simultaneously and leave them in an unre-
solved paradoxical tension, to see the play as real action and as dra-
matic recreation concurrently. My purpose in Chapter 2 is to show
that Hobbes’s commitment to emulating the theatrical effect of ana-
morphosis in his imaging of the representative state attests to his
understanding of theatricality as a self-generating source of politi-
cal power, whose awe-inspiring visibility is a condition of its being
believed and producing its representational effects. The theatre is the
place for visibility par excellence. It is intimately connected with the
act of making visible, of making things appear publicly, of represent-
ing in public. Etymologically, the word ‘theatre’ is related to sight, as
the Greek theatron, literally ‘place for viewing’, derives from the verb
theasthai, ‘to behold’. Hobbes, who also treats representation as an
ocular concept, viewed representational politics as exactly one such
spectacle of sight in which the deployment of a convincing dramaturgy

187
See Massey 1997.
188
See Malcolm 2002, p. 228 and Schaffer 2005, p. 202.
74 chapter one

of power—capable of uspending judgement, eliciting awe and produc-

ing strong public–stage identification—is one of the most important
determinants of the success of the performance, as measured by its
potential to create the conditions for an everyday social performance
of order. I will now turn to the significance of Hobbes’s tracing of the
roots of the self and political representation to the world of theatre.
 CHAPTER TWO

DRAMATIC REPRESENTATION

Person, is the same that an Actor is, both on the

Stage and in common conversation.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

Introduction: Hobbes and the Theatre

In his Brief Lives, Aubrey tells us that, before turning to his translation
of Thucydides, published in 1629, Hobbes ‘spent two years in reading
romances and playes, which he has often repented and sayd that these
two yeares were lost of him’.1 Typical of someone who outspokenly
praised the reading ‘of Men’ over that ‘of Books’, and who system-
atically obliterated the traces of his own sources, Hobbes’s derogatory
remark should, as Aubrey himself notes, be treated with caution and
as an invitation to further inspection. It would, however, be a mis-
take to conclude with Aubrey that all such literary pursuits might have
done is to ‘furnish [Hobbes] with copy of words’.2 For even a super-
ficial examination of Hobbes’s authorship would suffice to show that
theatre and literary fiction play a more important role in his thought
than Aubrey’s account would suggest.
Hobbes’s use of Medea is a case in point. In his verse Vita Hobbes
recollects that in the course of the 1620s he immersed himself in the
greatest ancient poets and dramatists, explicitly listing Horace, Virgil,
Homer, Sophocles, Plautus, Aristophanes and Euripides.3 Hobbes’s
acquaintance with Euripides was longstanding. In his adolescence
he had produced a Latin translation of Euripides’ Medea, which he
presented to his schoolmaster, Robert Latimer, on his departure

1
Aubrey 1898, I, p. 361.
2
Ibid.
3
Vita (OL I, p. lxxxviii, lines 77–8). To this list could be added Aeschylus, whose
Agamemnon found its way into Hobbes’s De Homine, and whose interest in the legend
of Prometheus was entirely shared by Hobbes.
76 chapter two

for the University of Oxford.4 But there could be no better proof of

Hobbes’s lasting attachment to that play than the recurring appear-
ance of Medea in his three main political works.5 In all of them Medea
figures prominently as a tale of dismemberment and delusions of
re-incorporation, which serves as the literary counterpart of the disso-
lution of civil commonwealths at the hands of dissenting factions. Self-
proclaimed reformers are, for Hobbes, fittingly to be compared to the
foolish daughters of Pelias, who, desirous of restoring their decrepit
father to youth, did not hesitate to cut him in pieces and boil him in a
cauldron. As to the revengeful Medea, upon whose advice they acted,
she emerges in Hobbes’s recounting of the tale as the personification
of the subversive powers of eloquence, whereby commonwealths too
are torn into pieces, ‘upon pretence or hope of reformation’.6
More than just a tale of murder and personal revenge, Medea epito-
mises for Hobbes a stark political lesson. And it is precisely for this
reason that it is of value to him. The lesson is easily summarised.
Rebellious subjects, as Hobbes’s fierce critic, Bishop John Bramhall,
mordantly predicted, may well succumb to the temptation of ‘tear[ing]
their Mortal God to pieces with their teeth and entomb[ing] his Sover-
eignty in their bowels’.7 But in so doing they will soon realise that they
have jeopardised the very end that their incorporation in the person of
the commonwealth was designed to serve.
Apart from his interest in classical plays as illustrations of his politi-
cal arguments, Hobbes had more direct ties to the world of theatre.
One was through his friendship with Ben Jonson, one of the greatest
playwrights of his time, and William Davenant, successor to Jonson as
poet laureate, and himself a prolific writer of masques and plays.8 The
other came through the borrowing of Hobbesian ideas, particularly

4
Aubrey 1898, I, pp. 328–9.
5
Hobbes 1969b, p. 178, 1998, pp. 140–1 and 1996, p. 234.
6
Hobbes 1969b, p. 178.
7
Bramhall 1844b, p. 597. Bramhall parodies Hobbes’s account of Medea in the
opening of the The Catching of Leviathan: ‘Greenland fishers [. . .] draw this formida-
ble creature to the shore, or to their ship, and slice him in pieces, and boil him in a
cauldron, and turn him up in oil.’ Ibid., p. 518.
8
To these two major names can be added that of Margaret Cavendish, Mar-
chioness of Newcastle, whose volume of comedies and tragedies, Playes written by
the thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Prince, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle
(1662), received Hobbes’s diligent praise. Hobbes 1994, p. 524. On Margaret Caven-
dish’s tendency to expand the category of theatre so that all human action becomes
representation, see Wiseman 1998, pp. 91–110.
 dramatic representation 77

his insights into human nature, by contemporary playwrights, among

them John Dryden, who admitted to Aubrey that he made regular
use of Hobbes’s doctrines in his plays.9 This intellectual exchange with
contemporary theatre seems, none the less, to have been one-sided,
given its notorious absence from the published evidence of Hobbes’s
life and work.10 Although Hobbes lived long enough to have attended
theatrical productions of Shakespeare’s plays, both during the play-
wright’s own lifetime and during the theatrical renaissance of the Res-
toration, there is no record that he did so, and, more importantly, not
a single line of the works of the brilliant generation of Elizabethan and
Jacobean playwrights passed into Hobbes’s texts.
This eclipse of contemporary theatre from Hobbes’s works stands,
however, in marked contrast with the strong presence of the theatre
metaphor. It is as if he were less interested in theatre tout court than in
the ways that theatre leaves the safety of the playhouse to trespass on
life. This interest plays itself out in the context of Hobbes’s discussion
of persons, both natural and artificial; in his analysis of Don Quixote’s
‘Learned madnesse’ and vainglory as its real-life counterpart; in his for-
mulation of the mechanisms of the construction of power, sovereign
and other; in his examination of different forms of crowd behaviour,
including those prompted by religious worship, theatrical possession
and madness. All of these discussions, as I seek to show, hinge upon
a common critical idea: the idea of theatricality as an essential mode
of almost all forms of human behaviour: social and political, as well
as aesthetic.
This is worth stressing, if only because commentators have usually
rushed to follow Hobbes in pursuing the concept of representation
from theatre to law-court, and from law-court to state. In so doing,
they have come to concentrate on the Roman legal use of persona
as a fundamental fact of law: that is, as the ability to be the reposi-
tory of rights and responsibilities, and enter legal standard relations,
which Hobbes certainly takes up, with a view to conceptualising the

9
Aubrey 1898, I, p. 372. Hobbesian themes can be found, for instance, in Dryden’s
The Conquest of Granada (1672), Tyrannic Love (1670) and Absalom and Achitopel
(1681). The comedies of William Wycherley, especially The Country Wife (1675),
George Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676) and William Congreve’s The Way of the
World (1700) also echo Hobbes’s ideas.
10
Hobbes’s biographer, A. L. Martinich, has put forward the suggestion that a bur-
lesque Hobbes might have been played by Hobbes himself on the occasion of the
performance of Ben Jonson’s masque Love’s Welcome at Welbeck before Charles I, at
Welbeck Abbey, in 1633. See Martinich 1998.
78 chapter two

personality of the state (as we shall see in Chapter 3). In this chapter,
however, I want to pause to examine another, more overlooked, aspect
of Hobbes’s account of human personhood, namely his use of the con-
cept of persona in its more basic sense, to mean an actor, or a player of
social roles, who must engage in a kind of theatrical self-presentation,
both simulative and dissimulative, to navigate the gap between private
subjectivity and public performance. If persons are, as Hobbes claims
in Leviathan, outward appearances placed in the theatrical sight of
others, this is the place to determine to what extent his emphasis on
the visibility and the theatricality of human personality connects to the
idea that the successful conduct of ordinary social life may depend on
the offstage equivalent of the theatrical practice of wearing masks to
fit roles, and the type of sustained sociability that is likely to well up
in the protective distance those masks create.11

The Man and the Person

In his introduction to Leviathan, Hobbes tells us that man plays a dual

role in the commonwealth. To use Hobbes’s own words, man is both
‘the Matter thereof, and the Artificer’.12 More concretely, man as artifi-
cer is responsible for unifying man as matter. For if men can compose
with their natural bodies the body of the Leviathan, only men in their
capacity as persons can give themselves in representation, and create
yet another person, the person of the state. Although Hobbes does
not explicitly work out the underlying distinction between man and
person, his theory of personhood undoubtedly requires that the terms
should not be taken as interchangeable. To begin with, if almost with-
out exception a natural person is a man, not every man is, in Hobbes’s
classification, a natural person.13 Even where the designations ‘man’

11
My reading of Hobbes therefore differs radically from the one offered recently
by Paul Kottman, for whom ‘what defines personhood for Hobbes is precisely the
opposite of the early modern commonplace that equates selfhood with “self-fashion-
ing”, with dissimulation or with wearing a mask’, and according to whom ‘being a
political subject has nothing to do with theatrically “fashioning” one’s identity, much
less with displaying oneself publicly through dramatic or stylized performances’. Kott-
man 2008, p. 72.
12
Hobbes 1996, p. 10.
13
The only exception is, of course, God, who, in Hobbes’s taxonomy, is also a
natural person.
 dramatic representation 79

and ‘person’ are rightly to be applied to one and the same individual,
they necessarily refer to different aspects of him.
Let us consider first the range of reference of ‘man’. ‘Figure, quan-
tity, motion, sense, reason, [passion] and the like’ are, according to
Hobbes, the defining parts of the nature of man.14 Yet it seems that
for a being to qualify as ‘man’ he need not have the full use of reason,
only some potential for it. Children, for instance, ‘are not endued with
Reason at all, till they have attained the use of Speech: but are called
Reasonable Creatures, for the possibility apparent of having the use
of Reason in time to come’.15 As for ‘Mad-men’, as the term by itself
implies, they are equally men, not least because they may ‘recover the
use of Reason’, after its temporary curtailment by the unbridled work-
ings of an overwhelming passion.16 Normally sober and right-minded
men can be suddenly crazed by some unusually strong impression or
hurt upon their organs; just as they can be cured of their madness by
the withdrawal of those exceptional circumstances.
Hence madmen appear, in Hobbes’s texts, not as men deprived of
intellectual faculties, but rather as those who, by the violence of their
passions, or any other such disturbance, take their fancies for truths,
and make what are often the right inferences from distorted first
premises. In so doing, they give proof of lacking the soundness and
reliability of behaviour that would be needed for them to govern their
affairs, but not of being entirely destitute of the faculty of rational cal-
culation. Such is, for instance, the case even of those eccentric lunatics
who, ‘imagin[ing] themselves brittle as glass’, make the right deduc-
tion, and respond to their (causeless) fear by using the caution that
would be necessary to preserve their (supposedly) fragile bodies;17 or
that of the man in Bedlam (London’s asylum) who, fancying himself
‘God the Father’, adopts the kind of behaviour fitting to his persona,
and entertains his interlocutor with nothing other than a captivating
‘sober discourse’.18 That madmen can transform their ideas into rea-
sonable speech and understand ideas that were put together in speech
by others is even more strikingly shown by Hobbes’s reference to the
category of learned madness, which typically befalls avid readers of

14
De C. (OL I, p. 60).
15
Hobbes 1996, p. 36.
16
Ibid., p. 113.
17
Hobbes 1969b, p. 53. See also Locke 1975, p. 161.
18
Hobbes 1996, p. 55.
80 chapter two

romances.19 In sum, Hobbes’s madmen are not entirely devoid of rea-

soning, but this is of little value when they are led astray by the force of
an overwhelming passion or the sway of an unrestrained imagination.
The situation is different with idiots or ‘naturall fooles’, whose
faculty of rational calculation can be so severely impaired that they
may be rightly said to be destitute of reason. At the extreme negative
edge of the vast spectrum of madmen, halfwits and fools lie cases like
that of the fool who, being incapable of using words to register his
thoughts, ‘could never learn by heart the order of numerall words,
as one, two, and three, may observe every stroak of the Clock, and
nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can never know what houre it
strikes’.20 In his incapacity for abstract reasoning this natural fool is
not unlike the brute beast that loses her offspring for ‘want of those
names of order, one, two, three, &c., which we call number’.21 Were
he able to reproduce, by heart, the order of numbers, he would not
yet differ from a parrot, which names unknowingly, by mechanically
repeating the sound of words to which no conception corresponds
in its mind.22 There is thence a marked contrast between, on the one
hand, the capacity to reason inscribed in the sound child and the dis-
turbed but partially operative reason of madmen and, on the other, the
want of reasoning exhibited, from birth, by natural fools. These fools,
if extremely handicapped, may have no more reason than brute beasts.
From this it follows that if they are still to be called men it must be
simply because we recognise something of our own figure and motion
in them.23 When, however, ‘upon the occasion of some strange and
deformed birth’, not even a human shape is recognisable in any such
creature, the question of ‘whether the same be a man or no’ is to be
settled by the state.24 The outermost limits of human kind are subject
to sovereign determination.

19
Hobbes 1969b, p. 52.
20
Hobbes 1996, p. 27.
21
Hobbes 1969b, p. 19.
22
Hobbes 1969b, p. 25.
23
Despite insistently singling out the use of speech and, more specifically, the use
of universal names as signs of general conceptions in contexture as the distinctive trait
of man, he does at times refer to our conception of man ‘as [simply] shape or motion’.
Hobbes 1969b, p. 18.
24
Ibid., p. 189.
 dramatic representation 81

But if there may be reasons to question the placement of fools

amongst what Hobbes calls ‘reasonable living bodies’,25 there is no
doubt that fools are, for Hobbes, to be placed alongside madmen and
children when considering their position with respect to moral and
legal matters. This is because none of them is, by his definition, a nat-
ural person. Rationality, understood as an ability to understand the
consequences of one’s own and another’s actions, together with the
resultant capacity for assuming legal and moral responsibility for one-
self, is, according to Hobbes, an irreducible condition of personhood.26
None of these normative criteria of personhood is met by the beings of
our triad, whose use of reason is, as we have seen, not actual but at best
potential or intermittent. They are therefore non-persons, lacking the
ability to enter into any covenant, including that instituting the com-
monwealth. Their access to the world of legal interaction is conditional
on their being represented. As Hobbes himself explains,
Over naturall fooles, children, or mad-men there is no Law, no more
than over brute beasts; nor are they capable of the title of just, or unjust;
because they had never power to make any covenant, or to understand
the consequences thereof; and consequently never took upon them to
authorise the actions of any Soveraign, as they must do that make them-
selves a Common-wealth.27
In other words, natural fools, children and madmen add to the mat-
ter of a commonwealth, but can neither author it nor be subject to its
laws. This is because they cannot be considered as capable of under-
standing and taking upon themselves the responsibilities ensuing from
the creation of their identity, both individual and collective, in the
world. As Hobbes explains, ‘A PERSON, is he, whose words or actions
are considered, either as his own [and then he is a natural person] or as
representing the words or actions of an other [and then he is an artificial
person or someone’s representative].’28 Such a capacity to play roles
validly for oneself or others is premised on sufficient use of reason,
and cannot be ascribed to men who are permanently or temporarily
incompetent to manage their personal affairs.

25
The distinction Hobbes makes here between reasonable and rational is analogous
to that between potential and actual.
26
For a discussion of the conditions of personhood in modern thinking see Den-
nett 1976.
27
Hobbes 1996, p. 187.
28
Ibid., p. 111.
82 chapter two

It should be clear by now how, in Hobbes, men differ from persons.

But here I am less interested in Hobbes’s legal concept of natural per-
sonality as the capacity to take personal responsibility for things said
and done (which will occupy me in Chapter 3) than in his underlying
concept of personhood as a social play of roles. As he makes clear in
chapter 16 of Leviathan—a pivotal chapter, which marks the transi-
tion from his discussion of man to his discussion of persons—persons
are primarily defined by their ability to act, or play roles, which will
on occasion, but not always, take a legal nature. In other words, in
Hobbes’s characterisation, persons are theatrical fictions before they
are legal ones.
This leads Hobbes straight to the definition of yet another area of
potential mismatch between the man and the person. For if not all
men are persons, Hobbes is also adamant that one and the same man
can be many different persons, according to the various social roles
he plays for himself or indeed according to the various roles he has
others play on his behalf.29 To illustrate his point, Hobbes turns to the
Ciceronian example of a forensic orator, Antonius, preparing himself
for a court trial by playing his own person against the persons of his
adversary and the judge.30 Antonius, Hobbes explains, is here one man
but three persons, and his private performance symptomatic of man’s
protean ability to change and move between different personages. This
ability can serve the illusory representation of others in a private set-
ting protected from the public gaze. But it can equally manifest itself in
the public impersonation of multiple facets of oneself as one performs
different social roles in response to changing social expectations. The
resulting image of one man unfolding himself in multiple, albeit ide-
ally related, personages foreshadows the self-conscious theatrical terms
in which Hobbes conceives of the self in its relationship to society. To
cite Shakespeare’s line in As You Like It: ‘All the world’s a stage’, and
this is true for Hobbes even of those less aware of living under the
theatrical gaze of others.31

29
This second possibility derives from Hobbes’s definition of ‘person’ as ‘he that is
Represented, as often as he is Represented’, in chapter 42 of Leviathan. Hobbes 1996,
p. 339.
30
Ibid., p. 112.
31
The familiarity, if not triviality, of the theatrum mundi image at the time Hob-
bes is writing can be inferred from its jocose appearance in the works of Shakespeare
and Cervantes, amongst others. Abundant expression of this topos can be also found
in Cicero, from whom Hobbes explicitly quotes at this juncture. See, for instance,
 dramatic representation 83

The World as Stage

This is not to say that the centrality of theatricality to the construc-

tion of successful social and political agency in Hobbes is generally
accepted. The tendency amongst his commentators has been rather to
de-theatricalise role-playing and recast it as naked instrumental ratio-
nal conduct, as though theatricality and rationality were, for Hobbes,
necessarily in opposition to one another. Some have gone as far as to
maintain that his work is characterised by ‘a radical disavowal of the
dramatic character of human life and interaction’, while others have
placed him amongst the anti-theatricalists of his time.32 This is the case
with Jonas Barish. In his influential work The Antitheatrical Prejudice
(1981), Barish aligns Hobbes with the Puritan attack on the stage and
all forms of theatrical social behaviour, to which, Barish claims, the
Puritans allowed no role in the ordered life of society at large.33 He
believes that much to be evidenced by the language Hobbes employs.
Hobbes’s distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’ person,
Barish claims, marks the boundary between ‘two modes of theatrical-
ity: the sustaining of a feigned person—or mimicry—and the emphatic
maintaining of one’s own person, or self-manifestation’, the natural
person being clearly Hobbes’s morally privileged term.34
To put this argument at its simplest, Hobbes’s theory of person-
hood would have posed a stark choice between two extremes: on the
one hand, the natural self, given to us by nature; on the other hand,
the artificial self, of purely human construct. The reason why he would
have preferred the natural as opposed to the artificial person is that the
natural person pertains to the realm of the sincere, the authentic and
the unmediated, whereas the artificial person belongs to the realm of
the devious, the fake and the counterfeit. Hence Barish’s conclusion:
that Hobbes shared with the Puritans an understanding of the person
in which the transparency of the self is favoured over any type of self-
concealing activity, whether simulative or dissimulative.35

Cicero 1913, I. 114. On the flourishing of the theatrum mundi image, especially in
playwrights, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see Yates 1969,
Righter 1967, Bernheimer 1956, Warnke 1972, pp. 66–89 and Christian 1987.
32
Kottman 2008, p. 55.
33
For a useful debunking of the reductive notion that all Puritans opposed theatre-
going see Heinemann 1980, pp. 18–58.
34
Barish 1981, p. 155.
35
For the opposite view, which is also mine, see Agnew 1986, pp. 102.
84 chapter two

This is a striking yet puzzling conclusion, for a number of reasons.

To start with, it wrongly reverses the position of nature and artifice in
Hobbes’s system of thought. For him, artifice does not have any of its
later connotations of narrow or cramped pretence. On the contrary,
it belongs to man as the maker of art. It means creativity, the ability
of human beings to fashion a world that works for them and enables
them to escape nature, not least their own nature.
Barish’s interpretation also falls down on at least two other, more
specific accounts. First, it misses the point of Hobbes’s distinction
between natural and artificial persons. This distinction is not con-
structed in moralistic terms, but is rather essentially juristic in nature.
What is at stake is the question of ability to take responsibility, or the
distinction between the roles individuals play in their own person, for
which they are expected to be personally accountable, and the roles
they play in the person of another, on whom the responsibility for
their actions falls. Second, it misreads the meaning of the ‘natural’ in
Hobbes’s conception of natural personhood, just as it misreads the
meaning of the ‘artificial’ in his conception of artificial personhood.
The latter did not necessarily carry all the pejorative associations of the
word ‘artifice’ in our day—e.g. deceptive mimicry, imposture, duplic-
ity, etc. Artificial personality was rather an ingenious expedient in a
world where the direct engagement of persons was rapidly giving way
to mediated contractual relationships. This is not to say that acting
by proxy did not involve, for Hobbes, a kind of contrivance, a form
of pretence, or that people could not try falsely to pass for others (or
their representatives). But most transactions carried out by proxy rest,
in his view, on a mutually acknowledged legal fiction, governed by
its own rules of credibility, which can be checked and enforced by
the state. Similarly, by putting the ‘natural’ into the ‘natural person’
Hobbes does not want to present the natural person as necessarily
transparent, spontaneous or unmediated, but rather as a natural locus
of responsibility, given the person’s full possession of his faculties.
For although Hobbes’s natural person need not be wholly artificial,
he cannot be artless either. Natural personhood is still personhood,
and ‘a Person [. . .] the same that an Actor is, both on the Stage and in
common Conversation’.36 That is, the natural is already an artifice: a
re-presentation.

36
Hobbes 1996, p. 112.
 dramatic representation 85

As personhood is, for Hobbes, founded upon impersonation, every

human act becomes an act of re-presentation, and the stage-player
a blueprint for the everyday performer. This same promiscuous rela-
tionship between life and stage that Hobbes countenances was blamed
by many Puritans on men’s ability to act out different social identi-
ties by substituting selves of their own contriving for a more genu-
ine self, given to them by God or by nature. But where the Puritans
saw the cause of moral and social dissolution, Hobbes found the key
to order. He believed the Puritans’ emphasis on social transparency
to be misplaced, and their attempt to represent the self as naturally
fixed as inviting a descent into chaos. Were men incapable of draw-
ing on the dramatic strategies of the actor, they would be deprived of
the means to constrain the external appearance of their most trouble-
some passions in the process of refashioning themselves as convers-
able personae, ready to engage in peaceable social relations with one
another. Only men capable of wearing masks whereby they prudently
dissimulate and simulate with others can protect themselves from
repeated clashes, while rendering their behaviour predictable and their
mutual company sufferable if not genial. Sociability is not natural to
the Hobbesian man. It requires art, a kind of theatricality, sustained by
the social conventions of play, which helps us hide behind a mask of
sustained decorousness, while moulding the externals of our conduct
to the specific requirements of our roles as citizens and as subjects. But
if theatricality is such an essential ingredient of civilisation, Hobbes’s
analysis of human impersonation must constitute a direct challenge
to the ideal of the absolute transparency or bareness of the self, rather
than an embrace of this ideal.
By looking in this chapter into Hobbes’s discussion of man as actor,
I will be reaching into a much-neglected dimension of his work. I refer
to the play-acting between subjects and between subject and sovereign,
sovereign and subjects, or the ways they must represent themselves
to one another, under worldly conditions that are plastic, and never
really leave the theatre behind. This presupposes the embeddedness
of theatricality in ordinary human behaviour, something that is first
hinted at by Hobbes’s reminding us of the pre-metaphorical meaning
of ‘person’ as a mask, whose origins lie in the world of theatre:
The word Person is latine: insteed whereof the Greeks have prosopon,
which signifies the Face, as Persona in latine signifies the disguise, or out-
ward appearance of a man, counterfeited on the Stage; and sometimes
more particularly that part of it, which disguiseth the face, as a Mask or
86 chapter two

Visard: And from the Stage, hath been translated to any Representer of
speech and action, as well in Tribunalls, as Theaters. So that a Person, is
the same that an Actor is, both on the Stage and in common Conversa-
tion; and to Personate, is to Act, or Represent himselfe, or an other.37
This brief, but critical, passage tells a tale of how theatricality came to
be abstracted from the stage, to be applied to the ways human beings
are required to act out their social identities by performing established
codes of social interaction.38 To be a person involves mask-wearing
and play-acting, something that is indicated by the very etymology of
the word. Starting as either the full-body or the strictly facial disguise
through which a play-actor made his character know to a theatre audi-
ence, the word ‘persona’ came with time to designate ‘any Representer
of speech and action’.39 It was thus by way of metaphorical extension,
that ‘a Person’ became ‘an Actor’, ‘both on the Stage and in common
Conversation’, and the theatre came to be subsumed in the whole
world.40 In the process, ‘to Personate’ was made a synonym of ‘to Act,
or Represent himself, or an other’, and a continuum was established
between the actor bearing a stage character and the self-impersonator,
acting his own part(s) on the stage of everyday life.41
The extension of the term ‘personate’ to include the representation
of the self in everyday life is not very true to the idiomatic English
of Hobbes’s own day.42 The idea of ‘representing oneself ’, or ‘playing
one’s own character’, was not then—and still is not today—the pri-
mary meaning of ‘to personate’.43 But it was not unprecedented either.

37
Ibid., p. 112.
38
On the suggestion that the modern notion of personhood is indebted to a new,
early modern, dramatic understanding of ‘character’, see, amongst others, Greenblatt
1980.
39
Hobbes 1996, p. 112.
40
Ibid.
41
Ibid. According to the OED, it was Shakespeare who first gave the word ‘act’ its
peculiarly theatrical overtones. It was also during Shakespeare’s lifetime that the term
‘actor’ moved from being the designation applied to any agent and came to designate
specifically the stage performer. It seems justified to assume that Hobbes was con-
sciously playing with recent linguistic developments.
42
As noticed by Hobbes’s contemporary and critic William Lucy: ‘no man can
properly be say’d to act himself, or represent himself; for the Actor and the acted, the
Representor and the represented, are two’. Lucy 1996, p. 275.
43
The English verb ‘to personate’ seems to have appeared around the turn of the
sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, as the first example of its use registered in the
OED dates from 1597–8. None of the meanings listed there, however, bears the notion
of representing one’s own character. On the contrary, ‘personation’ commonly des-
ignated the action of passing oneself off as someone else for fraudulent purposes.
 dramatic representation 87

In 1649, Hobbes’s friend, the poet John Hall, wrote about personation
in terms that closely foreshadow Hobbes’s: ‘Man in business’, Hall
declared, ‘is but a Theatricall person, and in a manner but personates
himself, but in his retired and hid actions, he pulls off his disguise,
and acts openly.’44 By conferring a similar centrality on the notion
of self-personation, Hobbes shows signs of being equally persuaded
of the complex intersections between theatricality—i.e., the type of
self-conscious performance that involves the polishing of a persona
for display—and the multiple personages we sustain everyday, as we
move from one milieu to the next. In Hobbes, as in Hall, the worlds
of play, business and politics are closely knit in their requirements of
performativity.
Hobbes’s claim that the ‘person’ concerns man as actor hinges, like
Hall’s, on the possibility, indeed on the necessity, of a disjunction
between signifiers and signified, inner and outer states, private sub-
jectivity and public performance. It turns away from the conception
of the person as an ontological essence, and ideals of unmediated self-
assertion, to concentrate on things that are on view: masks, disguises,
words, actions and other external appearances, which must conform
to laws, roles and other extant limits on public expression. As repre-
sentations, persons are always constructed in the presupposition of a
spectatorship, whose critical judgment they need to meet successfully.
Persons are not simply about the ways we present ourselves to others.
They are also, and more importantly, about the ways others see us.
The externalities that make up Hobbes’s person are amenable to
transmission, making the person representable, and to public exami-
nation, making the construction of personality an eminently inter-
personal matter. It is interpersonal because all the externals of public
conduct work as signs, which, qua signs, are always directed at an
audience. The audience’s role is to reconstruct these signs as a unitary
process, and acknowledge (or reprehend) the social actor in the result-
ing overall performance. Signs are, however, notoriously ‘subject to

Concomitantly, in English law the crime of ‘personation’ is that of claiming—e.g.

in voting—to be someone else, and a ‘personating agent’ is an agent employed by a
candidate at an election to detect attempted personation of voters. In connection to
the theatre, however, the term ‘personation’ seems to have first come into use in the
1590s, and referred to a player pretending to be a real contemporary or historical
person. See Gurr 2004, p. 166.
44
Hall 1953, p. 37.
88 chapter two

hypocrisy’, and their judgement is necessarily uncertain.45 This is why

Hobbes insists that Leviathan, the modern state, must steer clear of
trying to guess intentions (private beliefs) and concentrate exclusively
on the externals of conduct (what people do), in particular on actions
threatening the public order.46 Uncertainty in assessing intentions will
not, none the less, impede social actors from trying to read through
each others’ signs, and register early signs of alarm whenever hypoc-
risy surfaces. As Hobbes explains, ‘That which taketh away the reputa-
tion of Sincerity, is the doing, or saying of such things, as appeare to
be signes, that what they require other men to believe, is not believed
by themselves.’47 To avoid loss of trust, and its potentially catastrophic
consequences (loss of credit, social exclusion, etc.), as social perform-
ers we must not only keep promises we have made, but also learn to
display the right signs, at the right place and moment. This requires a
kind of mastering of oneself through performance, whereby our ges-
tures move from necessarily expressing prior feeling to making avail-
able reassuring signs of the authenticity of our motivations.
All of this leads Hobbes to a conception of personhood that is, at
once, public, relational and theatrical. It is public because the person
is an outer surface that is permanently on view. It is relational as the
person results from the interaction between he who acts and they who
establish whether the performance is plausible. This conception of per-
sonhood is also theatrical, because any such interaction is premised
on the fact that every person is already a ‘Representer’: a dramatically
enacted thing, acting herself before others.
The possibility of a disjunction between the private and the public,
inwards and outwards, personal conviction and external conduct, is
the premise of Hobbes’s conception of personhood as a series of roles,
which involve seeing oneself as others see one, and fashioning oneself

45
Hobbes 1996, p. 314.
46
This means that the Hobbesian state should leave citizens alone as long as they
behave as subjects, that is, as long as they act according to the sovereign’s will on all
occasions, regardless of what they think of it. But it does not mean, of course, that
the sovereign should not try to act on the subjects’ system of beliefs (their ‘opinions’)
by promoting a programme of civic education whereby they are taught the rights of a
commonwealth and the grounds of their civic duties. In effect, since ‘our wills follow
our opinions, and our actions follow our wills’, it is critical to the long-term survival
of the state that it works on its subjects’ opinions, so that the subjects may, without
reservations, accept, and indeed adopt, the sovereign’s public reason as their own.
Hobbes 1969, p. 63.
47
Hobbes 1996, p. 84.
 dramatic representation 89

accordingly. Being proficient at playing a role implies more than sim-

ply exhibiting the right signs. One must also understand the code(s)
that make a specific pattern of behaviour socially acceptable in certain
circumstances, and not in others, or else one risks performing inad-
equately and descending into being ridiculed. This much is clear from
Hobbes’s example of a man ‘ignorant of the Ceremonies of Court’,
who ‘comming into the presence of a greater Person than he is used
to speak to, and stumbling at his entrance, to save himselfe from fall-
ing, lets slip his Cloake; to recover his Cloake, lets fall his Hat’, thereby
discovering, and revealing to others, ‘his astonishment and rusticity’.48
Only he who is able to engage in reflexive role-taking, using outside
standards to look at himself, can avoid a similar embarrassment, by
producing a performance where the signifiers seem actually to become
what they signify; that is, a performance that succeeds in masking its
own existence.
The principle guiding the relationship between private subjectivity
and public performance is, in Hobbes, relatively straightforward. As
he puts it, ‘Private, is in secret Free; but in the sight of the multitude,
it is never without some Restraint, either from the Lawes, or from the
Opinion of men’.49 To explain: the inner state of one’s mind, so long
as it does not translate into action, is one’s private affair, and immune
from jurisdiction. But that which appears outwardly, in one’s words
and actions, is to conform to laws and social censure. Discretion in
the public expression of thought and feeling is a fundamental social, as
well as political, requirement. But this is a restraint that works also as
a protection, especially for the reformed subject, with his focus on reli-
gious interiority.50 Where the state sets it as its goal to rule exclusively
over appearances—that is, human behaviour in its externality and vis-
ibility—it stops trying to peer into souls. Thought control would have
been futile anyway. Beliefs, Hobbes insists, are neither visible to rul-
ers nor voluntary. Thus belief will not be affected by direct coercion,
only by the indirect acting on a man’s opinions, through a state-led
programme of education and control over doctrine. In Hobbes’s com-
monwealth, whatever a man believes, he will be safe, as long as he
keeps acting like a subject.

48
Ibid., p. 467.
49
Ibid., p. 249.
50
See Rosendale 2004.
90 chapter two

Dis/simulating with Others

Defined by their publicness, their visibility and their capacity to

act, persons are subject to public scrutiny, just as are actors on the
stage, and seek a similar acknowledgement of their performance. This
depends on their ability to put on a sustained mask of civility, which
must accomplish a double purpose. First, it must block from the pub-
lic gaze one’s aberrant thoughts, indecorous impulses and troublesome
passions through the blank wall of honest dissimulation. And second,
this mask is to express the signs of a sustained commitment to peace
and obedience, where necessary by simulating being what one is not,
because not doing so would compromise the performance of what is
expected from us by the commands of civil law and, before it, the
laws of nature. Always to put on the appearance that best suits the
construction of order, one must develop a control over one’s face, ges-
ture, words and actions, as the professional actor simulates emotions
he does not feel, and dissembles the emotions he does feel. Like the
actors they emulate, citizens in the Hobbesian commonwealth do not
exist to be true to themselves, but to be true to their roles.
Hobbes was not alone in his belief in the importance of the powers
of play (both simulatory and dissimulatory) for human interaction.
The licitness of dissimulation was central to contemporary debates
about Nicodemism, equivocation and mental reservation, in the con-
text of which the concept of ‘honest dissimulation’ (understood as dis-
simulation used to avoid religious persecution) was first deployed.51
But the political utility of dis/simulation was also a common topos of
the reason-of-state and courtier literature of Hobbes’s time.52 Machia-
velli notoriously contradicted Cicero in placing dis/simulation at the
heart of the craft of politics: a prince who wanted to preserve his
power should be, Machiavelli insisted, ‘a great feigner and dissem-
bler’.53 Machiavelli’s advice was indebted to Tacitus, and taken on
by Justus Lipsius, one of Tacitus’ foremost early modern disciples.54

51
See Garnet 1598.
52
For Hobbes’s relation to the reason-of-state tradition see Malcolm 2007a, pp.
92–123.
53
Machiavelli 1998, p. 62. For the opposite view, see Cicero 1913, p. 44 and 46.
54
Tacitus 1956, where the emperor Tiberius is described as someone who ranked
dissimulation highest amongst his virtues, an observation that reappears in the ‘Dis-
course upon the Beginning of Tacitus’, a work likely to have been written by William
Cavendish under Hobbes’s close scrutiny. See [Hobbes(?)] 1995, pp. 57 and 64.
 dramatic representation 91

Lipisius’ avowedly Machiavellian theory of ‘mixed prudence’, which

recommended rulers to use deception when necessary, together with
contemporary treatises on the benefits of dissimulation in courtly poli-
tics (notably Baldassare Castiglione’s 1528 The Book of the Courtier),
lies behind the famous essay ‘Of Simulation and Dissimulation’ by
Hobbes’s occasional employer, Francis Bacon.55 In this essay, Bacon
acknowledged—more so than Lipsius—that any attempt at a separa-
tion between secrecy, dissimulation and simulation held in theory,
but failed in practice. Accordingly, Bacon’s counsel to the prince and
his advisor living in an ‘Age of Dissimulation’, a phrase coined by
Montaigne, was unapologetic: ‘to have Opennesse in Fame and Opin-
ion; Secrecy in Habit; Dissimulation in seasonable use; And Power to
faigne, if there be no Remedy’.56
There are good reasons to believe that Hobbes was familiar with these
various early modern discourses on dis/simulation.57 But his counte-
nancing of dis/simulation comes with a difference. Hobbes does not
prescribe simulation and dissimulation as exceptional conduct, limited
to rare state occasions, government business or the closed world of
courtly politics. Instead, he refers to them as being an essential part of
the regulation of ordinary social life, if society is to be truly civil. By
‘civil’ I mean here not mere social politeness, decency of behaviour or
decorum (Hobbes’s ‘Small Morals’), but a civil state as opposed to the
state of war. If, in Hobbes’s view, dissimulation and simulation can be
morally faultless, indeed constitute ethical behaviour, it is because he
thinks them necessary to uphold the type of sustained outward con-
formity to the laws of nature and the commands of the sovereign that
allows men to live together ‘in Peace, and Unity’.58 In this conclusion
Hobbes stands closer to authors like Jérôme Cardan, for whom civil life
depended on the virtue of dissimulation, and Torquato Accetto, whose

55
For Lipsius’ theory of ‘mixed virtue’, countenancing secrecy, as well as bribery
and active deception on exceptional occasions, but vehemently rejecting breach of
contract or the infringement of law, see Lipsius 1970, p. 113. For Castiglione’s discus-
sion of dis/simulation as essential to the courtier who wishes to promote himself in
the eyes of the powerful, see Castiglione 1984.
56
Bacon 1985, p. 22, and Montaigne 1978, p. 795.
57
Many of the books discussed here figure in the early catalogue in the library at
Hardwick. Also, Hobbes was Bacon’s amanuensis, and had a close association with the
Anglo-Venetian circle (including the Earl of Devonshire, Fulgenzio Micanzio, and his
collaborator Paolo Sarpi) within which secrecy and dis/simulation were topical points
of discussion.
58
Hobbes 1996, p. 69. See also Frost 2001 and Hoekstra 2006a.
92 chapter two

little treatise Della dissimulazione onesta (1641) crossed a watershed

by morally re-qualifying a suspect practice as a Christian virtue, and
suggesting its profitable use by society as a whole.59 Acceto’s Christian
piety aside, Hobbes also believed that dissimulation could be deployed
honestly and even simulation virtuously, when they served the all-
important end of the construction of order.
Successful dis/simulation is, however, only possible, where one is
able to read others and oneself, or see oneself through a kind of social
looking glass, which is used as a guide in a continuing process of self-
monitoring, self-restraint and self-correction. Hobbes’s archetype of
disruptive, unreasoned and unreasonable behaviour, the drunkard, is
the perfect example of a man lacking in this social skill.60 The effects
of wine, Hobbes warns, take away dissimulation, since they curtail the
mechanisms of self-awareness that would enable a man to perceive
the deformity of his passions, and constrain them in assembling a sus-
tained public persona. In this, the drunkard resembles the madman,
who also gives reckless expression to passion, and in so doing makes
a true, dangerously erratic, spectacle of himself:
Again, that Madnesse is nothing else, but too much appearing Passion,
may be gathered out of the effects of Wine, which are the same with
those of the evill disposition of the organs. For the variety of behaviour
in men that have drunk too much, is the same with that of Mad-men:
some of them Raging, others Loving, others Laughing, all extravagantly,
but according to their severall domineering Passions: For the effect of
the wine, does but remove Dissimulation; and take from them the sight
of the deformity of their Passions. For, (I believe) the most sober men,
when they walk alone without care and employment of the mind, would
be unwilling the vanity and Extravagance of their thoughts at that time
should be publiquely seen: which is a confession, that Passions unguided,
are for the most part meere Madnesse.61
This example illustrates how, for Hobbes, the construction of a viable
persona rests upon a rigorous distinction between the private and the
public, inner and outer, thought and action. On the one hand, we
have that which is involuntary, internal and not submitted to restraint
(thought), in so far as it is not publicly seen, and does not translate
into action. On the other hand, we have that which is voluntary, exter-

59
Cardan 1652 and Accetto 1983.
60
See Hobbes 1998, p. 54.
61
Hobbes 1996, p. 55, my emphasis; see also p. 52.
 dramatic representation 93

nal and in need of restraint (action), in response to monitoring by sov-

ereign and fellow subjects. Given Hobbes’s distinctively performative
understanding of language, under the category of action fall not only
deeds, but also words, whether deployed in public speech or in writ-
ing. So if ‘the secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, pro-
phane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame, or blame’, this
is something ‘verbal discourse cannot do, farther than the Judgement
shall approve of Time, Place, and Persons’.62 The ability to discrimi-
nate between the words to put on show and the words to keep silent is
one of the most important prerequisites of competent social acting.
The stability of social life would be seriously compromised were
each man to follow the drunkard in presenting himself before another
as an unfiltered, more or less random play of passions, rather than
as a polished persona, with regard to whom reasonable expectations
can be formed and, generally speaking, fulfilled. This composure is,
at its most fundamental, a moral requirement of the laws of nature,
which condemn drunkenness as likely to produce humoral excess and
passionate intemperance, and oblige us to show a controlled, sociable
disposition towards others. ‘That no man by deed, word, countenance,
or gesture, declare Hatred, or Contempt of another’ is one of the key
commands of the law of nature, a command which, under conditions
of security, we are obliged to obey externally, even if—or should one
say, especially if—obeying it implies dis/simulating our true feelings.63
The performance of the laws of nature presupposes, therefore, a pro-
cess of self-fashioning, which is compared by Hobbes to the polishing
up of one’s persona for public display. Like those irregular stones that
are brought together for building up an edifice, men, whose lives also
touch, must round up their sharp corners, and create out of themselves
the type of personae who can fit in with one another in a sturdy civil
construction. Amongst natural persons, there will, of course, always
be some Malvolio-type characters, deliberately oblivious of the social
norms of play. But Hobbes’s project is to convince men of the systemic
advantageousness of playing by the laws of nature, showing modesty,
tractability, courtesy and so forth, towards others, even if this means
you have to put on a mask. As Hobbes reminds us, he who drops out
of this joint exercise in mutual accommodation, which the wearing of

62
Ibid., p. 52.
63
Ibid., p. 107.
94 chapter two

masks facilitates, runs the risk of being ‘cast out of Society, as comber-
some thereunto’.64 As the new civil religion, sociability carries its own
threats of excommunication.
Theatricality is vital to the maintenance of the civil condition. But
it is not exclusive to it. It is at play in the state of nature, which is,
for Hobbes, already social, and far from un-theatrical. In the state of
nature, an acute consciousness of others as beholders creates a the-
atrical consciousness whereby men constantly compare themselves
to others—in whose regard and opinion, it sometimes seems, they
solely exist. Glory, in particular, is a distinctively theatrical passion,
structured around an exchange of signs of recognition between actor,
wanting to be honoured, spectator, from whom signs of esteem are
expected, and onlooker, who is to be impressed by the honouring.
Without the active dissembling of signs, this exchange is likely to
break into strife, as the returned signs may easily declare (or, at least,
be taken to declare) lack of respect. The judicious and steady perfor-
mance of mutual deference, which would disarm the disruptiveness of
honour, is not prone to be adopted in the absence of a state acting as
the guarantor of mutuality and civilisation.65 In nature, theatricality is
likely to step out of bounds.
The arts of dissimulation and simulation are not so much allowed
as required to put the laws of nature into action once the theatrical
presence of the state makes it secure to perform them. And if anything
these arts must increase in refinement as we enter the civil condition,
where the disruptive potential of passions and their signs is still pres-
ent, but the rules of acceptable behaviour are more clearly codified, and
more readily enforceable. I put the stress on signs, because whenever
two interlocutors meet, strife-free interaction depends on their careful
administration. This is primarily so because, despite Hobbes’s initial
analogy, our everyday mask is nothing like that unmoving, opaque
object affixed to the ancient actor’s face, but rather a succession of
facial and bodily movements that may, at one’s least distraction, let
one’s mind be revealed. Nor do our everyday expressions simply act
on a script’s signal. The personae we build in everyday life require sub-

64
Ibid., p. 106.
65
In nature, the unilateral acting of modesty, tractability, fidelity, etc. is most likely
to bring about self-destruction.
 dramatic representation 95

stantial improvisation, for which we need not a fixed but an adaptable

mask, enabling us to react promptly to social stimuli.
Hobbes’s competent social actor must hence be an expert in semi-
otic analysis. His attention has to turn intently to the signs he gives to
the spectator, and those returned signs ‘by which one taketh notice of
what another conceiveth and intended’.66 On the correct reading of the
latter depends the successful management of the former, along with the
keeping of social tension within bounds. Our emotional responsiveness
to signs is primarily explained by our hyper-sensibility to comparative
rankings of honour. As such, violent quarrels can be ignited by some-
thing as little as a misplaced burst of laughter, which either threatens
peace, by giving expression to contempt for another, or generates ten-
sion, by unmasking one’s lack of self-confidence.67 But signs differ,
and so does our ability to control them. Amongst the myriad of signs
exchanged by any two interlocutors, ‘some are such as cannot easily
be counterfeited; as actions and gestures, especially if they be sudden’,
as is mostly the case with the natural signs of passions; ‘others there
are that may be counterfeited: and those are words or speech’.68 Yet
despite its being easier to feign conventional signs, especially words,
there is nothing preventing many natural signs from being produced
consciously by an onstage persona, or an offstage person.
In the realm of civil society, the first, thinner layer of self-fashioning
required by the impersonation of the laws of nature must be strength-
ened with further and ever more impenetrable layers, given the spe-
cific duties attached to the various roles we play. As Hobbes explains,
to compose one’s personae successfully one must take account of a
wide range of devices and constraints: the nature (private/public) of
the forum in which the performance is to be delivered; the numbers
and social status of the public; the specific requirements of one’s social
position, function, career or office; and the question of whether one
is acting in one’s natural capacity or as an artificial person. Disregard
for any of these aspects, Hobbes warns, is likely to result in a poor or
reprehensible performance:
An Anatomist, or a Physitian may speak, or write his judgement of
unclean things; because it is not to please, but profit: but for another

66
Hobbes 1969b, p. 64.
67
Hobbes 1996, p. 43.
68
Hobbes 1969b, p. 64.
96 chapter two

man to write his extravagant, and pleasant fancies of the same, is as if a

man, from being tumbled into the dirt, should come and present him-
selfe before good company. And ’tis the want of Discretion that makes
the difference. Again, in profest remissnesse of mind, and familiar com-
pany, a man may play with the sounds, and aequivocall significations
of words; and that many times with encounters of extraordinary Fancy:
but in a Sermon, or in publique, or before persons unknown, or whom
we ought to reverence, there is no Gingling of words that will not be
accounted folly: and the difference is onely in the want of Discretion.69
As the passage makes clear, discretion is the intellectual virtue chiefly
to be relied upon in the assemblage of a sustainable persona. When
sufficiently cultivated, discretion enables us to distinguish, discern or
judge between one thing and another, distinctive operations of the
faculty of judgement on the basis of which we can expect to temper
flights of fancy in public and to respond flexibly to changing social
circumstances. Therefore, because his actions follow his function, and
regard the good of others, the physician may freely convey his thought
about unclean things. But for another man to be similarly outspoken,
and fantasise publicly about the same matters, would be indicative of
a serious lack of judgement. Similarly, within one’s familiar, private
space, one can indulge in wordplay, and fiddle around carelessly with
the sounds and meaning of words. But when carried out in public, by
a man of God, or before an anonymous audience to whom one owes
reverence, such fooling around with words would be injudicious. A
person’s theatrical versatility, when tempered by discretion, permits
him to react quickly to his environment by performing the roles he
inhabits in ways that his role-incumbency makes seem natural, and
his versatility in no doubt. Where it is unguided, however, the person
is likely to find himself out of role.
For Hobbes, we have been seeing, to be a person means quite liter-
ally to play a pre-defined role or adequately improvise one’s social
appearance, rather than to act always in ways directly revelatory of
one’s spontaneous dispositions. Persons are constructs, products of
human creative industry, which are simultaneously constrained and
enabled by complex social scripts and normative expectations put into
play by our social and political interaction. An element of artificial-
ity—concealment (not always seeming to be what one is) and simu-
lation (occasionally appearing to be what one is not)—is intimately

69
Hobbes 1996, p. 52.
 dramatic representation 97

involved in the acting out of our multiple personae. But Hobbes is

emphatic in rejecting the idea that man’s dis/simulatory abilities need
be constructed as malignant. They may as well be entirely without
fault, indeed a form of moral and legal behaviour.
As we have seen above, it seems important to highlight this point,
if only because Hobbes is writing for an English audience that had
increasingly been exposed to the use of ‘actor’ as a term of abuse. As
the prolific anti-dramatic literature of the time makes clear, the actor
had become a hate-figure, not only as a minion of the king but also—
and more importantly—for being deemed a hypocrite, deceitfully pre-
tending to be another, both on and off stage.
Amongst the anti-theatrical polemicists, the Puritan lawyer Wil-
liam Prynne represented an extreme case, and was especially intent
on arguing that all acting is based on deceitfulness, a type of self-inter-
ested hypocrisy, which involves showing oneself to be other than one
is. Trained in the arts of ‘hipocrisie, faining, or dissimulation’ that
‘are exercised in the acting of Stage-playes’,70 actors, Prynne insisted,
are the antithesis of the ‘honest and sincere’ creatures God requires
us to be.71 In theatrical impersonation, Prynne added, everything is
‘counterfeited, feined, dissembled; nothing really or sincerely acted’,
for players are always ‘acting others, not themselves’, which is ‘but pal-
pable hypocrisie’.72 Having located hypocrisy at the root of all human
impersonation, he went on to advocate an absolute transparency of
the self, which stands in direct contrast to the plasticity and aesthetic
quality of Hobbes’s persons:
For God, who is truth it selfe, in whom there is no variablenesse, no
shadow of change, no feigning, no hypocrisie; as he hath given uniforme
distinct and proper being to every creature, the bounds of which may
not be exceeded: so he requires that the actions of every creature should
be honest and sincere, devoid of all hypocrisie, as all his actions, and their
nature are. Hence he enjoy[n]es all men at all times, to be such in shew,
as they are in truth; to seeme that outwardly which they are inwardly; to
act themselves, not others.73
In insisting that not only the character played by the actor on stage,
but also the person playing herself in everyday life, ought to substitute

70
Prynne 1632, p. 156.
71
Ibid., p. 159.
72
Ibid., p. 156.
73
Ibid., p. 159.
98 chapter two

selves of their own contriving for the ones given by nature, Hobbes is
visibly undercutting any such Manichean views of the theatrical social
person, and reinstating it as simply an individual playing his expected
role. Dis/simulation, Hobbes would agree, is, as Prynne claims, self-
interested. But this may well be a form of enlightened self-interest,
which works for the benefit of all, in that it is conducive to peace-
ful social interaction. By contrast, to affirm one’s natural being in all
one’s acts, always to show oneself outwardly as one is inwardly, are
imperatives that transgress the dictates of natural reason, and reveal
themselves as irreconcilable with the demands of civilisation. Such
injunctions resolve themselves in a utopian vision of an anti-theatri-
cal society, where the clash of men in the full force of their passions
would be disastrous, and unavoidable. Robbed of their powers of play,
men would be forever condemned to nature.

Actors and Hypocrites

But there is more to Hobbes’s critique. The Puritan defence of the

benefits of absolute sincerity is also exposed as a case of outright feign-
ing, carried out for the purely self-regarding, power-hungry reasons of
which the Puritans accuse others. From the socially necessary dissimu-
lation of one’s troublesome passions to their strictly manipulative con-
cealment can indeed be a short step. And the crossing of this thin line
is for Hobbes perfectly exemplified by those Presbyterian preachers
who, ‘by a long practised histrionic faculty, preached up the rebellion
powerfully’.74 It is by these Puritan enthusiasts, rather than by stage-
actors, or common men, that the mask is used as a trick, to further
status, wealth and power, under the robe of godly righteousness.
That we are, in this case, watching a very specific type of play-actor
is what Hobbes indicates by his careful choice of words. His use, at
this juncture, of the derogatory term ‘histrionic’, instead of the more
neutral ‘dramatique’ or ‘theatricall’, is already in itself suggestive of
the Presbyterian minister’s being the prototype of the religious hypo-
crite who falsely pretends virtuousness, and uses rhetoric to serve his

74
Hobbes 1969a, p. 159, my emphasis.
 dramatic representation 99

anti-ethics of manipulative communication.75 ‘Their prayer’, Hobbes

tells us, ‘was or seemed to be extempore, which they pretended to be
dictated by the spirit of God within them, and many of the people
believed or seemed to believe it’, but in truth these improvised prayers
were no less calculating than the set forms of ‘the common-prayer-
book’ they set themselves to condemn.76 As actor, the Presbyterian
secretly revels in the theatrical, harbouring an explicitly anti-Puritan
engagement with dissembling and deceptive performance. He is an
accomplished technician of counterfeit emotions in his effort to per-
suade the audience of the sincerity of his intentions. But unlike the
stage-actor, who puts his technique in the service of the audience, or
the common man, whose acting serves the desiderata of peace, the
Presbyterian preacher enlists the audience in the service of his blind
drive for power. Nothing in the composition of his character is left
to chance. Countenance, gesture, looks, diction, phrasing, intonation
are all meticulously trained and, at last, reassembled to maximise the
desired effect. In the process, the church in which the Presbyterian
preaches is transformed into a playhouse, and the pulpit into a pan-
optic tower, from which his performance is given, whilst the reactions
of the public are closely surveyed. In Hobbes’s own words,
[Presbyterians] for the manner of their preaching; they so framed their
countenance and gesture at their entrance into the pulpit, and their
pronunciation both in their prayer and sermon, and used the Scripture
phrase (whether understood by the people or not), as that no tragedian
in the world could have acted the part of a right godly man better than
these did; insomuch as a man unacquainted with such art, could never
suspect any ambitious plot in them to raise sedition against the state, as
they then had designed; or doubt that the vehemence of their voice (for
the same words with the usual pronunciation had been of little force)
and forcedness of their gesture and looks, could arise from anything else
but zeal to the service of God. And by this art they came into such credit,
that numbers of men used to go forth of their own parishes and towns
on working-days, leaving their calling, and on Sundays leaving their own

75
Hobbes’s use of ‘histrionic’ comes in the OED as an early example of the employ-
ment of ‘histrionic’ in the sense of ‘theatrical in character or style, “stagey”; also fig.
“acting a part”, hypocritical, deceitful, face’. The theme of hypocrisy is central to Behe-
moth, where the character B. comments, with respect to Presbyterians that ‘Hypocrisy
hath *indeed* this great prerogative above other sins, that it cannot be accused.’ Hob-
bes 1969a, p. 48; see also p. 25.
76
Ibid., p. 25.
100 chapter two

churches, to hear them preach in other places, and to despise their own
and all other preachers that acted not so well as they.77
And thus we see how the word of civil society never leaves the theatre
behind.
In reality, men were so powerfully engaged by the Presbyterian
ministers’ cunningly rehearsed performance that they were willing
to travel afar, leaving work and church behind, to gaze in rapture at
the spectacle staged before them. The audience’s inability to suspect
the plot hidden beneath the histrionics can, in Hobbes’s opinion, be
explained by the ordinary man’s unfamiliarity with the dramatic arts,
in particular with the actor who performs a tragic role in the theatre.
As Hobbes puts it, ‘a man unacquainted with such art, could never
suspect any ambitious plot in them’.78 And the judgement of the ordi-
nary man being so impaired, he ceases to belong to an active force—a
public, and becomes a member of a herd of followers, which the Pres-
byterians animate to rebellion.
There is an interesting and instructive ambiguity in Hobbes’s use
of the term ‘plot’ in this sentence. Presbyterians are masters of plot at
least at three levels, not explicitly separated by Hobbes, but to which
the amateur audience remains equally blind. Behind their claim to be
mere actors of a plot that is dictated by the spirit of God within them,
the Presbyterians carry out what is a self-designed script, concealing a
(com)plot: i.e., a secretly contrived plan to instigate sedition and take
hold of power, under the cover of pristine religious zeal.79 But all the
way through, the English public are unable to see through their perfor-
mance. To be able to see that the Presbyterians were but prideful, or
at best self-deceiving men, sacrificing the public good at the hands of
their reified fancies, would require greater spectatorial sophistication.
Hobbes leaves his reader with the impression that the collective
blindness to the Presbyterian duplicitous fraud would have been less
pervasive if the Presbyters’ audience were composed of theatregoers. It
is not hard to elaborate why. The self-conscious theatricality of many
Elizabethan and Jacobean plays typically confronted their audiences
with a troubling yet liberating sense of the theatricality of society itself,

77
Ibid., p. 24, my emphasis.
78
Ibid.
79
According to the OED this second meaning of ‘plot’ (which occurs in England
c.1575) was influenced by the French ‘complot’ and was already common currency in
Hobbes’s time in connection with the Gunpowder Plot against James I.
 dramatic representation 101

which opened to question the relation between appearances and social

reality—the very relation Hobbes is seeking to expose.80 What is more,
between 1570 and 1640, the stage did much to popularise Hobbes’s
favoured image of the Puritan as an impostor, acting secretly and
deceitfully, to advance his egoistic social aspirations. Dramatic satire
rejoiced, as Hobbes does, in disclosing inconsistencies in the Presby-
terian’s acting of the role of a Puritan.
And there were plentiful such inconsistencies, according to Hobbes.
Beneath their shell of rectitude, Presbyterians were much more un-
Puritanical than one might imagine. In their silence, they expressed
their complicity with ‘the lucrative vices of men’, ‘such as are feigning,
lying, cozening, hypocrisy, or other uncharitableness, except want of
charity to their pastors’.81 In effect, ‘irreligion, hypocrisy, avarice and
cruelty’ were ‘so eminently in the actions of Presbyterian members and
Presbyterian ministers’ that they let the Independents dirty their hands
by killing ‘God’s anointed’, but not without having first ‘betrayed and
sold him to his murderers’, like Judas.82 All of this betrays a distem-
pered appetite for power. But all of this too fell outside the scope of
the gaze of credulous beholders.
Early modern English theatre—which Presbyterian spectacles came,
in a way, to replace—relied on the experience of the unreality of the
theatrical situation itself to create a distance, a kind of performative
de-fusion, enabling the public to experience ongoing action as mere
representation, and see the play as play.83 In making its artificiality
explicit the theatre of Hobbes’s day resembles other forms of represen-
tation we have seen endorsed by him because they openly profess their
inconstancy, and turn the awareness of deception into a constitutive
part of their enjoyment (e.g. metaphors).84 Common people, Hobbes
seems to believe, need to be exposed to such self-confessed appear-
ances, if they are ever to recognise less apparent games of illusion, and

80
See Gurr 2004, especially pp. 124–8.
81
Hobbes 1969a, p. 25.
82
Ibid., p. 155.
83
This distance was reinforced by speaking in verse rather than prose, the use of
men to play women, the grouping of audiences in three dimensions, the tight com-
pression of spectators against one another, and particular dramaturgical techniques
such as the play-within-the-play and soliloquy, to give but a few examples. See Gurr
2004.
84
Hobbes 1996, p. 31.
102 chapter two

take signs such as the hyper-theatricality of the Presbyterians for what

they are: indicators of fraudulence.
Vilified as instruments of idolatry, plays could be instrumental to
iconoclastic demystification. But the common man’s unfamiliarity
with the theatre was unlikely to be overcome. In September 1642 the
Puritan Parliament commanded that theatres be closed to appease the
wrath of God, with civil war imminent.85 The theatre could no longer
be relied upon to create a critical audience. And the rebellious Pres-
byterian rhetoricians were now free to trump anything else put on the
political stage, having their ‘word’ bolstered by claims to divine truth.
For Hobbes, however, there could be no word of God other than the
commands of the sovereign. And, the sovereign’s monopoly of the
right to represent God being so critical to Hobbes’s political project,
there can be little doubt of the reason for his obsession with stripping
off the masks of those Presbyterian ‘impious hypocrites’ pretending
‘to have a right from God to govern every one his parish and their
assembly the whole nation’, including the monarch.86 Only one person
can wear the mask of God, and that is he who already wears the mask
of the state.

Religious Play-Acting and the Power of Crowds

Thus we see Hobbes turning the Puritan attack on the stage against
itself. Not content to stop here, he proceeds from the Puritan con-
demnation of the theatre, and all theatricality in human relations, to
their reproach of any stage-play in worship. The Puritan advocacy
of absolute sincerity—however much they contrived its appearance
themselves—underpinned not only their opposition to play-going,
but also their anti-theatrical conception of worship. Repeated prayers,
no less than the lines repeatedly recited on the stage, followed for
them a mechanical pattern, rather than the spontaneous expression
of one’s mind. As Barish explains, for the Puritans, ‘worship, to be

85
In 1642 Parliament issued an ordinance forbidding all stage-plays. As illicit play-
acting resurged, however, a new and stricter ordinance was issued five years later.
In 1648, it was finally ordered that all playhouses be pulled down, all players seized
and whipped, and everyone caught attending plays fined. Playhouses were therefore
practically closed from 1642 until the restoration of theatre in 1660. For the order that
closed the playhouses on 2 September 1642, see Firth and Rait 1911, pp. 26–7.
86
Hobbes 1969a, pp. 26 and 2.
 dramatic representation 103

genuine, could only be a direct translation of one’s inner self ’, that is,
‘unique, spontaneous, unpremeditated’, it being for them unacceptable
to ‘reduce it to set forms, to freeze it in ritual repetitions of word or
gesture, to commit it to memory, to make it serve a variety of occa-
sions or a diversity of worshippers’.87 These objections, we will see,
are in stark contrast to Hobbes’s multi-layered conception of worship,
whereby different types of performance are required from worshippers
as they move from the private to the public realm.
For Hobbes, our inward conception of the power of another is sig-
nified by external acts, words, actions and gestures, which are com-
monly known as ‘worship’. Worship, we have seen in Chapter 1, can
be divided into civil and divine: into the worship we ‘exhibite to those
we esteem to be but men, as to Kings, and men in Authority’ and ‘the
worship we exhibite to that which we think to bee God’,88 as well as
into private or public, depending on whether it is exhibited by men
according to their individual will, or exhibited according to the will
of the state.
The institution of public forms of worship coincides with the institu-
tion of commonwealths, and gives expression to their unity in a newly
representational form. Each commonwealth being one person, it must
be one religion that represents itself publicly through one communal
form of worship, defined by its uniformity: ‘But seeing a Common-
wealth is but one Person, it ought also to exhibite to God but one Wor-
ship.’89 Different forms of religious worship may be tolerated privately,
but if the commonwealth is to worship God as one, then it must pub-
licly show a unity of religious expression. To this end, those actions,
words and gestures ‘as the Common-wealth shall ordain to be Pub-
liquely and Universally in use, as signes of Honour, and part of Gods
Worship, are to be taken and used for such by the Subjects’.90 Subjects
are obliged to follow the commonwealth’s prescription because when
men transferred their right of judgement to the sovereign, they also
passed to him the right to decide on the manner of expressing their
awe of God. Whilst in the state of nature the different manners of
honouring God were determined by each man’s private reason, and
conflict would arise from some of these seeming impious in the eyes

87
Barish 1981, p. 95.
88
Hobbes 1996, p. 447.
89
Ibid., p. 252, my emphasis. See also Hobbes 1998, p. 181.
90
Ibid., p. 253.
104 chapter two

of others, once man submits his judgement to the sovereign’s, he is

obliged to perform whatever form of public worship is ordained by
public reason, or the law. Whatever subjects may believe as individu-
als, whatever religious practices they may be free to adopt privately,
qua subjects, they are obliged to external religious conformity. As
Hobbes explains, ‘where many sorts of Worship be allowed, proceed-
ing from the different Religions of Private men, it cannot be said there
is any Publique Worship’, nor that the commonwealth worships God,
as it should, in unison.91
Hobbes’s tolerance of diverse private worship co-exists with his
intolerance of diverse public worship: ‘Publique [worship], in respect
of the whole Common-wealth, is Free’, ‘but in respect of Particular
men it is not so’.92 Whereas commonwealths choose freely their one
form of public worship, subjects are under an obligation to perform it.
Any such regime of outward compulsory religious conformity is bound
to invite a degree of deceit, to force dissenting practitioners into dis-
sembling, to avoid punishment. This was something English Catholics
and English Puritans living under the 1559 Act of Uniformity (not to
speak of the Protestant subjects of Catholic rulers on the continent)
had come to learn to their cost.93 But for all their mutual hatred, the
Catholic clergy and their Protestant counterparts were adamant in con-
demning their disciples for practising dissemblance between interior
belief and outward conduct, a dissemblance commonly justified under
the Nicodemist justification that outward conformity was acceptable if
one’s true religion continued to be inwardly professed.
To Hobbes this same dissemblance between heart and mouth, inter-
nal belief and external performance, is essential to uphold sustained
political obedience, where religious diversity exists and is tolerated pri-
vately. Moreover, because Hobbes cannot conceive of a state without
a public religion, public religion without a public worship, and public
worship without uniformity, religious dis/simulation in obedience to
the state-appointed worship is for Hobbes lawful, even virtuous, as

91
Ibid., p. 253.
92
Ibid., 249.
93
The Act of Uniformity of 1559 decreed one form of public worship for the entire
realm and made attendance at church services on Sundays and holy days compulsory.
During at least the first dozen years of Elizabeth’s reign, most English Catholics seem
to have attended the official church to avoid any penalties, but in the aftermath of
Pope Pius V’s bull of excommunication (1570), the official line of the Catholic church
hardened. See Garnet 1593, pp. 144–55.
 dramatic representation 105

the virtue of the subject consists entirely in his obedience to the law.
Where a uniform public state worship is prescribed, dutiful subjects
must dissimulate, if it forbids the expression of what they believe, and
simulate if it requires the expression of what they do not believe. In so
doing, they are but signifying their acceptance of state control over all
their external behaviour, including their public religious practice.
This is something that Hobbes infers from the scriptural passage
most frequently cited in defence of religious dissimulation: the prophet
Elisha’s authorising of Naaman—a servant of the king of Syria, who
‘was converted in his heart to the God of Israel’—to worship an idol,
Rimmon, at the command of his sovereign.94 For Hobbes the licence
of Naaman perfectly illustrates the difference between inner belief,
which never follows men’s commands, and public religious practice,
which must follow them; or how one might be able to reconcile inner
religious integrity (conscience) with outer religious conformity (civil
obedience). If most of Hobbes’s contemporaries condemned Naaman
for his anti-religious hypocrisy, Hobbes’s response to them is twofold.
First, Naaman’s action should be seen as an act of political obedience
rather than one of religious adherence, because the externals of one’s
conduct are subject to the sovereign, and neither engage nor infringe
one’s conscience: ‘Profession with the tongue is but an externall thing,
and no more then any other gesture whereby we signifie our obe-
dience.’95 Second, Naaman’s action was not ‘repugnant to true, and
unfeigned Christianity’, for ‘whatsoever a Subject, as Naaman was,
is compelled to do in obedience to his Sovereraign’, ‘that action is
not his, but his Soveraigns’.96 However hard this last conclusion is to
square with Hobbes’s theory of attributed action (further discussed
in Chapter 3 below), whereby all the actions the sovereign does, qua
representative of the state, are ipso facto his subjects’ actions, it fulfils
a clear purpose.97 It disarms all resistance, all martyrdom, founded on

94
Hobbes 1996, p. 343. Hobbes excludes pastors, however, from the freedom of
Naaman: their worship of an idol under the command of an idolatrous king would be
‘sinfull Scandal’ and ‘a perfidious forsaking of [their] charge’. See ibid., p. 452.
95
Ibid., p. 343.
96
Ibid., p. 344.
97
Hobbes’s claim that the action required of the subject (i.e., bowing to an idol)
ceases to be problematic because it is not his, but rather attributable to the sovereign,
conflicts with the fundamentals of his theory of attributed action, according to which:
‘[E]very Subject is by this Institution Author of all the Actions, and Judgments of
the Soveraigne Instituted.’ Ibid., p. 124. This contradiction has also been noticed in
Hoekstra 2006a.
106 chapter two

claims of conscience, while making it easier for subjects to stay true to

their role as subjects, even if this means they need to act out what in
their conscience they believe to be false.
In contrast to public worship, which must be uniform, private wor-
ship may take as many forms as there are varieties of occasions and
diversity of worshippers. But it need not always be spontaneous or
freely expressive of the feelings of the worshipper. For besides what is
carried out individually, and out of public view, there is yet another
kind of private worship, performed collectively, which could appro-
priately be deemed ‘semi-public’. This was the case with worship that
took place in the private chapels of great houses, which Hobbes would
have attended himself at Hardwick or Chatsworth, along with other
servants. This kind of limitedly public worship too is constrained by
both the laws of the commonwealth and those of our shame before
others. As Hobbes explains in De Homine,
In the private worship of many together, there can be ceremonies, since
men can jointly decide among themselves about the fittingness of com-
mon performance, provided that they do nothing contrary to the laws of
the state. But such a situation is an invitation to simulation, which is,
however, sometimes without fault. For men, if many be gathered together
in one place at the same time, are so possessed by the nature of a crowd
that each individual wants to be feared by every other and demand that
no one speak scurrilously, inconsistently, boorishly, or in a disorganized
manner to them or in their presence; but rather most elegantly as far as
they understand that; and they demand a fitting seriousness of gesture,
such as no one used in his own home. Wherefore, he who speaks to a
crowd or in their presence when all others are silent, must adopt a role
graver and holier than he otherwise might; this is, indeed, a kind of play-
acting, but without fault, since when a crowd demands something, the
many are more powerful than the one.98
Here we see again Hobbes giving free reign to theatrical language and
deliberately exploring its many ambiguities. The underlying contrast
upon which he is working is not that opposing public and private,
but rather a more subtle gradation between private and semi-public,
or, to use his words, between private worship expressed by one per-
son in secret and that exhibited by many collectively. The former is
necessarily devoid of any simulation, as feigning would not be of use
before God, from whom nothing can be hidden. In secret worship,

98
De H. (OL II, p. 123), my emphasis.
 dramatic representation 107

there are thus no ceremonies, but only the natural signs of honour
are displayed. The situation is different in the case of private worship
by many together. This is because in social contexts the spectatorial
perspective takes centre stage, and behaviour tends to become theatri-
calised. Therefore, whenever many worship together, worship consists
not in one’s opinion, but in the opinion of the beholders, which means
that worshippers must agree (tacitly or explicitly) with one another the
ways in which their piety should be expressed.99 This much concert is
needed because, as Hobbes explains, ‘if to them the words, or actions
by which we intend honour, seem ridiculous, and tending to contu-
mely; they are no Worship; because no signes of Honour.’100 Signs,
unlike marks, are representations of one’s thoughts to others: that is,
‘not a signe to him that giveth it, but to him to whom it is made; that
is, to the spectator’, and there is no sign of honour unless it seems so
to others.101 Once an agreement on the suitable signs of awe is reached,
worshippers, who constantly alternate between the role of each other’s
spectators and each other’s spectacle, can successfully coordinate their
actions, and engage in a choreographed collective ritual. This consti-
tutes an invitation to simulation, as they must sublimate impulses, to
represent to one another only those outward characteristics and ritu-
alised behaviours likely to gain their acceptance. But in so far as it
prevents conflict, and sustains a peaceful exchange of signs, simulation
is also without fault here.
Alongside the religious representation, a new and far more interest-
ing process is set in motion. For it is as if the concourse of many men
in one place at the same time possesses them with some of the trouble-
some passions of a disunited multitude, making every man want to be
feared and revered by every other. To avoid conflict, men must, in that
situation, repress any unmannerly harshness, and address one another
clothed in their most distinguished personae. This requires dis/simula-
tion, i.e., the denial or delay of all impulses that would compromise the
exhibition of public selves whose every gesture is grave and measured
by the risk of anticipated confrontation. But this theatricality, which
creates an impassive mask, is, Hobbes insists, without fault, in that its
only purpose is to temper social interaction.

99
Conventional signs of honour are those ‘based upon tacit or explicit agreement
[constitutio]’. Hobbes 1998, p. 181.
100
Hobbes 1996, p. 249.
101
Ibid., p. 249. See also Hobbes 1998, p. 183.
108 chapter two

It happens similarly when it is the role of one individual to address

a silent crowd, and he makes sure to put on a mask of singular gravity
for that purpose. He will be then resorting to the dramatic strategies
of the actor. But his play-acting is, in Hobbes’s view, irreproachable; in
effect, a courteous expression of regard for the crowd’s superior power,
which propitiates the favour of the crowd towards him in ways that
pre-empt confrontation. To paraphrase Hobbes, if this man speaks to
the crowd with consideration, and appears before it with decency and
humility, it is to honour it, ‘as signs of fear to offend’.102 This is a fear
that is judiciously controlled by the speaker and channelled instead
into a highly theatrical mode of self-representation, which restores
some equilibrium, in a potentially volatile situation of great imbal-
ance of power.
A seemingly innocuous digression on worship ends up, therefore,
functioning as a gloss on the dangers of downplaying the great power
of the many. Hobbes turns the crowd—which started up as the agent
who honoured—into the honoured object. His words of caution, in
the Latin Leviathan, come immediately to mind in connection with
this role reversal: ‘if the great, because they are great, demand to be
honoured, why are not the common people to be honoured, because
they are many and much more powerful’.103 In life, perhaps even more
than in the theatre, each actor strives critically for public endorsement.
And to find oneself on stage before a crowd, as sovereigns often do,
may prove an especially perilous business: ‘Kings, indeed, ought not
to provoke the common people.’104 This means that they too must cul-
tivate the ability to dissimulate their passions behind a flawless public
mask, capable of reducing the multitude to one expression, which each
and every subject can own as if his own.

‘Quixotic’ Personalities and Republican Men

Whilst running through Hobbes’s gallery of human types we have

encountered common men committed to putting together a civ-
illy sustained public persona; distempered men assuming disorderly

102
Hobbes 1996, p. 64.
103
Lat. Lev. (OL III, p. 247).
104
Ibid.
 dramatic representation 109

personae; and, finally, those others deceitfully taking on an outward

character ‘to the winning of the people to a liking of their doctrines
and good opinion of their persons’, in a deliberate strategy to desta-
bilise the commonwealth.105 Whereas the first used the powers of play
to prevent disruptive passions from breaking into their civic perfor-
mance, the last used those same powers to the contrary effect, namely
to intensify their displays of religious fervour. But despite their efforts
to create a following by producing empathy, they occasionally verged
on disclosing their duplicity, as a result of a somewhat defective his-
trionic calculus. Even so, the Presbyterians managed to evade rec-
ognition until very late; more precisely, until they found themselves
deceived, ‘outgone by their own disciples, though not in malice, yet in
wit’, and alienated from the mechanisms of parliamentary authority
they had sought to control.106 As Hobbes cautions, ‘those that deceive
upon hope of not being observed, do commonly deceive themselves,
[. . .] and are no wiser than Children, that think all hid, by hiding their
own eyes’.107 In the long run conspiracy and deception hardly ever pay
off. They undermine themselves by setting the tone for others.
What is particularly significant about this sequence of human char-
acters is that it shows that if a man’s public persona is not to disinte-
grate, the extremes of too much nature and too much artificiality must
equally be avoided. This rule of thumb is seemingly easy to follow, but
is blatantly contravened in cases of inordinate passion, or madness.
This is because the madman is incapable of keeping roles at a distance,
of detaching raw human nature from highly stylised social perfor-
mance, tending to be both impulsive and melodramatic in his public
outbursts. He is the main actor of confrontational politics, which he
ignites with an undisciplined deployment of the spectacular.
But before we concentrate on what is for Hobbes the worst of fol-
lies—the madness of the self-deceiving ego—a brief digression on the
nature of passion is required, since all madness is, for him, but uncon-
trolled passion. For our current concerns it suffices to recall that, in
Hobbes’s account, sensory perception and passion are but two distinct,
yet causally related, phases of one and the same motion originating in
the perceived object. This motion is first communicated to the brain

105
Hobbes 1969a, p. 24.
106
Ibid., p. 75.
107
Hobbes 1996, p. 205.
110 chapter two

and heart, causing there a counter-pressure, which constitutes the

physiological basis of sense, and explains our experience of phantasms
as things really existing outside us. But the motion, not stopping there,
when it reaches the heart either stimulates or hinders the vital motion
of the body, thereby provoking changes that we experience as pleasure
or pain, respectively. In response to either occurrence—or the memory
of it—we feel solicited to draw near (that is, experience an appetite for)
or shun (that is, experience an aversion to) a determinate object. Such
a tension is depicted by Hobbes as an almost imperceptible internal
beginning of voluntary motion that he designates as conatus. It is thus
in this conatus, or endeavour, that we find the raw material of pas-
sions. Passions are thoughts, which act as motives for action, because
they represent things as good or bad for the beholder.
Passion always proceeding from some ‘opinion’, ‘imagination’ or
‘fiction’, it follows that glory is also depicted by Hobbes as ‘arising
from imagination of a mans own power and ability’ above those of
potential rivals.108 Typically manifesting itself in the form of ‘ostenta-
tion in words, and insolency in actions’, glory is classified, in Levia-
than, as a particular sub-type of joy, and vainglory there includes traits
Hobbes formerly attributed to the now elided category of false glory. As
a result, vainglory is now seen as a misconception based either ‘on the
flattery of others; or only supposed by himself, for delight in the con-
sequences of it’, which engenders no or dangerously futile ventures.109
The vainglorious man is, in Hobbes’s description, a man held pris-
oner by his own imagination and by his image as mirrored back by oth-
ers. He rejoices in the fiction of that which would please him if it were
real, and escapes his reality by feigning actions done by himself that
were never done, and supposing abilities in himself of which he never
gave proof. A simulator, living by pretence, he is also a self-deceiver,
whose vanity issues from intellectual pride, purportedly grounded in
divine inspiration, wisdom or learning, three sources of pride to which
correspond the three main forms of madness singled out by Hobbes as
responsible for plunging England into anarchy: the spiritual madness
of providentialist and millenarian politics; the learned madness of men
clinging to the absurdities of Scholastic speech, and the various super-
stitions it nurtures; the ideologically induced hysteria of educated men

108
Ibid., p. 42.
109
Ibid.
 dramatic representation 111

who found in classical republicanism the utopian blueprint for the

perfect commonwealth.
Typical of youth, but also of social and political climbers, vainglory
is, in Hobbes’s characterisation, a passion often befalling gullible read-
ers, and nourished by ‘the Histories or Fictions of Gallant Persons’.110
Its common signs,
in the gesture, are imitation of others, counterfeiting attention to things
they understand not, affectation of fashions, captation of honour from
their dreams, and other little stories of themselves, from their country,
from their names, and the like.111
Obsessed with representing himself as another, the proud man pretends
to be the originals he emulates. But if the vainglorious man’s playing
at being another often starts as a voluntary activity, it carries with it
the danger of ousting reality entirely from his mind. This is because,
as the process of self-refashioning continues, his identity becomes a
mere function of the originals he imitates, and his role-playing a form
of alienation in another’s person or, indeed, in another’s image. And
as the very act of imitation makes some element of automatism surface
in his person, he easily slips into an over-theatrical or burlesque per-
sonality, whose tics are as easy to reproduce as to ridicule.112
The snares attached to the imitation of aspirational role models were
detected by Hobbes’s friend Ben Jonson, who exposed them to view
by means of an old maxim, suggestively vested in the life-as-theatre
metaphor:
I have considered our whole life is like a play wherein every man, for-
getful of himself, is in travail with expression of another. Nay, we so
insist in imitating others as we cannot, when it is necessary, return to
ourselves.113
It is easy to see how such imitation of others may relapse into a psy-
chological blockage, leading to a denial of the truth about oneself. This
may ultimately amount to that kind of gallant madness of which Don
Quixote, a poor hidalgo who turned himself into a knight-errant by

110
Ibid., p. 43.
111
Hobbes 1969b, pp. 37–8, my emphasis.
112
For a comprehensive study of Renaissance theorists of laughter, see Ménager
1995. On their special contempt for the vices of pride and vaingloriousness, see Skin-
ner 2002b, pp. 158–60.
113
Jonson 1953, p. 71.
112 chapter two

reason of his addiction to chivalric romances, is Hobbes’s paradig-

matic example: ‘And the gallant madness of Don Quixote is nothing
but an expression of such height of vain glory as reading of romants
may produce in pusillanimous men.’114 As Cervantes explains, in
terms which stand very close to Hobbes’s own explanation of the psy-
chology of vainglory, Don Quixote ventured to do everything earlier
knights had done, ‘giving himself the opportunity to experience every
sort of danger, so that, surmounting them all, he would cover himself
with eternal fame and glory’, and so much rejoiced in ‘such pleasant
ideas’, that ‘he hurried to turn them into reality’, miscalculating what
was involved.115 With his weak body and poor garments, he was an
imitation that fell short of the original heroic potential he imagined
for himself. And yet because he lived by the book, and saw no fron-
tier between literary fiction and the shaping of his own life, he was
compelled to recognise in himself the celebrated knights of the past,
and in everything he encountered something coming out of one of
the storybooks he so avidly read. Stubbornly refusing to be awoken
from his dreamland of ‘pleasing Shows and Apparitions’ and ‘imagi-
nary Glories’,116 Don Quixote crossed the arid planes of La Mancha in
search of marks of resemblance between reality and fiction, dismissing
any signs of mismatch as false likenesses, ensuing from the obscure
forces of sorcery.117 He was, in Foucault’s words, the prototype of the
‘man who is alienated in analogy’,118 of the man whose overwhelming
mimetic impulse stands in the way of his seeing representations qua
re-presentations: things contingent upon a gap between fiction and
reality.
Behind Don Quixote’s estrangement in a world of resemblances,
likenesses, and identities lie the workings of his compound imagina-
tion, which is ‘full to bursting [not only] with everything he read’,119

114
Hobbes 1969b, p. 52. The first English translation of Cervante’s Don Quixote
was Thomas Shelton’s version of part I, published in 1612, followed by part II in 1620.
Earlier in The Elements of Law, Hobbes refers to the vainglorious man as he who
‘imagineth himself to do the actions whereof he readeth in some romant, or to be like
unto some other man whose acts he admireth’. Hobbes 1969b, p. 37. Again, on the
connection of vainglory to ‘the Histories and Fictions of Gallant Persons’, see Hobbes
1996, p. 43. Ironically, Charles I too was known for his love of chivalric romance.
115
Cervantes 1999, p. 15.
116
Ibid.
117
See, for instance, ibid., p. 332.
118
Foucault 1974, p. 54.
119
Cervantes 1999, p. 14.
 dramatic representation 113

but also with those images he collected as a ‘devoted play-goer’, fas-

cinated by masks and ‘everything theatrical’.120 Fascinated, but curi-
ously not fooled: Don Quixote is deceived by his bookish imagination,
not by the theatre. When Sancho Panza, his faithful squire, brusquely
observes that the crowns and sceptres of actors are never made of real
gold, but only tin and tinsel, Quixote acquiesces, and further explains
that ‘it would be improper for the stage props to be real, rather than
make-believe and mere resemblances of reality, as the plays themselves
are’.121 This reflexivity with regard to theatre, which gives Quixote a
glimpse of sanity, does not prevent him from succumbing otherwise to
the effects of his mimetic imagination; an imagination that is unusu-
ally quick in ranging from sensational schemes and dreams to real-life
situations, and, especially, in erroneously taking one for the other. For
what he is lacking in judgement, the faculty that ‘subtly distinguishes
among similar objects’, he makes up for in fancy, which ‘pleasing con-
founds dissimilar objects’.122 And judgement is for Hobbes the critical
cognitive skill when it comes to man’s capacity to interact with rep-
resentations.
With all his continuous retaining, altering and mixing of images
formerly received by sense into those representations of the world, and
himself, which are most agreeable to his imagination, Don Quixote is
the perfect literary counterpart of that other vainglorious man,
[who] compoundeth the image of his own person, with the image of the
actions of an other man; as when a man imagines himselfe a Hercules,
or an Alexander, (which happeneth often to them that are much taken
with reading of Romants) it is a compound imagination, and properly
but a Fiction of the mind.123
It is unlikely that Hobbes did not have the Spanish knight at the back
of his mind when writing this passage about how the desire of imita-
tion befalling credulous readers may produce not only mad, yet harm-
less individuals, but also, and far more worryingly, seditious rebels,
who hold ancient Greece and Rome as the models of the regime they,
as military heroes emulating their fictional role models, want to rep-
licate at home. With his ‘distempered brain waking’,124 Don Quixote

120
Ibid., p. 414.
121
Ibid., p. 417.
122
De H. (OL II, p. 111).
123
Hobbes 1996, p. 16.
124
Ibid., p. 270.
114 chapter two

is eloquent proof that the borderline separating madness from sanity,

dream from reality, is a rather thin one. Proceeding from the action,
distemper or violence of our inward parts upon the brain, dreams,
Hobbes warns, make those images formerly collected by the organs
of sense reappear ‘as if a man were waking’.125 Moreover, as sense
is benumbed by sleep, dreams are necessarily clearer, more striking,
more impinging ‘than our waking thoughts’.126 This distinctive vivid-
ness of dream-images lies behind our extreme difficulty in separat-
ing vision, and sense in general, from dreaming, a difficulty Hobbes
himself experiences when trying to explain the difference.127 Insidious
by nature, dreams are all the more difficult to discern when a man
does not acknowledge that he dozed and has ‘no cause to think it
a Dream’;128 or, indeed, when, being perfectly awake, he is possessed
with alluring tales of tyrants and their heroic slayers, or like fancies of
divine inspiration, affecting zealous readers of the Scriptures.
Firmly grounded in the workings of the human psyche, Don Quix-
ote’s madness is also highly discriminating in nature. Despite thinking
himself a knight, and building into the world the plot of a romance,
he is the otherwise perfectly sane author of the sharpest insights.129
His sane madness gives him the freedom of expression that was nor-
mally attributed to the court jester, or the professional stage fool. But
whereas the latter deliberately acted the eccentricity typical of natural
fools to gain the licence to mention the unmentionable, Quixote cannot
avoid being a fool when addressing knightly themes, while perspicu-
ous in approaching almost everything else. As a fictional character in
a written text he could have a part to play in England at a time when
the closing of theatres, and the condemnation of court entertainment,
had driven artificial fools off the stage. But perhaps they had not been
entirely driven out, for Hobbes recovers something of that dramatis
persona when he introduces into his own text the famous character of
the ‘Foole’ who, not entirely without warrant, ‘hath sayd in his heart,
there is not such thing as Justice’, but, in trumpeting the reasonable-
ness of acting unjustly also ‘in his tongue’, publicly betrayed himself,

125
Ibid., p. 17.
126
Ibid.
127
See Hobbes 1969b, pp. 9–10, as well as p. 13. See also Hobbes 1996, p. 17.
128
Hobbes 1996, p. 18.
129
See Cervantes 1999, p. 335.
 dramatic representation 115

making a real spectacle out of his own folly.130 Hobbes’s explicit fool’s
folly consists in an absolute lack of discretion, which makes him pass
into verbal discourse what he should keep in the seclusion of his
thoughts, and thus commit social suicide.131
In response to the fool’s appeal to the opportunistic violation of jus-
tice, Hobbes emphasises that the reasonableness of a course of action
must not be inferred from its actual outcome, but rather from the
likeliness of its leading to a positive one. This remark could easily be
a warning against those vainglorious men who, blinded by their self-
deception, lack the judgement to make that estimation. Prone to act
on the basis of a foolish evaluation of their capacities, the proud can
irreversibly endanger not only their lives, but also the life, and the
fragile theatrical balance, of the commonwealth. Glory consisting, like
honour, in representing oneself above others, it is only to be expected
that vain men act ‘as if difference of worth, were an effect of their wit,
or riches, or bloud, or some other naturall quality’, which they see
as indicators of divine or natural favour, impelling them to the most
ambitious adventures.132 Reassured by their self-asserted greatness,
they venture themselves ‘upon great exploits, and danger’, as well as
‘on Crimes, upon hope of escaping punishment’.133
It is typical of the self-important man to react with disproportion-
ate rage, whenever his dream world breaks down, by virtue of a col-
lision between his inflated self-perception and the devaluation of his
status by others.134 Any sign on another’s part that is interpreted as
expressing depreciation is suffered as an unbearable hurt, which must
be ruthlessly, even dramatically, responded to.135 Owing to his special
susceptibility to his own image as reflected in others’ eyes, there is
virtually no word, or deed, however innocent, that cannot be taken

130
Hobbes 1996, p. 101. For a discussion of the ‘fool’ passage that hinges upon the
distinction between the silent and the explicit fool, see Hoekstra 1997.
131
This is because any man who becomes known for not keeping his agreements
will see the willingness of others to cooperate with him weaken at the same pace as
his reputation for injustice grows.
132
Hobbes 1996, p. 205.
133
Hobbes 1969b, p. 35 and Hobbes 1996, p. 205. See also Hobbes 1996, pp. 88,
107 and 205.
134
Anger comes, accordingly, defined as the ‘grief proceeding from an opinion of
contempt’. Hobbes 1969b, pp. 38–9, my emphasis.
135
This ‘hurt’ is, of course, ‘not Corporeal, but Phantasticall’, and therefore, when
the vainglorious man breaks the law to ‘protect’ himself for the future, his action is
entirely unjustified, and rightly taken for a ‘crime’. See Hobbes 1996, p. 207.
116 chapter two

for offence, nor any slight injury which cannot grow in his mind to
a major affront. This tendency to overreact is also explained by his
fear that ‘unlesse he revenge it, he shall fall into contempt, and conse-
quently be obnoxious to the like injuries from others’.136 It is this fear,
this insecurity, which lies behind the nobleman’s engagement in duels,
and revengeful enterprises.137 Revenge being, however, past-oriented,
and specifically directed at the humiliation of another, it serves no
other purpose than the triumph of glory, and even this at the cost of
igniting further revenge.138 Obsessed with social recognition, the proud
are likely to enter mutually reinforcing mechanisms of self-delusion,
which result in an operatic spiral of violence, from which the com-
monwealth cannot escape unharmed.
More than a mere annoyance, vainglorious men are a menace to the
very foundations of the civil peace, and the well-measured theatricality
that sustains it. This is especially so when, encouraged by their false
presumption of their wisdom, they ‘take upon them to reprehend the
action, and call in question the Authority of them that govern, and
so to unsettle the Laws with their publique discourse, as that nothing
shall be a Crime, but what their own designs require should be so’.139
Their fault lies less in their actual infringement of the law than in the
unabashed public encouragement of its generalised violation, which,
if their position of power or reputation is great, is likely to be imitated
by others.140
Besides leading to the open contestation of public authority, vanity
grounded in a duel of wits is also behind contempt for monarchy in
particular. As Hobbes mordantly explains in De Cive, those citizens
who decry their loss of liberty under a monarchical form of govern-
ment are, in reality, ‘only annoyed because they are not called to play
a role in the government of the Country’, and, this being so, are not

136
Ibid., pp. 206–7.
137
Knowing that monopoly over legitimate coercion and administration of jus-
tice is essential to the consolidation of the state, Hobbes dismantles the noble ethics
behind duels. Ibid., p. 67.
138
See Hobbes 1969b, p. 39.
139
Hobbes 1996, p. 205. Hobbes repeats the same claim in chapter 11, where he
writes: ‘Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdome in matter of govern-
ment, are disposed to Ambition. Because without publique Employment in counsell
or magistracy, the honour of their wisdome is lost. And therefore Eloquent speakers
are enclined to Ambition; for Eloquence seemeth wisedome, both to themselves and
others.’ Ibid., p. 72.
140
See Hoekstra 1997.
 dramatic representation 117

‘given leave to publicly display prudence, knowledge and eloquence

in deliberations’.141 That ‘road to winning praise and rank’ being, in
a monarchy, ‘blocked for most of the citizens’, vain debaters give
themselves up to the dream of a popular state where they would ‘pit
[their] wits against another man’ before an enlarged audience.142 The
pleasure of political participation is, in Hobbes, explained by a narcis-
sistic desire to score publicly over others. The republican type of pub-
lic self-representation is therefore profoundly, even self-consciously,
exhibitionist: a gladiatorial contest of men struggling for the applause
of their spectatorship. What they fail to see in their dreams of glory is
that those games of self-display, in a kind of political public theatre,
are also an occasion for the major humiliation of seeing their opinions
contested, and masks of wisdom assaulted, in full view of their rivals,
if not of the general public.143 However attractive public games of wit
may sound to democratic gentlemen wanting their vanity massaged,
Hobbes warns, they would perhaps serve themselves better if they gave
serious consideration to the costs of entering public deliberation and
suffering defeat. For there can surely be no greater torment for the
vainglorious class of learned men than
To see the proposal of a man whom we despise preferred to our own;
to see our wisdom ignored before our eyes; to incur certain enmity in
an uncertain struggle for empty glory; to hate and be hated because of
differences of opinion (which cannot be avoided, whether we win or
lose); to reveal our plans and wishes when there is no need to and to get
nothing by it; to neglect our private affairs.144
The publicity of large assemblies can also dictate the ignominious
defeat of the operatic performer. After all, it is not only in theatres that
audiences are allowed to be critical of the performance, and approve
or disapprove of it by such signs as shouting, applauding, groaning or
whistling. The political stage can also be the focal point for the con-
struction, and the cruel shattering, of illusions. Those who seek pre-
eminence, but want to avoid the danger of losing face in public, may
want to think twice before engaging in politics. Their egos—Hobbes

141
Hobbes 1998, p. 122, my emphasis.
142
Ibid.
143
‘To agree with in opinion, is to Honour; as being a signe of approving his judge-
ment, and wisdome’, but ‘to dissent, is Dishonour, and an upbraiding of errour, and
(if the dissent be in many things) of folly’. Hobbes 1996, p. 65.
144
Hobbes 1998, p. 122.
118 chapter two

suggests—may be better served by giving themselves in representation,

and turning to private business.

Theatre of Politics

From our discussion of vainglory it should be apparent that, in

Hobbes’s view, nothing can propitiate men better than the spectacle
of the transformation of another’s inward recognition of their superior
power into visible signs of honour: signs of being loved or feared by
another. Honour, Hobbes notes, is enlarged by worship, and real power
accrues, above all, from a reputation of power.145 Thence, even where
a man’s power is based less on fact than on imagination, if cunningly
displayed, it may end up creating an impressive reality by a process of
mutual reinforcement of delusions. Such a possibility is opened up by
the fact that, at its most fundamental, power is a matter of belief.146
There is a good reason for this. For Hobbes, man is simply a com-
modity amongst others. His exchange value is not absolute, but deter-
mined according to the needs and subjective judgement of prospective
‘buyers’. These estimate how much they would be willing to ‘pay’ for
the use of a man’s power by assessing the signs of his possessing it.147
This means that power is contingent on making itself manifest, on
staging itself publicly. For a man ‘[t]o be Conspicuous, that is to say,
to be known’, Hobbes contends, ‘is Honourable as a signe of the power
for which he is conspicuous’, whereas the contrary, ‘Obscurity, is Dis-
honourable’.148 Visibility is the very essence of power, and dependent
on the reflectiveness of signs. While the direct signs of power emanate
from the honoured themselves, the indirect signs of power are signs
of honour whereby the honourer makes his opinion of the honoured
known to onlookers. It is through these signs of high regard that
power is evaluated, but also, more importantly, socially reproduced
in audiences. For the mechanics of collective behaviour are such that
when a man sees another being addressed deferentially, ‘he supposeth

145
See Hobbes 1996, p. 62.
146
See Tuck 1996, p. 184.
147
See Hobbes 1996, p. 63.
148
Ibid., p. 66, my emphasis.
 dramatic representation 119

him powerfull, and is the readier to obey him; which makes his Power
greater’.149
For power ever to be recognised as such, it must first make itself rep-
resented in ways that elicit recognition. A concealed power, a power
that does not display itself in identifiable signs, is a power reduced
to the shelf-life of its most immediate effects, a power condemned to
progressive atrophy. For this reason, Hobbes is adamant that politi-
cal power depends on visibility and thus on a disciplined deployment
of the spectacular. I say disciplined, because the spectacular is always
dangerous: it involves the potential for manipulation. If the politi-
cal audience is not to be entrapped by the enemies of the common-
wealth, Hobbes’s sovereign must prevent the imaginary from getting
out of hand; passion from eclipsing reason; the necessary spectacu-
larity of power from occluding the proper measure of political truth.
His deployment of the spectacular in the construction and staging of
verbal and visual symbols of sovereign authority must, therefore, be
complemented by a state-led process of rationalisation, whereby men
are emancipated from their fear of imaginary powers, and educated in
the necessity of the greatest of visible ones: their own, as represented
in the Leviathan state.
Visibility has a potential for generating power because, for Hobbes,
passion is aroused by the imagination (the image-making faculty), and
passion being more potent than reason, it dominates the will. If he is
right in contending that image makes passion, then the diffusion of
images of sovereign power that appeal most vividly to the popular
imagination is an essential step in the production of the power the
image depicts. Seeing is believing, and belief in a virtually irresistible
sovereign agency which is given in an inedible representational image
is vital to securing the type of obedience that creates it. This explains
why Hobbes thought it necessary to combine picture, pictographic
language and text for the striking presentation of his political mes-
sage. The visual representation of the Leviathan state had to be such
that it elicited passionate reverence, by confronting onlookers with a
‘visible Power that keeps them in awe’, and by the ‘terror thereof’ ties
them also emotionally to their promises.150 In other words, to draw
together the adherence of all those in need of protection, Leviathan,

149
Ibid., p. 249.
150
Hobbes 1996, pp. 117 and 120.
120 chapter two

the representative state, needs to construct itself as an impressive

object of sight, capable of dominating their visual horizon. This object
was intended to be viewed as a dramatic spectacle, capable of arrest-
ing the senses, and having a power of affective contagion like that of
well-acted plays. But this was a play in two acts; a kind of visual riddle,
at first mystifying, and experienced as an awing, monstrous presence,
yet meant to lead into the text, where the reader would find the key to
its rational decoding.
Stephen Greenblatt has maintained that wherever power is depen-
dent upon its privileged visibility, theatricality is not set over against
power but is one of power’s essential modes.151 Leviathan’s power being
a function of its impressive visibility, it is no coincidence that Hobbes
turned to the theatre for metaphors of how humanity generated the
greatest of human powers, and the only power capable of keeping
nature at bay. This is sovereign power, whose very essence is represen-
tational, and whose existential condition is that of coming to be only
by and in representation; representation as theatrical static image, for
sure, but primarily representation as acting, or performance. Political
power is performing power: power to do things, power to protect. Just
as the performance brings the play into existence, so does Leviathan
properly exist, first and only, when enacted. Politics—like theatre—is
a live art form.
Hobbes’s self-consciously theatrical solution to the problem of polit-
ical unity is founded upon man’s powers of play. Given that most men
are persons or self-representers, they have also the aptitude to give them-
selves to others in representation. Mankind’s escape to security pre-
supposes this representability, which allows for the multitude’s division
into two groups: that of the representative, and that of the represented.
Given that representing is performing, or action by actors, Hobbes’s
sovereign is ‘an Actor’ whose role it is to act the part of the entire
political community. And each political subject is ‘the AUTHOR’ who
legitimises the sovereign performance by consenting to the separation
between actor and author, representative and represented, the persona
borne by the sovereign and himself. It is in this aesthetic gap that the
transformative power of representational politics operates: a power
that has for its quintessential sign the ability to create, and impose,
its own fictions upon the world. Chief amongst these is Leviathan, the

151
Greenblatt 1981, pp. 56–7. See also Pye 1984.
 dramatic representation 121

fictitious person of the state, which does not exist prior to, or inde-
pendently of, representation, as the original cause of the sovereign’s
acting, but rather because of sovereign representation itself. Political
theatre, even more than stage theatre, is not merely mimetic of the
world around it: it is constitutive of it.
When maintaining that the sovereign must bear the person of the
people, Hobbes deliberately deploys theatrical language to suggest the
need for the extension of mask-wearing into politics. Should the sov-
ereign representative come before us, he ought to come as a persona,
invested in a public role, his private identity dissimulated behind the
impersonal mask of our collective unity. In the bourgeoning interpre-
tations of the iconographic meaning of the frontispiece of Leviathan,
this mask has variously been taken for the face of different individu-
als, including Hobbes himself. But the truth is that in its unresolved
ambiguity lies its political strength. As an impersonator of each and
every subject, the sovereign’s power depends on his capacity to pro-
duce universal psychological identification, or the self-recognition of
all others in him. This means he must don a mask that cannot be iden-
tified with any of the particular men, or groups of men, that compose
the commonwealth at any given time. He must rather be beyond all
literality, beyond all partisanship, beyond himself. Only such a mask
as we see crowning the colossus, displaying archetypal characteristics,
with which everyone, but no one specific, can identify, will be able
to bestow on the multitude the unity of expression which is to be
expected of an impersonal sovereign agency like the state.152
Although the sovereign’s mask bears some resemblance to the
archetypal masks of ancient theatre, his role departs from a purely
theatrical one in that it eschews imitation and is an office, imposing
duties (officia) on its actor. These duties arise from natural law and
the end for which he was ‘trusted with the Soveraign Power’.153 Such
duties may demand self-contention from the sovereign’s natural per-
son, and force him to do things differently from the way that would
be appropriate for him if acting in his own name. As Hobbes stresses
in chapter 30 of Leviathan, the sovereign must make his representative
status manifest through both doctrine and example. As the temporary
bearer of sovereignty he inhabits a demanding, double-faceted role. He

152
See Dumouchel 1996, pp. 76–7.
153
Hobbes 1996, p. 231.
122 chapter two

is but one of us, and yet he is radically other. He is both completely

immanent and completely transcendent. A man appointed to his rep-
resentative role by fellow men who are the authors of his authority, he
must nevertheless act his role as invested in an all-powerful authority,
which remains outside the law and can do no injustice.154
It is this impressive figure of power, shaping the multitude into unity,
that we see portrayed in the frontispiece of Leviathan, in what looks like
an artificial man–theatre of multiple spectators. But one thing is sure:
this is no usual playhouse. The packed mass making up Leviathan’s
body looks nothing like the early modern theatre audience. This was
an audience marking togetherness by explicit, often vocal, responses
to the play; an audience interacting powerfully with one another, and
those speaking to it from the stage; an audience empowered to pass
judgement, and refusing to keep a respectful distance from the stage.
By contrast, the frontispiece offers an image of order, an image of still-
ness. There, the defiant crowd gives way to a modern audience, whose
double experience is that of being inside, drawn into the scene, at the
same time as they stand outside, watching it, separated from (state)
action by a fourth wall. They compose an ordered mass of discrete
individuals, quietly gazing up towards a mask, which does not return
their gaze. Captivated by the spectacle of sovereignty, they seem will-
ing to hand over their judgement and settle themselves at a respectful
distance, in reverential silence. This is an audience that has delegated
itself to the stage, and agreed to let itself live by the imagined, uni-
fied political community that only the theatre—the theatre of poli-
tics—is able to construct for it in representation. If the theatrical gaze
of spectators is unified, it is not because it is exchanged, letting them
cohere together to form a public. It is because it converges on the same
upstage sovereign performance.155
Although Hobbes is primarily interested in representation as pro-
ductive of power, rather than mere instrument of its consolidation, he
is not entirely uninterested in the latter. Whatever the form, spectacle
is always a necessary component of the theatre of power. This is clearly

154
Ibid., p. 120.
155
This is also the only type of political community Rousseau thought that the thea-
tre was able to sustain, as is clear from his invectives against theatre and the various
exclusions the theatre creates, namely the separation between the actors of sovereignty
and its passive spectators. This reads as an indirect rejection of the theatricality of the
Hobbesian sovereign. See Rousseau 1960.
 dramatic representation 123

reflected in the care that the powerful take in dressing up their appear-
ances with all manner of symbolic paraphernalia. In ancient Germany,
Hobbes tells us, warlords made themselves recognisable to their fol-
lowers by painting ‘their Armor, or their Scutchion, or Coat, with the
picture of some Beast, or other thing’, or ‘some eminent and visible
mark’ they would put ‘upon the Crest of their Helmets’.156 So did the
gentry come to have ‘Scutchions, and Coats of Armes haereditary’
made for them.157 If it is characteristic of powerful men, in general,
to resort to settings and props to keep others in awe of their power,
it must, by necessity, be all the more so when the man in question is
the bearer of the ‘Greatest of humane Powers’, ‘such as is the Power
of a Common-wealth’.158 For not only is the power signified greater,
but also it is representational power, needing to represent itself back
to those in whose name it acts. The spectacle of representational sov-
ereignty, more than any other spectacle, is about performance in the
public view, directed at the theatrical intensification of the appearance
of what is being brought before their presence: their own estranged
power, in all its dynamic fullness.
But if it is the goal of theatrical sovereignty to subject the audience
by suspending their judgement, this is not necessarily always the out-
come. Representation is as powerful as it is dangerous. And to stand
on a place of privileged visibility before a multitude harbours consid-
erable risks: the actor, even the sovereign actor, becomes ultimately
subject to the (dis)approval of a multitude of spectators. This anxiety
surfaces in Elizabeth’s and James’s comments about being on stage.
Princes, Elizabeth observed, are ‘set on stages, in the sight and view of
all the world’.159 It was a place from which, King James added, their

156
Hobbes 1996, p. 68.
157
Ibid., p. 67. It was one such coat of arms that, according to Aubrey, Hobbes
declined. See Aubrey 1898, I, p. 354.
158
Hobbes 1996, p. 62.
159
This line uttered by Queen Elizabeth before the Parliament of 1586–7 can be
found in Neale 1957, p. 119. Neale has, in turn, taken it from Lansdowne MS. 94,
fols. 84–5. As noted by Neale, the text to which the quoted line belongs represents
the speech delivered to Parliament as the queen wanted the world to know it, for it
results from a report she amended heavily in her own hand. In total agreement with
what James I would come to say, Queen Elizabeth proceeds with the remark that ‘the
eyes of many behold our actions, [therefore] a spot is soon spied in our garments, a
blemish quickly noted in our doings’.
124 chapter two

‘smallest actions and gestures, all the people gazingly doe behold’.160
When even the most discreet of the sovereign’s acts is open to scru-
tiny, it is not surprising that his public image, spectacle and ceremony
should become a matter of the highest priority.
In reality, the problems the sovereign encounters when engaging in
the construction of his political persona may well be said to replicate
those of the natural person, but at a much higher level of complex-
ity. For if the sovereign has privileged access to stage devices he can
also, by their very misuse, easily slip into something of a clown-like
figure, lacking the gravity which is essential for the assertion of his
authority. Where, for instance, Elizabeth, a great performer and lover
of spectacles, carefully crafted (and even more carefully controlled) her
royal pose, James tried to master the dramaturgy of royal power by
covering up his weak natural presence in extravagant behaviour, but
to no avail.161 And yet, as Voltaire would stress a hundred years after
the publication of Leviathan, in the incumbent of the seat of power,
majestic bearing and nobility of features can be ‘more commanding
than the authority of his rank’.162
This remark comes immediately after Voltaire’s description of how
in 1655, after the suppression of the civil wars, his first campaign and
his coronation, Louis XIV, knowing that the Estates General wanted
to reassemble on the subject of various edicts, hastily left Vincennes
‘in his hunting costume, entered Estates General in great boots, whip
in hand’, and with a few resolute words dismissed it.163 Voltaire’s por-
trayal of the Sun King’s menacing presence brings immediately to mind
Hobbes’s own account of the threatening warning that Cromwell, that
other king of self-refashioning, gave to Parliament. Upon the king’s
rejection of the Nineteen Propositions, Cromwell told Parliament it
was time it should govern and defend the kingdom without the king.
This he did theatrically ‘laying his hand upon his sword when he spake
it’, whereby he showed who was in command, who had the Parliament

160
This observation was made by James I in his handbook of kingship, Basilikon
Doron, and directed to his heir, Charles I. See James I 1994d, p. 49.
161
For a discussion of Sir Anthony Weldon’s controversial description of the king’s
physical appearance in his satirical work A Perfect Description of the People and Coun-
try of Scotland, see Beasley 1995.
162
Voltaire 1966, I, p. 310.
163
Ibid.
 dramatic representation 125

‘in his pocket’.164 If theatre is intrinsic to politics, Cromwell certainly

knew how it ought to be stage-managed.
After all, it was Cromwell—the opponent of a single man’s rule—
who surrounded himself with the insignia of his predecessor in power,
making himself king in all but name. If he stopped short of adopting
the title of king, this was for purely prudential reasons. Adopting the
name would have betrayed his ambition to be absolute master, and
make him powerful enemies, especially within the army.165 In this cau-
tious move Cromwell followed the emperor Augustus, who, knowing
that nothing ‘stirred to sedition so much . . . as insolent titles’, resisted
taking ‘any offensive Title, as that of King or Dictator’.166 After all,
‘in a multitude, seeming things, rather than substantial, make impres-
sion’:167 a warning which is also an invitation to construct power by
working more subtly on impressions. That is precisely what Cromwell
did. He achieved royal status through a subliminal manipulation of
less manifest symbols of royalty.
The symbolic power invested in the insignia of sovereignty can
indeed be such that the temptation, and the gains, of moulding them
in one’s image are immense. There is no better illustration of this point
than the successive iconographic manipulations to which the Great
Seal of England was subjected from the beginning of the civil wars to
the Protectorate. As Hobbes stresses, the seal represents the locus and
the possibility of power, because it bears the authority of the common-
wealth, and constitutes its objects as legitimised ones. As is typical of
signs of power, the seal only needs to be seen for the power behind
it to be believed: ‘What verbal command of a king can arrive at the
ears of all his subjects,’ Hobbes asks, ‘which it must do ere it be a
law, without the seal of the person of the commonwealth, which is
the Great Seal of England?’168 Through the seal an unheard localised
performative of the king can be represented throughout the kingdom
as an authoritative command designed to elicit distant obedience.
Commonly showing on one of its faces an equestrian figure repre-
senting the monarch, the seal came under the Protectorate to show a

164
Hobbes 1969a, pp. 146 and 143.
165
For Hobbes’s discussion of Cromwell’s purely strategic reasons for not wanting
to change the title of protector for that of ping see ibid., pp. 188–9. Chief amongst
royal insignia is the crown, which was, of course, never adopted by Cromwell.
166
[Hobbes(?)] 1995, p. 38.
167
Ibid., p. 38.
168
Ans. Bram., p. 370.
126 chapter two

representation of Charles I’s trial instead. But the image of a ruler on

horseback did not disappear from view. Cromwell shrewdly retained it
in the seal of Scotland, with himself pictured in the saddle as the new
saviour monarch, mastering the bewildered citizenry. He understood
all too well the power of subliminal messages.
In his narration of the English civil wars, Hobbes repeatedly alludes
to these critical disputes over the control of the Great Seal. More than
anyone else he knows the importance of its symbolic capital: that
power is his who controls the visual symbols of authority. Accord-
ingly, Hobbes recounts (in the person of A.) that in 1643:
Parliament caused to be made a new Great Seal. The Lord Keeper had
carried the former seal to Oxford. Hereupon the King sent a messenger
to the judges at Westminster, to forbid them to make use of it. This
messenger was taken, and condemned at a council of war, and hanged
for a spy.169
To this narration of the capture of the Great Seal by Parliament the
character B. replies with a question: ‘Was not the making of a new
Great Seal a sufficient proof that the war was raised, not to remove evil
counsellors from the King, but to remove the King himself from the
government?’170 This was a rhetorical question followed by a silence
which spoke louder than words. Control over the Great Seal and its
iconography was the surest sign of who in the commonwealth was in
command. A freestanding element in the creation of power, represen-
tations of power have an inherent weakness: they are appropriable.
Though not mentioned by Hobbes, there is another slightly earlier
episode involving the manipulation of the king’s iconography that is
of interest in this context. Shortly after the Declaration of the Lords
and Commons of 27 May 1642—whereby, in Kantorowicz’s words,
‘the King’s body politic was retained in and by Parliament whereas
the king body natural was, so to say, frozen out’171—medallions were
struck representing the king in Parliament. One such medallion
appeared from whose head the king’s personal image had disappeared,
being replaced by that of an (insurgent) battleship, but on whose tail
it remained, even if ‘very like an apparition of the image of the Great

169
Hobbes 1969a, p. 128.
170
Ibid.
171
Kantorowicz 1997, p. 21. The text of the Declaration can be found in McIlwain
1910, pp. 389–90.
 dramatic representation 127

Seal’, by the authority of which Parliament ‘acted against the individ-

ual Charles I’.172 In this medallion we see the visual representation of
how the king’s political body could be retained to the exclusion of his
private one. It is exactly the absurdity of the underlying fiction of the
continuous presence of the king in Parliament that Hobbes chooses
to denounce, when he notices that every time members of Parliament
‘summoned any town, it was always in the name of the King and Par-
liament, the King being in the contrary army, and many times beating
them from the siege’.173 To this he adds, in a tone of explanation, that
they pretended that ‘the King was always virtually in the two Houses
of Parliament; making a distinction between his person natural and
politic’.174 Not content with denouncing the folly of the fiction of the
king’s two bodies, Hobbes rejoices in the disclosure of the perverse
effects to which such a fiction could and did lead. For one needed
not to wait long to see the fiction of the real presence of the king in
Parliament rebounding on Parliament itself. Just as the Parliament had
maintained that the king was always virtually present, Hobbes sarcasti-
cally remarks,
so the army now, making war against the Parliament, called themselves
the Parliament and the army: but they might, with more reason, say,
that the Parliament, since it was in Cromwell’s pocket, was virtually in
the army.175
The world of power being also a world of make-believe, in which fic-
tions and seeming appearances rule, there will inevitably be many situ-
ations in which, as in the theatre, the crown, the costume and the royal
horse-riding make the king. Hobbes did not ignore this possibility.
Instead, he stressed the importance of the sovereign’s being in charge
of his theatrical representations, to avoid an unexpected subversion
of civil authority. This concern comes across, once again, in Hobbes’s

172
Kantorowicz 1997, p. 22.
173
Hobbes 1969a, p. 124, my emphasis. Hobbes’s denunciation of the legal fiction
which allowed Parliament to war against the man Charles I, while convening in the
name of the person of the king of England, should not make us forget that Hobbes too
distinguishes between the king’s natural and political person. According to his theory
of representation, however, to put the former to death is tantamount to condemning
his political person and the person he bears, the commonwealth, to extinction. For
the distinction between the sovereign’s natural and political person, see Hobbes 1996,
p. 131.
174
Hobbes 1969a, p. 124.
175
Ibid., pp. 140–1.
128 chapter two

discussion of ‘Civill Honour’, whose bestowal and performance must

always be dependent upon ‘the Will of the Soveraigne’.176 He illustrates
this with a passage drawn from the Book of Esther, where the sover-
eign figures as the puppeteer presiding over the public playing of his
political persona:
The King of Persia, Honoured Mordecay, when he appointed he should
be conducted through the streets in the Kings Garment, upon one of
the Kings Horses, with a Crown on his head, and a Prince before him,
proclayming, Thus shall it be done to him that the King will honour.
And yet another King of Persia, or the same another time, to one that
demanded for some great service, to weare one of the Kings robes, gave
him leave so to do; but with this addition, that he should weare it as the
Kings foole; and then it was Dishonour.177
The king of Persia’s miniature theatre evades the enclosed space of the
playhouse to parade itself in the open: the potentially ungovernable
city street. This makes it all the more critical that the king oversees and
orchestrates the playing of his persona by one of his subjects. Despite
the sovereign’s intention to honour Mordecay’s loyalty by letting him
play his role publicly, this street theatre will always carry the risk of
subversion. For when, as happens here, rule is publicly exposed as
role, and the garment, the royal horse and the glittering crown pass
on to another actor, the distinction between king and actor becomes
blurred, and royal power demystified. This much is also true when
the king seeks to dishonour a subject by allowing him to wear the
royal costume but on the condition he acts as a buffoon—mocking,
joking, singing and dancing in front of the street crowd. This may
well enhance the authority of the incumbent monarch, by disgracing a
potent subject, qua clown-king, in the eyes of the public, while reveal-
ing the monarch to be a much more competent player than otherwise
thought. But it will still expose the king as actor, and as such depen-
dent on the approval of his subject audience.
As holder of a power depending on its privileged visibility, Hobbes’s
sovereign must use representation as an instrument of power, with-
out losing sight of the dangers of representation. He might want to
further his presence amongst his subjects directly, through regular
appearances at formal institutions, like Parliament, or by means of

176
Hobbes 1996, p. 65.
177
Ibid.
 dramatic representation 129

more irregular public appearances, made in the context of progresses

around the realm, formal visits to favoured courtiers, or ceremonial
civic entrances, all of which constitute ways of presenting his person to
the public view. But however much the sovereign may display himself
in person, he can only gain the ubiquitous presence the modern state
requires if he unfolds himself in a series of representations—a minis-
ter, a constable, a justice, a throne, a stool, a royal seal—before which
the respect owed to his public persona is to be exhibited. If, on the one
hand, the sovereign’s power is reinforced by this ability to produce
and disseminate representations of his political persona (i.e., of him as
bearer of the state), on the other hand their uncontrolled proliferation
can backfire and result in increased fragility. Mordecay’s parade already
hints at this possibility. It is not altogether impossible that subjects
take Mordecay for the king, or the king for just another performer. If
the sovereign does not closely monitor civil performances, whereby he
comes to have as many persons, as there be justices of peace and petty
constables in his kingdom, what starts off as a subordinate representa-
tion of his political persona could turn into irreversible usurpation of
sovereign authority.178 Hobbes alludes to one such outcome when dis-
cussing the perils of a king ruling, in his absence, by viceroy. Although
people would ‘offend against the king if they did not obey the viceroy
in all things’, it is also crucial that they recognise, and withdraw their
obedience, when the viceroy gives signs of ‘seeking the kingdom for
himself ’.179 Crucial it may be, but, as Hobbes well knows, not at all
certain. The signs of the viceroy’s intention may go unnoticed until, as
the living image of a distant monarch, he comes to supersede what in
the eyes of the subjects has become an obsolete original.
Another complication adds to this danger. The more powerful a sov-
ereign is, the vaster his domains, the more he has to discharge his office
with the aid of public ministers. To these he transfers the authority to
represent, or bear, the person of the commonwealth in the discharge
of specific functions. They are actors of words and actions whose
authorship belongs to the sovereign, and whose authority depends
on his. A public minister will, none the less, be incapable of com-
manding obedience if he does not project an image of authority, which
must be accomplished by bearing the signs of the authority invested

178
See Ans. Bram., pp. 306 and 316.
179
Hobbes 1998, p. 186.
130 chapter two

in him, signs in whose reading subjects are, as Hobbes stresses, to be

instructed. This points to a particular meaning of the verb ‘to repre-
sent’: that of exhibiting or exposing to sight, of which French has a
significant variant. For représenter can, in French, be used in the sense
of exhibiting a title, and therefore be applied in phrases such as ‘to
represent one’s license, one’s passport, one’s birth certificate’.180 When
a man ‘represents’ his passport to a border guard, he is not giving
visibility to himself so much as to his legitimate presence. Similarly,
when recalcitrant subjects ask the public ministers of sovereign power
why they should obey them, the ministers must make their authority
manifest, through the exhibition of a commission displaying a public
seal, as the pose, the costume or the standardised performance of their
role may no longer suffice.181 This would seem to lead us away from
theatricality and its insinuating appearances to the safer world of law.
But if in most cases that is what happens, it need always not be so.
All those signs that make of ministers the recognisable images of the
sovereign can be counterfeited. Hence there will always be cases where
a crown of tinsel prompts the same effects as a crown of gold, just as
there may always be cases when a viceroy plays the part of royalty bet-
ter than the king, and steals the performance from him. As Hobbes is
the first to admit, ‘of who is Soveraign, no man, but by his own fault,
(whatsoever evill men suggest,) can make any doubt. The difficulty
consisteth in the evidence of the Authority derived from him.’182 To
minimise the number of those cases where the authority is feigned, it
is decisive that the sovereign retains a firm control over the spectacle
and symbolic structures of power, and that only he monopolises and
bestows those signs whereby civil power is handed down to some of

180
Louis Marin, in his Portrait of the King, offers a perceptive discussion of this
particular use of the verb représenter, which can be found in Littré’s Dictionnaire
de la langue française. Marin 1988, pp. 5–6. The general notion of representing as
exhibiting or displaying to the eye can also be found in the OED, but not the phrase
‘to represent a title’.
181
On how the effectiveness of political authority, as held by the early modern
officeholder who exercised it in face-to-face contexts, depended not only on formal
warrant but also on the quality of his reproduction of relatively standardised perform-
ances, see Braddick 2000, p. 77 and 68–85. The use of warrants and legal papers as
symbols of power is more fully discussed in Rosenheim 1993.
182
Hobbes 1996, p. 189. And yet, because a climate of generalised suspicion would
endanger the workings of the machinery of the state, ‘if the question be of Obedience
to a publique Officer; To have seen his Commission, with the Publique Seale, and
heard it read; or to have had the means to be informed of it, if a man would, is a suf-
ficient Verification of his Authority.’ Ibid.
 dramatic representation 131

his subjects and signified before all others.183 When politics borrows
from theatre, as Hobbes’s does, it must also pre-emptively protect
itself from the subversive potential of coups de théâtre.

The Powers of Theatre

Up to this point we have analysed the stage sensibility that perme-

ates much of Hobbes’s discussion of persons, natural, artificial and
fictitious. In so doing, we stepped down from the stage to see how, in
Hobbes’s civil society, theatre and reality intermingle, and representa-
tion asserts itself as a powerful, but also dangerous, world-building
activity. Although Hobbes has more to say about the theatre of politics
than about the politics of theatre, he is not entirely silent about theatre
and its uses. In the opening section of this chapter, I argued that for
Hobbes plays are not mere ‘play’, or things outside politics, but rather
material amenable to ideological deployment. But besides using play-
scripts to put across his political message, what did Hobbes have to say
about the nature of theatre as an art form, and its complex interaction
with the public?
In The Elements of Law Hobbes addresses the question of the pur-
poses and powers of theatre through a discussion of the workings of
rhetoric, or persuasive communication. But what seems to be an oblique
strategy proves to be a much more direct transposition. Addressing a
public assembly has, in Hobbes’s view, much in common with appear-
ing on a stage, as both arts—speech and theatre—seek to excite emo-
tions in the audience by means of visual persuasion.184 Their common
reliance on the power of images to create an effect of vivid life-likeness
also means that neither rhetoric nor theatre looks to achieve persua-
sion by the force of rational argument. They appeal directly to passions
aroused in the imagination.
In stressing the affinities between theatre and rhetoric, stage-actor
and orator, Hobbes follows in the steps of classical rhetoricians (Cicero,
Quintilian or Longinus) who highlighted the theatrical dimension of

183
As Blackstone notices with specific reference to subordinate corporations, where
the body is invisible, and cannot manifest itself by any personal act, it must make itself
represented, i.e., speak and act, by the mediation of signs, namely the common seal.
Blackstone 1862, p. 492.
184
Hobbes 1969b, p. 68.
132 chapter two

delivering, indeed performing, a speech by bringing together an array

of visual strategies: gesture, facial and bodily expression, figurative lan-
guage, sets, etc. The word ‘acting’ was originally used to describe the
gestural component of an orator’s art, it being likely that before the sev-
enteenth century stage-characters were ‘presented’ rhetorically rather
than ‘represented’ dramatically on the English stage. But the coinage
of the word ‘personation’ around the start of that century seems to
have signalled a more subtle approach to characters, as required for
the performance of Shakespeare, who wrote that ‘Action is eloquence,
and the eyes of th’ignorant / More learned than the ears.’185 Despite
Shakespeare’s apparent frustration with playgoers valuing ‘shows’ over
‘words’, he himself moved from calling his customers an auditory to
referring to them simply as spectators.186 Theatre was surrendering to
the power of images: it was becoming increasingly ‘ocularcentric’.
Trained in the arts of rhetoric, Hobbes was fully aware of the pow-
ers of the visual. He knew that performers, regardless of the stage on
which they act, would not be able to move their publics unless they
conjured up and convincingly acted out representations that by the
effect of life-likeness impinged on their imagination.187 The reason is
simple. Passion is kindled not by things as they are, but by things as
we believe them to be.188 Hence the job of the orator was tradition-
ally depicted as that of using imagery to make people ‘see’ things his
way, quite independently, Hobbes would add, of their reality. This is
because passion can be raised from opinion ‘whether the opinion be

185
Coriolanus III.2. For the changing meaning of ‘personation’ see Trussler 2000,
p. 72. Throughout the Middle Ages it was widely believed that ancient comedy and
tragedy were forms of narrative intended to be recited with the occasional accompani-
ment of mute miming, rather than to be performed by actors impersonating charac-
ters with voice and gesture. For a few more accurate medieval interpretations of the
reality of ancient representation, which draw on Boethius’ information on stage-acting
in De Duabus Naturis, see Marshall 1950.
186
Gurr 2004, pp. 102–16.
187
These representations are, of course, primarily those images they—orators and
stage-players—compound in their minds by an act of imagination, to translate them
subsequently into speech and gesture. The notion of ‘representation’ as the action
of placing a fact, event or situation before another or others by means of discourse,
with a view to conveying a particular view or impression that influences his or their
opinion and/or conduct, was common currency in Hobbes’s times, as can be inferred
from the examples in the OED, and much used by, for instance, the spokesmen in the
Putney debates.
188
See Tuck 1996, pp. 184–6 and James 1997, p. 135.
 dramatic representation 133

true or false, or the narration historical or fabulous’.189 Suspension

of disbelief, and passionate reaction, even to fictional stories of what
could never have happened, can, in Hobbes’s view, be triggered by the
skilful deployment of visual strategies.190 Persuasion in the arts cannot
do without image. But it can do without veracity: ‘not truth, but image,
maketh passion’.191
In stressing the role of imagination in the arousal of passion, Hobbes
is in line with the Roman theorists of rhetoric, for whom the ora-
tor should combine vivid illustration and expressive gesture to make
the audience ‘see’, and be convinced of, what he was thinking. For
these rhetoricians, the emotional responses of the audience were on
the whole fairly predictable, and therefore also open to manipulation.
All that was needed was that the orator should work on the images
impressed upon the spectators’ minds in ways consistent with their
shared experience, so that spectators could identify with what was put
before their eyes, by recreating the original experience from which
the image sprung. Quintilian illustrates this process through a telling
example:
When I am lamenting a murdered man will I not bring before my eyes
all the things which might believably be represented as having happened
in the case under consideration? Will the assailant not suddenly spring
out, will the victim not be terrified when he finds himself surrounded
and cry out or plead or run away? Will I not see the blow and the victim
falling to the ground? Will his blood, his pallor, his dying groans not be
impressed on my mind? This gives rise to [that] which Cicero calls illus-
tratio and evidentia, by which we seem to show what happened rather
than to tell it; and this gives rise to the same emotions as if we were
present at the event itself.192
The forensic orator pleading for justice in a law-court must summon
up a vivid image of a murder in his own mind, so that he may commu-
nicate the murder scene in ways that make the audience feel as if they
were witnesses to the crime. By this contagion of imagination, he will
manage to arouse sympathy for the victim and gain support for the

189
Hobbes 1969b, p. 68.
190
Hobbes is here drawing on the classical subdivision of narration into historiae
and literary fiction, and the division of literary fiction into two sub-genres, fabulae and
argumenta, the first of which presupposes a principle of charity (a willing suspension
of disbelief ). See Cicero 1949, I.19.27 and Sidney 1912, III, p. 29.
191
Hobbes 1969b, p. 68.
192
Quintilian 2001, vol. III, 6.2.31.
134 chapter two

victim’s cause. Were the performance to be translated from tribunal

to theatre, the orator replaced by the actor and his speech converted
into moving stage pictures, we would end up with a scene justifying
Hobbes’s extraordinary maxim that ‘tragedy affecteth no less than a
murder if well acted’.193 The lesson is clear: whenever the striking real-
ism of representations makes them dissolve into what they represent,
the frontier separating truth from fiction is blurred, and the one easily
taken for the other.
Tales about the bewitching powers of tragedy were not unheard of.
As we have seen with Don Quixote, literary fiction could mesmerise
without theatrical representation. One of the earliest references to the
sort of obsessive solitary reading later epitomised by Quixote comes in
Aristophanes’ lyrical-burlesque The Frogs, where the god Dionysus is
said to have been driven mad by the reading of a tragedy Hobbes was
well familiar with, Euripides’ Andromeda. But only public theatre can
rouse the possibility of collective madness. We have to look no further
than the Greek satirist Lucian to encounter an account of how the citi-
zens of a Greek city, Abdera, lost their judgement after a performance
of the same play.194 It was summer, the sun burning hot, and after the
performance of Andromeda the spectators were taken by a high fever,
which soon turned into uncontrollable haemorrhaging and sweating.
In their hallucination, they began to invent tragedies, speak in verse,
scream and sing, all of this in the name of the main characters of the
play, who had control of their minds. The deranged crowd acted out
its own versions of the parts from the play for months, transforming
the city streets into their live stage, until winter and intense cold came
and put an end to their collective delirium. This is, of course, the very
same tale of madness arising from an impingement of theatre upon
reality which makes its appearance in chapter 8 of Leviathan:
There was once a great conflux of people in Abdera, a City of the Greeks,
at the acting of the Tragedy of Andromeda, upon an extream hot day:
whereupon, a great many of the spectators falling into Fevers, had
this accident from the heat, and from the Tragedy together, that they

193
Hobbes 1969b, p. 68. Hobbes offers a reason why people might enjoy the spec-
tacle of tragedy: men, he explains, take pleasure in beholding other men in dangerous
or afflictive situations when they themselves are safe, because ‘there is novelty and
remembrance of own security present, which is delight’. Ibid., p. 46.
194
Lucian 1968, pp. 3–5. Lucian blames the actor Archelaüs in particular for the
events in Abdera. Ibid., p. 3.
 dramatic representation 135

did nothing but pronounce Iambiques, with the names of Perseus and
Andromeda; which together with the Fever, was cured, by the comming
on of Winter: And this madnesse was thought to proceed from the Pas-
sion imprinted by the Tragedy.195
Not unlike Lucian, Hobbes is suspicious of the causes of this out-
break of collective madness. As he sceptically puts it, it was ‘thought
to’ proceed uniquely from the passion aroused by the theatrical rep-
resentation. But caution is advisable, as the Greeks were also prone
to ascribe madness wrongly to the operation of supernatural entities
like the ‘Eumenides, or Furyes; and sometimes of Ceres, Phoebus, and
other Gods’.196 Determined, like his Roman predecessor, to strip the
Abdera episode of the aura of awe with which it had been traditionally
surrounded, Hobbes insists that the madness observed there was the
product of the combination of the powers of theatre and severe heat.
This suggestion is in perfect agreement with Hobbes’s understand-
ing of the physiological processes that account for the emotions we
experience both awake and in dreams. For him, mental representa-
tions and corresponding affections are produced by ongoing motions
between the brain and the vital parts, but, physically, they are also to be
explained ‘by the distemper of some of the inward parts of the Body’,
different distempers causing different delusions.197 Thence, ‘lying cold
breedeth Dreams of Feare, and raiseth the thought and Image of some
fearfull object’, whereas ‘Anger causeth heat in some parts of the Body,
when we are awake; so when we sleep, the over heating of the same
parts causeth Anger, and raiseth up in the brain the Imagination of
an Enemy’.198 Too much heat, springing from a burning sun, could
have produced in the citizens of Abdera an especially vivid imagina-
tion, whose original inspiration lay in the events performed on stage.
Though the effects of a well-acted tragedy may, in Hobbes’s view, be
no less powerful than those of a genuine murder, they would certainly
have been dispelled by the disappearance of the actors from the stage,
and the emptying of the stone seats of the theatre. The conventions of
ancient theatre provided reliable indicators of the play’s being a recon-
stitution of life in mere re-presentation: that is, of the performance
as something not to be read literally as yet another scene of everyday

195
Hobbes 1996, p. 56.
196
Ibid.
197
Ibid., p. 17.
198
Ibid.
136 chapter two

life. Only a deranged audience, like the citizenry of Abdera, could fail
to engage in the right kind of doubled vision, which all representa-
tions require. Thus they ceased to see simultaneously the realism of
the performance and the performance as artificiality, or theatre. And,
having stopped seeing the play as play, they proceeded to incorporate
it into reality.

The Politics of Theatre

Abdera’s case is extreme, and unlikely to repeat itself. But on the

whole Hobbes remains firm in his belief that plays, when well acted,
have powerful worldly effects. In particular, their ability to influence
and persuade in ways that may impact on moral and political author-
ity explains why the question of what constituted acceptable play was
so central to social debate in early modern England. Part of this debate
took place in two closely related intellectual circles with which Hobbes
had close ties, and in which his ideas had wide currency: the Caven-
dish and the Hartlib circles. The question their members posed them-
selves was twofold: first, whether public order was better sustained by
the ignorance or the education of the common people; and, second,
what means would be most effective in promoting either of them.199
William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, the patron of the first of
these circles, blamed much of England’s recent troubles on too much
education, and trusted only arms combined with recreational activi-
ties to keep people within bounds. In a letter written to Charles II on
the eve of the Restoration, he enthusiastically argued for the provision
of ‘Devertisements For Your Majesties People, both in the Citie, &
Country’, on the grounds that ‘These Devertismentes will amuse the
peoples thoughts And keepe them in harmless actions, which will free
your Majestie from Faction, & Rebellion.’200 Amongst city recreations,
Newcastle included theatre, recommending ‘five or Six playe houses,
[. . .] for all Sortes of peoples’.201 Hobbes was sensitive to Cavendish’s
arguments about the public utility of spectacles as weapons pre-empt-
ing popular discontent. In Leviathan he refers, not unsympathetically,

199
For more details on this background, see Jacob and Raylor 1991.
200
Newcastle 1984, pp. 63 and 64.
201
Ibid.
 dramatic representation 137

to how the subjects of ‘the first Founders, and Legislators of Com-

monwealths’ were ‘entertained with the pomp, and pastime of Fes-
tivalls, and publike Games’, all of which ‘kept them from discontent,
murmuring, and commotion against the State’, even when there would
have been reasons for it.202
But for Hobbes this reliance on spectacles to bind people to obe-
dience was a tactic fit for rulers of a bygone era.203 The Hobbesian
commonwealth could not stand firm on spectacles alone. Recreational
activities generating a dormant or false consciousness could as easily
serve the purposes of the sovereign as be turned against him. Cer-
tainly, spectacles could be used to supplement argument in the aid of
political truth. Indeed they should, as Hobbes recognises that demon-
strative argument has a limited capacity to move the people. But spec-
tacles carried out at the expense of true political principles would leave
the commonwealth vulnerable to subversion by more able performers.
Persuading the people of the true grounds of the state’s authority and
the reasons for their obedience, Hobbes insists, is the duty as well as
the guarantee of the sovereign. Spectacle, ignorance, pious frauds can
present themselves as attractive short cuts to order. But lasting order
will not be achieved unless the average subject is educated, and fully
persuaded of the benefits of living under an absolute state.204
In revisiting the political advantages of public entertainments, New-
castle revisited the spirit of the controversial Jacobean Declaration of
Sports, a manifesto against the strictness, and compulsory imposition,
of the Puritan Sabbath, which Charles I ordered to be republished
and communicated to his subjects from the pulpit.205 The king’s good
people, the Declaration announced, should no more be reprimanded
‘for using their lawful recreations and honest exercises upon Sundays,
and other Holy-days’, as these strengthened their bodies for war, while
better disposing their minds to obedience.206 In like manner, Hobbes
refers favourably to ‘lawfull recreation’, and stresses the importance
of the people having, at regular intervals, leave from their ordinary

202
Hobbes 1996, pp. 82 and 83.
203
See Hobbes 1998, p. 9.
204
As Hobbes emphasises, the grounds of the rights of the sovereign ‘need to be
diligently, and truly taught; because they cannot be maintained by any Civill Law, or
terror of legall punishment’. Hobbes 1996, p. 232.
205
On the events leading to the republication of the Declaration of Sports, see Gar-
diner 1884, pp. 318–22.
206
Newcastle 1984, p. 100.
138 chapter two

labour.207 His emphasis, however, is on the pedagogical potential of

such recreational interludes, as demonstrated by the Jewish Sabbath.
In that day of rest and worship, Hobbes explains, the effect of the
reading and expounding of the law was bolstered by spectacle, by the
solemnity of the occasion, whereby the Jewish people ‘were put in
mind, that their King was God’.208 Were the symbolism of the cer-
emony not powerful enough, the ‘lawfull recreation’ that followed it
instructed again secretly, by reminding the audience ‘that God was their
King, which redeemed them from their servile and painfull labour’.209
Inspired by the Jewish example, Hobbes urges the sovereign to reserve
those occasions ‘after prayers and praises given to God, the Soveraign
of Soveraigns’ for the instruction of his subjects in their duties and the
laws of the realm, but also especially to the effect of putting them ‘in
mind of the Authority that maketh them Lawes’.210 Hobbesian educa-
tion reaches behind the surface. Not only particular laws were to be
taught, but also why those laws were made, and the necessity of the
authority that constitutes law as law.211 This message would be all the
more forcibly conveyed if the Christian Sunday were also to be a day
on which the subjects were allowed to ‘take joy in themselves’ by pur-
suing various recreational activities, rather than a stern occasion.212
Presented with such royally sanctioned entertainments, the people
would be induced to bend to the authority that rescued them from
nature, to bring them into the state of peace, security and satisfaction
they presently rejoiced in.213 Playful recreation, if well stage-managed,
could be an important vehicle of ideological cohesion.
Could the entertainments Hobbes condones include a state-regu-
lated theatre? One would look in vain for an explicit answer. But the
evidence so far suggests a few clues. First, Hobbes endorsed the dis-
cerning use of theatrical techniques to serve ends justified by reason,
such as the reproduction of state power, and persuasively disseminate
his scientific principles of politics. Second, as a form of representa-
tion that makes its artificiality explicit, theatre could have educational
potential. Third, despite Hobbes’ confessed reservations about the

207
Hobbes 1996, p. 235.
208
Ibid.
209
Ibid.
210
Ibid.
211
See ibid., p. 240.
212
Ibid., p. 235.
213
Ibid.
 dramatic representation 139

moral effects of some theatre, namely base comedy, he seemed to have

no qualms about the performance of plays providing ‘a truer Idea of
Virtue and Honour’, or, I would add, any other plays, provided they
passed the requirements of state authorisation.214 From here it might
not seem, perhaps, too far-fetched to extrapolate that Hobbes might
have welcomed the educational role of state-sponsored forms of a
more politicised type of theatre. This seems at least to have been the
conclusion reached by his poet friend William Davenant.
Davenant, who was no stranger to the Cavendish circle, Hobbes,
and his philosophical ideas, was the author behind A Proposition for
Advancement of Moralitie, By a New Way of Entertainment of the Peo-
ple (1653).215 This text resonates with some Hobbesian ideas about the
nature and motivational force of images and passion, in an attempt to
persuade Cromwell of the moral and political advantages of a reformed
stage directed at the instruction of the lower classes. Properly managed
public entertainment, Davenant claimed, would enable the govern-
ment to ensure its own permanence, by producing affectively positive
stimuli for the people’s loyalty to the new regime.
Davenant became especially well acquainted with Hobbes after flee-
ing to Paris in 1646, where he joined the exiled Stuart court. In Paris,
Davenant began Gondibert, his vast heroic poem, to which Hobbes
paid ‘daylie examination’.216 Hobbes’s close exchanges with Dav-
enant resulted, as we have seen in Chapter 1 above, in his ‘Answer’ to

214
The qualification is in place because, in a letter to the Marchioness of Newcastle,
Hobbes shows his apprehension about the moral effects of base comedy and reveals
his scepticism about the taste of vulgar audiences: comic writers, he writes, sometimes
‘present Vices upon the Stage [. . .] ridiculously and immodestly, by which they take
their [the vulgar] rabble [. . .] For that which pleases lewd Spectators is nothing but
subtile Cheating or Filch.’ Hobbes 1994, II, p. 524. These words of caution go, of
course, in tandem with Hobbes’s theory of laughter, according to which laughter is
an expression of contempt, which need not involve any wit: ‘for men laugh at mis-
chances and indecencies, wherein there lieth no wit or jest at all’. Hobbes 1969b, p. 41.
But there is hope for a higher form of comedy: there is laugher ‘without offence’, ‘at
absurdities and infirmities’, ‘where all the company can laugh together’ (ibid., p. 42);
and for a higher form of theatre: the Marchioness of Newcastle herself had produced
comedies and tragedies that provided ‘a truer Idea’s of Virtue and Honour than any
Book of morality’. Hobbes 1994, II, p. 524. Those plays, which could provide the basis
for innocent, even instructive, recreation in the Hobbesian commonwealth, can be
found in Playes written by the thrice Noble, Illustrious and Excellent Princess, the Lady
Marchioness of Newcastle (1662).
215
The authorship of the Proposition was convincingly asserted by Jacob and Raylor
in their 1991 article, to which I am much indebted.
216
Davenant 1971, p. 3.
140 chapter two

Davenant’s Preface to Gondibert, published in 1650. Both texts provide

lengthy reflections on poetry and painting as sister-arts offering visual
representations crafted in the aptest figures and colours, as well as tex-
tual proof of each author’s self-confessed borrowing from the other.217
Although their intellectual exchange hinges primarily on poetry, the-
atre, as well as politics, lurks not far beneath the surface. Davenant’s
heroic poem is self-consciously modelled on the five-act structure of
contemporary English drama, and the unfolding of its plot, as Hobbes
acknowledges approvingly, is ‘not much unlike the Theatre’, where
persons are brought upon the stage ‘to speake and act their owne
parts’.218 In more ways than one Davenant’s Gondibert announced his
future enterprise: the staging of heroic plays.
But what would have been Hobbes’s likely reaction to the ‘Heroick
Representations’ recommended by Davenant to Britain’s new sover-
eign? While fully endorsing Davenant’s claim that ‘subjects should
received good education from the State’ if civil order is to be main-
tained, Hobbes would most certainly have had serious doubts about
the instructive potential of Davenant’s entertainments.219 Davenant’s
reformed stage went too far in the way of spectacle, with too little in
the way of presenting the public with perspicuous reasons for obe-
dience. His moral entertainments consisted in a new and powerful
sensual mix, designed to allure people’s ‘Eyes and Ears’, by combining
the devices of Italian opera with the mechanics of the court masque,
in the rendition of military dramas drawn from England’s recent his-
tory. These dramas contained virtuous characters whom, Davenant
hoped, the audience would feel emotionally compelled to emulate
without any need for ‘reviews and subtle examination’.220 Drawing on
Hobbes’s conception of passion as proceeding from fancy, and form-
ing the motivating source of all human voluntary activity, Davenant
devised a form of popular ‘instruction’ that ignored Hobbes’s advice
against the aesthetic mistake of causing an admiration that is divorced
from any ‘delightfull appetite for knowledge’, and for applying reason
to the imagination for a better moving of the will.221

217
Davenant’s references to statesmen as immense whales, people’s representatives,
and the instrumental use of spectacles in ancient Greece and Rome are especially
revealing. See Davenant 1971, pp. 3, 54, 35 and 39–40.
218
Hobbes 1971b, pp. 50 and 46.
219
Ibid., p. 243.
220
Davenant 1971, p. 244.
221
Hobbes 1971b, p. 52.
 dramatic representation 141

Hobbes is in no doubt that in moral and political instruction rea-

son needs the aid of visual persuasion to move its publics to action.
But image is meant to remain a crutch for the truth, not to replace it.
Yet Davenant’s stage dismisses reasoning in favour of affective conta-
gion, and, should ‘publick Tranquility’ require it, would not stop short
of the sensory inculcation of false beliefs.222 A broad band of sensory
stimuli is used by Davenant to direct the moral and political education
of the masses, whose intellects are thought to be, and made to remain,
inactive. He justifies his reliance on the mere play of senses by the fact
that ‘the generalitie of mankinde’ are slaves to ‘those Engins that scrue
them up, which are their passions’, and therefore ‘solely instructed
by their senses’.223 Hobbes agreed that not only the common people,
but men in general, tended to follow their passions at the expense of
reason. But he also believed the vulgar had capacity enough to under-
stand the grounds of authority, and the reasons for obedience to it.224
Any lasting political instruction, he contended, must appeal to this
capacity. Davenant’s herd of sheep might quietly follow the ‘voice of
their shepherds’, but just whose voice this is depends essentially on
who owns the best bag of tricks if the people remain ignorant. And the
best conjurer might not always be the sovereign.225 If the theatre were
ever to join the university and the pulpit in Hobbes’s state-directed
programme of political education, it would have to use the communi-
cative efficiency of images to kindle, rather than extinguish, the light of
reason, treating spectators as active intellects, which can be persuaded
by argument.226 Unlike the obfuscating visuality of Davenant’s spec-
tacles, the visibility Leviathan seeks is such that it overwhelms at the
same time it enlightens: ‘For the Civill Authority being more visible,
and standing in the cleerer light of naturall reason, cannot choose but
draw to it in all times a very considerable part of the people.’227

222
Davenant 1971, p. 247: for instance, to deceive them by making ‘them believe
they have peace’, even if ‘the sound of Trumpets and clashing of Armes’ reverberates
outside.
223
Ibid., p. 244.
224
Hobbes 1996, p. 233.
225
Davenant 1971, p. 245.
226
Hobbes 1996, p. 233.
227
Ibid., p. 227.
142 chapter two

Conclusion

The role of theatre and theatricality in Hobbes remains highly con-

tested. In a recent study Paul Kottman maintains that Hobbes’s work
represents a ‘break with the elemental dramatic character of human
life’, and that the Leviathan state displays a ‘nontheatrical, nonactive,
anti-here-and-now mode of visibility’; that for Hobbes ‘being a politi-
cal subject has nothing to do with theatricality’.228
The reading of Hobbes I offer differs markedly. I have argued that
Hobbes sees theatricality as an intrinsic feature of almost all human
behaviour (social, political and aesthetic). Spontaneously triggered by
human interaction, theatricality as a form of strategic self-presentation
is already inscribed in nature, which is far from ‘devoid of interactive
scenes’.229 In effect, were it not for the fact that for Hobbes the natural
is already artifice, the person a re-presentation, words and actions rep-
resentational effects or things impersonated, there would be no escape
from nature, since the social covenant has the representatibility of the
covenanters as its pre-condition.230 In Hobbes the art whereby the
state is crafted is hence inextricable from man’s natural capacity for
artificiality, the human powers of play, and theatrical representation
understood not as mere mimicry or as a subordinate reality, but as a
distinctive world-building activity. And the reason for this is simple.
Only men who are actors can have their representational powers con-
ferred upon one common actor whom they empower to enact them
all as if one, which is the same as to say, to enact the state into being.
It is, therefore, neither coincidence nor of small consequence that
Hobbes should have taken the paramount representative of speech and
action—the stage-actor, who commodified himself in the construction
of different personae for a public—for his model of personhood and a
paradigm for the delegation of authority in the social, commercial and
political spheres. In so doing, Hobbes was quite deliberately break-

228
Kottman 2008, pp. 55, 88 and 72. Kottman sees Hobbes as negating the theatre in
its spontaneous, relational, particularistic, here-and-now mode of being. But the thea-
tre Kottman takes as paradigmatic, despite bearing some resemblance to early modern
theatrical practice, can hardly be said to comprise all possible theatrical experience.
Despite my fundamental disagreement with Kottman as to Hobbes’s purported dis-
missal of the dramatic quality of human life, we are in close agreement as to Hobbes’s
treatment of personality, both natural and artificial. See ibid., especially pp. 69–70.
229
Ibid., p. 64.
230
As Kottman himself acknowledges; see ibid., pp 69–70.
 dramatic representation 143

ing the bounds of nature and artifice, in ways that allowed artificial
personality, or the acting of others, to be solidly grounded in natural
personality, or the acting of oneself. It took one theatrical construct, a
person, to set up another. This is the larger-than-life person, sustained
by the desire of all to preserve the fiction of their unity, in order to
preserve themselves: the Leviathan state.231
Hobbes’s man-made state is far from a non-theatrical, non-active
entity. The guarantor of our peaceful co-existence, his state is insepa-
rable from agency—the capacity to decide and act. As a fictional entity
set in motion by the compositional activity of its chief actor, the sov-
ereign, the state’s representational efficacy depends on making its
artificiality disappear from view (albeit never totally so), and allowing
spectators to invest psychological reality in the fictional entity enacted
by the sovereign. The members of the citizen audience must hence
experience the state not only as something contrived, but also, and
critically, as something real, as something authentic.232 In Hobbes’s
politics, as in the theatre, audiences engage in a double experience, at
once re-presentational and actual, demystifying and mystical. For to
make a self-confessed artifice appear real is what ensures its believ-
ability, as well as its power to produce an affective response, setting
off the complicity, if not the collusion, which pre-empts all resistance
between actor and audience, representation and represented. For
Hobbes, political power, like the power of theatre, results less from
the actor’s acting alone than from his productive interaction with an
audience that suspends its judgement, and is emotionally complicit
in its submission to the fictional person being posited on the political
stage as its collective image. Appearance, visibility, representation and
theatricality are here not mere props of power, but sources of political
power in their own right. Either staged as the terrifying vision of a
colossus who oversees political order by taking over the visual horizon
of the expectant crowd, or approaching us in close-up as impersonated
by state officers addressing us in its name, Hobbes’s Leviathan state
exists only as acted as a doubled reality, since we always experience it
as happening in both imagined and everyday space-times simultane-
ously. In charge of its complex mise-en-scène—by which I mean, quite

231
As Jean-Christophe Agnew perceptively put it, only from the self-fashioned man
could Hobbes’s man-made state have originated. Agnew 1986, p. 93.
232
Schaffer 2002, p. 498.
144 chapter two

literally, the state’s putting into action, by the doing and orchestrating
of its appearances and movements, in both time and place, localised
and delocalised—is the representational sovereign. Like a stage direc-
tor overseeing the mounting of a stage production, the sovereign must
seamlessly unify the state’s different performative parts in a compel-
ling dramaturgy of power.
In Hobbes this dramatic artificiality of the state co-exists with the
dramatic artificiality of all social life. Although subjects give away
their representation with respect to things conducive to peace, they
do not stop representing themselves in a performative sense once the
state is formed. In effect, all social life consists for Hobbes of a set of
personations in response to demands of different social roles. As the
guardian of civilisation, the state enforces the conditions of an ordered
theatrical exchange between subjects, as well as between subjects and
sovereign. And it is the duty of subjects to display loyalty by play-
ing their part, that is, by actively joining in the public performance
of order. For Hobbes, to be a political subject has therefore much to
do with theatricality, role playing, or the public display of oneself in
stylized performances. Subjects are under an obligation to mould the
externals of their conduct to the dictates of law and sociability. They
must show a peaceful disposition towards others, and an obedient
disposition towards their sovereign. To both ends mask-wearing—or
the practice of simulating and dissimulating with others—may be
required, and indeed constitute virtuous behaviour, that is, behaviour
serviceable to the construction of order. It is Hobbes’s belief that men
can live together in peace only where they keep themselves somehow
apart, by using their powers of play (i.e., their ability to pretend what
is not, and conceal what is) to create between themselves a protective
distance, which avoids clashes in the violent force of their passions.
This requires a public staging of oneself that glosses the disorderly
work of passions, and constrains potentially disruptive beliefs behind
a steady mask of civic conformity. Political order would be hollow if
the plurality of human action within the city lost its dramatic quality.
 CHAPTER THREE

JURIDICAL REPRESENTATION

The state is a dream [. . .] a symbol of nothing at all,

an emptiness, a mind without a body, a game played
with clouds in the sky. But states make war, don’t
they, and imprison people?
John le Carré, Call for the Dead

Introduction

As I have shown in Chapter 2, Hobbes’s employment of theatrical cat-

egories to frame the problem of socio-political order amounts to far
more than the superficial deployment of metaphor. Whilst it is impor-
tant to restore theatricality to its true role in his civil philosophy, one
must not overstate its importance in ways that relegate to the back-
ground the juristic armour Hobbes devised to buttress the position of
the sovereign against potentially volatile subject audiences. Despite his
willingness to speak of the politics of representation as an extension of
the wearing of masks in theatre, and of representational effectiveness
as contingent on a theatricalising of power that disposes subjects to
hand over their judging faculty, Hobbes cannot allow political author-
ity to be subsumed under spectacular politics, nor can the sovereign
representative be subsumed under the persona of the stage-actor. This
is because, as Pufendorf rightly remarked, ‘whatever is said or done by
such a person leaves behind it no moral effect’ (by which Pufendorf
meant, no obligation on the parts), ‘but is valued solely in the light of
the cleverness of the impersonation’.1
In the theatre performers and audience pass a covenant whereby
they immunise each other from any extra-theatrical consequences of
their time-bound collaborative fiction. This is not to say that theatrical
impersonation cannot produce durable aesthetic and ethical effects, as
Hobbes would be first to acknowledge. What it does tell us is that none

1
Pufendorf 1934b, p. 15.
146 chapter three

of these is a binding effect from which political authority and political

obligation could be derived. Yet it is crucial for Hobbes that whatever
is done representatively, in and for the person of the state, falls within
the sphere of authoritative action; that is, action that commands obe-
dience and is to be assessed in terms of the validity, rather than the
mere artistry, of the impersonation.
To be able to speak of state representation as action that makes the
represented, morally and practically, responsible for its consequences,
Hobbes must allow the lexicon he originally borrowed from the the-
atre to be colonised by the meanings of law, and legal constructions
to be introduced into the representational relationship linking actors,
authors and things represented. In this chapter we will thus see the
fictions of the theatre join forces with juristic fictions that Hobbes saw
underpinning everyday transacted exchanges. By a leap of the imagi-
nation, anchored by the ties of covenant or positive law, these fictions
helped ensure that institutions functioned as real agencies, from the
world of business to the world of politics Chief amongst these agencies
is, for Hobbes, the state, itself a collaborative political fiction, bound
up in juristic categories, in which we all have a major stake and a spe-
cific role to play, but from whose representative actions none of us can
be ever disentangled or completely immune. How Hobbes makes this
transition from the theatrical stage, where actions are done in mere
sport, and not expected to have life consequences, to the high-powered
world of the Leviathan state, where actions such as the momentous
decision to wage a foreign war involve us collectively as well as person-
ally, is the subject of what follows.

The Elemental View

As we have seen, for Hobbes a person distinguishes itself by the roles

it can play, and by how well it plays them. Personhood is for him a
form of representation, a kind of theatrical self-construction, whereby
we make ourselves socially present to others. But in Hobbes’s more
technical use of the word, ‘person’ is a distinctive juristic term, refer-
ring to an entity to which responsibility for words and actions can be
attributed. In this second sense, the ‘person’ is a legal construct; to be
more precise, it is a legal fiction, which does not hide its own fictive-
ness or the cognitive operations it requires (namely, ‘judgement’ or, in
Hobbes’s favoured expression, ‘consideration’):
 juridical representation 147

A PERSON, is he, whose words or actions are considered, either as his

own, or as representing the words or actions of an other man, or of any
other thing to whom they are attributed, whether Truly or by Fiction.
When they are considered as his owne, then is he called a Naturall
Person: And when they are considered as representing the words and
actions of an other, then is he a Feigned or Artificiall person.2
To speak of a person is to speak of agency, or the capacity to speak and
act. We either speak and act for ourselves, as natural persons, or speak
and act for others, as artificial persons. Since representation allows for
actions and utterances to be transferred from one agent to another, it
has the potential for breaking apart the physical from the moral source
of action. This raises the question of action ‘ownership’ or whether
the action we witness is imputable to the agent performing it or to
someone else. This is a question to be settled from a juristic point of
view, for the technical sense of ‘to consider’ is, in the above passage,
‘to understand as in the view or sense of the law; to construe, to hold
legally’ (OED, s.v., IV.16). When the agent speaks and acts in his own
name and is legally liable for the consequences of what he says and
does, he is a natural person. When, on the other hand, his words and
actions are legally empowered to represent those of another, the agent
is an artificial person (that is, a representative) and the responsibility
for what he says or does in representation is legally attributed to that
other by whose right the agent acts (that is, the represented).
In equating the artificial person with the representative, rather than
the represented, Hobbes was at variance with the treatment of this
issue in law from medieval times onwards. To the legal mind, artifi-
cial persons were, and still are, entities represented, namely collectives
that are treated as persons (i.e., right-and-duty-bearing units) in law,
such as corporations. These are said to be artificial because they act in
the manner of persons not by nature, but by the legal contrivance of
man.3 In contrast, for Hobbes, the artificiality of the representative lies

2
Hobbes 1996, p. 111.
3
As Coke puts it, ‘Persons capable of purchase are of two sorts, persons natural
created of God, and persons incorporate or politique created by the policy of man’, the
latter being ‘of two sorts, vz either sole, or aggregate of many’. Coke 1797, I.1.4: 2.b.
Among the persons sole singled out by Coke, the parish priest is of particular inter-
est, as Coke uses in its description some of the terminology that we will encounter
in Hobbes: ‘“Parson”, Persona. In the legall signification it is taken for the rector of a
church parochiall and is called persona ecclesiae, because he assumeth and taketh upon
him the parson of the church: he only is said vicem feu personam ecclesiae gerere.’
Ibid., III.9.528: 300.b. Coke’s categories of persons are taken up by Blackstone, who
148 chapter three

in the fact that he or it does not come before us as himself or itself,

but invested in the person or guise of another, possibly a corpora-
tion, whose part he or it plays. This led some of Hobbes’s critics, less
comfortable with leaps of imagination, to question whether a repre-
sentative, qua representative, should be called a person at all: ‘no more
than the picture of the image of a man is a true man’, William Lucy
objected, ‘no more is a feigned or artificial person, a true person’, and
‘what is not truly such, is not such’.4 Lucy wanted to oppose artificial
persons to real persons; Hobbes wanted to insist that the actions artifi-
cial persons carry out in representation are no less real, and of no less
consequence, than those of natural ones.
Having established that artificial persons are representatives, Hobbes
proceeds to explain that the attribution of words and actions to some-
one other than the performing agent can be made either truly or by
means of a fiction. This attribution occurs truly if the entity represented
is a natural person, i.e., someone capable of standing by the words and
actions which are carried out in his name; and by fiction if the repre-
sented is a non-person, i.e., an entity incapable of acting responsibly
and therefore also of authorising and owing up to the actions of any
representatives acting on his behalf. Such is the case, for instance, with
men deprived of the rational capacity to manage their own affairs,
fictional entities and inanimate objects, all of which are, in Hobbes’s
view, capable of representation by fiction, despite being incapable of
representing themselves.
The basic case remains, however, where the person represented is a
natural person, accountable for the consequences of his actions. For he
who is liable for his own actions—i.e., the actions of which he is both
author and actor—is also liable for those actions he authorises others
to perform in his name:
Of Persons Artificiall, some have their words and actions Owned by
those whom they represent. And then the Person is the Actor; and he
that owneth his words and actions, is the AUTHOR: In which case the
Actor acteth by Authority.5

distinguishes between natural persons created by God and artificial persons ‘devised
by human laws for the purposes of society and government’. Blackstone 1862, p. 107;
see also p. 484.
4
Lucy 1996, p. 273.
5
Hobbes 1996, p. 112.
 juridical representation 149

The question of imputation of responsibility is central to this passage,

where Hobbes contrasts ‘authors’ with ‘actors’ in the knowledge that
both terms are familiar pieces of legal terminology. So if for Hobbes
an author is he who can be held responsible for his actions, includ-
ing that of giving another the right to act in his stead, an actor is he
who, whilst acting within his commission, acts by authority and has
his actions owned by the author.6 This distinctively legal understand-
ing of the actor accords with some of its uses in Roman law.7 Besides
designating a pleader or a plaintiff—the players of a role at law—the
term ‘actor’ was in Rome applied to tutors and temporary representa-
tives of corporations, and would come to designate in England also an
advocate, a public prosecutor or an executor acting by proxy.
Readily available in seventeenth-century England, the notion of an
‘author’ as he who grants authority and an ‘actor’ as he who acts by
authority figured prominently in the parliamentarian literature of the
1640s. This borrowed from monarchomach treatises, which deployed
the Roman terminology of auctores and actores as a model for think-
ing through the relation of the people to its rulers. A case in point
is the Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579), where Duplessis-Mornay,
writing under the classical pseudonym of Junius Brutus, depicted the
people as the sovereign auctor of all political authority, and rulers as
fiduciary actores, temporarily holding the people’s power for the pro-
tection of the public good.8 Thus refashioned as a mere delegate of the
people for specific functions, the king was said to be superior to each
private individual, but inferior to the people as a whole, by whom he
could always be held accountable for an abuse of trust. Yet this was a

6
Ibid. In effect, Hobbes distinguishes between two different types of author: those
who own the actions of another simply and those who own his actions condition-
ally. See ibid., p. 115. The debtor—creditor ‘conditional’ type of relationship Hobbes
alludes to was central to monarchomach treatises, such as the Vindiciae of 1579 (Brutus
1994; see discussion below, according to which the people had, jointly with the prince,
made a contract with God, and were like a debtor who had a joint obligation to pay
a certain sum: should the king infringe the law of God, the entire debt fell upon the
remaining signatory, i.e., the people, who were therefore obliged to resist the king who
strayed from the divine path. The notion of a ‘conditional’ author was also used in
covenant theology. See Goodwin 1642, especially pp. 46–9.
7
See, for instance, Quintilian’s discussion of advocates as actors in Quintilian 2001,
vol. III, 7.1.10 and 7.6.2, as well as D. 26.8.3.
8
Brutus 1994, p. 59. Familiar as he was with the monarchomach treatment of kings
as accountable mandated agents, Hobbes asked in De Cive: ‘Quantum hominum inter-
fecit doctrina haec erronea, Reges summos multitudine superiores non esse, sed min-
istros ejus?’. Hobbes 1983a, p. 78.
150 chapter three

right the people could not exercise on its own. An originating, rather
than an active agency, the people of the Vindiciae held what amounted
to a power to yield its power to others: namely, assemblies and tuto-
rial magistrates of aristocratic extraction empowered to exercise final
political control over the king by their claim to act with the people’s
right, in the people’s stead.
Henry Parker, the foremost English parliamentarian publicist, con-
curred entirely. He maintained that whatever produces something is
greater than it, and peoples produce kings. Man being ‘the free and
voluntary Author’ of all political power, sovereignty must have resided
originally in the people, and is only to be found derivatively in parlia-
ments as well as kings.9 Since, however, the people as a whole is an
inchoate mass, incapable of formulating a single will, the people in
its political sense must be predicated on representation. Parker argues
that the people comes into being first in its representative body, Par-
liament, which, unlike the king, is not a mere authorised agent of the
people and of lesser power than the people, but the whole people itself,
in a mirror-image and therefore entitled to hold the people’s ‘Arbi-
trary power’ in its hands.10
One by one, we will see, Hobbes appropriates the ideas of the par-
liamentarians and turns them back on themselves, within the context
of an extended examination of the representative principle.11 Hobbes
realised that the parliamentarian ascending theory of politics, deriv-
ing legitimacy from authorisation, could ground absolute obligation,
if only representation were to be conceived in terms of ‘ownership’
and ‘attributed action’ rather than isomorphism. Transmuted into the
instrument of power, rather than the instrument of its limitation, rep-
resentation would no longer be interchangeable with a specific institu-
tion (Parliament) or a form of government among others (democracy).
Representation was rather what made all politics possible, the very
essence of political organisation as such. Political power came into
existence in the process of the sovereign representing it and could nei-
ther exist nor honour the duty of protection except by the continuing
supply of authorisation by those represented in it.12 Representativeness

9
Parker 1642a, p. 1, my emphasis. For the treatment of Parliament as an ‘Author’
instructing agents (‘Actors’) to act in its place, see ibid., p. 27. For the rejection of
Parker’s claim see Bramhall 1844a, p. 446.
10
Parker 1642a, p. 34.
11
The best study of this debate is Skinner 2005.
12
See Dumouchel 1996.
 juridical representation 151

was therefore a definitional attribute of sovereignty, independent of

the office being occupied by one or many men, an elected assembly or
a non-elected monarch. And this ‘or’, Hobbes stressed, was mutually
exclusive, despite contrary claims by the advocates of mixed monar-
chy: where there is more than one representative of the same people
the political unity of the state dissolves into factionalism.13
To make his case, Hobbes starts by investing the building-blocks of
the parliamentarian theory of political representation with new mean-
ings of ancient extraction:
For that which in speaking of goods and possessions, is called an Owner,
and in latine Dominus, in Greek kurios, speaking of Actions, is called
an Author. And as the Right of possession, is called Dominion; so the
Right of doing any Action, is called AUTHORITY and sometimes war-
rant. So that by Authority, is alwayes understood a Right of doing any
act: and done by Authority, done by Commission, or Licence from him
whose right it is.14
What we see here is a definition of representation in terms of authori-
sation, or the right to act as passed from author to actor by means
of a contractual agreement.15 But the means to that end is somewhat
unexpected, as Hobbes works with a seemingly strained analogy
between ‘ownership’ (a right to property, exclusive to the civil con-
dition) and ‘authority’ (a right to action, existing in nature). It soon
becomes clear, however, that the analogy hinges on a subtle transi-
tion from the notion of ‘to own’ (to possess) to the notion of ‘owning
up’ (to take responsibility), whereby the author comes defined as he
who owns actions, and the actor as he who performs them.16 Owner-
ship means here responsibility for the author, immunity for the actor
from consequences following actions he performs by the right of the
author. By drawing the analogy between the author and the property

13
Hobbes 1996, p. 130.
14
Ibid., p. 112.
15
I therefore disagree with François Tricaud’s claim that for Hobbes ‘authority’
is always an attribute of the actor, never of the author. Redefined as a right to act,
authority must surely belong, in the first instance, to the author, and only secondarily,
to the actor, to whom it is transferred. See Tricaud in Hobbes 1999, p. 163, n. 12.
16
On the impact of this reconstruction of the premises of authority in terms of
ownership and contractual considerations, see Weimann 1996, pp. 12–13. Though the
concepts of ownership and authority seem, to the present-day reader, to be foreign
to each other, the truth is that it has not always been so: in Roman private law there
was the notion of auctoritas rerum, which designated a right of ownership established
by means of an act of acquisition presupposing an auctor from whom the res was
acquired. See Magdelain 1990, pp. 685–705.
152 chapter three

owner, Hobbes aims to portray words and actions as commodities,

which are transferable from agent to agent, on the basis of a transfer
of rights.17 Whereas things can be simply alienated (e.g. I can sell a
piece of property), actions are authorised (e.g. I authorise a person
to sell a piece of property on my authority). In this case, what the
actor receives from the author is authority, or the right to act on his
behalf, not the ownership of the actions he performs in the author’s
name. This, Hobbes stresses, remains integrally with the author, who
owns up no less to what he does by mediation of an authorised other
than to what he does himself: ‘when the Actor maketh a Covenant
by Authority, he bindeth thereby the Author, no lesse than if he had
made it himselfe’.18
Hobbes’s answer to the question of under what conditions the
actions performed by one agent (the actor) are attributable to another
(the author) is therefore threefold. (1) To have his actions owned by
the author, the actor must have been commissioned or have had trans-
ferred the right to do something in the author’s name. Meanwhile,
(2) the author must have possessed this right and have been free to
transfer it.19 And finally, (3) the actor must act within his commis-
sion, rather than against or beside the authority passed onto him. But
if Hobbes believes the criteria of legitimate representation to be rela-
tively straightforward, the same cannot be said of our assessment of the
legal arrangements underpinning day-to-day transactions conducted
by proxy. It is not only in the theatre, Hobbes warns, that appearances
deceive. In the stagecraft of everyday commerce also, many things are
not what they seem. This means that the inspection of the signs of
authority before entering into transactions with individuals purport-
ing to have the authority to act for others is a necessary cautionary
step. For if an actor making a covenant by authority binds the author
to the consequences of the same, one who acts under a feigned com-
mission binds no one but himself. Hence he who seals an agreement
with an alleged actor without caring to verify his authority ‘doth it at

17
This ‘commodification’ of words and actions gains especial resonance in the light
of Hobbes’s treatment of the person as an actor, since actors made their living from
commodifying their verbal and gestural outputs when constructing different dramatis
personae.
18
Hobbes 1996, p. 112.
19
For there are certain rights that no one can transfer, not even to the sovereign;
see ibid., pp. 93–4.
 juridical representation 153

his own perill’, leaving himself without grounds for future protest.20
In a world increasingly reliant on vicarious relations, as was Hobbes’s,
the author behind the mask may not always be apparent, and taking
the mask at face value may prove a perilous business.

Representation by Fiction

Hobbes’s theory of attributed action, which, as we have seen, describes

the case of legitimate representation, also accounts for those situations
in which the represented is a non-person incapable of self-representa-
tion. As Hobbes points out, inanimate things such as bridges, churches
or hospitals cannot act for themselves, own actions or authorise oth-
ers to act on their behalf. None the less the fact that they cannot be
authors does not mean that they cannot act at all, since they can still
be personated, albeit by fiction only. The fiction involved here is that
they are persons, capable of performing nearly all the actions that
natural persons can, while also taking responsibility for any actions
which are performed for them in representation.21 The plausibility of
this assumption depends on the concerted actions of owner and actor,
who must jointly commit to upholding the fiction of the represented
entity’s juridical personality:
There are few things, that are uncapable of being represented by Fiction.
Inanimate things, as a Church, an Hospital, a Bridge, may be Person-
ated by a Rector, Master, or Overseer. But things Inanimate, cannot be
Authors, nor therefore give Authority to their Actors: Yet the Actors
may have Authority to procure their maintenance, given them by those
that are Owners, or Governours of those things. And therefore, such
things cannot be Personated, before there be some state of Civill Gov-
ernment.22
The first thing to be noticed is that for a thing to gain existence as
a person it must be represented by a person, which remains single in
all its artificial actions and utterances. Since, however, non-persons

20
Ibid., p. 112.
21
As Hobbes explains, with regard to the church, ‘if the Church be not one person,
then it hath no authority at all; it can neither command, nor doe any action at all; nor
is capable of having any power, or right to any thing; nor has any Will, Reason, nor
Voice; for all these qualities are personall’. Ibid., p. 268.
22
Ibid.
154 chapter three

cannot by themselves authorise others to act in their name, their rep-

resentation can no longer involve just two roles, that of author and
that of actor, for author and represented need now be different per-
sons. A third party, namely he in whose power the thing to be repre-
sented lies, must intervene to confer on the actor authority to speak
and act on the represented thing’s behalf. This is because only the
owner or governor of the thing, which in the case of the church, the
hospital and the bridge will normally be a corporate body, has the legal
standing to appoint it a representative, investing him with sufficient
authority to transact business on the thing’s behalf. In handing over
authority to procure the thing’s maintenance, the owner or governor
makes manifest his intention to treat the thing as something enjoying
an existence and interests of its own, which deserve special protection,
in so far as they may stand over and above the transient interests of
its several owners or governors. Once the inanimate thing starts being
personated, it gains animation, allowing us to speak of the thing’s will,
interests and actions for the first time. As a result, the thing can take
full part in juridical life: e.g. acquiring or alienating patrimonial rights,
taking on or claiming contractual responsibilities, suing and being
sued in court. Despite being exercised through a surrogate agency, this
acquired capacity to act at law is made to appear as belonging to the
thing itself, in such a manner that it shall admit responsibility for the
acts done in its name: therein lies the fiction.23
The fiction of authorship is in play when, for instance, juridical per-
sonality is conferred upon an idol or false deity, and the idol’s property
being stolen, the state, in its quality of owner or governor, arranges for
the idol’s interests to be attended to in court by an attorney, asking
for a condemnation in the idol’s name.24 The case of the idol, whose
nature is that of a fancy or mental fiction, puts us immediately in mind
of another case of fictitious personality addressed by Hobbes. I refer in
particular to the impersonation of fictional characters on the stage. It

23
Resistance to this fiction of authorship can be found in Pufendorf, who accuses
Hobbes of being ‘mistaken in holding that in communities a man may frequently
represent the person of an inanimate object, which in itself is not a person, such as a
church, a hospital, etc. For it is not necessary by a fiction of law to assign a personal-
ity to any of these things, since it is very much simpler to say that certain states have
assigned to particular men the duty to collect revenues for the preservation of such
places, and to prosecute and defend any suits that shall arise on such an account.’
Pufendorf 1934b, p. 12.
24
For the attribution of juridical personality to idols, see Duff 1929.
 juridical representation 155

is not immediately clear, however, by whose authority, if any, theatri-

cal characters such as Hamlet are represented in the theatre. Pitkin has
famously argued that the stage-actor does not fit Hobbes’s standard
author-actor pattern of representation, in so far as the actor can be
said to act neither on the authority of the fictional character he imper-
sonates, nor on the authority of a recognisable third party.25 This is
doubtful. The coming into being of the author’s persona is inseparable
from the development of a system of ownership for texts within which
theatrical discourse became yet another object of appropriation.26 In
Shakespeare’s day playwrights sold their plays to theatrical compa-
nies, thereby losing all rights to them. As such, besides the Master of
Revels—the state officer who had authority over the production and
publication of plays—the theatre company itself, as the legal owner of
the play-script, seems to qualify as the authorising third party Pitkin
is looking for.27 Furthermore, there were circumstances in which the
playwright was still expected to take ownership of the actions of his
characters. Should e.g. an Elizabethan actor speculate onstage about
the queen’s succession, the dramatic censor, the Master of the Revels,
would probably be doomed for his oversight, but the author himself
would still be the person held responsible for the crime of seditious
libel so long as the actor had not misrepresented the original script.
Pace Pitkin, in Hobbes’s time there were plenty of persons who could
be held liable for onstage representations.
Since fictitious personality depends on a sophisticated legal appara-
tus, namely a valid covenant of authorisation contingent on a previous
determination of ownership or governorship, it is exclusive to civil
society. This holds whether the act of authorisation is conditional on
dominion of things or dominion of persons, as both types of domin-
ion owe their existence to the positive legal framework that only the
coercive power of the state can uphold:
Likewise Children, Fooles, and Mad-men that have no use of Reason,
may be Personated by Guardians, or Curators; but can be no Authors
(during that time) of any action done by them, longer then (when they

25
See Pitkin 1964a, pp. 333–6, as well as 1967, p. 25.
26
On the questions of authorship, attribution and ownership of texts, see Long
2001, and Foucault’s essay ‘What is an Author?’ in Foucault 1998, pp. 205–22.
27
Skinner was the first to point out that Pitkin’s objection is unhistorical, in so
far as by 1640, the licensing of stage-plays was compulsory. See Skinner 1999, pp.
15–16.
156 chapter three

shall recover the use of Reason) they shall judge the same reasonable. Yet
during the Folly, he that hath right of governing them, may give Author-
ity to the Guardian. But this again has no place but in a State Civill,
because before such estate, there is no Dominion of Persons.28
Just like the inanimate objects we have previously encountered, chil-
dren, natural fools and madmen are not legally competent to act.29
Although they perform actions, they cannot be regarded as present in
any transaction, since they lack understanding of what is being done,
and cannot work out for themselves the consequences of consent-
ing or refusing that something should be done for them. Neverthe-
less, the management of their affairs requires interaction with others,
and provision has to be made for someone legally competent to carry
out any necessary transaction on their behalf.30 And just as the owner
may authorise the representation of his possession, so may the gov-
ernor author the representation of his charge. The task of appoint-
ing a person to act on behalf of the legally incompetent falls upon
those who have them in their power, which under civil law will almost
certainly be the civil magistrate or (before him) the father himself.31
This is because the civil law determines that dominion rests with the
father, each family consisting of a man, his wife, children and servants
together ‘wherein the Father or Master is the Sovereign’.32 Alongside
the authority of the father, however, there ran in Hobbes’s time that
of the Lord Chancellor, who by right derived from the crown served
as supreme guardian to all wards.

28
Hobbes 1996, p. 113.
29
The discussion of the guardianship of buildings alongside that of men (minors,
lunatics and the spendthrift) is symptomatic of Hobbes’s indebtedness to Roman law.
In The Institutes of Justinian, Tit. XIII, for instance, we can read that tutors ‘are called
tutors as being guardians (tutores) and defenders in the same way as those who guard
buildings (aedes) are called custodians (aeditui)’. Inst. 1.13.
30
As Roman law put it, the tutor’s function was to supply what the minor could not
give—auctoritas. Therefore only the tutor could give the final approval and the final
guarantee to any transaction in which the minor had a part. See D. 26.8.
31
This, as Hobbes stresses with the neo-Roman theorists of liberty in view, was
already so in Rome, where children were called liberi, and yet ‘both the state had
power over their life without consent of their fathers; and the father might kill his son
by his own authority, without any warrant of the state’. Hobbes 1969b, p. 134. For the
Court of Chancery’s role in appointing and removing guardians who fail in their trust
see Blackstone 1862, pp. 477–9.
32
Hobbes 1996, p. 142. The family is therefore united in the person of the father,
as ‘one Person Representative’, who has the right to speak and act for his household
(wife, children and servants, included) ‘as farre as the Law permitteth’. Ibid., pp. 162
and 163.
 juridical representation 157

The case of guardianship underlines a significant difference between

the representation of a natural person (i.e., true representation) and the
representation of a non-person (i.e., representation by fiction). As an
author, a natural person can make arrangements to limit his liability
for the actions of his representatives by e.g. issuing instructions or
agreeing merely to be represented for certain purposes and periods
of time. Where these limits are disrespected, a natural person can
object to what has been done in his name, accuse his representative of
misrepresentation, and even cut the representative relationship alto-
gether.33 This possibility is unavailable to non-persons, who cannot
set up the limits of their liability. In their case, it is the role of their
owner or governor to stipulate the conditions of their representation,
so that the representative may be held to account in case he does not
adequately provide for their maintenance.
Consider, for instance, the guardianship of a minor, as established
by his father or the Court of Chancery. In Hobbes’s time, when the
ward came of age the guardian was bound to give him an account of
all that he had transacted on his behalf. While the ward could retro-
spectively accept having been the author of any transactions made in
his representation that effectively served his interests, he also had the
possibility of making the guardian answer for any losses incurred that
he believed to have resulted from the guardian’s wilful default or neg-
ligence. During his minority too, the child could have his legal inter-
ests represented, but this time by a court-appointed special advocate
(guardian ad litem), who could sue a fraudulent guardian in the name
of the infant’s best interests. When a guardian abused his trust, it was
the court’s right to check and punish him, sometimes by his removal
and the appointment of a new guardian in his stead. This means that
where the represented is a non-person, but has an existence indepen-
dent of its representation, the possibility of a gap between the rep-
resentation and what can be reasonably constructed as being in the
interest of the represented entails some space for accountability. But
the non-person can only object to what has been done on its behalf by
either overcoming its legal incompetence or having its objections rep-
resented by someone upon whom the state confers authority to speak

33
As Hobbes puts it: what is true of ‘Covenants between man and man in their
naturall capacity, is true also when they are made by their Actors, Representers, or
Procurators, that have authority from them, so far-forth as is in their Commission, but
no farther’. Ibid., p. 112, my emphasis.
158 chapter three

in its name. Hobbes is determined, however, that no such competitive

representative claims be admitted when it come to the representation
of the state.

The State as Person

Representation by fiction, we have seen, has the power to transform

a non-person into a legally responsible person. This transformation
bears witness to the great constitutive powers of representation. But
it falls short of ‘that Fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by
God in the Creation’.34 This is because most of the represented enti-
ties we have encountered up to this point were not things created out
of nothing. As they are persons through representation, they existed
in some capacity before it. To grasp the full transformative powers
of representation, increasing as far as producing persons virtually ex
nihilo, we have to search for a case where the represented has no pre-
existence but comes into being only after and due to the process of
representation itself.
The state fills the brief perfectly. On Hobbes’s account, represen-
tation is the condition of possibility of the state; the state, its most
impressive creation. As man’s way out of nature, representation is
allowed to play freely, realising the full potential of its creative power,
in such sort that a collective unity of organised action is constituted
which provides ‘for their Peace and Common Defence’.35 This happens
as a multitude of self-impersonators covenant amongst themselves to
authorise a man or assembly to construct their collective political per-
sonality, by investing it with meanings, intentions and choices that will
be enforced by subsequent practice, with their unfaltering collabora-
tion. For in celebrating the covenant, men pass to the sovereign the
authority to bind every other individual in the state by the unscripted
utterances and actions whereby he or it interprets and literally brings
to life the state as they come to know it: an irresistible power derived
from them, yet different from them. Such an unconditional grant of
authority on the part of the multitude is for Hobbes unavoidable. Lim-

34
Ibid., p. 10.
35
Ibid., p. 121.
 juridical representation 159

ited representation depends on its limits being enforced by an arbitra-

tor, the sovereign, who is not yet in existence. Furthermore, since the
sovereign is charged with procuring the security and well-being of the
political community as a whole, he must be endowed with the means
to that end. Otherwise, the covenant would be self-defeating, indeed
invalid.36 And for Hobbes nothing less extensive than their original
right to potentially anything will suffice, if the sovereign is to stand
a chance of fulfilling the duties of his office. In other words, if the
sovereign representative is to secure protection, his right to act with
respect to the commonwealth must be like theirs in nature: ‘Authority
without stint’.37
Most of the cases we have analysed so far have been instances of
representation of single entities, not of collectives, much less of col-
lectives of a state’s dimension. However, Hobbes’s authorisation view
of representation applies whether the represented is singular or plural.
Given that, in Hobbes’s definition, to represent is to personate oneself
or another, his basic theory of personhood is easily extendable to a
theory of collective personhood, accounting for how groups, stretch-
ing to aggregates as large as the state, incorporate into one and come
to exhibit a personality that is separate from that of its members. All
that is needed for this sort of incorporation to take place is for the
group members to authorise one common impersonator to bear the
collective as though one person capable of acting intentionally.
When it comes to collectives, Hobbes’s premise is that a group can
be treated like a person if it shows a similar capacity to form judge-
ments, goals and intentions on the basis of which it can act. ‘Person’
refers, in this context, to a contrived being, built upon a fiction of the
juristic mind. This is an idea that Hobbes borrowed from the medieval
corporate law, according to which a community was not a real person
but a represented one (persona non vera sed repraesentata), representa-
tion being here a metaphor of cognition, and in particular the doctrine
of the persona ficta, according to which corporate bodies are fictitious
persons (personae fictae), which unite a plurality of individuals juristi-
cally as one, thanks to a creative act of the state. Variously qualified

36
Hobbes 1998, p. 27: ‘But a right to an end is meaningless, if the right to the means
necessary to that end is denied.’
37
Hobbes 1996, p. 114.
160 chapter three

as fictive ( ficta), imaginary (imaginata) or represented (representata),

the fictitious person faced, in its early days, resistance from nominal-
ists like William of Ockham (c. 1280–1349), on the grounds that ‘what
is only represented and imaginary is a fantasy, and does not exist in
reality outside the mind’.38 But jurists like Bartolus of Saxoferrato
(1314–57) objected to such literal-mindedness. Whilst they acknowl-
edged that nominalists were right if ‘we speak about reality proper’,
they also argued that ‘according to legal fiction, they err[ed]’.39 For by
means of the constitutive power of law, corporations represented only
one person in law, and this person was no inert abstraction. Differing
from their constitutive parts, corporations held almost all the ordinary
attributes of legal personality—the rights to a name and address, to
own property, buy and sell, enter into contracts, make claims, incur
obligations, sue and be sued, etc. All of these the corporation effec-
tively exercised through agents, councils and elective representative
officers, charged with the task of enacting the corporate will. In other
words, the unity of the corporation, from which it derived its capacity
to impress itself outside the legal mind, was dependent on its being
represented.40
Hobbes’s indebtedness to corporational theory is undoubted. From
the early 1640s onwards, he maintained that the state was a type of
corporation, civil body or person in law, enjoying an existence distinct
from that of its members. Accordingly, in The Elements of Law (1640),
he showed his astonishment at the fact that ‘though in the charters of
subordinate corporations, a corporation be declared to be one person
in law, yet the same hath not been taken notice of in the body of
a commonwealth or city, nor have any of those innumerable writers
of politics observed any such union’.41 The astonishment is obviously
feigned. Hobbes must have known that he was following in the foot-
steps of his medieval jurist predecessors when working out the state
concept from the legal notion of corporation.

38
Ockham 2001, p. 428.
39
Bartolus, Commentary on D. 48.19.16.10, where he develops the notion of the
corporation as a persona repraesentata or ficta, that is, as a legal personality that is
separate both from the state and from the corporation’s members, despite only being
capable of acting through them.
40
As Albericus de Rosciate put it in 1354: ‘collegium, licet constituatur ex pluribus,
est tamen unum per representationem’. Rosciate in Eschmann 1944, p. 33, n. 145.
41
Hobbes 1969b, p. 174.
 juridical representation 161

Of paramount importance for corporations were their unity, dis-

tinctiveness, perpetuity and identity over time. The concern with these
salient characteristics is fully echoed by Hobbes in Thomas White’s
‘De Mundo’ Examined (1642–3), where he maintains that ‘when any
citizen dies the material of the state is not the same, i.e., the state is
not the same ens’.42 But ‘the uninterrupted order [ordo] and motion of
government that signal a state ensure that, while they remain as one,
the state is the same in number’.43 Irreducible to the actual individu-
als that compose or rule it at each point in time, Hobbes’s state has
its corporate identity throughout time guaranteed thanks to a unitary
principle of motion, conferred upon it by an uninterrupted chain of
sovereigns in whose will its members unite. This is rendered more
explicitly in De Cive (1642), where Hobbes stresses that the state ‘is to
be taken as one person; and is to be distinguished and differentiated by
a unique name from all particular men, having its own rights and its
own property’.44 Yet for the state to be a union capable of exercising
rights of its own and claiming back obligations from others, it needs
to have a corporate head: ‘one person, whose will, by the agreement
of several men, is to be taken as the will of them all’.45 Corporate per-
sonality, Hobbes insisted, was conditional on the people attaining a
political voice by allowing another to will for it.
In these earlier works, Hobbes vacillated, however, between describ-
ing incorporation into the state as a question of subjection of many
private wills to one foreign public will, which all recognised as such
and promised not to oppose; or as a question of the involvement of
many wills in one sovereign will, which all recognised as theirs and
pledged to support. This last notion of a sovereign will engaging all
others points towards the idea of representation. But the correspond-
ing term did not appear in Hobbes’s works until 1649, and even then
at the hand of Sorbière, the first French translator of De Cive.46 Sor-
bière’s grasping of the idea in translation is further proof that Hobbes
was already operating according to the notion of representation in
the early 1640s as an intrinsic element of the corporation theory from
which he drew. But Hobbes’s self-conscious use of the concept as the

42
Hobbes 1976, p. 141.
43
Ibid.
44
Hobbes 1998, p. 73.
45
Ibid.
46
See Hobbes 1649, p. 100.
162 chapter three

key to his politics comes later, and was triggered by an extraneous

catalyst: the republican challenge.47
In effect, immediately after the publication of De Cive (1642), the
question and the rhetoric of representation dominated a whole series
of works vindicating Parliament’s case against the king, including
Henry Parker’s own pamphlets.48 Hobbes’s response to the theories of
parliamentary representation coming out from these treatises was to
develop his own theory of representative sovereignty appropriating the
vocabulary parliamentarians had developed to pick out and discuss the
concept of political representation with a new consistency. Although,
as we have seen, their building-blocks were virtually the same, Hobbes
set himself to undercut the conclusion the parliamentarians derived
from their assemblage: that the will of the people could be represented
nowhere but in and by Parliament, within whose walls they wanted to
relocate greater, if not absolute, decision-making powers.
Hobbes’s move was not entirely unprecedented. Quick to under-
stand the sway of representation as political ideology, Dudley Digges,
as early as 1643, reminded his readers that the king was the ‘represen-
tative all’, ‘legally the whole people’, and ‘what he doth is legally their
Act’.49 And where there was already one such representative, there
could be no other. But if Digges’s words might have been Hobbes’s,
what Digges, unlike Hobbes, failed to see was that the very powers
of representation he identified implied that their proper receptacle
should be placed above contending parties (e.g. king and Parliament):
in sovereignty itself, understood as the continuous representation of
the entire political community for decision-making purposes. It was
the task of Hobbes’s science of politics to make sense of the state as a
collective representation, with regard to which the whole people has a
unified responsibility.

47
This has been clearly shown by Quentin Skinner; see Skinner 2005.
48
For the fullest discussion of the theses of the parliamentarians to date, see Skin-
ner 2005. Authors developing aspects of a theory of representative government in
support of the parliamentarian case between 1642 and 1644 included Henry Parker,
William Haller, John Marsh, Richard Ward, William Bridge, Philip Hunton, William
Prynne and William Bridge. It ought to be noted, however, that the use of a claim to
represent as a strategy for enhancing the Commons’ position dates from much earlier,
as is clear from the famous words uttered in 1601 by Sir Edward Coke: ‘That his Maj-
esty and the Nobles being every one a great person, represented but themselves; but
his Commons though they were but inferiour men, yet every one of them represented
a thousand men.’ Coke in D’Ewes 1708, p. 515.
49
Digges 1643b, pp. 33, 149 and 151–2.
 juridical representation 163

In Leviathan it is the sovereign qua artificial person who comes

defined as our representative: more precisely, as bearing the person
of the commonwealth, whether the office of sovereignty is held by
one, some or all. The notion of ‘bearing the person of ’ was almost
inexhaustible in its polysemy, bringing together the worlds of theatre,
law and republicanism. Actors bore characters (dramatis personae)
on stage. In Roman and medieval law the expression personam alicui
gerere sive sustinere was regularly used with reference to corporations
(universitates). Cicero argued that the foremost duty of the magistrate
is to behave as the personification of the city ( gerere personam civita-
tis). Hobbes plays into all these different meanings as he fashions sov-
ereignty as an office, occupied by one or more natural persons, which
must remain masked and single in all the official actions they perform
while bearing the person of ‘the Public’.
In maintaining that the artificial person of the sovereign is the
bearer of the multitude’s collective person, Hobbes does not intend,
however, to endorse the notion that the people, understood as a corpo-
rate entity, pre-exists representation, and gives the sovereign its person
to be acted for under pre-fixed conditions. If the people did constitute
such an autonomous sovereign body, capable of exercising constituent
power on its own, this sovereign body would also have the capacity to
overturn the constituted order at any future time for alleged breach
of trust. This is a position attributable to sixteenth-century monar-
chomachs and all those parliamentarians for whom the body of the
people, understood as a corporation, was the proper subject of sov-
ereign power; but not to Hobbes. Hobbes’s point is the opposite. For
him, ‘the people’ comes into existence retroactively, after the state is
formed, according to the person the sovereign devises for it in repre-
sentation. States make peoples, not the other way round.
Against the advocates of popular sovereignty, Hobbes can therefore
say that in every state ‘the people’ is already sovereign. This is because
‘the people’ inheres in sovereignty, not because sovereignty inheres
originally in the body of the people.50 This asymmetry is worth stress-
ing, if only because some commentators have continued to argue that
Hobbes ‘in developing his theory of representation [. . .] worked his

50
I am here borrowing, if in a slightly altered form, Giuseppe Sorgi’s apt formula-
tion of Hobbes’s views on popular sovereignty: ‘It is not that sovereignty inheres in
the people, but the people in sovereignty.’ Sorgi 1989, p. 105. See also Hoekstra 2006b,
pp. 203–6.
164 chapter three

way through to the kernel of the idea of the people as the constitu-
ent power of the body politic’.51 But this is misleading. Representation
does not work, in Hobbes, as a pre-commitment device undertaken by
a constituted body politic (‘a people’), endowed with a unified consti-
tutive will, to limit future political authority. Representation is rather
the way of engendering the very possibility of a collective political
agency holding sovereign power. If ‘the people’ is ever to rule over
itself, it must be indirectly, by means of a sovereign representative,
appointed to act in its name. Popular sovereignty is represented; or it
is not. In a Hobbesian world, the construction of ‘the people’ is always
mediated and transformed by state institutions.
Hence the matter out of which Hobbes’s state is erected does not
constitute a corporate body politic, but a disorderly heap: not a people
but a multitude, which ‘naturally is not One, but Many’.52 Any such
aggregate of men, like a pile of stones, can share a common space,
occupy a common territory. But it remains a multitude, character-
ised by its plurality and lack of lasting cohesiveness. It would be in
vain, Hobbes warns, to search for unity in any amorphous multitude
of people. Unity amongst men is never a datum, always a constructum:
its shaping into being is dependent on the setting up of a ‘common
Representer’, whom the multitude entrust with the ‘Right to Present
the Person of them all’.53
However, as Hobbes makes sure to stress, it is not so much the
voluntary consent of each prospective subject that makes them one as
the fact that their representative is himself one unified person, capable
of acting for them with one will and on the basis of one judgement.
More than just consent, more than just concord (which would, at best,
form an unstable ‘wholeness’), it is the oneness of the artificial person
representing them all that achieves the much-desired unity of the body
politic:
A Multitude of men, are made One Person, when they are by one man,
or one Person, Represented; so that it be done with the consent of every
one of that Multitude in particular. For it is the Unity of the Representer,
not the Unity of the Represented, that maketh the Person One.54

51
Forsyth 1981, pp. 191–2.
52
Hobbes 1996, p. 114.
53
Ibid., pp. 114 and 121.
54
Ibid., p. 114.
 juridical representation 165

The moment men give themselves the same representative, and he or

it speaks for them with one voice, they unite themselves in his or its
person. This ability to speak for the multitude with one voice may
pertain to the representative naturally or artificially. It comes to him
naturally if the representative is a natural person, who is already per
se una (one by nature), and therefore naturally capable of speaking for
the multitude in unison. It is artificially constructed if the representa-
tive is a collective body composed of several natural persons, which
can none the less reduce their multiple and potentially clashing voices
to one by virtue of adopting ‘the voyce of the greater number’.55 This
presupposes the adoption of a decision rule—on Hobbes’s suggestion,
majority rule—which extracts one will from the assembly and brings
about the unity of the entire assembly as representative, enabling it
to represent the whole political community effectively for decision-
making purposes. The result of the representation of the multitude by
any such unitary person (man or assembly), capable of bearing them
all as if they were one, is, in Hobbes’s own words, ‘more than Con-
sent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and same
Person’.56
The solemnity of these words, and the magnitude of the transfor-
mation they capture—from a heap of men to a ‘Mortall God’—invites
a parallel between the ‘real unity’ created by men through the pact of
institution and ‘real presence’, the Catholic sacrament we have seen
Hobbes deriding for its purported ability to transmute bread and wine
into the body and blood of Christ at the pronouncement of the words
of institution.57 Hobbes makes it clear, however, that the feat of creat-
ing this peacekeeping ‘Mortall God’ testifies to the purely productive
capacities of representation, which are verbal, visual and kinetic, and
not to a supernatural transformation, whereby one absent body, divine
or politic, becomes substantially present. For Hobbes, the representa-
tional character of human language—the fact that words are not tied
up to a pre-linguistic reality, but have the power actively to construct
social reality—is politically critical, because only it can allow the cov-
enants by which ‘the parts of this Body Politique were at first made, set
together, and united, [to] resemble that Fiat, or the Let us make man,

55
Ibid., p. 114.
56
Ibid., p. 120.
57
See Chapter 1 above. The same analogy is drawn in Kahn 2003, p. 78 and Pettit
2008, p. 75.
166 chapter three

pronounced by God in the Creation’.58 If it is underwritten by fear,

the illocutionary force of the Let us make sovereignty pronounced by
men at the foundation of the commonwealth, the ability of the speech
act to perform what it names, is an essential part of calling the com-
monwealth into being ex nihilo. Whereas bread and wine remain effec-
tively the same after the act of consecration, only their function and
symbolic meaning changing, the disunited, violently quarrelsome and
virtually powerless multitude celebrating the pact of institution make
themselves emerge in a new capacity as a result of their holding to a
performative promise which has representation as its pre-condition.
For their promise is to pass to the sovereign ‘the Right to Present the
Person of them all’.59 Hobbes insists that it would be wrong to reduce
this person borne by the sovereign to any of its constituent elements:
either to the numerical aggregate of individuals who inhabit a given
territory at any given time or to the government ruling over it. As ‘the
Greatest of humane Powers’, this separate collective person, emerg-
ing from the pact as word made thing, is fittingly christened with a
mythical name of its own: ‘LEVIATHAN’, also ‘called a COMMON-
WEALTH, or STATE (in latine CIVITAS)’.60
This person is separate, but not freestanding. For the state exists
only in representation—in performance. The name does not make the
person and even with a name of its own, ‘the Common-wealth is no
Person, nor has the capacity to doe anything, but by the Representa-
tive, (that is, the Sovereign)’.61 Only the sovereign’s impersonation of
the impersonal state can ensure that the latter seems no less real than
any other person in its presence and effects, i.e., that it ‘can be said to
have power to will, to pronounce, to command, to be obeyed, to make
laws, or to do any other action whatsoever’.62 The indefiniteness of the
adjective ‘whatsoever’ is important here, as it captures the interpreta-
tive nature of the sovereign’s impersonation, requiring the freedom
as well as the capacity to compose the state’s character without a sub-
stantial script with which to work. Improvisation is essential because
the state may be created by the multitude with one purpose in mind,

58
Hobbes 1996, p. 10.
59
Ibid., p. 121.
60
Ibid., pp. 62 and 9.
61
Ibid., p. 184.
62
Ibid., p. 321. These are personal qualities defining the church qua person, but
since in Hobbes church and state are fundamentally the same, the transposition is
warranted.
 juridical representation 167

namely protection, but the best way of fulfilling this purpose will vary
as circumstances change. This means that the action of the sovereign
can never be specified in advance, and that he must be empowered not
only to do something definite, but to do virtually anything he thinks fit
or in our interest. The only constant for the sovereign performance is
the requirement to make the disunited multitude appear on the politi-
cal stage in the semblance of a powerful union capable of acting with
steadiness of mind and purpose in the face of any internal or external
menace. This is something the state, in all its abstractness, could never
do if stripped of its animator.
Sovereign and state are indeed, for Hobbes, not only co-original,
but entities as closely interdependent and as radically interwoven as
the circumference and the circle in geometry. The person of the state
is defined by its capacity to act on a single will; the sovereign is the
state as regards this capacity.63 In other words, the state depends on a
sovereign being in place that is capable of acting out the multitude’s
political part, transforming it into a res publica. For the state, sover-
eign performance means therefore nothing short of life itself. Hence
Hobbes’s insistence that a mere gap between the present sovereign
and the next poses the danger of the state ceasing to be and the mul-
titude dissolving into anarchy. For just as the soul is the principle of
thought and action in a man, so is the sovereign ‘the publique Soule,
giving Life and Motion to the Common-wealth; which expiring, the
Members are governed by it no more, than the Carcasse of a man, by
his departed (though Immortall) Soule’.64 And if the soul signifies, in
Scripture, either the life or the living creature, so does the sovereign
signify the state’s spring of life and therefore the state itself qua ‘living’
person. One could not be without the other. The bond between state
and sovereign is so indissoluble that Hobbes slides from speaking of
it in terms of interdependence to terms of identification, and refers to
the sovereign as being, rather than simply representing, that which he
presents: ‘in all Courts of Justice, the Soveraign (which is the Person of
the Common-wealth), is he that Judgeth’.65 To be sure, it was a com-
mon legal fiction of Hobbes’s time to judge the person representing

63
The capacity to act defining the state’s person, Kottman’s recent claim that
‘Hobbes’s Leviathan, quite simply, does not perform; it does not act’ must be strongly
resisted. Kottman 2008, p. 95.
64
Hobbes 1996, p. 230.
65
Ibid., p. 187, my emphasis.
168 chapter three

to be one with the person represented.66 But it was also a fiction that
gained striking credibility when the entity represented had no body,
no will, no voice: in short, no existence, except through its being rep-
resented, as is the case with the state.
The analogy with theatre is again enlightening. The play proper
exists first and only when it is played. Performance brings the play
into existence, and the playing of the play is the play itself. As with the
play, so it is with the state. Sovereign performance brings the state into
being, and the acting out of the state is the state itself, in so far as the
state is only in enactment. This necessary coupling of sovereign and
state explains why Hobbes alternates between treating the sovereign as
he who ‘bears’ and saying that he ‘is’ the person of the commonwealth.
The ambiguity is deeply rooted in Hobbes’s political writings, and too
conspicuous to be dismissed as a mere slip.67 In some ways, it can be
traced back to Hobbes’s claim, in chapter 16 of Leviathan, that the
persona being a mask, the person is an actor: a representative.68 The
inference is troubling because the theatrical mask is not the actor, but
he whom the actor represents: more correctly, a representation of the

66
Hobbes, Ans. Bram. (EW IV, p. 311). Digges resorts to the same legal fiction,
when he writes that the king is ‘legally the whole people’; see Digges 1643b, p. 149. See
also Lawson, who refers to the juridical treatment of represented and representative
as one and the same person with relation to Hobbes; Lawson 1657, p. 37. The legal
fiction figured prominently in contemporary law treatises, such as Antoine Dadine D’
Autreserre’s De Fictionibus Iuris Tractatus Quinque (Paris, 1659).
67
The ambiguity between the civil person as represented or representative appears
already in The Elements of Law, where Hobbes maintains that the people can signify a
multitude or ‘a person civil, that is to say, either one man, or one council, in the will
whereof is included and involved the will of every one in particular; as for example:
in this latter sense the lower house if parliament is all the commons’. Hobbes 1969b,
p. 124, my emphasis; see also ibid., p. 117. Similarly, in De Cive Hobbes contends that
neither any single citizen nor all together (except him whose will stands for the will of
all) are to be regarded as the commonwealth. Hobbes 1998, p. 73. Turning to Levia-
than, in chapter 26 Hobbes maintains that ‘The Legislator in all Common-wealths, is
only the Soveraign’, immediately explaining that ‘Therefore the Common-wealth is the
Legislator.’ In chapter 28, he asserts that Leviathan is the ‘Governour’ of man, leaving
the reader in doubt whether he is speaking of the sovereign or the state in its entirety,
not least because the biblical Leviathan was commonly associated with kings or men
in a position of eminence. Hobbes 1996, p. 221. In the next chapter, he explains that
that ‘to those Lawes which the Soveraign himselfe, that is, which the Commonwealth
maketh, he [the sovereign] is not subject. For to be subject to Lawes, is to be subject
to the Common-wealth, that is to the Soveraign Representative.’ Hobbes 1996, p. 224.
Also in the Latin Leviathan, Hobbes both refers to kings bearing the person of the
commonwealth, and identifies the kings as the person of the commonwealth. Lat.
Lev., pp. 139 and 209.
68
I thank Kinch Hoekstra for having brought this point to my attention.
 juridical representation 169

represented (fictional) character (as is the mask of the state).69 In point

of fact, Hobbes’s changing between the civil person as represented and
representative aptly captures the underlying theoretical point that sov-
ereign and state are not freestanding entities, as well as illuminating
the duality of perspectives involved in political representation under-
stood as a kind of performance. As in a theatrical setting, on the politi-
cal stage actors are both actors and characters, and the grand fiction
of politics is that its main actor is other than who he is for the time of
his incumbency: no longer just another man, but all his subjects, with
all their powers, united in one—his—person. Hence, when he is in
character, the sovereign must personify the unity of the state, make its
awesome power manifest, give it a presence in his every gesture. For
this to happen, however, the sovereign’s acting must be effected—both
enhanced and constrained—by the ‘implied’ presence of the character
he plays: that of their political union, which is something of greater
stature and strength than any particular man, including the sovereign
himself. In the theatre of politics, as in stage theatre, successful per-
formance depends on audiences needing no convincing that the actor
is the character for the duration of the play, so that they are willing
to credit the representation with their approval. But however success-
ful in their onstage impersonation, actors are not warranted in taking
the person they develop as their disposable possession or something
reducible to their bodily onstage presence. This person is intended to
outlive the play, by being kept in play by whoever next holds the com-
mand of the state, or the reins of power.
It is of this disembodied character, which would be lost if identi-
fied completely with any particular men, ‘not of the men (but in the
Abstract) of the Seat of Power’, that Hobbes wants to speaks to us
in Leviathan.70 Thus abstracted into the impersonal bearer of sover-
eignty, Hobbes’s state is an enduring institution of common life that
sovereign actors animate in succession to one another, and in virtue
of which they enjoy virtually unlimited authority—not mere force, but
legitimised power—to act in the interest of the state and of all those
within it.

69
This explains why in chapter 42, in a cross-reference to chapter 16, Hobbes main-
tains that the proper definition of ‘person’ is ‘that which is Represented by another’.
See Hobbes 1996, p. 339.
70
Ibid., p. 3.
170 chapter three

But what type of person is this Leviathan, the person of the state?
The first thing to notice is that the language Hobbes uses to describe
the state is reminiscent of the language traditionally used to charac-
terise the persona ficta. This was often described as real men united
in a fictitious being, which was nothing but a name, a thing of the
intellect, an incorporeal entity, having a being only in abstracto, like
‘man’ in respect to men. In a similar nominalist vein, Hobbes tells us
that the state’s incapacity to act is a consequence of its insubstanti-
ality. The state, he tells us, would be a purely verbal entity, nothing
‘but a word, without substance’, if it were not placed before us at a
distance by the sovereign through representation.71 But as a fiction
before the law, the state is not so much a legal as a political fiction:
not a supposition of fact created by the state and taken to be true by
the courts of law, but a supposition of ‘the Greatest of humane Pow-
ers’ which men must imagine to cause it to come into being. In its
almost spectral quality the state bears a resemblance to those figments
of mind, or idols, whose nothingness Hobbes also stresses.72 Idols, we
have seen, are purely imaginary entities, which have no reality except
that which is given to them in the minds of frightened people, or by
artists translating them into painted or sculpted image. To enter the
world of legally binding transactions, they have to be represented by
men authorised by the state to perform real actions in their name.
Similarly, despite acting severally through its several agents, and
forcefully addressing us in many disguises—king, judge, sheriff, con-
stable, ambassador—the state is an elusive entity, allowing only par-
tial glimpses of its person. As rational political fictions whose earthly
impression depends entirely on representation, they have no figure, no
real-world correspondence, upon which one could form an image: no
gross and material body can be found behind its many masks. Argu-
ably even more than other fictional entities, states resist attempts at
figurative representation, their overwhelming power transgressing the
law of located visibility, of figurativeness. When finally caught in an

71
Ibid., p. 245. Hobbes’s pronouncements as to the purely verbal existence of the
state in the absence of a sovereign bring to mind Pope Innocent IV’s famous words
on the nature of corporations, and the fictitious character of their legal personality:
‘capitulum, quod est nomen intellectuale et res incorporalis, nihil potest facere nisi per
membra sua’. In Decr., X 5.39.64 n. 2.
72
Hobbes 1996, p. 245. The case for Hobbes’s state being a person by fiction rather
than, as Skinner first argued, a ‘purely artificial person’ was first put by Runciman
2002. Skinner has come to revise his position, as seen in Skinner 2005.
 juridical representation 171

image, as in the memorable frontispiece of Leviathan, this image is

therefore to be taken metaphorically, as an emblematical composition,
connecting citizens imaginatively to their common being, rather than
as a mimetic resemblance of what is not there to be seen.73 For states
are not so much seen as imagined communities, where the imagining
itself constitutes a creative act leading people to consider themselves
as forming one state and, more importantly, to behave as if they had
consented to form one by performing the type of unbroken obedience
which is necessary to uphold it over time.74
States would be totally absent from the world of natural persons if
no group of real men committed themselves to establishing and sus-
taining the fiction of their collective political personality. But how spe-
cifically does, on Hobbes’s account, the state come to act in the guise
of a person, whose actions leave behind a trace of veritable effects?
This question is pertinent, as it is characteristic of persons by fiction to
come to exist only where authority is passed on by a third party (their
owners or governors) to an actor to represent them. The state cannot
do the authorising itself, as it is not a natural person, but a fictional
person with no existence prior to its representation. But neither can
authority be derived from the state’s owner or governor, for the simple
reason that the state has no owner, and its governor, the sovereign,
is he who is in need of authorisation. It has been at times suggested
that since the multitude are the artificers and the matter out of which
the state is generated, the members of the multitude have a dominion
over the state analogous to that which the mother has over her child,
a dominion that would give them the standing to appoint an actor
for the state’s person.75 Objections have been raised against this anal-
ogy.76 But the most fundamental of them has surprisingly been over-
looked. The multitude goes into the state without remainder, whereas
the mother remains after her child’s birth. More critically, the right of

73
For the influence of emblemata or emblem-books on Hobbes, see Skinner 2008.
For an especially perceptive discussion of this difficulty in ‘picturing’ the state, as well
as Hobbes’s attempt to circumvent it in the title page of Leviathan, see Malcolm 2002,
especially pp. 222–9.
74
For the notion of ‘imagined community’, albeit applied to the nation, see Ander-
son 1983, pp. 5–7 and Seton-Watson 1977, p. 5.
75
This analogy was originally drawn by Quentin Skinner, according to whom, ‘Just
as the mother brings her child into the world, thereby acquiring dominion over it, so
the union of the multitude serves to procreate the state.’ Skinner 1999, p. 23.
76
For some such objections, see Runciman 2000, p. 273, n. 13.
172 chapter three

dominion of the mother does not on Hobbes’s view spring from gen-
eration, but from consent.77 Consequently, no right of dominion could
have ever been acquired by the multitude over the state in virtue of
its genetic proximity to it. What is more, before submitting to a hus-
band, the mother retains dominion over the engendered, and it would
be disastrous for Hobbes if the multitude could reclaim its dominion
over the state once it is established. The analogy is visually suggestive,
but analytically flawed.
So how does the person of the state come onto the scene? The short
answer is: by means of a covenant of representation whereby the
would-be subjects covenant with one another to authorise the same
unitary representative to act for them, collectively speaking, on con-
dition that every would-be subject accedes. What we find here is the
same triadic relationship we encountered before in cases of represen-
tation by fiction. But this time it is not premised on dominion, which,
being established by positive law, belongs exclusively to the civil con-
dition. To distribute the roles, the multitude are now the authors, the
sovereign the actor and the state the entity represented, which, being a
fictional person, comes into full being only in and through represen-
tation. This also means that the state cannot object to its representa-
tion or the ways the sovereign decides to play its part. But neither can
the multitude of natural persons authoring the state raise any such
objections on the state’s behalf. To authorise is to acknowledge and
accept the attribution of the actions of another to oneself, making one-
self liable to take responsibility for whatever the other does in one’s
name, on one’s behalf, within his commission. In authorising the sov-
ereign unconditionally the multitude make themselves, every one, the
author of whatever the sovereign ‘shall do, and judge fit to be done’ in
their corporate person.78 They cannot dissociate themselves from the
sovereign’s actions—their actions—by way of objection, without self-
contradiction; nor can they disown the consequences of these actions,
as owners of the rights by which the actions of the representative state
are performed.79 In Hobbes, the institution of the sovereign cancels any

77
Hobbes 1996, p. 114.
78
Ibid., p. 122. Hobbes’s account of the responsibility accruing to the subject
through its representative relationship with the state sits uncomfortably with his claim
that subjects cannot be blamed for moral wrongs they commit at the command of the
state, as that of worshipping a false god, discussed in Chapter 2 above.
79
George Lawson, in his comments on Hobbes’s use of the term ‘representative’,
maintains that in Hobbes whatever is done by a lawful representative is considered to
 juridical representation 173

non-represented power of the political subject, while implicating him

in each and every act the state performs in his name.
For all its consequences, the process of authorisation whereby the
state acquires its authority need not be un-coerced or explicit. Fear is a
perfectly sufficient basis for motivating legitimate authorisation, as for
Hobbes the coercion of the will does not undercut the voluntariness
of one’s actions. And authorisation itself can be inferred retrospec-
tively from men living in a pacified polity, which only their de facto
authorisation could sustain. But while it may be implicit, authorisation
must involve more than just the sum of the voluntary consent of each
prospective subject, as this alone would fall short of accounting for the
nature of the state as a collective entity.80 If there is to be not merely
the unity of the representative but, as Hobbes claims, ‘a reall Unitie’ of
them all, the unitary state has to stand on the multilateral implications
of the covenant.81 This involves a set of bilateral agreements linking
each contractor to every other, and the possibility for each party to
demand fulfilment of the agreement by each of the others. More spe-
cifically, contractors bind one another to hand over their rights and
combined power to whoever is elected their representative, and to act
as co-owners of his actions. This mutual bind generates their joint
ownership, or shared responsibility, for any decisions that the state
undertakes in their name, making it possible for us to speak, without
qualification, of the state as a legally responsible person, and of the
sovereign’s acts as done in the service of the state as the collectively
binding representation of us all: the public. This means that it is also a
representation from which no one can choose to defect, or stand out,
on his own terms, without risking standing alone. Only this obligation
of each to his fellow citizens, and all to their sovereign, can put the
fiction of the state on a solid foundation.

be done by the author, so that ‘the person representative, is Judged to be one with the
person represented by fiction of Law’. Lawson 1657, p. 37.
80
This makes the case of commonwealth by acquisition sit somewhat uncomfort-
ably with Hobbes’s theory of shared citizen responsibility for state actions, as the
covenanters can authorise the sovereign singly, rather than by a mutual exchange of
promises.
81
Overlooking this multilateral dimension of the covenant, whereby a series of
individual authors bind themselves each to each, and all to all, has led David Runci-
man to conclude that ‘to leave the sovereign as merely the representative of a series
of individual “authors” is to reduce politics to a series of personal relationships, each
binding, but also each distinct, with the result that the people as whole remain a frag-
mented multitude’. See Runciman 2006, p. 7.
174 chapter three

We have seen that, by each of their bilateral agreements, men

surrender their individual right of self-rule to the sovereign. Given
Hobbes’s conceptualisation of authorisation by analogy with property
relations, there is some ambiguity as to whether authorisation presup-
poses a mere translation or an actual alienation of rights.82 The advo-
cates of the ‘translation thesis’ maintain that all the sovereign receives
from the members of the multitude is the use of rights that remain in
the subjects’ possession.83 Referring back to Hobbes’s comparison of
authority with ownership of goods, they rightly stress that it is one
thing to dispose of one’s rights over something (for instance, by sell-
ing it), quite another for one to allow another to exercise one’s right
in one’s name (for instance, by selling one’s property on one’s behalf).
The original act of authorisation, they conclude, must fall into this
second category, because it is the only one that can sustain a repre-
sentational relationship.
In support of their thesis, adherents quote a passage of A Dialogue
of the Common Law, in which Hobbes alludes to the importance of
distinguishing between transfer and commission of power: ‘He that
Transferreth his power’, Hobbes writes, ‘hath deprived himself of it;
but he that Committeth it to another to be Exercised in his name, and
under him, is still in the Possession of the same power.’84 When closely
inspected, this passage does more to undermine than to vindicate their
interpretation. For the point Hobbes is making is that the justices of
the commonwealth merely use a right that lies with the sovereign.

82
Before proceeding, it is important to notice that, according to the OED, to
seventeenth-century English speakers ‘to authorise’ meant not only to create a rela-
tionship of agency, by giving legal warrant to a person to do something on one’s
behalf, but also to endow with authority, set up as authoritative, acknowledge as pos-
sessing final decisiveness. All of these senses are embedded in Hobbes’s description of
the nature and effects of the pact of authorisation.
83
I am here using the term ‘translation’ in the un-Hobbesian sense of ‘loan’ or
mere ‘transfer of use’. Hobbes, however, explicitly equates translation with transfer
or renunciation of right, as can be seen in Hobbes 1996, p. 94. The ‘translation thesis’
has prevailed in French literature (see, for instance, Zarka 1995, pp. 208–27), though
its first, and also its foremost, advocate has been David Gauthier (see Gauthier 1969,
pp. 99–177), whose discussion of Hobbes’s doctrine of authorisation recovers points
first set forth by Pitkin (see Pitkin 1964b, pp. 911–14). Gauthier has, however, more
recently changed his mind, and acknowledged that authorisation implies, after all,
alienation of right (Gauthier 1988). Amongst the advocates of the ‘renunciation thesis’
can be counted Jean Hampton (see Hampton 1986, pp. 114–29) and Quentin Skinner
(see Skinner 1999, p. 9, n. 48).
84
Hobbes 1971a, p. 89, my emphasis.
 juridical representation 175

Therefore, if the sovereign is dissatisfied with their performance, he

is free to withdraw his commission, and exercise his right in person.
The problem Hobbes saw in conceiving prospective subjects as simi-
larly loaning or conferring the use of their rights of self-government
to their sovereign, while retaining their ownership, is readily apparent:
it risks reducing the sovereign to a mere minister or administrator for
the multitude, and enables the multitude to retrieve the exercise of the
rights he temporarily borrowed from them.85
This is, of course, the outcome Hobbes most wanted to avoid.
Accordingly, Hobbes stresses that, to be able to leave behind their nat-
ural condition, men have to give up their authority or right of self-rule
in favour of the sovereign.86 By this he means they have to renounce
their prerogative of making judgements about what constitutes a men-
ace to the state and is necessary to secure peace, and to forgo the right
of using their powers accordingly, which would lead them to stand in
the way of the sovereign repeatedly.87 In Leviathan, Hobbes seems to
want to have things both ways, by combining the idea of transfer of
rights (in the specific Hobbesian sense of abandoning, surrendering or
granting away a right to another), which he had used in previous works
to support absolute sovereignty, with the newly introduced notion of
authorisation. The effect is that in entering the covenant would-be
subjects not only oblige themselves not to hinder the sovereign, but
also commit themselves to owning up to the sovereign’s actions as if

85
Such is the case with elective kings, that is, monarchs elected for life, but who
do not have the right to nominate a successor. ‘For Elective Kings and Princes have
not the Soveraign Power in propriety, but in use only’: they are but ministers of the
people. Hobbes 1996, p. 136. The ‘sovereign power (like Ownership) remained with the
people; only its use or exercise was enjoyed by the time-limited Monarch, as a usufruc-
tuary.’ Hobbes 1998, pp. 98–9.
86
Ibid., p. 120. See also the formulation of the covenant in the Latin Leviathan:
‘Ego huic homini, vel huic coetui, authoritatem et jus meum regendi meipsum concedo’
(Lat. Lev., p. 131) Since the purpose of authorisation is self-preservation, the question
can be raised of whether the would-be subjects are to be understood as authorising
all the sovereign’s acts or only those necessary for peace and defence. However, the
gap between these two possibilities is closed by each subject’s simultaneous surrender
of his judgement, that is, of his right to judge what is necessary to government, and
what is not. See Pufendorf 1934b, p. 985.
87
Accordingly, the second law of nature commands men to lay down mutually
their right to all things. Hobbes 1996, p. 92. To lay down one’s right to everything is
not to lay down one’s right to anything. The end of the transfer of rights being the
security of one’s person, there are natural rights that cannot be relinquished, namely
the right of defending one’s life and one’s means of preserving it. See ibid., pp. 93–4,
96 and 107.
176 chapter three

they were their own. In reality, the negative duty not to pass judge-
ment, complain or interfere with sovereign action is now derived from
the positive obligation to take upon ourselves the responsibility for the
success of acts of ruling which are ultimately ours. The modern state
is not simply unopposed power. Its unopposability is a function of its
representational character.

Representing the Covenant into Being

When describing the kind of commitment implied by the multitude

made one, Hobbes deliberately employs an ‘as if ’ clause. It is ‘as if ’, he
claims, ‘every man should say to every man, I Authorise and give up my
Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on
this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his
Actions in like manner.’88 By introducing the wording of the covenant
with a hypothetical clause, Hobbes signals that the covenant should
not be taken literally as a putative historical event, but metaphorically
as a self-confessed heuristic artefact describing the type of obligation
the members of society must have consented to so that they would no
longer live at war with each other. A retrospective rationalisation of
what underpins a people’s peaceful co-existence, the covenant works
also as a powerful performative metaphor.89 By this I mean an organis-
ing image, or collective representation, which by being made public is
meant to constitute, instantiate or put into effect the very thing that it
is supposed to represent.
As I have suggested before, Hobbes’s state is an imagined commu-
nity, whose members will never know most of their fellow members,
and yet must see themselves as one entity. This makes it all the more
critical that in the minds of each there lives a compelling image of
their union, its political necessity and long-term benefits, and how
they might behave to prevent its downfall.90 This is something Hobbes
hopes to achieve by making explicit the terms of their implied cov-
enant, while shaping the image subjects have of themselves and each
other into that of covenanters: that is, men who obliged themselves

88
Ibid., p. 120.
89
On this performative element, see Junge 2008.
90
Anderson 1983, p. 6.
 juridical representation 177

to one another to author and do everything necessary to uphold the

fiction of the state as an organised unity of collective action. This is
only possible if their authorisation is not a one-off event, but a con-
tinuously active collective effort of supplying the sovereign with the
resources required for discharging his office, and acting the fiction of
the state to life.
Through their transformed self-image as authors, subjects are
expected to shape their behaviour, their mutual expectations, and the
ways they orient themselves to each other and to their sovereign, who
is understood as a third-party beneficiary of the covenant, with whose
actions they all agree to identify. And as the recipients of Leviathan
are made to see themselves as co-authors of the words and actions of
their sovereign representative, they are also being induced to act from
that role, the only way Leviathan, the metaphor, can be brought into
historical being.
Yet their adoption of this role seems to be dependent on external
intervention to compel performance. This is because the terms of the
covenant underlying the institution of sovereignty are such that each
will perform only on the condition that all relevant others will do the
same, the commission of the representative being contingent on the
execution of the covenant between authors. What we have here is a
covenant of mutual trust: a present agreement to perform promises in
the future, involving a problematic time-lag and the doubtful element
of other people’s reliability, especially in the light of the covenant-
ers’ disparate short-term interests and strong passions, which ‘without
the fear of some coërcive Power’ are likely to win against the rational
appeal of the long-term interests of peace.91 Hence for subjects to act
from their role effectively as authors—for the process of authorisa-
tion to be set and then kept in motion—it is not enough that they
know the truth about themselves and understand the rationale of their
behaving like authors of sovereign power. This power, understood as
something external, with an almost irresistible capacity to bind men to
their promises, must be presupposed, to make the contract possible. In
other words, Leviathan is at once the cause and the effect of its founda-
tion: it must be first imag(in)ed, so that it is brought into being.92

91
Hobbes 1996, p. 96.
92
On the complex duality/circularity of Hobbes’s argument, see Malcolm 2002,
p. 228.
178 chapter three

Here we find again the simultaneous twofold perspective that is the

hallmark of representation in Hobbes. On the one hand, we are made
to see the state as artefact: as the purposeful product of a collective
practice, a covenant weaving together our rational wills as its artificers.
On the other hand, we are asked to see the state as independent real-
ity, as a hypostasised colossus of unparalleled potential for violence,
which must be conceived as such in order to compel us to the kind
of obedience that allows for its emergence in just that capacity. This
interaction of two complementary perspectives—the representational
and the presentational—has direct implications for the role the sov-
ereign plays. In holding the mirror of representation up to the sover-
eign, Hobbes makes him see himself as mere actor, whose authority is
traceable to the rational acts of will of his people, and is in no sense
personal, but belonging to the office he inhabits. The sovereign’s ori-
gins are earthly and humble, and in discharging his office he must bear
them constantly in mind.93 But if the sovereign could in principle be
just any one of us, except for his office, he is also, because of it, the
only one of us who has all our powers at will. So unlimited a power
being largely at his discretion makes him not the same, but radically
other. Moreover, since all power has its foundation in man’s opinion
and belief, sovereigns must appear before their subjects as holding a
power distinct from and incommensurably superior to theirs: a power
that strikes terror and encourages obedience. For the power to guar-
antee obedience, which is expected of him, is created by obedience
itself. Yet, Hobbes warns, such power would perish if people faced it
only as an external menace, and ceased to recognise themselves in the
sovereign’s acts, because they saw no connection between them and
the procurement of their safety. Political authority must be above its
subjects, but still remain recognisably one with them.
This authority can be very broad indeed. By virtue of his subjects’
unconditional grant, the sovereign is free to decide on the best way to
act, on the basis of the people’s rights and strength, and on their behalf.
If the purpose of achieving their long-term peace and security is not to
be undermined, Hobbes insists, the sovereign must have untied hands,
so that he may benefit from great latitude of action to fashion their

93
This vulnerability intrinsic to the portrayal of the sovereign as ‘representative’
was detected by Hobbes’s critics, namely Clarendon, who warned the sovereign: ‘for
his greatness and security never so far to lessen himself, as to be considered as the
people’s Representative’. Clarendon 1676, p. 59.
 juridical representation 179

collective personality and ascribe it a consistent set of goals over time.

This power of creative political agency must, however, be backed up by
his subjects, who have no rights to withdraw from, or pass judgement
on, the sovereign’s decisions. To take back one’s judgement would be
unjust not only with respect to the sovereign, but also with respect to
all one’s fellow subjects who covenanted together to accept the sov-
ereign performance as authoritative. Besides being unjust, criticising
the sovereign for behaving differently from the way they would in his
place is also self-contradictory. Hobbes’s sovereign is the ‘Person rep-
resentative of all and every one of the Multitude’, representing us not
to a third party, but back to ourselves, all to all, each to each, so that
all his actions are ‘done in the Person, and by the Right of every one
of them in particular’.94 Therefore whoever comes face to face with
him finds, behind his tantalising mask of power, not another person,
but ‘his own Ghost in a Looking-Glass’.95 To oppose the sovereign, to
contest his actions, to accuse him of injury, is to fight one’s own reflec-
tion in a mirror, which, Hobbes insists, is patently absurd. As authors
of everything he does, the subjects remain one with their sovereign: in
obeying his will they obey their own will. But if this means subjects
have neither right, nor logical reason, to object to what the sovereign
does in their name, it does not necessarily imply that sovereigns are
always right in what they do. For sovereigns have duties, albeit none of
them enforceable by their subjects. These duties arise from the law of
nature, namely ‘to seek Peace, and follow it’, as well as from the office
they occupy as sovereign representatives, namely the ‘procuration of
the safety of the people’.96 With the seat of power come not only free-
doms, but also restrictions.
These are closely intertwined with the notion of ‘representativeness’.
In Hobbes, the representative nature of sovereign power imposes con-
straints upon the ways it ought to be personated if the representation
is to be credible, and produce a following of willing subjects, which
enhances that power further.97 As the representative of all considered

94
Hobbes 1996, pp. 129 and 123.
95
Ibid., p. 441.
96
Ibid., pp. 92 and 231. So when Hobbes titles chapter 30 of Leviathan ‘Of the
Office of the Soveraign Representative’, ‘office’ refers here to the Ciceronian language
of officia in the sense of public duties.
97
For ‘it is not the right of the sovereign, though granted to him by every man’s
consent, that can enable him to do his office; it is the obedience of the subject, which
must do that’. Hobbes 1969a, p. 144.
180 chapter three

as one, the sovereign cannot, for instance, allow his personal ends to
come in the way of the ends of his office. He must rather direct all
those actions he performs in his political persona to the protection of
the interests of the fictional person he represents: the commonwealth.
The success of his performance depends on how credibly his actions
can be said to promote the purposes, or enhance the good, of all his
subjects taken as a whole, instead of serving merely personal, sectional
or short-term public interests. As Hobbes makes clear in chapter 30
of Leviathan, there are many things sovereigns are within their rights
to do, which do not fit the expectations of their office, or the duties
attached to their representative role. Should, for instance, a sovereign
legislate excessively, in too many areas of his subjects’ life, he may stand
in the way of their providing for their material flourishing, thereby
decreasing their wealth, and by implication that of the commonwealth
(and himself ).98 Should he choose to deprive his subjects of their prop-
erties and riches by force, to ensure a lavish endowment of titles and
gifts to a few favourites, he would again be rightly accused of acting
‘out of character’: that is, in his natural rather than his artificial person,
there being nothing in his behaviour which can be said to represent
the interests of the union of those who covenanted together for peace
and prosperity by lawful industry. These and similar courses of action
result from failures of political judgement, which can put the state and
even the private interests of the sovereign at risk. For, Hobbes insists,
a sovereign is at his strongest where he sees his interests as being one
with those of the commonwealth, and keeps his visage constrained
behind an unbiased mask of unity, which makes his subjects think
themselves into the mask he wears, and feel themselves to be repre-
sented in the words, decisions and decrees that sound through it.

The Representativeness of the Sovereign

Representation generates political power, but it also sets limits on its

plausible performance. Unenforceable by the subjects, these limits
work as conscientious guidelines, which, when not observed, point to

98
‘The riches, power, and honour of a Monarch arise onely from the riches, strength
and reputation of his Subjects.’ Hobbes 1996, p. 131. For Hobbes this interdependence
between the private interest of the ruler and the public interest is at its strongest in a
monarchy, which makes it a superior regime.
 juridical representation 181

an improper use of the freedom of the sovereign. Besides the ques-

tion of how sovereign representation ought to take place, a theory of
political representation like the one Hobbes seeks to construct should
also answer two other questions: who, and what, is to be represented?
Hobbes has answers for both of these questions, as he evidently uses
the language of representation to describe the relationship between
both individual subjects and their sovereign (the ‘who’), and the sov-
ereign and all his subjects taken as a whole (the ‘what’). In his own
definition, the sovereign is ‘the Person representative of all and every
one of the Multitude’: that is, he represents both the person of the
commonwealth and the person of each of its members.99 The sover-
eign represents the person of each because, as we have seen, there is
no such thing as a body politic waiting to be represented at the act
of institution. Hobbes’s conception of representation is, at its most
fundamental, individualistic: all that stands available in nature is a
multitude broken down into individuals who are the exact equivalent
of one another, and freely agree to establish a common representative
to ‘represent them every one’.100 This process of representing each is
none the less inseparable from the process of representing them all
as a corporate person. This is because in representing each Hobbes’s
sovereign is not representing them in what differentiates them from
one another but inasmuch as each of them is similar to the others, and
has a stake in the common good. Sovereign representation is about
sealing out diversity, not about mirroring it by allowing different sorts
of individuals within society to be represented according to the dif-
ferences between them. In particular, the construction of a political
union must relate directly to the most essential commonality between
men: the necessity of (commodious) self-preservation. Individuals
must therefore be represented in the state on the basis of the lowest
common denominator that makes them virtually interchangeable with
one another (fear of violent death), and of that end which is the indis-
pensable condition of any other ends they might want to pursue: living
together in conditions of peace, reasonable mutual trust and security.

99
Ibid., p. 129. My analysis here differs substantially from the one presented by
Runciman 2006, which hinges on the claim that ‘what is striking about the version [of
political representation] Hobbes gives in Leviathan is that it does not use the language
of representation to describe the relationship between the individual subject and the
sovereign’. Runciman 2006, pp. 5–6. The truth, however, as I show, is that there are
several instances in which Hobbes does just that.
100
Hobbes 1996, p. 130. See also Skinner 2005.
182 chapter three

Were Hobbes’s sovereign to mirror the many features that divide his
subjects up into separate groupings, identities and interests, capable of
being represented separately, it would have to be a collective body: an
assembly of men, rather than a single individual. This was exactly the
claim of the parliamentarians, for whom only a kind of harmonious
microcosm of the wider community on the smaller scale of the repre-
sentative body could count as being representative: ‘The composition
of Parliaments’, Henry Parker insisted, ‘takes away all jealousies, for it
is so equally, and geometrically proportionable, and all the States doe
so orderly contribute their due parts therein.’101 Parliament was, for
Parker, both a representative body and a representation. As an autho-
rised actor empowered by the people to act in its right on its behalf,
Parliament was also the whole people itself, in miniature, each repre-
sentative member being in some way like the people of the estate he
represents. There was nothing outside Parliament that was not already
in it, and therefore any divergence between both parties’ judgement
was effectively inconceivable. When representation is conceived, as it
is by Parker, as a matter of reproducing the composition of the body
politic, authorisation and accountability tend to recede from view, and
descriptive accuracy (real or suggested) is all that matters.102
But this is not so for Hobbes, in whose view parliamentarians err
in seeking to promote mimetic representation in a sovereign body.
What they fail to appreciate is the vital importance of the maintenance
of a division between state and society in the constitution of politi-
cal authority. If states are capable of protection, Hobbes insists, it is
because they represent the people in their unity by artificially sealing
out diversity, not because they subordinate themselves to it. Repre-
sentation aims to constitute and give reality to this political unity, by
having someone acting creatively for it, with one mind, one set of
purposes, and one centre of action. And there is nothing better than
one natural person, Hobbes maintains, to act in this way for the com-
monwealth. A natural person is already one by itself, and therefore
naturally capable of those intentional actions on the basis of which

101
Parker 1642a, p. 23.
102
Some of the royalist authors contested the idea that Parliament depicted the
realm’s distinctive features by offering a rigorous sampling of all its inhabitants: ‘For
some of the poorer, and some of the younger sort, and women generally by reason of
their Sexe are excluded; yet all having their lives to lose, are concerned in the publique
safety.’ Digges 1642, p. 15.
 juridical representation 183

the people as a whole can be seen acting in the guise of a unified per-
son. By contrast, where the commonwealth’s representative is plural,
that is, an assembly, replicating within itself the variety of interests
present in society, the commonwealth cannot be set in motion except
by a plurality of agreeing opinions, which is normally reached after
a lengthy and potentially divisive process of deliberation. By virtue
of ‘the diversity of Opinions, and Interests of men’, Hobbes warns,
assemblies become ‘oftentimes, and in cases of greatest consequence,
a mute Person, and unapt, as for many things else, so for the govern-
ment of a Multitude’.103 They privilege diversity over of unity, thereby
compromising the ability of the commonwealth to act promptly as one.
Hobbes goes further in his criticism. A single individual is the fittest
representative not only on account of efficiency, but also on account of
what parliamentarians actively deny him: i.e., general representative-
ness. This is because the job of Hobbes’s sovereign representative is
not to represent diversity, but unity. In this, his role is profitably con-
trasted with the role assigned to MPs by William Hakewill, a junior MP
in the Elizabethan Parliament of 1601. Hakewill foreshadows Hobbes
in associating the kind of artificial personhood required by political
representation with theatrical impersonation: ‘We must lay down the
respects of our own persons, and put on others, and their affections for
whom we speak; for they speak by us.’104 But for Hakewill this imper-
sonation was dependent on empathetic identification with others, on
the capacity of putting oneself in different men’s shoes, and serving a
variety of interests that diverged from one’s own: ‘If the matter which
is spoken of toucheth the poor, then think me a poor man. He that
speaks, sometimes he must be a Lawyer, sometimes a Painter, some-
times a Merchant, sometimes a mean Artificer.’105 Hakewill’s exemplar
representative had to divide himself into a thousand parts; Hobbes’s
sovereign representative must, on the contrary, make all those parts

103
Hobbes 1996, p. 115. It should not therefore come as a surprise that to Henry
Parker’s claim that the king should always take advice with Parliament, for ‘the many
eyes of so many choice Gentlemen out of all parts, see more then fewer’ (Parker 1642a,
p. 11), Hobbes replies that ‘though it be true, that many eys see more then one; yet it
is not to be understood of many Counsellours; but then only, when the finall Resolu-
tion is in one man. Otherwise, because many eyes see the same thing in divers lines,
and apt to look asquint towards their private benefit; they that desire not to misse
their marke, though they look about with two eyes, yet they never ayme but with one.’
Hobbes 1996, p. 182.
104
Hakewill in D’Ewes 1708, p. 667.
105
Ibid.
184 chapter three

converge in one. And to achieve this he represents all his subjects not
on the basis of their conflicting identities and interests, as Hakewill
suggests, but on the basis of what makes them equal to each other: that
is, human nature, the force and similitude of the passions, on whose
restraint peace depends. In other words, to exhibit general representa-
tiveness one need not reflect the external social world in all its divisive-
ness, but engage in self-reflexiveness. Hobbes’s sovereign is first and
foremost the external agent of this general self-awareness.106
When someone asks ‘a painter to make him the picture of a man,
which is as much as to say, of a man in general’, Hobbes explains,
‘he meaneth no more, but that the painter shall choose what man he
pleaseth to draw’.107 Similarly, if one asks what type of sovereign has
the greatest degree of representativeness with regard to the multitude
of men he represents, Hobbes’s answer would undoubtedly be that it
is yet another individual, especially one capable of reading ‘in himself,
not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind’.108 This is a fundamen-
tal political skill, grounded in a fundamental similitude of passions
and thoughts between men, but also presupposing the ability to dis-
criminate between what is common and what is idiosyncratic, such as
are the objects of those passions. If perfected, however, self-knowledge
enables one man to epitomise every other man, and set them right
about themselves, by acting as the custodian of their higher-order
rational desire for peace and security, a desire whose representation
takes precedence over all potential subordinate claims parliaments
usually represent. Therefore, while Hobbes is willing to admit that an
assembly is the fittest representative when the end of the incorporation
is ‘the particular gaine of every adventurer’, he denies it is so when the
representative is to procure ‘a Common benefit to the whole Body’.109
Assemblies have a role to play in the commonwealth, but ideally not
the sovereign one.
Confident of having vindicated the general representativeness of
single rulers, in Leviathan Hobbes refers to ‘the King of any Countrey’
as ‘the Publique Person, or Representative of all his own Subjects’.110

106
Mansfield 1971, p. 102.
107
This is, of course, a direct inference from Hobbes’s nominalism; see Hobbes
1969b, p. 20.
108
Hobbes 1996, p. 11.
109
Ibid., p. 161.
110
Ibid., p. 285.
 juridical representation 185

This move is purposeful. In applying to the king the title of ‘public per-
son’ (rather than ‘civil person’, as he did before), Hobbes is relocating
the public within the sovereign, and disidentifying it from the citizens.
The sovereign’s monopoly on public representation makes it possible
for Hobbes to speak of public opinion as the sovereign’s opinion, and
of public conscience as the sovereign’s conscience, as crystallised in the
civil law. Citizens, by contrast, in giving themselves in representation,
voluntarily withdraw from politics and the conduct of public affairs.
They become fully ‘privatised’ persons, whose only hope of acquiring
power and using it at their own discretion should lie in the world of
private affairs (but always within the limits set by the state).
But by referring to the sovereign as the public person, Hobbes is also
meeting his parliamentarian adversaries upon their own ground. Dur-
ing the 1640s a growing emphasis was put on the representative char-
acter of ‘public men’ integrating the House of Commons or the army,
as opposed to private men (such as the lords) who represented no one
but themselves. In 1641, Sir John Wray made this clear by urging his
fellow MPs to remember that they were ‘not only Parliament-men but
public men and Englishmen. [. . .] As public men, forget not whom we
here represent, and by how many chosen and trusted.’111 It is precisely
this republican idea of MPs as public men potentially speaking for the
whole realm that Hobbes is counteracting by reminding his readers
that where a monarch rules the king is the public person: that is, he
has the monopoly on representation, and is the sole absolute represen-
tative of all his subjects. This means that all public officials, including
MPs, exist only on the king’s sufferance, their powers of public repre-
sentation being limited by how the king defines their role.
The concept of the public, representative or common person (the
terms were used interchangeably) underlining Parliament and army
claims against the king flourished during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, in particular in the writings of covenant theologians.112 For

111
Nalson 1682–3, p. 786.
112
Especially John Preston, Richard Sibbes, William Ames, William Gouge, Thomas
Goodwin, William Bridge and John Owen, who developed the doctrine as basically
formulated by William Perkins. See Preston 1634, p. 4; Sibbes 1862–4, III, p. 571, IV,
p. 462, and VII, p. 192; and, in particular, Goodwin 1642, pp. 46–9. The doctrine is
summarised in the Larger Catechism (1648) of the Westminster Assembly of Divines.
See The Larger Catechism 1865, pp. 110 and 122. For a history of the concept, to which
I am much indebted, see Hill 1986. On the links between Hobbes’s conception of the
sovereign as typical and covenant theology see Skinner 2005.
186 chapter three

instance, the theologian Thomas Goodwin portrayed Adam and Christ

as public persons, acting not only for themselves, but representatively
for all mankind. Their representational status explained why when
Adam sinned, all men sinned in him, and his disobedience made them
all sinners. Besides sustaining a public person, Adam was also said to
typify Christ to come, typifying meaning here a prophetic resemblance,
wherein something imperfect going before prefigures something per-
fect following after. The theological doctrine of the ‘public person’ is
worth mentioning in this context, not only because it provided support
for the idea of the general representativeness of a single man, but also
because it defined the representational relationship in juristic terms
which were not much different from those Hobbes would adopt: ‘A
Common person’, Thomas Goodwin explained, ‘is one who represents,
personates, and acts the part of another, by the allowance and warrant
of the Law: so as what he doth [. . .] that other whom he personates, is
by the Law reckoned to doe.’113 As a result, Goodwin compared Adam
and Christ to attorneys, ambassadors and, in particular, MPs, all of
whom were deemed public persons, whose actions were attributable to
the members of the communities they represented. Just as all mankind
sinned with Adam, William Perkins contended, so ‘in a Parliament
whatsoever is done by the burgess of the shire is done by every person
in the shire’.114 This emphasis on the right of ‘public men’—whether
those elected from below, as were MPs, or the elect appointed by God
from above, as the godly thought of themselves—to represent people
at large was a development which Hobbes characteristically sought to
appropriate for his benefit. This he did by stressing that in a monarchy
only the king had a claim to general representativeness, for only he had
the right to represent God to man and men as sovereign to themselves
as subjects.115 If the power within the commonwealth ought to rest, as
the enemies of the king claimed, with the represented many, then it
had been rightly placed in the king, in whom ‘the people’ inhered, and
through whom ‘the people’ had always ruled in England. Not unlike

113
Goodwin 1642, p. 47.
114
Perkins 1612–13, p. 161.
115
For Christopher Hill’s suggestion that the theological theory of the ‘public per-
son’ helped dissociate the idea of representation from the idea of election from below,
see Hill 1986, p. 316.
 juridical representation 187

the composite Christ of the radical theologians, Hobbes’s king is the

person in whom all his subjects unite and incorporate as one.116

Parliament as Representation

Hobbes’s point is clear: in any given commonwealth, there can be

only one ‘absolute Representative of the people’, and that is he who
is already ‘erected a Soveraign Power’.117 The English civil war was
marked by a transition from the premise that parliaments can repre-
sent the people to the conclusion that the will of the people could be
expressed nowhere but in and by Parliament.118 Hobbes was perfectly
willing to admit the premise. But he was adamant that the conclusion
was wrong, and cost England dearly.
Let us start with the premise. There is plentiful evidence that Hobbes
regarded Parliament as a representative institution. In The Elements of
Law, he described the lower House of Parliament as a person civil
‘in the will whereof is included and involved the will of every one in
particular’.119 To this he added that ‘the lower house of parliament is
all the commons, as long as they sit there with authority and right
thereto’.120 Moving to De Cive, he explained that, given the impos-
sibility of the sovereign’s meeting in person with every subject, he
‘summons the citizens and in view of their large numbers decides that
selected men should receive authority to speak on behalf of those who
select them’.121 But while Hobbes recognises the value of parliaments
as mediators between king and people, he shows his concern with
how easily representative assemblies generate identification and, fur-
thermore, public endorsement as recognisable likenesses of the body

116
By this I do not mean (as some commentators have suggested: see Martinich
1992, p. 363) that the frontispiece literally intends to portray a Christ-like figure, but
rather that it conveys the idea that the sovereign bears the collective person of his
subjects, and his acts are owned equally by each and every one of them, through a
colossal figure which is a composite of their various figures. For the concept of the
‘composite Christ’, see Hill 1986, p. 318.
117
Hobbes 1996, p. 130.
118
For the growing emphasis on the representative nature of the House of Com-
mons, whose ties are therefore to the country rather than to the king, see Hirst 1975.
119
Hobbes 1969b, p. 124.
120
Ibid., my emphasis. The legal fiction of the identity between the civil person as
the represented and the representative is at work here.
121
Hobbes 1998, p. 89.
188 chapter three

politic. It is as if, Hobbes comments, ‘even the politically unaware see

the face of the commonwealth’122 reflected in a popular assembly, but
were incapable of ‘seeing’ it ever reflected in the mask borne by the
king.123
It is no wonder that the aspirations of the Parliament to sovereignty
were becoming too visible to be ignored: a representative is at its
strongest when the represented see themselves represented in it. This
psychological dimension of representation was soon to be explored
by parliamentarian authors like Henry Parker, for whom Parliament
had a unique capacity to represent the body of the whole kingdom,
because it offered a perfect likeness, a well-balanced map-like replica,
of the equilibrium between the different corps within it. Further-
more, the copy represented an improvement on the original, as in the
artfully composed representative body of Parliament the bulky and
clumsy mass of the people acquired a superior form: ‘The Parliament
is indeed nothing else but the very people it self artificially congregated
or reduced by an orderly election, and representation, into such a Sen-
ate or proportionable body.’124 As the use of the word ‘Senate’ suggests,
Parker is echoing the medieval idea that a people could best be made
present by being represented by its betters, its weightier or wisest
part. It was indeed only in and through the actions of these select few,
Parker insisted, that the people acquired the capacity to fashion them-
selves as an active political agency, which should therefore understand
itself as having been self-fashioned. This was the strongest possible
version of the claim that there was an indissoluble unity, or self-same-
ness, between people and Parliament. Parliament, Parker claimed, was
‘virtually [meaning here, effectively] the whole kingdom itself [. . .]
indeed the State it self ’, which meant that its judgement in ‘matters of
State as matters of Law’ could never go against the people’s interests.125
The king was always other and lesser than the people as a whole: an
external delegate to be kept under close vigilance. Parliaments, on the
contrary, were identical with the people, which made it safe to entrust

122
‘Nam in conventu multorum hominum civitatis faciem agnoscunt, & consilio res
geri intelligunt etiam imperiti. [. . .] Sed civitatem in persona Regis contineri, minus
manifestum est plerisque.’ Hobbes 1983a, p. 143, my emphasis.
123
Hobbes 1998, p. 83.
124
Parker 1644, p. 18.
125
Parker 1642b, p. 28.
 juridical representation 189

them with unlimited powers to act as a counterpoise to the king.126

Ironically, Parker’s conclusion corroborated Hobbes’s claim that what-
ever the nature of the representative trying to substantiate its claim to
sovereignty, once it rose to power, its power would be essentially the
same, and would be absolute. But if parliamentary absolutism in its
purest forms hardly differed from monarchical absolutism, the latter
was still commonly thought to be more insufferable than the former.
Who the master was mattered, and the representation of the people’s
interests by Parliament, Hobbes feared, had acquired a degree of self-
evidence, and a motivational force, that the idea of representation by
the king was far from commanding. It was his job to turn the tables.
It has sometimes been argued that, perhaps because of this, ‘the
acceptance of the Commons as representative disappears from
[Hobbes’s] later works’.127 But the evidence points to the contrary. In
Leviathan Hobbes reinstates the representative nature of the Commons
and openly acknowledges that when the sovereign commands several
parts of his territory ‘to send to him their Deputies’, ‘such Deputies,
having a place and time of meeting assigned them, are there, and at
that time, a Body Politique, representing every Subject of that Domin-
ion’.128 Along the lines of De Cive, he worries about the people resist-
ing the idea of the king ‘as their Representative’, which he contrasts
with the promptness with which they are willing to take any assembly
providing a ‘generall Representation of the People’ ‘for the absolute
Representative of the people’.129 A change of perception was needed.

126
The claim that Parliament was not simply the representative of the people, but
the people itself, was very common amongst parliamentarian apologists. See, for
instance, Ward 1642, p. 7: ‘the Parliament men are no other than our selves, and
therefore we cannot desert them, except we desert ourselves’. In Plain Dealing with
England 1643, p. 2, the claim to identity is made even more strongly: ‘their judgment
is our judgment, and they that oppose the judgment of the Parliament oppose their
own judgment’. From this reasoning, lawyers on the Parliament side arrived at the
conclusion that Parliament ‘can do no wrong’; ‘Kings seduced may injure the com-
monwealth, but the Parliaments cannot.’ Marsh 1642, p. 15. Reiterations of this argu-
ment can be found in Reasons why this Kingdom ought to adhere to the Parliament
1642, p. 7 and Animadversions Animadverted 1642, p. 5.
127
Tuck in Hobbes 1996, p. xxxvii, n. 51.
128
Hobbes 1996, p. 162, my emphasis.
129
Ibid. In effect the idea of the king being the or even a representative of the
people was resisted by both divine right theorists, for whom the king’s power was
derived directly from God, as the king was his earthly representative, and advocates of
Parliament, for whom Parliament, namely the Commons, whose members were effec-
tively elected, were the sole representative of the common people. For the Commons’
growing emphasis on election and electoral accountability to the country, particularly
190 chapter three

The authority of the sovereign over the people was now predicated
on the sovereign’s being recognised as the people’s legitimate repre-
sentative.130 And to allow every man in a commonwealth to have, or
believe to have, ‘his person represented by two Actors’ is the surest
way to dissolve its unity, and ‘reduce the Multitude into the condition
of Warre’.131
Therefore, in Behemoth, Hobbes recognises, again, that the people
of England may be represented by Parliament, but only ‘to some pur-
poses’, ‘as to put up petitions to the King’.132 At the same time he
takes the opportunity to undercut the Long Parliament’s aspiration
to represent the whole people, by remarking that the lower House of
Parliament was never ‘the representative of the whole nation, but of
the commons only; nor had that House the power to oblige, by their
acts or ordinances, any lord or any priest’.133 A representative’s actions
bind only those by whom he has been authorised, and the election of
the Commons belonged exclusively to townsmen and freeholders.134
The emphasis Hobbes puts on the factionalist character of Parliament
is an important development, but it does not undermine the general
point. Whether considered in its entirety, as representing the subjects
of the realm, or as Commons plus Lords, each representing a faction
within it, Parliament is a representative institution.135

under the Stuarts, see Hirst 1975. The Commons’ increasing awareness of their stand-
ing as a representative institution can already be inferred from the words Coke uttered
as Speaker in 1593, as quoted in n. 48: ‘that his Majesty and the Nobles being every
one a great person, represented but themselves; but his Commons though they were
but inferiour men, yet every one of them represented a thousand of men’.
130
In the Hereditary Right manuscript, Hobbes suggests that this instruction
should be accompanied with ceremonies such as enthroning, proclaiming, anointing
and crowning, whereby the subjects are ritualistically reminded of the fact that the
king has been duly commissioned to represent the commonwealth. See Hobbes 2005,
p. 177.
131
Hobbes 1996, p. 130.
132
Hobbes 1969a, p. 152.
133
Ibid., p. 180. For the self-characterisation of the Commons as ‘the Representa-
tive Body of the whole Kingdom’, as opposed to the Lords, who are said to be only
‘particular persons’, acting ‘in their particular capacity’, see the Journals of the House
of Commons (II, 330).
134
This was a common claim amongst royalists. The contention that the House of
Commons represented the whole country was attacked, amongst others, by Filmer
and Spelman. For the former’s criticism see Filmer 1991, pp. 145–6.
135
Though Hobbes is not explicit about this, it seems that the Parliament as a whole
(i.e. both Houses) must, in his view, represent the whole people by aggregation only.
This is because parliamentary representatives could never be chosen by the ‘people’
 juridical representation 191

The question for Hobbes is not whether Parliament is representative

but on what terms. And his answer is straightforward. Where a king
rules, he is free to make and unmake parliaments as he pleases, for
the purposes he pleases. Accordingly, the only way a Parliament can
be assembled is by the king’s writ, summoning lords and commons to
wherever the king shall determine. Legally remaining in place during
the king’s pleasure, parliaments are brought to an instantaneous death
by the declaration of his will. Hobbes’s insistence on the idea that if
parliaments are not to be sovereign, they must be kept as occasional,
short-term and irregular events, as soon kindled as blown out at the
king’s whim, has an obvious target.136 During the first two years of
the Long Parliament two consecutive acts were issued whereby Parlia-
ment was endowed with a permanent institutional existence: the Tri-
ennal Act and the Act Against Dissolution.137 As the Earl of Leicester
observed, under these Acts Parliament ceased to be a tenant at will, to
become its own master. The permanence gained by Parliament was,
the earl added, a clear sign of its having become a corporation, and
‘corporations never dying (as it is the law) the parliament which is a
corporation never dies’.138

(as opposed to the distinct sets of subjects of different provinces, cities and borough
towns), since ‘the people’ has no existence independently of the king. The point was,
however, made by Filmer, who argued that for the Commons to represent the whole
people, ‘either every each one of those representers ought to be particularly chosen
by the whole people’, ‘or else it is necessary that continually the entire number of the
representers be present’. Ibid., p. 277.
136
See Parker’s contestation of the royal ‘Prerogative to discontinue Parliaments’
in Parker 1642a, p. 7.
137
Both acts were clear attacks upon the royal prerogative of calling and dissolving
Parliament at will. The Triennial Act of February 1641 was designed to prevent the
‘inconveniences happening by the long intermission of Parliaments’, and established
that Parliament should be assembled every third year ‘without any further warrant or
direction from His Majesty’. See Gardiner 1906, pp. 145–6. In turn, the Act Against
Dissolution of May 1641 determined that ‘this present Parliament now assembled
shall not be dissolved unless it be by Act of Parliament to be passed for that pur-
pose; nor shall be, at any time or times, during the continuance thereof, prorogued or
adjourned, unless it be by Act of Parliament to be likewise passed for that purpose’.
Ibid., p. 159. For an influential contemporary defence of the idea of an annual parlia-
ment, see John Pym’s speech to the Commons on 17 April 1640 reproduced in Cope
1977, especially pp. 155 and 234.
138
See the Earl of Leicester quoted in Russell 1983, pp. 149–50. The immortality of
corporations was famously asserted by Coke; see Coke 1794, III.6.413: 250a. Under
the common law, however, in the case of a corporation aggregate, the death of all its
members determined its dissolution. See Blackstone 1862, p. 501.
192 chapter three

While also placing parliament amongst those ‘subordinate bodies

politic [that] are usually called CORPORATIONS’,139 Hobbes is eager
to stress that parliaments do die when the sovereign so determines.
In effect, the House of Commons has personality only while in ses-
sion: ‘after they be dissolved, though they remain, they be no more
the people, nor the commons, but only the aggregate, or multitude
of the particular men there sitting’.140 Any authority the Commons
have to act in the person of their principals exists only on the king’s
sufferance. For though the king does not appoint the Commons him-
self, only he can authorise towns and boroughs to hold elections for
their selection as well as determine that they shall be sent to him ‘with
power to make known their Advice, or Desires’.141
Parliamentary representation is neither the subjects’ birthright
nor a prerogative of communities imposing their representatives on
the king to bring him to account. When allowed by the sovereign to
choose their deputies, subjects must do it therefore not for their own
purposes, but for those purposes the sovereign shall determine: ‘For
the People cannot choose their Deputies to other intent, than is in
the Writing directed to them from their Soveraign expressed.’142 As
such, once assembled in one body, the elected are obliged to discuss
no other issues than those the sovereign shall list. Should they exceed
their commission, and address matters that do not belong to their cog-
nisance, they would act no longer as representatives entitled to engage
their principals, but as rebellious private men, whom the sovereign is
free to punish.
Each Parliament is but the king’s own temporary creation: a fact-
finding organ called to ‘enforme him of the condition, and necessities
of the Subjects’, as well as ‘to advise with him for the making of good
Lawes’, not an independent authority entitled to its own agenda.143 As
privileged points of contact between king and kingdom, parliaments

139
Hobbes 1969b, p. 104.
140
Ibid., p. 124.
141
Hobbes 1996, p. 130.
142
Ibid., p. 162. Hobbes’s position stands very close to that advocated by Dudley
Digges against Parker: ‘Whatsoever the Houses do, [Parker] calls that, the Act of the
People whereas the truth is, they represent them only to some purposes and ends. So
that if they exceed their Commission, and vote things not belonging to their Cogni-
sance the People by no meanes is engaged in it, as having no Legall way of expressing
themselves, in such cases.’ Digges 1642, p. 17.
143
Hobbes 1996, p. 162.
 juridical representation 193

could be profitably used to take account of the ‘generall informations,

and complaints of the people of each Province’, as brought to the king
by those ‘who are best acquainted with their own wants’.144 But that
was about all. Emptied of any effective participation in government,
MPs, as George Lawson noted, are reduced by Hobbes into ‘so many
carriers of letters and petitions between home and the Court’.145 They
come before the king to portray in words the grievances of the people.
But having made their representations they must withdraw from sight,
leaving it to the king to make up his mind—the public’s mind—on
what he has heard. Subordinate representatives are dangerous, and
must be treated cautiously.

The Dangers of Subordinate Representation

Given Hobbes’s acute awareness of the constitutive powers of repre-

sentation, and his modelling of all group life after the representative
model of the state, it is unsurprising that he looks at most intermedi-
ary groups, not only parliaments, with deep distrust. As representa-
tions potentially competing against the sovereign for the allegiance of
his subjects, these self-governing groups must be kept on a tight leash,
so that sub-state group life does not threaten to make a new sovereign.
This rule of thumb was not new. Hobbes’s account of subordinate
group life has a strong parallel with the medieval counterpart of the
theory of the persona ficta: the concession theory of juridical persons.
This treated all manner of organisation within the state as a probable
threat, except when deriving its power from an express grant of the
state, and kept strictly under the state’s control. Tight control over
any partial representatives of the people is also for Hobbes a neces-
sary condition of their not growing into the absolute representative of
the people as a whole, passing from subject to sovereign in the blink
of an eye. In Hobbes’s own anxious words, ‘the Soveraign, in every
Commonwealth, is the absolute Representative of all the subjects, and
therefore no other, can be Representative of any part of them, but so

144
Ibid., p. 243.
145
Lawson 1657, p. 37.
194 chapter three

far forth, as he shall give leave’.146 The prudent sovereign must keep his
monopoly on corporate being and expression.
Hobbes’s approach to collective agency within the state is disarm-
ingly straightforward once the essentials of his theory of representation
have been laid out. Only those collectives represented by one artificial
person are capable of having actions assigned to them on the basis
of the actions performed by that authorised common representative.
Such groups are called, in Hobbes’s own terms, regular systems. As
groups incorporated into one through representation, they must be
contrasted with irregular systems. These are unincorporated individu-
als temporarily sharing a common design, such as defensive leagues,
or sometimes ‘meer concourse of people’, such as church meetings,
markets or public shows, including audiences of theatre plays.147 The
political challenge the sovereign faces with respect to these groups in
particular is to establish whether they should be deemed dangerous:
depending on their design, the occasion, and how controllable their
numbers might be by ‘present [state] Officers’, popular gatherings can
be declared lawful or unlawful.148
All regular systems are representative, but only one of them is inde-
pendent and absolute: the state. The state is the sole corporate per-
son subject to no one but its own representative, who unconditionally
represents the whole people for all purposes. By contrast, subordinate
regular systems must be subject to the sovereign and so must their
representative (and its powers). To exist legitimately, they have to be
authorised, and their authorisation can take one of two alternative
forms. It can be either the act of the members of the group, acting
within their liberty as subjects, or of a foreign power, and then the
system will be private; or the act of the sovereign himself, and then
the system will be public.
To explain: in private associations, A, either a foreign power or the
members of one group singly, authorise B, one and the same represen-
tative, to speak and act for C, i.e., the members of A in their corporate
personality.149 They will be lawful if permitted by the state, unlawful if

146
Hobbes 1996, pp. 155–6.
147
Ibid., p. 163.
148
Ibid., p. 165.
149
Authorisation by a foreign power takes place when, for instance, the Catholic
clergy based outside the territory of the Holy See claims its pastors are invested by
the pope’s authority. Needless to say, for Hobbes this claim is unlawful, and a clear
attempt against the unitary and absolute nature of civil authority, except if made on
 juridical representation 195

disallowed, or acting in ways that are at odds with the state and chal-
lenge sovereign representation, as when factions for the government
of religion, e.g. papists, claim for themselves jurisdiction independent
of the sovereign. Private corporate persons are lawful if allowed by the
law of the commonwealth, as occurs for example with families, which
are collective bodies united in one person: the father. But families too
can turn into unlawful corporate persons, as is the case with a large
and powerful family which, by equipping its own private army, chal-
lenges the state’s monopoly on the sword.
Whereas private associations are constituted by subjects amongst
themselves, in political associations the authority whereby the group
gains its corporate identity springs directly from the sovereign, because
political associations concern the governance of people’s affairs, as we
have seen with parliaments. The sovereign will not only pre-emptively
set limits on the powers of the association’s representative, but also
carefully regulate the business, times, places and numbers of the body
itself. The relevant question in political associations is therefore not so
much that of who chooses the corporate representative as by whose
authority their election occurs. And the answer is the sovereign’s
authority, which also establishes the amount of power to be trans-
ferred in the election. As Hobbes explains, just as, when an assembly
of Christians choose their pastor, it is the sovereign who ultimately
elects him, because the election is done by the sovereign’s authority,
so ‘when a Town choose their Maior, it is the act of him that hath the
Soveraign Power: For every act done, is the act of him, without whose
consent it is invalid.’150 To avoid misunderstanding, Hobbes immedi-
ately adds that the sovereign can never be understood as having autho-
rised ‘a Body Politique of Subjects, to have an absolute Representative
to all intents and purposes’.151 This would be tantamount to giving
away the government of the commonwealth, something which the
sovereign cannot be conceived as doing except by error, and therefore
invalidly.

sufferance from the sovereign: ‘Corporations of men, that by Authority from any for-
raign Person, united themselves in anothers Dominion, for the easier propagation of
Doctrines’ are unlawful, their likely purpose being that of ‘making a party, against the
Power of the Common-wealth’. Hobbes 1996, p. 163.
150
Ibid., p. 373.
151
Ibid., p. 156.
196 chapter three

Hobbes’s overall point is clear. Within the state, no aggregate of per-

sons seeking juridical personality can acquire it unless it is approved
by the sovereign.152 This authorisation can be explicit, by granting of
writs or letters patent, or implicit, if no specific instructions are given
but the association still conforms to the general laws of the common-
wealth. In private associations the group takes upon themselves the
task of contriving their own personality, of which their members must
come to share an understanding. By contrast, subordinate political
associations have their personality shaped in writing, by statutes or
pre-fixed law, defining the association’s ‘identity’ and ‘script’ before
it can be acted upon. Born out of explicit acts of sovereign authorisa-
tion are three different types of bodies politic: those entrusted with
local and colonial government, those charged with the organisation of
trade, and consultative bodies.153 Amongst the first are the assemblies
charged by the sovereign with the administration of some province,
colony or town, such as the corporation known as the City of London,
which had strongly backed Parliament against the king in the civil war.
In the second group we find companies of merchants, founded for the
exploitation of trade, such as the East India Company. Chief amongst
the last is Parliament, the subordinate ‘generall Representation’ of the
English people, which had augmented its representative claims, and
grown to be their sovereign.154 For any such body politic to be truly
incorporated, the common representative must be charged not only
with acting on the group’s behalf before third parties, but also with
seeing that the rules of the group are executed and obeyed by its own
members. This means that the common representative has the power
of an overseer, enforcing the by-laws or private statutes of the corpora-
tion upon the members themselves.155

152
The principle according to which, to have a legal standing, any corporation has
to have the approbation of the (competent) superior is commonly known as the ‘con-
cession principle’
153
To these could be added educational bodies, namely universities, which Hobbes
does not, however, explicitly discuss in chapter 22 of Leviathan.
154
See Hobbes 1996, p. 159. Hobbes was a shareholder of the Somer Islands
Company.
155
Ibid., p. 160. For instance, towns that were granted charter privileges gained the
right not only to name their own governors, but also to make their own ordinances,
administer their own laws and collect their own taxes, all of these activities requiring
representatives to act as enforcing authorities.
 juridical representation 197

As with private associations, so also in bodies politic, if the represen-

tative is one man, whatsoever he does in the person of the body which
is unwarranted by the letters or by the laws is merely his own act, and
obliges no other. But if he acts according to the letters or the laws, then
it ‘is the act of every one’.156 This means that our representation in the
activities of political bodies implies that we can be held individually
responsible for collective actions we have authorised. The similarity to
our representation in the state is, of course, not mere coincidence, and
is dangerous. Therefore, Hobbes proceeds to distinguish between the
two forms of group involvement. Our involvement in the actions of
the sovereign representative is unconditional and irrevocable. In sub-
ordinate political bodies, however, individual members must be pro-
vided with means of escaping collective responsibilities and the guilt
associated with them. In other words, what is attributed to the subor-
dinate political body on the basis of the actions of its representative
is not always, according to Hobbes, the responsibility of all members
of the group. Those who dissent from those actions, and make their
dissent explicit, are unaccountable.
Hobbes’s worry with the protection of individuals from the sway
of groups and collective goals other than those fixed by the state
becomes apparent in his discussion of political systems which have
a collegiate organ as their representative. The responsibility for the
unwarranted decrees or debts voted by the representative assembly,
Hobbes explains, is always attributable to the assembly as a whole in
its corporate aspect and punishable by its eventual dissolution. But
absentees and/or dissenting members are exempted from any liabil-
ity.157 This limited liability marks a radical distinction between assem-
blies governing subordinate political bodies and a sovereign assembly
governing the commonwealth. Whilst every subject is the author of
the commands of a sovereign assembly and has no right to pass judge-
ment on its decisions or opt out at will even if he disagrees, it is not
only lawful but, Hobbes insists, advisable for members of subordinate
assemblies to disengage themselves from the assembly’s decrees, if they
find them to be imprudent or unjust, by making ‘open protestation’,
‘and caus[ing] their dissent to be Registered’.158

156
Ibid., p. 156.
157
Ibid., p. 157.
158
Ibid., p. 158.
198 chapter three

Hobbes’s conceptualisation of political representation rests on a

multitude broken down into individuals who, for the purposes of rep-
resentation, are regarded as the exact equivalent of each other. This
interchangeableness allows for the sovereign to represent the interests
of them all considered as one. Hobbes’s analysis of corporate life is
directed at maintaining the state’s monopoly on corporate expression,
by controlling the proliferation of intermediary corporate entities with
a right to represent individuals according to the different groups they
belong to. Both state and subordinate corporations are born out of
representation, whose power it is to shape groups of men, indepen-
dently of their numbers, into civil persons, capable of exhibiting a will
of their own. Therefore, wherever a group of like-minded people act
together to select a representative, there is a risk that the act founding
the commonwealth finds itself repeated.159 Unlawful private groups, in
particular, generate their own personality outside the law, by replicat-
ing the very process whereby the commonwealth was once instituted.
They are like ‘a commonwealth within the commonwealth’, and prone
to ‘calling by the name of the people any multitude of [its] own fac-
tion’.160 But even political bodies established by the sovereign to assist
him with governance can tear their original briefs to shreds, and estab-
lish themselves as rival representations competing against the com-
monwealth for the allegiance of its subjects. The constitutive powers of
representation, its power to form a corporate being out of a disparate
group by having a representative speak for the whole number, form
its biggest asset, and its biggest danger. This is a danger to the state’s
monopoly on collective expression that the sovereign must confront
by remaining vigilant, and preventing any of those ‘many lesser Com-
mon-wealths’, or ‘little Wormes’ living ‘in the bowels of a greater’,
from devouring its host.161

The State’s Many Guises

Most analysis of representation in Hobbes stops at the representation

of the commonwealth by the sovereign.162 However, if the state is to

159
Ibid., p. 155.
160
Hobbes 1998, p. 149 and Hobbes 1969b, p. 171.
161
Hobbes 1996, p. 230.
162
For an exception, see Lessay 1992, pp. 165–7.
 juridical representation 199

fulfil the variety of roles we expect from it and to spread its presence
over a large territory, sovereign authority must be represented back to
the people, both by the sovereign and by multiple other representa-
tives, executive and judicial officers whom the sovereign appoints to
impersonate the state and carry out the tasks of government. Hence,
the moment the sovereign occupies the seat of power he becomes not
only the main political actor within a given commonwealth (that is,
the person with the monopoly of the commonwealth’s representation),
but also the main political author (that is, he who alone is entitled to
create the law and to authorise others to represent under him the per-
son of the commonwealth). It is in this latter, often neglected quality
of ‘author’ that the sovereign embodies himself in the state’s machin-
ery and confers full juridical efficacy on the state’s acts.
First and foremost, the sovereign is the author behind civil law. As
Hobbes stresses, ‘all Lawes, written, and unwritten, have their Author-
ity, and force, from the Will of the Common-wealth; that is to say,
from the Will of the Representative’.163 Accordingly, for a law to be
formally instantiated it must not only be written and published, but
also show ‘sufficient signes of the Author, and Authority’.164 By these
signs laws are verified, not authorised, ‘for the Verification, is but the
Testimony and Record; not the Authority of the Law; which consisteth
in the Command of the Soveraign only’.165 In other words, the author-
ity of law has no other source than the will of the lawgiver, whether
he originally drafted it or not. As Hobbes explains, ‘the legislator is
he, not by whose authority the Lawes were first made, but by whose
authority they now continue to be Lawes’.166 Sovereign authorisation
of the law can take one of two forms: active endorsement or mere
non-prohibition. Active endorsement is expressed by means of affixing
public seals to the text of a new law; tacit authorisation, by allowing
custom to continue to be applied with the force of law.167 Through the

163
Hobbes 1996, p. 186. For Locke’s subversive use of Hobbes’s language of rep-
resentation to make Hobbes’s sovereign representative pass from unbounded author
to he who is acted upon by the will of the people as declared in its laws, see Locke
1988, p. 368.
164
Hobbes 1996, p. 189.
165
Ibid.
166
Ibid., pp. 185–6.
167
Against common lawyers, who maintain that the control of common law belongs
to Parliament, Hobbes insists that it is only the ‘Will of the Soveraign signified by his
Silence’ that gives old custom the authority of law. Ibid., p. 184.
200 chapter three

public system of laws the sovereign, who is simultaneously lawgiver

and executor, acts upon his subjects, directing them, regulating their
mutual interactions, keeping them out of each other’s way, whilst leav-
ing enough space for each to act or hold back from acting, accord-
ing to ‘what their own reasons shall suggest, for the most profitable
to themselves’.168 Law, once publicised and enforced throughout the
kingdom, performs a vital function in conferring much-needed ubiq-
uity to the state.
Besides being the unbridled creator of law, Hobbes’s sovereign is
also the person who stands behind the vast network of subordinate
offices making up the fabric and the dynamic power of the state. This
network is critical because, as is suggested by Hobbes’s comparison of
the incumbents of public offices with the sensorial organs of a man,
no person, not even the sovereign, can see all things with his eyes,
hear all with his ears, pronounce every sentence with his own voice,
or be present and acting everywhere he ought. Omnipresence, Hobbes
reminds us, is proper to God, and even he used several men as his
mouthpieces on earth, so there is all the more reason for earthly sov-
ereigns not to dispense with the assistance of public ministers in the
discharge of their office.
It has sometimes been argued that in admitting others to a share in
the exercise of sovereign power Hobbes undermines two main tenets
of his political theory: the unitarian nature of the sovereign person
and the indivisibility of its powers.169 But this contention results from
a misunderstanding of the kind of agent—principal relationship hold-
ing between the sovereign and his ministers. As Hobbes likes to stress,
the right to sovereign power and the exercise of that power are sepa-
rate. This means that if the sovereign is ‘unwilling or unable to play a
personal role’ he can still divide the administration of power between
his person and his ministers without depriving himself of any of his
original rights of sovereignty.170 The act whereby public officers are
limitedly authorised to play part of the vast role of the state leaves all

168
Ibid., p. 147.
169
This charge is raised by David Gauthier, who, when speaking of the sharing of
the exercise of sovereign power between sovereign and ministers, argues—wrongly in
my view—that ‘if the formal division of sovereignty is ruled out, then the informal
division of sovereignty among the sovereign’s agents is also ruled out’. Gauthier 1969,
p. 167.
170
Hobbes 1998, p. 142.
 juridical representation 201

sovereign powers basically untouched, in so far as all that the sover-

eign does is to allow others to exercise some of his powers under him
and subject to his control. And, critically, he does not thereby give up
rights. Like the landowner who places the administration of his prop-
erty under a foreman, he only conditionally and temporarily confers
this use.171 It is precisely for this reason, Hobbes remarks, that the
actors of the public person of the sovereign are called ministers. They
are ministers because they ‘serve the Person Representative, and can
doe nothing against his Command, nor without his Authority’.172
If we return to Hobbes’s general scheme of representation and apply
it to the relationship of sovereign and public ministers, what we have
is yet another case of representation by fiction whereby the sovereign,
as the governor of the state, authorises other agents to act in the state’s
name, but only under those conditions he himself establishes: ‘A PUB-
LIQUE MINISTER, is he, that by the Soveraign, (whether a Monarch,
or an Assembly,) is employed in any affaires, with Authority to repre-
sent in that employment, the Person of the Common-wealth.’173 The
principle of representation, as we have seen, requires a separation
between the private and the public aspects of a representative’s per-
sonality. This is reflected in Hobbes’s distinction between ministers
and the sovereign’s personal servants; ministers acting in a public or
a private capacity; and public and private ministers of the common-
wealth. Those serving the sovereign in his political capacity, for the
administration of public business, are ministers; those serving him in
his natural capacity, for private business, are his servants. Ministers
whose authority is public, but business private (as is the case with
ambassadors sent by a prince to express his condolences to a foreign
monarch), act as private persons. Ministers acting with public author-
ity in the secret pursuit of public business are private ministers of the
commonwealth, not public ministers. The ‘publicness’ requirement of
representation cannot be met when, for instance, a spy is sent by the
prince abroad to take on a cover identity and collect valuable informa-
tion, ‘because there is none to take notice of any Person in him, but his

171
See Hobbes 1971a, p. 89.
172
Hobbes 1996, p. 167. As George Lawson remarks, the idea that in all acts of civil
government ‘the principal agent is the Soveraign, the instrumental or ministerial are
Officers’ is perfectly conveyed by the expression ‘instrumenta majestatis vicaria’, of
common use amongst political authors. Lawson 1657, p. 78.
173
Hobbes, 1996, p. 166.
202 chapter three

own’, which means ‘he is but a Private Minister’.174 Political representa-

tion is not possible without a public or without authority which defines
the relevant public to whom the performance is made, and for whom
it is authoritative: a ‘Souldier without Command, though he fight for
the Common-wealth, does not therefore represent the Person of it’.175
This is because ‘there is none to represent it to’, ‘for every one that
hath command, represents it to them only whom he commandeth’.176
Only those who act with the sovereign’s authority and are known to
represent the sovereign in his political capacity in the administration
of state business are properly to be called public ministers.
Just as the sovereign should not allow his personal ends to stand
in the way of the ends of his office as representative, so must pub-
lic ministers guide their performance by the duties attached to their
offices, and their overall duty of loyalty to the sovereign. There is no
question of Hobbes’s public ministers guarding against the possibil-
ity of the sovereign’s doing any damage to the interests of the state.
The monarchomach claim that inferior magistrates, as co-tutors of the
kingdom, are obliged to admonish or take action against the king if
he infringes the interest of the people has no place in Hobbes, because
‘the people’ inheres in sovereignty.177 Magistrates do not represent the
people independently of the king; and are certainly never legitimised
in representing the people against the king as if the people constituted
a body distinct from him to which they could appeal. For the king is
the people, and the public interest the same as the sovereign’s interest.
Moreover, since the sovereign’s acts are our acts, a magistrate taking
action against the sovereign would be taking action against all his sub-

174
Ibid., p. 169.
175
Ibid., p. 167.
176
Ibid.
177
The monarchomach claim is founded upon the distinction between officers of the
king, roughly Hobbes’s private ministers, serving the sovereign in its natural capacity,
and officers of the kingdom. These differ substantially from Hobbes’s public ministers
in that they are conceived as members of a corporate body, receiving authority from
and being dismissed only by the people, as represented in the assembly of the people
as a whole or in local assemblies. Therefore, whereas for Hobbes public ministers
depend entirely on the supreme authority of the king, for monarchomachs the officers
of the kingdom, the king included, depend exclusively upon the supreme lordship of
the people, and though individually they are the king’s inferiors, as a whole, they are
his superiors. Brutus 1994, pp. 77–8.
 juridical representation 203

jects, not to mention against himself, as he too is subject and hence co-
author of everything the sovereign does in their collective name.178
One way the sovereign can assert his presence in the actions of those
ministers he employs is by issuing clear instructions about what they
may do. But even where the sovereign does not control his ministers
by ‘written Instructions’, they are still obliged ‘to take for Instructions
the Dictates of Reason’, as to what is ‘most conducing to his Soveraigns
interest’.179 As mere instruments of the sovereign’s will, ministers must
have their actions constrained by his implied presence, while the sov-
ereign is free to create and discharge them at will. The whole difference
between them and the sovereign, as George Lawson rightly remarked,
‘is that they are essentially and properly but subjects, and accidentally
officers’, which comes to explain why ‘though they have power, the
same is the Soveraigns, as in him it is original, supreme, universal in
respect of the whole state, in them it is derivative, subordinate, par-
ticular, or but a part and a particle of it’.180 It is exactly this need to
stress that only the authority of the sovereign is held without interme-
diaries that leads Hobbes to declare that ‘Christian Kings have their
Civill Power from God immediately; and the Magistrates under him
exercise their severall charges in vertue of his Commission’.181 From
this asymmetry it follows, as Lawson emphasises, that ‘whatsoever the
Soveraign acts, is valid immediately in it self; but what they act is only
good and valid as they are one person with him, and make his will
their rule and principle, and do all things in his name’.182 This is not
to deny that subordinate public officers wield significant power to do
certain things in the state’s name, but to stress that whatever power
they may wield is entirely derived from the state’s coordinating centre,
the sovereign, and owes all its authoritativeness to it. Nowhere does
Hobbes make this point more forcibly than when explaining why we
are obliged to the commands of a constable:

178
Hobbes’s argument about the identity of interests between sovereign (whether
a man or assembly) and subject suffers from visible flaws, not least because, as he
himself acknowledges, ‘if the publique interest chance to crosse the private, he [i.e. the
sovereign] preferrs the private’. Hobbes 1996, p. 131.
179
Ibid., p. 188.
180
Lawson 1657, pp. 78–9.
181
Hobbes 1996, p. 391.
182
Lawson 1657, p. 79.
204 chapter three

If a Constable lay hands upon me for misdemeanor, I aske him by what

right he meddles with me more than I with him. He will answer me, Iure
Regio (i) by the right of the King. He needs not say, because you are a
Theefe. For perhaps I might truly say as much of him.183
Authority, in its rational-legal sense, trumps exemplary character. It
is only because the constable’s actions are performed by the right of
the sovereign, not because he is a more righteous man than I am, that
I owe him obedience. The sovereign being the author of whatever his
ministers do with authority, Lawson is certainly right to maintain that,
despite the delegation of sovereign power, Hobbes’s ‘Soveraign, doth
exercise this power, and acts severally by several Officers, which are
but instruments animated and acted by him’.184 This much is empha-
sised when Hobbes reminds us that the king has legal ubiquity, as he
is always present in all his courts.185 Though not personally distribut-
ing justice, he signals his presence through law and those judges who,
‘in their Seats of Justice [. . .] represent the person of the Soveraign;
and their Sentence, is his Sentence’.186 It would be wrong, however,
to infer that the sovereign necessarily owns all the actions his min-
isters perform in his name. Even when seemingly acting within their
commission, ministers will not have their actions owned by the sov-
ereign, if they do not act with the sovereign’s reasons and interests
in mind. As Hobbes explains, when adjudicating a claim, every judge
must ‘have regard to the reason, which moved the Soveraign to make
such Law, that his Sentence may be according thereunto; which then
is his Soveraigns Sentence, otherwise it is his own, an unjust one’.187
Misinterpretation of the spirit of the law, or the intent of him by
whom the law is law, no less than disregard of explicit instructions,
amounts to misrepresentation, and frees the sovereign from ascrip-

183
Hobbes MS D.5, as transcribed in Hobbes 2005, p. 177. See also Hobbes 1996,
p. 391.
184
Lawson 1657, pp. 30–1.
185
As Blackstone would later remark, the king’s ‘judges are the mirror by which the
king’s image is reflected. It is the regal office, and not the royal person, that is always
present in court.’ From this ubiquity, Blackstone added, it follows that ‘in the forms
of legal proceedings, the king is not said to appear by his attorney, as other men do;
for he always appears in contemplation of law in his own proper person’. Blackstone
1862, p. 260.
186
Hobbes 1996, p. 168.
187
Ibid., p. 187.
 juridical representation 205

tion of authorship for what is done in his name.188 Strictly speaking,

sentences disrespecting the intent of the law are, therefore, but the
judge’s private verdict, and do not carry public authority. By contrast,
‘a wrong Sentence given by authority of the Soveraign, if he know
and allow it, in such Lawes as are mutable, [is] a constitution of a
new Law’.189 In other words, judicial error can be made right by the
sovereign. But to judge by standards at odds with the sovereign’s is
the same as trying to represent the people within government inde-
pendently of him, thereby subverting the unity of the representative,
on which the unity of Hobbes’s state depends. Hobbes is intent on
reserving to the sovereign absolute control over representation, or the
power of creative political action. The sovereign is the master painter
of the state’s persona, its ministers mere assistants, obliged to interpret
away any aspects of the law which appear to conflict with the dictates
of the sovereign’s reason, which is also, by definition, the reason of
state and the reason of ‘the public’. The legitimacy of ministerial work
is always dependent on its proving worthy of sovereign authentication.
But what Hobbes’s example of the judicial bench also shows is that
even where sovereignty remains undivided, and only the exercise of
sovereign rights is delegated, problems of representative coordination
can still arise. Law requires interpretation, and the delegated exercise
of power cannot eschew judgement. It is hence inevitable that different
ministers, each responsible for pursuing different state functions, will
pull against one another, and even against the sovereign, something
which Hobbes seeks to curtail by devising incentives to conformity
and institutional prescriptions for altering the opportunities and/or
payoffs of misrepresentation.190 For Hobbes, the growth of competing

188
It is interesting to compare Hobbes’s position with the view expressed ten years
earlier on the same subject by Dudley Digges: ‘The reason why the King cannot coun-
termand their [i.e., ordinary judges’] judgments’, Digges explains, ‘is, because they
sustaine his person, and his consent is by Law involved in what by Law they doe, and
there would be no end, if he should undoe what he hath done. Authoritas rei iudicate
vim legis habet; there can be no appeale from himself to himself.’ Digges 1642, pp.
21–2. Hobbes differs from Digges in that he believes the king can countermand the
inferior judges’ sentences, but it might not be in his, and especially in the state’s, best
interest that he does so frequently.
189
Hobbes 1996, p. 191.
190
To keep judicial rulings under supervision, Hobbes promotes judicial transpar-
ency and mechanisms of accountability. He instructs sovereigns not only ‘to practice
justice themselves’, but also to construct incentives to ‘compel the judges they have
appointed to do the same’, namely by lending ‘an ear to the complaints of citizens’ and
appointing ‘a special court of inquiry into the regular judges’. Hobbes 1998, p. 152.
206 chapter three

forces, which give the people distinct voices within government, was
an invitation to mutual destruction. But his fears would prove to be
exaggerated. As the revolutions of the next century showed, by playing
with countervailing power and the right kind of institutional arrange-
ments, representation in the state could be unitary yet divided between
different branches of government, each jealous of its own indepen-
dence, and controlling the other, but all still representing the nation
as one, albeit in different ways, and for different purposes.

Conclusion

In Hobbes’s view, representation lies at the heart of political power,

which is not only generated but also exercised through it. Far from
being exclusive to a particular regime form, as some of the parties to
the English civil war contended, helping fan the flames of the conflict,
representation is conceived by Hobbes as standing over and above
any particular parties. It is what makes the state—any state—possible,
and therefore also the key to transcending partisan conflict. But if the
relationship between citizen and state is, as Hobbes claims, first and
foremost representative, understanding what this relationship implies
in terms of distribution of rights and duties is crucial for dissecting
the question of collective political agency and the type of responsibility
that accrues from it. This responsibility is what separates the theatre of
politics, with its capacity to implicate us as audience, from the theatre
as mere play, where there can be crime without guilt, passive specta-
torship without the requirement of involvement. The authority of the
modern state (morally distinctive on account of its claim to imper-
sonate the only legitimate authority in each state, namely the collec-
tive body of citizens) is premised on its acting on the authority of its
constituents: with their rights, in their name, and on their behalf. This
is a resounding claim the validity of which requires, in Hobbes’s view,
no other demonstration than the state’s capacity to fulfil its political
function, to make and maintain order. Because this end is a necessary

Furthermore, because the stability of the state would suffer if judicial rulings were
constantly countermanded, Hobbes trusts the abolition of the rule of precedent to
impede most errors of judicial interpretation from being propagated throughout the
judicial system, and to impede the judiciary from becoming self-regulating. Hobbes
1996, p. 194.
 juridical representation 207

pre-condition of any other ends that are capable of representation,

Hobbes believes representation by the state to have a prima facie case
over any other forms of representation, which are always trumped by
it. This precedence of the state’s representative claim is founded on the
preservation of life as an absolute priority, and explains the especially
stringent kind of responsibility we acquire on the basis of the words
and actions the state performs as our representative, as compared to
those responsibilities which accrue to us from other subordinate forms
of human association. Hobbes is adamant that as members of a capable
state, which adequately provides for our protection, we cannot wash
our hands of any actions of the state on the grounds that we did not
approve of them or did not play any significant causal role in bring-
ing them about. We are rather always necessarily implicated—both
collectively and personally—in the actions that the state takes by our
right, which is defined in the broadest terms, as the state represents
our blameless liberty of acting on what it judges to be at each time in
the interest of our peace and security. Whatever credited agents do in
the name of the state while at the state’s service leaves behind a moral
residue that can be traced back to the hands of each and every single
one of its citizens. ‘Not in my name!’ is a personal pronouncement
which represents an objection, and a potential opt-out clause, which
are unavailable to the citizen of Hobbes’s representative state.
 CHAPTER FOUR

REPRESENTATION IN THEOLOGY

O Blessed glorious Trinity,

Bones to Philosophy, but milke to faith,
Which, as wise serpents, diversly
Most slipperinesse, yet most entanglings hath
John Donne, ‘A Litany’

Introduction

One of the most striking features of Hobbes’s theory of representation

is his attempt to rewrite the central dogma of Christian theology in
terms of a concept of representation he first devised for his politics.1
This is the dogma of the Trinity, according to which God is triune,
existing as three persons in one being.
It was the Latin theologian Tertullian, a converted lawyer, who first
fixed the language of Trinitarian orthodoxy by applying the word per-
sona to the Trinity, which he describes as ‘tres personae, una substan-
tia’ (three persons, one substance). His innovative use of persona in
this particular theological context is not altogether self-explanatory,
and the question of what ‘person’ meant when applied to the triune
God remained highly contentious, not least in seventeenth-century
England.2 Still, most of Hobbes’s contemporaries continued to follow
the Boethian orthodoxy, embracing a definition of ‘person’ as a first,
singular, subsistent, intelligent substance which clearly combined the
Christian theology of the church fathers and the philosophy of Aris-
totle, with its ontology of substances and accidents.3 This is clear from

1
As is clear from Hobbes’s exposition, representation in theology follows Hobbes’s
account of representation in politics and not the other way around, as sometimes sug-
gested. See, for instance, Tuck in Hobbes 1996, p. xli, n. 55.
2
See Dixon 2003.
3
Boethius famously defines ‘person’ as ‘naturae rationabilis individua substantia’.
Boethius 1973, p. 84. While setting forth his definition, however, Boethius also empha-
sises the original theatrical meaning of persona, making an explicit reference to the
210 chapter four

theological treatises as well as the most popular devotional books of

the time, such as The Practice of Pietie (1631), in which the Puritan
Lewes Bayly maintained that the three divine persons ‘are not severall
substances, but three distinct subsistences; or three divers manner of
being of one and the same substance, and Divine Essence’, so that ‘a
Person in the Godhead, is an individuall understanding and incommu-
nicable Subsistence, living of itselfe, and not sustained by another’.4
In Hobbes’s view such Hellenised theological renderings of the Trin-
ity were errors in construal, an example of insignificant speech, which
uses words without any correspondence in the mind, ‘through mis-
understanding of the words they have received’.5 This attack aims, for
instance, at the interpretation of words not found in Scripture, such as
‘Trinity’ or ‘person’, according to concepts derived from Greek philoso-
phy, such as ‘homoousios’, ‘hypostasis’, ‘subsistent subject’, ‘substance’
or ‘essence’, that were mingled with Scripture in the explanation of the
Trinitarian ‘mystery’. By contrast, Hobbes’s project of the reformation
of theology is led by an impetus to expurgate from its ‘difficult points’
any remnants of the ‘Tenets of Vain Philosophy’, especially those Aris-
totelian categories, transmitted by the patristic tradition, which stood
in the way of a reformed ‘first philosophy’ and a sound civil science.6
Therefore, Hobbes’s treatment of the Trinity takes a contrasting path,
that of philological reconstruction, and aims to take words as used in
common speech, since common men ‘seldome speak Insignificantly’.7
These men are to be delivered from abuses of Scripture, which draw

ancient theatrical masks called personae, as well as to the etymology of persona as from
personando, that is, ‘sounding through’. Ibid., p. 86.
4
Bayly 1631, pp. 5, 6.
5
Hobbes 1996, p. 59.
6
Ibid., pp. 59 and 462. For the de-Hellenisation impetus underpinning Hobbes’s
reformed theology, see Wright 1999.
7
Hobbes 1996, p. 59. Gianni Paganini has argued that Lorenzo Valla is a probable
humanist source of Hobbes’s Trinitarian theology, as in the fifteenth century Valla
controversially confronted the Boethian definition of ‘person’ by maintaining that the
three divine persons should be read after the Latin notion of person as some ‘quality’
whereby we differ from one another; for instance, the different professional, social
and familial roles we commonly impersonate. See Valla 1686, lib. 6, ch. xxxiv, Ll4 and
Paganini 2001, especially pp. 30–6. Although there are obvious continuities between
Valla’s and Hobbes’s anti-clerical and anti-Scholastic project of leaving behind the
Aristotelian categories in favour of common speech, any suggestion that Hobbes is
historically dependent on Valla for his particular use of the concept of ‘person’ should
be rejected, as Hobbes may have derived the relevant idea independently from a prior
source, namely Cicero, as Hobbes repeatedly claims (see below). (Paganini discounts
Hobbes’s reference to Cicero as merely a humanist commonplace.)
 representation in theology 211

on a bogus Aristotelian metaphysics so that the clergy can extend their

power over the faithful, at the expense of the civil sovereign. Hence
Hobbes insists that ‘the word Person is latine’, not Greek, and person-
hood a synonym of personation, or of being-personated.8 This is an
understanding Hobbes derives from a pre-Boethian and pre-Christian
Latin source, Cicero, and extends to different statements of the doc-
trine of the Trinity in the four late works in which he discusses it.
This happens first in the English Leviathan (1651), where Hobbes puts
forth two readings of the Trinity founded on his theory of persons and
representation, introduced in chapter 16 of that same work. The ques-
tion of the Trinity receives further treatment in De Homine (1658),
in the Latin Leviathan (1668), especially in its new appendix, and in
Hobbes’s reply to Bishop Bramhall’s The Catching of the Leviathan,
works in which Hobbes’s reading of the Trinity undergoes a num-
ber of alterations. In the next three sections, I will track and interpret
these changes, showing the conceptual tangles Hobbes gets himself
into when he tries to explain how God can be three and one at the
same time in ways consistent with his theory of (political) representa-
tion. This analysis leads me to the conclusion that Hobbes’s insistence
on holding to a highly unorthodox view on this dogma, which, by his
own recognition, is irrelevant to salvation, is explained by his convic-
tion that his newly coined theology of the Trinity ‘manifestly tend[s]
to Peace and Loyalty’, as it contests ‘Ancient Errors’ that corroded uni-
fied sovereignty and were responsible for breeding unending trouble
and disorder in the state.9

Three Persons as Three Representatives

Hobbes’s first reference to the Trinity is made in chapter 16 of the

English Leviathan, where he states that the true God, no less than the
‘Gods of the Heathen’, was personated on earth three different times:
first, by Moses, second, by Jesus Christ, and third, by the Holy Ghost,
‘speaking, and working in the Apostles’.10 Although the word ‘Trinity’
is used nowhere in this chapter, in the appendix to the Latin Leviathan

8
Hobbes 1996, p. 112.
9
Ibid., p. 490.
10
Ibid., pp. 113 and 114.
212 chapter four

Hobbes acknowledges that he was thereby trying to ‘explain the doc-

trine of the Trinity’.11 This explanation comes a few paragraphs after
his definition of ‘person’ as ‘any Representer of speech and action’.12
Hence, the persons of Hobbes’s Trinity appear as Moses, Jesus Christ
and the apostolic band, all of which are described as artificial persons,
or representatives, speaking and acting on behalf of God, with God’s
authority, upon earth at different historical times. The outcome is a sui
generis Trinity of human impersonators, exercising representational
functions in God’s name, whose earthly quality is striking. Just as in a
civil commonwealth the sovereign cannot perform his office without
making himself represented in particular employments by public min-
isters, so Hobbes’s God is in need of temporally manifesting himself
through earthly agents ruling and directing in his name. And if in any
established political hierarchy the legitimacy of an individual office-
holder’s actions derives from the delegated authority of an officeholder
higher up the system, right up to the sovereign himself, so do the per-
sons of Hobbes’s Trinity come to exercise their earthly functions not
as of themselves, but as sent by God. However, to speak and act in
the name of another, and exercise his delegated power, means that
one is not that other (except, perhaps, by legal fiction), but a distinct
entity. This abrogates the oneness of the tri-unity. What is more, any
depiction of the persons of the Trinity as distinct subordinate agents,
carrying out roles on behalf of one and the same principal and at dif-
ferent times, necessarily undermines the idea of a tri-unity in timeless-
ness, while also reducing Christ to a representative of apparently no
higher standing than Moses and the apostles. Accordingly, Hobbes’s
account of the Trinity in chapter 16 of Leviathan attracted accusations
of distancing itself radically from the doctrines of the first four general
councils of the church, endorsed by the Church of England, which
affirmed the consubstantiality, the co-divinity and the co-eternality of
all three original divine persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.13

11
Hobbes, App. (OL III, p. 563).
12
Hobbes 1996, p. 112.
13
As Hobbes himself came to stress, the Council of Nicaea was unequivocal in
its denial of the equality and consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. The Son
was begotten, not made; he proceeded of the Father ab aeterno; he was of one sub-
stance (homoousion) with the Father, true God of true God, uncreated and co-eternal.
Fifty-six years later, at Constantinople, the same divinity expressed for the Son at
Nicaea was ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the church councils seems to
be undercut by Hobbes’s rendering of the Trinity in terms of historical personations
 representation in theology 213

Under the pressure of much criticism, Hobbes came to admit to

his infelicitous original wording of the Trinity: ‘since Moses, as much
as all Christian kings, carried, he himself, in some way, the person of
God, [Hobbes] seems to make of him one of the persons of the Trin-
ity’, which was rather careless.14 Like all the civil sovereigns who later
came to hold his place, Moses personated God solely by his ministry.
To be God’s representative is to act on God’s behalf, as his executive
agent, with words and deeds which are ultimately attributable to God
himself; not to embody God, or literally incarnate him. As Hobbes
makes clear, God did not dwell in Moses, who was but a man, carrying
out a specific role in God’s plan of salvation; nor did God dwell in the
apostles, who were, again, merely men, representing another person of
God, the Spirit; just as he does not dwell in any living Christian king.
Of the three representatives of God Hobbes names in chapter 16—
Moses, the apostolic band and Christ—only in one does Hobbes allow
that the Godhead dwelt bodily, and that was Christ, the God-man.15

Three Persons as Three Roles

Hobbes’s intended reading of the Trinity is recast in chapters 41 and

42 of the English Leviathan, where he deploys his account of person-
hood as personation or as ‘being-personated’ to explain that every per-
sonation of God is a different person. Hence the persons of Hobbes’s
Trinity—now expressly presented as Father, Son and Holy Spirit—are
not to be understood as representatives, but as persons represented.16
This change rests on a seeming reversal of Hobbes’s definition of ‘per-
son’. A person, Hobbes writes, ‘(as I have shewn before, chapt. 16) is
he that is Represented, as often as hee is Represented’.17 This sounds
contradictory, as Hobbes starts chapter 16 exactly by defining ‘person’
as a representative, rather than as the represented. Yet, admittedly,

of God. For Hobbes’s narration of the history of the Council of Nicaea, see Hist. Narr.
(EW IV, pp. 390–402).
14
Hobbes, App. (OL III, p. 563).
15
Hobbes 1996, p. 295.
16
‘For a Person being a relative to a Representer, it is consequent to a plurality
of Representers, that there bee a plurality of Persons, though of one and the same
Substance.’ Ibid., p. 338.
17
Ibid., p. 339. Richard Tuck’s edition (following Hobbes’s own error) here gives
chapter 13 instead of 16.
214 chapter four

what ultimately defines the person is a capacity for action which comes
with personation. Therefore, in Chapter 2 above, we saw Hobbes
showing us that the same person can be many different persons, as he
personates himself in different ways, or is personated by many differ-
ent people; Hobbes concludes chapter 16 by maintaining that the unity
of the people is consequent on the unity of its representative. Thus,
should the person of the people be personated by three distinct rep-
resentatives, ‘they are not one Person [. . .] but three Persons’.18 Now,
in a similar vein, Hobbes tells us that God, who is one, becomes three
persons on account of being engaged in three representative relation-
ships: (1) God/Moses = Person of the Father; (2) God/Jesus = Person
of the Son; (3) God/apostles = Person of the Holy Spirit. The Father is
God personated by Moses; the Son is God personated by Jesus Christ;
the Spirit is God personated by the apostles.
If a person is he who is represented, as often as he is represented,
then each personation presents a different person. The same God was
personated on earth three times, which means he is three persons.
He is three, in so far as he ‘has been Represented (that is, Person-
ated) thrice’, and yet he is but one, for every person represented ‘is
the Person of one and the same God’.19 Each person is now clearly,
ontologically speaking, one and the same individual God; that is, one
and the same substance, God himself, as he intervened in different
ways in history—speaking and acting in different roles, through the
mediation of this or that representative ‘in three different times and
occasions’.20 The heavenly sovereign, like the earthly one, can be rep-
resented by vice-regents, but in neither case does this representation
put the sovereign’s unity at stake.
If Hobbes’s first phrasing of the Trinity in chapter 16 raised suspi-
cions of his subordinating the persons of the Trinity to God himself,
the one offered in chapter 42 seems to fall into some variant of the
opposite form of anti-Trinitarianism, known as Sabellianism or modal-
ism.21 Sabellianism is a heresy originating in an exaggerated defence of
the unity (monarchia) of God. While verbally admitting that the divine
unity is triune, modalism denies the real distinction between persons.

18
Ibid., p. 228.
19
Ibid., pp. 339–40.
20
Ibid., p. 340.
21
Matheron quite rightly refers to Hobbes’s modalism as juridical in type, as it is
conceived in terms of the effects of delegated action. See Matheron 1990, p. 386.
 representation in theology 215

Father, Son and Holy Spirit are but modes, aspects, attributes or quali-
ties of one and the same divine being, to whom different names are
ascribed, according to the different functions God exercised, at differ-
ent historical times, outside the Trinity: creation (Father), redemption
(Son), sanctification (Holy Spirit). A strong emphasis on God’s mon-
archy seems indeed to be the corollary of Hobbes’s focus on the three
different historical manifestations of the different persons of God:
In this Trinity on Earth, the Unity is not of the thing; for the Spirit,
the Water, and the Bloud, are not the same substance, though they give
the same testimony: But in the Trinity of Heaven, the Persons are the
persons of one and the same God, though Represented in three differ-
ent times and occasions. To conclude, the doctrine of the Trinity, as far
as can be gathered directly from the Scripture, is in substance this; that
God who is alwaies One and the same, was the Person represented by
Moses; the Person Represented by his Son Incarnate; and the Person
Represented by the Apostles. As Represented by the Apostles, the Holy
Spirit by which they spake, is God; As Represented by his Son (that
was God and Man), the Son is that God; As Represented by Moses, and
the High Priests, the Father, that is to say, the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, is that God: From whence we may gather the reason why those
names Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the signification of the Godhead,
are never used in the Old Testament: For they are Persons, that is, they
have their names from Representing, which could not be, till divers men
had Represented Gods Person in ruling, or in directing under him.22
This formulation resolves the relationship between Moses and the first
person of the Trinity. Moses can no longer be mistaken for a person
of the Trinity. Instead, its first person, the Father, is God himself, in
so far as represented on earth by Moses and his successors. The third
person is also clarified. The Holy Ghost is again God himself, in so far
as he is represented on earth by the apostles and their successors in
their specific office of preaching and teaching. Furthermore, as persons
represented, instead of persons representing, the three persons of the
Trinity are no longer seemingly thrown outside God. They are rather
so vigorously conducted back to the person of one and the same God
that Alexander Ross, the Scottish vicar of Carisbrook on the Isle of
Wight, readily accused Hobbes of turning the three persons of the
Trinity into nothing but names, as we seem to be left with only one
true person, God himself, receiving different names as he manifests

22
Hobbes 1996, pp. 340–1.
216 chapter four

himself externally in three distinct roles, consonant with Hobbes’s

radical de-substantialisation of the concept of person.23 But this was
only one of the many criticisms directed at Hobbes’s second rendition
of the Trinity in the English Leviathan. As Bishop Bramhall was eager
to stress, on Hobbes’s account, ‘there was a time when there was not
Trinity’ and ‘God Almighty hath had as many “Persons” as there have
been sovereign princes in the world since Adam’.24
It is at first hard to see how Hobbes could evade the first accusation.
In deriving the divine persons from their earthly personations, Hobbes
seems to be saying that it is because of Moses, Jesus and the apostolic
representations that there are three persons in God. The persons of
the Trinity seem therefore to come into existence and fade away at
different times, in so far as they result from God’s being represented
on earth in three different times and occasions by Moses, Jesus and the
apostles, respectively. Just as a society of men is not a person before
it has a person as its representative, and ceases to be one when it is
without a representative, so, for instance, God the Father seems not
to exist as a person before being represented by Moses, and to have
ceased to exist in the interregnum between the death of Joshua and
the time of Saul.25 Hobbes again appears to suggest that the persons
of the Trinity are neither co-existent nor co-eternal when he explains
that, if the names Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not used in the Old
Testament, this is because ‘they have their names from Representing,
which could not be, till divers men had Represented Gods Person in
ruling, or in directing under him’.26
Such rendering of the divine persons of the Trinity as temporal
constructions would justify Bramhall’s contention that after Hobbes
‘the adorable mystery of the Blessed Undivided Trinity’ appears to
be ‘shrunk into nothing’, as if the words ‘the Father eternal, the Son
eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal’ were blotted out of the Creed.27

23
Ross 1653, pp. 53 and 54.
24
Bramhall 1844b, p. 527.
25
An interregnum in which, Hobbes writes, ‘there was [de facto] no Soveraign
Power in Israel’. Hobbes 1996, p. 328.
26
Ibid., p. 341.
27
Bramhall 1844b, p. 527. This would have meant that whereas Hobbes’s reasons
for denying the three divine persons as eternal sprang from his making the divine per-
sons relative to an earthly representative, for the subordinationists the denial of that
co-eternity is consequent on the belief that the Son of God is merely a creature, and
therefore had a beginning, before which the Father was not. For Hobbes’s rejection of
the Arian doctrine of Christ as a creature, see App. (OL III, pp. 514, 517 and 527).
 representation in theology 217

Yet Hobbes seems to imply differently by stressing that the persons

of the Trinity have their names (rather than their being) from God’s
being represented on earth at different times by different men. By this
Hobbes seems to want to suggest that the three different aspects of the
divine being in the Godhead—that is, God’s identity as triune—may
well have existed ad intra before their external manifestation, but did
not come to the knowledge of men before God’s being represented by
different human personators.28 Hobbes’s account of the Trinity con-
centrates precisely on this temporal manifestation of the persons of
the Trinity through historical men carrying out specific roles in God’s
plan of salvation (the economic Trinity)—not in the tri-unity in time-
lessness (the immanent Trinity, or the Trinity in terms of its internal
relations).29
As Hobbes repeatedly stresses, the nature of God is incomprehen-
sible to us. Therefore if we were to say anything of ‘what he is’, namely
to name the diverse persons in the Godhead, it could only be after we
accepted as authentic the words he made known to us by the mouth
of his earthly representatives.30 In the light of this, it becomes appar-
ent why Hobbes insists that the names Father, Son and Holy Spirit
were not used in the Old Testament, and why he stresses that God is
called the Father only from the time Jesus represented him on earth,
Hobbes’s point being that the existence of God as Father or indeed of

28
As Pocock claims, for Hobbes ‘God’s Trinity may be known from his having
been personated on earth three times—by Moses and the prophets as Father, by Jesus
as the Son, by the apostles and their successors as the Spirit’. Pocock 1972, p. 188.
29
In effect, Hobbes has little to say about the immanent Trinity, traditionally
described in terms of the eternal generation of Christ and the eternal procession of
the Holy Spirit, notions which Bramhall saw as having been cast aside by Hobbes, and
which Hobbes indeed disclaimed, given his criticism of the Scholastic understanding
of eternity. On this disappearance of the immanent Trinity from Hobbes’s account,
see Wright 1999, p. 418. For Hobbes, eternity cannot be understood as ‘the Standing
still of the Present Time, a Nunc-stans (as the Schools call it)’, which holds that God
exists out of time in an eternal instant, but rather as ‘an Endlesse Succession of Time’,
implying God’s presence in history. See Hobbes 1996, pp. 466–7.
30
Hobbes 1996, p. 271. It should be noted that Hobbes seemingly departs from the
conception of the persons of the Trinity as mere ‘aspects’ of God when he speaks, in
some detail, of the relations of origin whereby the divine persons are commonly dis-
tinguished, that is, of the Father as he who generates, the Son as he who is begotten,
and the Holy Spirit as he who proceeds from both. (See The Westminster Confession
of Faith (1646), chapter II, 2:3.) But soon after establishing the distinction between
the internal relations of the divine persons Hobbes rejoins the monarchian position
by denying any real difference between ‘being born’, ‘begotten’ and ‘proceeding’. See
Hobbes, App. (OL III, p. 538).
218 chapter four

God as Son could not be inferred before God disclosed himself before
men as such, which happened only when the Son came to speak to us
in the Father’s name.
But however much Hobbes may want to speak simply of a beginning
of the use of names to refer to the different persons in the Godhead,
he seems to have committed himself, by his own definition of ‘person’
as a thing consequent on the existence of a representative personating
it, to a beginning of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as persons. Moreover,
despite Hobbes’s suggestion, each of God’s personators does not per-
sonate just one person: for instance, Jesus commanded baptism in the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matt. xxviii. 19).
Despite its reformulation, Hobbes’s rendering of the Trinity remains
muddled and certainly incapable of providing anything like an ortho-
dox account.
Can Hobbes fare better in his response to the second of Bramhall’s
charges? If God is as many persons as the representatives he has had,
is he not, as Bramhall implies, many more than three persons? Are
not the apostles themselves twelve? And do not their successors to this
day include Christian kings as supreme governors of the church in
their own dominions, amongst whom also figure the popes? There are
textual grounds for Bramhall’s criticism, as Hobbes explicitly main-
tains that ‘it is consequent to plurality of Representers, that there bee
a plurality of Persons, though of one and the same Substance’.31 To
prevent Bramhall’s criticism, Hobbes would have needed to qualify his
definition of the person as he who is represented, as often as he is rep-
resented ‘in the exercise of a different role or function’. For Hobbes’s
theory of representation does allow for one and the same person to
be represented by a collective, in so far as the individuals composing
it represent their commissioner for the exercise of one and the same
function.32 Nevertheless, in the light of that same theory, for the rep-
resentatives exercising the same function to count as one, they must
themselves constitute one person, through an institutionalised proce-
dure which extracts one voice for the collective from the voices of its
members.33 It is none the less clear that in the case of the earthly per-
sonations of God, Hobbes would have to keep exclusively to the first

31
Hobbes 1996, p. 338.
32
See Matheron 1990, p. 386, n. 6.
33
See Curley 1996a, p. 266.
 representation in theology 219

requirement, not least because representatives performing the same

function on God’s behalf were, very often, not contemporaries. For
instance, if Moses and the high priests are to correspond one and the
same person in God’s Trinity, it is because they represent one and
the same function in God’s name, not because they ever formed one
unitary person. However, Hobbes’s reply to Bramhall goes in a dif-
ferent direction. Hobbes admits Bramhall’s charge that upon his con-
ception of ‘person’ there may be ‘as many persons of a king, as there
be petty constables in his kingdom’.34 But he denies that his claim
that every personation is a different person has impious implications
when applied to the Trinity. This is because there is a critical differ-
ence between the persons of the king and those of God. Unlike the
persons of the Godhead, Hobbes explains, the king ‘and every one of
his persons’ are not ‘the same substance’.35 Hobbes’s counter-objection
is cunningly, but also elusively, playing with two different understand-
ings of the ‘person’: the ‘persons’ of the king Hobbes refers to are his
‘representatives’, his personating constables, whereas the persons of
God he mentions are the represented divine persons, not his human
personators.

Revisions in Response to Critics

Since the reading of the Trinity put forth in chapters 41 and 42 of the
English Leviathan had not succeeded in saving him from accusations
of ‘atheism, impiety and the like’, Hobbes withdrew tactically in the
works that followed.36 In the Latin Leviathan, the relevant passages
were simply excised, whereas the passage in chapter 16 was altered in
such a way as to drop the problematic reference to Moses and to come
closer to the wording of the Trinity in the Anglican catechism. None
the less, the originally theatrical language of representation (‘to bear
the person of’)—whereby ‘person’ denotes a fictional character, a role
or, by extension, a function that is delegated—is fully retained, and
the persons of the Trinity reappear as persons emanating from three

34
Hobbes, Ans. Bram. (EW IV, p. 316).
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid., p. 282. In 1666, Hobbes was threatened with accusations of atheism by
Parliament.
220 chapter four

distinct impersonations, pursuing three different functions (creation,

redemption and sanctification) in God’s name:
Also, the person of the true God is borne and has been borne. For he
created the world in his own person: and in redeeming humankind,
Jesus Christ bore the person of God; and in sanctifying the elect, the
Holy Spirit bore the person of the same God.37
The notion of God’s person as a self-impersonator poses no problem.
For God is, in Hobbes’s view, a natural person, or an author, engaging
himself through his own words and actions. God has not only cre-
ated the world ‘in persona propria’, but he is also the ‘originall Author’
of the Scriptures.38 But this same God who is capable of personating
himself was also personated twice, thus becoming two more persons,
as personated by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. However, in not
naming the persons represented (supposedly, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit), while naming the third person representing after the
corresponding person in God’s Trinity (rather than its human imper-
sonators), Hobbes generates some confusion. For if Jesus Christ (the
God-man) and the Holy Spirit, who are the deity itself, are also to be
taken as representatives of God, they re-emerge as artificial persons, or
representatives in speech and action, personating God on earth in the
offices of redeeming and sanctifying, and the Trinity turns again into
an ad extra theatrical-juridical construct, devoid of any distinctive,
immanent, ontological reality. Furthermore, the axis around which the
scheme of representation rotates presents the Trinity as a composite
of distinct binary relations connecting an author and an actor, rather
than the canonical communion of three persons in perpetual relation
with one another.
Hobbes’s next discussion of the Trinity comes in the appendix to
the Latin Leviathan and is written in direct response to his critics. Fol-
lowing a recurrent pattern, it turns on the proper meaning of ‘person’.
Hobbes insists that this meaning pre-dates the Boethian definition
adopted by the fathers of the church in their reading of the Trinity,
and is to be found in Latin authors who are skilful in their language
use, such as Cicero, who in the De Oratore wrote: ‘Unus sustineo tres

37
Hobbes, Lat. Lev. (OL III, p. 125).
38
In the Latin Leviathan, a natural person is referred to as a ‘persona propria, sive
naturalis’. Ibid., p. 123; see also Hobbes 1996, p. 267.
 representation in theology 221

personas, mei, adversarii, et iudicis.’39 Hobbes takes Cicero to be using

‘person’ in the right and common sense of the word, that of someone
acting on his own behalf, or on behalf of another, on his own author-
ity, or on the authority of another. It is in this same sense that Hobbes
insists the persons of the Trinity ought to be taken.
This argument is made with clear polemical intent. Hobbes’s point
is that if instead of the Latin ‘person-role’, we were to use the Greek
fathers’ ‘hypostasis’ (a synonym of substance) in our conceptualisation
of the three divine persons, we would no longer end up with three
persons, but rather with three divine substances or three numerically
distinct gods.40 It is therefore into tritheism that Hobbes accuses Car-
dinal Bellarmine and many other doctors of the church of relapsing
when they, following the Boethian orthodoxy, define ‘person’ as a first,
single or intelligent substance, and rush to apply the concept to the
persons in God.41 Not only would the promotion of this view be contra
fidem, but it would also leave us with two sovereigns in excess, a disas-
trous result for a political thinker who believes that a man can obey
only one master at a time. The solution to the mystery of the Trinity
is hence, for Hobbes, to take the three persons of the Trinity for what
they effectively are: three representative faces, figures or images of the
hypostasis of God, who constitutes the foundation (or suppositum) of
the three persons’ mutual relations.42
But what does Hobbes mean when he speaks of Jesus and the Holy
Spirit as representative faces or images of the hypostasis of God? After

39
Hobbes, Lat. Lev. (OL III, p. 533).
40
‘Hypostasis’ is a Greek philosophical term that corresponds to substantia, both
deriving from words meaning ‘under’ (hypo and sub) and ‘standing’ (the accidents or
qualities of a thing). The Greek word hypostasis was not, however, used by Aristotle,
but only later coined by the early Greek Christians to explain the doctrine of the
Trinity: God as having three hypostases, namely Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. For
Latin-speaking Christians, however, to render hypostases as substances made it seem,
in effect, as though there were three gods rather than one.
41
Hobbes, App. (OL III, pp. 533–4).
42
Ibid, pp. 534 and 529. In articulating these relationships, Hobbes approaches the
meaning of ‘hypostasis’ by resorting to the example of a group of three relatives—
father, son and grandson. On the son, who is but one real being, are imposed two
different names in virtue of the diversity of relations in which he is engaged (i.e., he
is, at the same time, son of the grandfather and father of the grandson). The son is
thus the suppositum of the two denominations, that is, the hypostasis or foundation
of the relation involving the three terms. With his analysis of this family triad Hobbes
aims to capture something of the relational nature of God, though the denominations
(father and son) refer in the example not to two really distinct entities in relation, but
rather to two roles performed by one and the same being (the son). See ibid., p. 529.
222 chapter four

distinguishing between an artificial face (i.e., a mask) and a representa-

tive face (i.e., a representative), Hobbes specifically applies the latter
notion to the persons of the Trinity, who are therefore equated with
representatives of speech and action, acting for themselves or another.
This reading of the Trinitarian persons is consistent with Hobbes’s
own use of the term ‘image’, as we have seen in Chapter 1 above. For if
Hobbes maintains that images can be resemblances, he adds they can
also be ‘any Representation of one thing by another’, in which sense
‘an earthly Soveraign may be called the Image of God’ or ‘an inferiour
Magistrate the Image of an earthly Soveraign’.43 But if Jesus and Holy
Spirit are to be taken for images, in the sense of inferior ‘magistrates’,
representing God’s person, the co-equality of the three divine persons
is again open to question.
Having expurgated the word ‘hypostasis’ from the correct reading
of the three divine persons, Hobbes sets forth a new, and supposedly
more exact, phrasing of the Trinity:
God, in his own person, has instituted a church for Himself through the
ministry of Moses, has redeemed it in the person of the Son, and has
sanctified it in the Person of the Holy Spirit.44
The main advantage Hobbes finds in this paradoxical formulation,
whereby God is said to have acted in his person and yet through the
mediation of Moses, is the clarification of the role of Moses. His prior
error, he acknowledges, had been that of speaking of God as having
acted ‘in the person of Moses’, for thereby he seemed to include Moses
in the Trinity. Instead, he should have said that God spoke and acted
‘by the ministry of Moses’—ministry being here an officium—to make
it clear Moses was not one of the divine persons, but a purely human
representative, both connected and obliged to his principal only by
his undertaking.45 But if it is now clear what Hobbes means ‘by the

43
Hobbes 1996, p. 448.
44
Hobbes App. (OL III, p. 564). It should be noted that Hobbes is again quite care-
less with his use of words. For here God is literally said to have created for himself a
church both ‘in his own person’, that is, directly, and through the ministry of Moses,
that is, through the mediation of a representative. Though in his answer to Bramhall
Hobbes tries to clarify the sentence, it seems that in both cases he should have written
not ‘God, in his own person’, but instead, ‘God, the Father, created the world in his
own person, and instituted a Church in Israel, using therein the ministry of Moses’.
45
Hobbes, Ans. Bram. (EW IV, p. 316). As we have seen in Chapter 3 above, Hobbes
defines a ‘public minister’ as he who ‘is employed in any affaires, with Authority to
represent in that employment, the Person of the Commonwealth’. Similarly, an ‘eccle-
 representation in theology 223

ministry of ’, it is not so apparent how we should take the phrase ‘in

the person of ’. According to the OED, the most common seventeenth-
century signification of the phrase ‘in the person of ’, and one which
appears often in the English Leviathan, is that of ‘in the character of ’
or ‘as representing’, but it could equally be used as ‘(as) personally
represented by’.46 So Hobbes could either be speaking of the persons of
the Trinity as ‘characters’, ‘roles’ or ‘offices’ borne by God himself as he
acted on earth (after all, when the represented and the representative
are the same God, it makes little sense to speak of any representation
other than self-representation in the performance of different roles);
or, alternatively, he could be speaking of the persons of the Trinity as
authorised representatives of God, who, however, differ from Moses in
that they share God’s divine nature.
The need to stress that in the Trinity we have three persons of one
and the same substance lies behind Hobbes’s next move. In the appen-
dix to the Latin Leviathan we have seen him starkly contrasting the
meaning of ‘person’ (i.e., face or external appearance) with that of
‘hypostasis’ (i.e., first, individual or intelligent substance) to avoid end-
ing up with three divine substances—i.e., three gods. In his Answer to
Bramhall (1682) Hobbes cleverly introduces what appears to be a new
definition of person that incorporates the Boethian definition to reach
the same outcome. Interpreters have been puzzled over Hobbes’s deci-
sion to adopt such a definition, as they believe it undermines his case.47
I cannot myself see that their criticisms are justified. For despite the
seeming shift to an orthodox rendering of ‘person’, Hobbes’s concep-
tion of ‘person’ remains unchanged. A person, Hobbes writes in answer
to Bramhall, ‘signifies an intelligent substance, that acteth any thing in
his own or another’s name, or by his own or another’s authority’.48

siastical minister’ or minister of the church is he who ‘voluntarily doth the businesse
of another man; and differeth from a Servant onely in this, that Servants are obliged by
their condition, to what is commanded them; whereas Ministers are obliged onely by
their undertaking, and bound therefore to no more than that they have undertaken’.
Hobbes 1996, pp. 166 and 367.
46
‘In the person of’ seems to have been a common phrase in the seventeenth
century meaning that if a man is duly entitled to act on behalf of another he can be
said to act in the person of that other. Still, according to the OED, ‘in the person of ’
was also used as ‘(as) personally represented by’ during at least the last quarter of that
century. See, however, Hobbes using ‘in the person of’ as ‘representing’ in Hobbes
1996, p. 156.
47
See, for instance, Lessay 1992, pp. 181–2.
48
Hobbes, Ans. Bram. (EW IV, p. 310).
224 chapter four

Though he starts with the Boethian conception of person, Hobbes does

not give in to it. The person of his definition is still not the intelligent
substance tout court, but rather the individual as a player of parts or
as an authorised impersonator of his own and/or another’s person. To
demonstrate the validity of this revised definition of ‘person’, Hobbes
applies it to Cicero’s famous presentation of the technique for prepar-
ing a legal case, cited above. From the stresses put in Hobbes’s transla-
tion, it is clear that he is preparing the ground for his final word on the
mystery of the Trinity.49 That becomes even clearer in the explanation
that follows:
Cicero was here the substance intelligent, one man; and because he
pleaded for himself, he calls himself his own person: and again, because
he pleaded for his adversary, he says, he sustained the person of his
adversary: and lastly, because he himself gave the sentence, he says, he
sustained the person of the judge.50
Here Cicero is the underlying individual intelligent substance, the man
who becomes three different persons as he plays three distinct roles:
his own and both the adversary’s and the judge’s. It is thus true to say
that Cicero, no less than the God of Hobbes’s Trinity, is one substance,
yet three different persons, which he plays consecutively. But how con-
vincing his Hobbes’s analogy?
William Lucy, for one, thought that Hobbes’s attempt to model the
Trinity after the Ciceronian impersonations was unacceptable. Lucy
stressed that Cicero said sustineo (I bear), not sum (I am), which
meant that Cicero’s fictionalised impersonations were no adequate
mould for the triune God, who not only bears but effectively is three
divine persons.51 Indeed, it is not clear how Hobbes’s Trinity is to be
taken when analogised with Cicero’s private theatre. If we were to
replace the Cicero of the quoted passage with God, the persons of the
Trinity would no longer emerge as representatives of God, but rather
as God himself who becomes the three Trinitarian persons as he acts
for himself and consecutively sustains the persons of Jesus and the
Holy Spirit. In what sense could God then be said to carry the three
persons of the Trinity? The most straightforward reading would be to

49
Ibid., pp. 310–11.
50
Ibid., p. 311.
51
See Lucy 1996, especially pp. 272, 275, 280 and 284. Lucy’s comments refer to
Hobbes’s use of the Ciceronian definition of ‘person’ in chapter 16 of the English Levi-
athan, but they apply equally well to Hobbes’s later uses of the Ciceronian analogy.
 representation in theology 225

take Hobbes’s God for a God-actor, and the three divine persons as
three different roles God himself acted on earth, under different masks
and at different times, in his plan of salvation. Each of the divine per-
sons would then be but God, in so far as he manifested himself ad
extra under different personalities.52 However, I believe that Hobbes
unwittingly undermines this reading of the Trinity in insisting that
Cicero takes ‘person’ in the same sense as it was then used ‘in English
vulgarly, calling him that acteth by his own authority, his own per-
son, and him that acteth by the authority of another, the person of
that other’.53 If a transfer of authority were indeed involved in God’s
different personations, the Ciceronian trinity would translate into a
conceptualisation of God as the actor who received the right to per-
form certain actions from his Son and the Holy Spirit. These, in turn,
would emanate as natural persons, the outcome Hobbes so vigorously
wanted to prevent, as it seemingly divides the heavenly sovereign into
three mixed powers.
Would there, then, be any reading of the Trinity by which Hobbes
could at once preserve the notion of authority and avoid treating the
persons of the Trinity as substances? There seems indeed to be one
kind of representation in which all these goals could be achieved: the
representation of fictitious persons by artificial persons. If we conceive
of God’s Trinity as a case of fictitious personality, God’s designated
earthly actors (Moses, Jesus and the apostles) appear as artificial per-
sons playing the roles or speaking the lines drawn up by God himself,
the supreme author, in order to allow for the representation of differ-
ent characters (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) over which God has the
kind of authority that emanates from authorship. In this case, God no
longer appears as the actor who puts on the Trinitarian masks, but
rather as he who affixes them to the personalities in need of being rep-
resented as well as to the human actors who are to do the representing.
This understanding of the Trinity would explain the parallel Hobbes

52
In the Latin Leviathan Hobbes explicitly interprets the judge and the adversary
in Cicero’s quotation as simply parts acted by Cicero. See Hobbes, Lat. Lev. (OL III,
p. 123). The fathers of the church criticised the application of the concept of persona
(understood as a mask) to the analysis of the Trinity precisely because they thought
that if a deity were to assume three alternative roles, he would be forced to abandon
two of them whilst performing the third. Such a God-actor would then be not unlike
Hobbes’s ‘histrio’, who ‘potest diversas personas diversis temporibus induere’, and his
Trinity would consequently not be eternal. Hobbes, De H. (OL II, p. 130).
53
Hobbes, Ans. Bram. (EW IV, pp. 310 and 311).
226 chapter four

establishes between the pagan idols and the Trinitarian God. Both the
false gods and the true God seem to exist for us, and to acquire their
place in the world we inhabit, mainly by virtue of the credit placed
in their earthly representatives qua representatives with authority to
represent God in particular employments.
But there is more to this analogy than first meets the eye. Across
his writings, but particularly in Leviathan, Hobbes shows an admira-
tion for the instrumental value of the civil religions of the gentiles in
bringing about obedience.54 He evinces the state-centred organisation
of ancient religions, whereby the gentile gods, purely imaginary crea-
tures, were given earthly influence by being personated at the com-
mand of the state, to serve the state’s purposes. Nowhere is the parallel
between the personation of the pagan gods and that of the Christian
God made more explicit than in chapter 15 of De Homine. Here we
find Hobbes’s original account of the Trinity replaced with the estab-
lishment of a long line of human representatives of God, from Moses
and Christ, as bearers of the ‘person of God reigning’, to the Christian
sovereigns and supreme governors of the church in their dominions.55
Christian kings, Hobbes tells us, as long as they acknowledge God
as ruler, represent God to their subjects. It is, he admits, normally
required ‘that the will of Him that is represented be the author of the
actions performed by those who represent Him’.56 Yet God is now
unapproachable, and with the close of the age of prophets his will is
no longer made known to men through their direct mediation. And
if God is no longer author, Hobbes boldly explains, ‘it needs be that
God’s person’, no less than that of the ancient idol, ‘be created by the
will of the state’.57 If God continues to have a presence in the world of
men, it is because the state appoints officers to act in his name, all of
whom derive their authority from the Christian sovereign, the person
with the monopoly on God’s earthly personation. As the immortal
God fell back into himself, the mortal god took absolute control over
God’s representation in speech and action. In the age of Scripture, God
must speak to man exclusively through the voice of the Leviathan.

54
Hobbes 1996, pp. 79–82.
55
Hobbes, De H. (OL II, p. 131).
56
Ibid., p. 171.
57
Ibid.
 representation in theology 227

The Trinity as Political Analogy

When he stated that all those who venture to reason of God’s ‘Divine
and incomprehensible Nature’ condemn themselves to ‘fall from
one Inconvenience into another, without end, and without num-
ber’, Hobbes pointed to his own predicament.58 And yet, as the many
windings of his argument show, he relentlessly insisted on taking
this enterprise upon himself, even in the face of the English Houses
of Commons’ threat of a charge of atheism.59 This was not because
of his deference to post-Nicene orthodox Trinitarian theology. His
contempt for the Trinitarian orthodoxy is apparent, as he attributes
its formation to useless speculation between power-hungry clerics.60
He stresses Constantine’s great indifference to the precise articles
of faith the Council of Nicaea agreed upon, while also praising the
emperor for his instrumental understanding of religion, in particular
his conviction that theology must submit to the dictates of statecraft,
as doctrinal conflict breeds political conflict. It was not the truth of
the Trinitarian doctrine, Hobbes notes approvingly, that worried Con-
stantine, but the uniformity of doctrine, on which the peace of his
people depended.61 Nor does Hobbes insist on developing his views
on the Trinity because he thought belief in the Trinity essential to
salvation.62 No more than belief in Jesus as the Christ is necessary to

58
Hobbes 1996, p. 467.
59
This threat is clear from an entry in the Journal of the Commons for Wednesday
17 October 1666, where a work by ‘Mr Hobbes called “The Leviathan”’ is one of the
two main books mentioned as tending ‘to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness’.
60
See Hobbes, Hist. Narr. (EW IV, pp. 392–402). This undermines Martinich’s
tendency to take Hobbes at his word when Hobbes says he accepts these councils’
doctrines: Martinich takes Hobbes for a sincere Trinitarian. Martinich 1992. Because
the doctrines of the first four church councils had been endorsed by Elizabeth’s High
Commission on Religion, Hobbes was obliged to their external observance qua sub-
ject, but his disdain for the Nicene Creed is clear from his placing of the doctrine of
the Trinity amongst the typical cases of ‘madness’ or ‘insignificant speech’ (Hobbes
1996, pp. 58–9), as well as from his ‘Narration Concerning Heresy’ and his Historia
ecclesiastica. His rather free thinking about the Trinity in Leviathan might have been
encouraged by the looser regime in 1651.
61
Hobbes, Hist. Narr. (EW IV, p. 393). Where Constantine failed was in giving too
much power to the assembled bishops to determine the interpretation of Scripture.
62
Hobbes advocates a minimal faith, hinging upon the belief in Jesus as the Christ,
‘that is, the King of the Jews, promised in the Old Testament’, as being sufficient, when
combined with obedience to the laws of nature, to secure eternal life. See, for instance,
Hobbes 1996, p. 299.
228 chapter four

that end, and Hobbes’s own readings of the Trinity are permeated by
a monarchian emphasis on the unity of God in himself whose Uni-
tarian implications are, essentially, anti-Trinitarian. Nor is Hobbes’s
obstinate defence of his doctrine of the Trinity explained by his being
a wholehearted reformed theologian, avidly deleting any extraneous
Greek philosophic influence from Christian theology, for the sake of
the principle of sola Scriptura.63 Hobbes’s reading of the Trinity is no
inward-looking theological exercise; rather it is heavily pregnant with
political implications, namely the entire establishment, on the basis of
Scripture, of a unified political and religious sovereignty.
This need for unified sovereignty does not, of course, contradict but
rather confirms the conclusions independently arrived at in parts I
and II of Leviathan. This should not come as a surprise. As Hobbes
stresses, natural theology may at best arrive at the knowledge that God
exists; but God’s nature is not within the scope of man’s natural pow-
ers. Hence, anything we may say about God’s (triune) nature must
stem from God’s revelation, as gathered from a historically contingent
human artefact, such as Scripture. However, any evidence given in
Scripture is not self-explanatory. It requires interpretation, which must
follow principles that cannot be derived from the given evidence itself,
but rather from ‘our naturall Reason’.64 This means that in interpreting
God’s word (for instance, regarding his triune nature), we must reject
anything contrary to the conclusions deduced from human nature and
human reason as ‘unskilfull Interpretation, or erroneous Ratiocina-
tion’.65 Thus scriptural interpretation cannot but confirm that unified
sovereignty—which reserves the right of the sovereign to be the sole
judge of doctrine in civil and ecclesiastical matters—is necessary to
peace. But scriptural interpretation also completes what reason alone
established, and significantly reinforces its persuasion of the faithful,
by showing that Christian sovereigns receive their right to interpret
Scripture and determine religious doctrine from Scripture itself, and

63
The view of Hobbes as a good reformed theologian is particularly emphasised
in Martinich 1992.
64
Hobbes 1996, p. 255. On the overlap between Hobbes’s political theory and his
exegesis of Scripture as a consequence of his theological position, in particular his
severance of any connection between the nature of created things and the nature of
God, see Malcolm 2002, especially p. 40.
65
Hobbes 1996, p. 256.
 representation in theology 229

that by God’s will the Christian commonwealth cannot exist but as

presently represented in the Leviathan.66
Hobbes’s interpretation of the Trinity is integral to this conclu-
sion. We have seen that Moses takes centre stage as God the Father’s
first human impersonator. This is for two reasons. Besides being the
mediator, or representative figure, par excellence—the one who rep-
resented all Israelites to God, and God back to them—Moses stands
for the foundation of unified sovereignty, both political and religious,
and thus sets the terms of all future sovereign authority, with its twin
right to command obedience in civil affairs and determine what is, and
what is not, God’s word. In Hobbes’s words, ‘whosoever in a Chris-
tian Commonwealth holdeth the place of Moses’ represents God to
the people, and ‘is the sole Messenger of God, and Interpreter of his
Commandments’.67 Importantly, in Hobbes’s account, Moses is a tem-
poral sovereign, whose source of authority is the Israelites’ consent to
his civil sovereignty and their promise to obey him (not his access to
supernatural revelation), and on whom alone rests the power to make
God’s word law. Moses’ rule is, however, tied up with God’s sover-
eignty, in so far as Moses governs the Israelites next under God, in
God’s name, as the vice-regent of the Kingdom of God, which Hobbes
takes to be a literal civil kingdom on earth, resting on a covenant.68
Hobbes’s Kingdom of God was therefore a kingdom in the past,
mediated by civil sovereigns (Abraham, Moses, the high priests), who
governed in both policy and religion, as Christian sovereigns must do
in the future, holding both civil and ecclesiastical powers. But God’s
kingdom is also, in Hobbes’s interpretation, a kingdom that ceased to
exist after Christ’s resurrection, and will not be restored until Christ’s
second coming, at an unknown time in the future, when Christ will be
king, as a vice-regent subordinate to his Father, just as Moses was in
the past. This striking political identity, or similarity in office, between
Christ, in his human nature, and Moses underpins many of Hobbes’s
juxtapositions of Christ and Moses as Trinitarian figures, or concrete

66
This point is made in Mitchell 1991, p. 693. Although Mitchell’s analysis is
enlightening at points, I disagree with his wider attempt to question the autonomy of
arguments developed in parts I and II of Leviathan.
67
Hobbes 1996, p. 326.
68
See ibid., p. 280.
230 chapter four

historical representatives carrying out, at different times, a similar

double role of teaching and reigning in God’s plan of salvation.69
Although Hobbes intends to draw a line of continuity between
human representatives of God, from Moses and Christ as bearers of
the person of God reigning to Christian sovereigns and supreme gov-
ernors of the church in their own dominions, there is an indelible
difference between the kingdom established by God and the Christian
commonwealth represented in Hobbes’s Leviathan. In the past, God
spoke in person to his people through the authority of his lieutenants,
who were therefore sovereign prophets. But since Christ’s first appear-
ance on earth this is no longer the case, and will not be so, according
to Hobbes, until the restoration of God’s kingdom by Christ at the end
of history. In the interim, God is literally absent from human history,
and yet, as Hobbes stresses, still very much present representatively
through those Christian sovereigns who are ‘the onely Persons, whom
Christians now hear speak from God’, by virtue of their right to inter-
pret Scripture, which re-presents that of Moses.70 Between the dawn
and new rise of the Kingdom of God, God’s will is not heard on earth
except through the God-like figure of the Leviathan.
This withdrawal of the Kingdom of God, which Hobbes portrays
as a civil rather than spiritual reality, has another important political
consequence: it undercuts any claim by the church to represent the
Kingdom of God, or to be God’s kingdom on earth in the present. Any
claim by the church to independent authority is further undermined
by Hobbes’s portrayal of the second and third persons of the Trinity,
Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Let us start with Jesus, who, in God’s repre-
sentation, came to earth ‘to induce all Nations into the Kingdome of
his Father’.71 Whereas, in Hobbes’s reading, Moses was civil sovereign

69
See ibid., pp. 335–8. Hobbes’s treatment of Christ, in particular his likening of
Christ to Moses, has bred accusations of Hobbes’s denying the divinity of Christ. See,
for instance, Lessay 2004 and 2007. Although it is true that Hobbes stresses Jesus’s
status as vice-regent, and defines the concept of Messiah as a representative, i.e., ‘the
Anointed Priest and the Soveraign Prophet of God’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 334), it should
be noted that if Hobbes assimilates Christ as man to Moses, for they perform similar
offices, he also asserts the divinity of Christ on various occasions. See, for instance,
Hobbes 1996, pp. 340 and 423, where he refers to the Son as ‘God and Man’; p. 295,
where Christ is distinguished from Moses, as the Godhead dwelt bodily only in the
former; and p. 335, where Hobbes states that after his resurrection, Christ ‘shall be
King, no onely as God, in which sense he is King already’.
70
Hobbes 1996, p. 405.
71
Ibid., p. 114.
 representation in theology 231

of Israel and enjoyed coercive powers, Jesus was deprived of these in

his lifetime, for ‘whilest hee was on Earth, [he] had no Kingdom in this
world’, and, what is more, nothing that he did or taught ‘tendeth to
the diminution of the Civill Right of the Jewes, or of Caesar’.72 On the
contrary, he urged men to obey whosoever ‘sate in Moses seat’, civil
sovereigns whose spiritual sovereignty Christianity thus left intact.73
As Hobbes explains, Christ’s power consisted of only teaching and
persuasion, which had neither status of law, nor anything to do with
dominion or with any powers to command, judge and punish. And
this was the only power he could have left to the apostles, the found-
ers of the church, which cannot therefore lay a claim to the authority
of Christ’s eternal kingdom, or require obedience in Christ’s name.74
As such, before the Scriptures were made law by the civil sovereigns
of Christian commonwealths, who finally give the faithful a unity of
voice, men lived in a potentially dangerous situation where, the apos-
tles lacking authority, every man was judge of the teachings of the
apostles, which he only could make ‘a Law, or Canon to himself ’.75
On Hobbes’s account of the Trinity, this inner conversion of the faith-
ful was assisted by the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost,
‘speaking and working in the Apostles’, who were inspired by the third
divine person as they carried out their office of preaching and teach-
ing.76 When the apostles transmitted the Holy Spirit to their successors
by the laying on of hands, they were, therefore, imparting to them no
coercive power, but sealing their commission to preach Christ and
teach his doctrine.77 The unconvincing nature of Hobbes’s account of
the Holy Spirit qua divine person stems ultimately from how uneasily
it sits with his materialism: as ‘spirit’ the Holy Spirit is at best a natural
body of very fine subtlety; at worst (as Bramhall puts it) ‘a ghost, or
other idol or phantasm of the imagination’.78 And yet this might have

72
Ibid., pp. 334 and 335.
73
Ibid., p. 335.
74
Ibid., chapter 42. Nor did the apostles have, according to Hobbes, a monopoly on
the interpretation of Scripture so that men were obliged to take ‘their Interpretation
for Law’. Ibid., p. 355.
75
Ibid., p. 359.
76
Ibid., p. 114.
77
For ‘spirit’, as in the Holy Spirit, must mean ‘either properly a reall substance, or
Metaphorically, some extraordinary ability or affection of the Mind, or of the Body’.
Ibid., p. 273.
78
Bramhall as quoted in Hobbes, Ans. Bram. (EW IV, pp. 333–5). For Hobbes’s
peculiar understanding of the Holy Spirit, see Hobbes 1996, pp. 273, 279, 338, 364,
232 chapter four

been just what was needed, for to empty the Holy Ghost of any deeper
significance as a divine person is to undermine any authority it might
have otherwise left to the church ‘in which the Holy Ghost resideth’.79
From first to second and second to third person of Hobbes’s Trin-
ity the way is cleared for the sovereign’s religious and ecclesiastical
monopoly, and the total absorption of the church by the Leviathan,
‘for they that are the Representants of a Christian People, are the
Representants of the Church: for a Church, and a Common-wealth of
Christian people, are the same thing’.80
Hobbes also uses the Trinitarian analogy in more metaphorical
ways, to support the all-important unity of the body politic, and its
dependence on undivided sovereignty. The use of the Trinitarian God
as a model for civil government was not unheard of. The metaphysical
poet John Donne, whom I have quoted in the epigraph to this chapter,
stated that God being a plurality, he surely would admit of a plural
state, or ‘a monarchy composed of monarchies’.81 Similarly, before the
close of Parliament as long ago as 1401, the Speaker had established
a comparison between the body politic and the Trinity: kings, lords
and commons, he proclaimed, jointly formed a trinity in unity and
a unity in trinity.82 Hobbes, in his turn, tried to invalidate this type
of argument by showing that the analogy is ill-founded. The Trinity
and mixed monarchy represent, for Hobbes, not mirror-images, but
opposites. In ‘the Kingdom of God, there may be three Persons inde-
pendent, without breach of unity in God that Reigneth’, but where
men reign ‘it cannot be so’.83 This is because the three divine per-
sons are one and the same substance, and their unity is both natural
and real. But the unity of the commonwealth is entirely artificial: it is
entirely dependent on the unity of the representative that unites the
multitude in one person. Therefore, ‘if the King bear the person of the
People, and another Assembly bear also the person of the People, they
are not one Person, nor one Sovereign, but three Persons and three

435 and 443. This makes it hard to accept the vital and indeed radically subversive role
James Martel ascribes to the Holy Spirit in his interpretation of Hobbes; see Martel
2007, ch. 6.
79
Hobbes 1996, p. 435.
80
Ibid., p. 378
81
Donne 1959, pp. 30–1.
82
Rot. Parl., III, 459, para. 32, as quoted in Kantorowicz 1997, p. 227.
83
Hobbes 1996, p. 228.
 representation in theology 233

Sovereigns’, competing amongst themselves.84 Mixed government is

thus no government, but the division of the commonwealth into three
warring factions. Yet, if the Trinity cannot, except by misconception,
be analogised with mixed government, it can still be a useful tool to
illustrate how unity and diversity may combine in Hobbes’s indivisible
commonwealth. His readings of the Trinity repeatedly put an empha-
sis on God’s monarchy in God’s self, while reducing the divine persons
to different aspects, or roles, played by human impersonators. This
Unitarian God is the perfect counterpart to Hobbes’s unitarian civil
sovereign, who may be represented by subordinate ministers without
compromising his unity. And if in the Trinity we have one substance,
and three only nominally distinguished persons, we also find in the
commonwealth one substance or matter, the multitude, out of which
three nominally distinguished persons originate—the person of the
sovereign, the person of the people and the person of the state; per-
sons amongst whom a qualified identity holds, as Hobbes assumes a
performative coincidence between these persons within the medium
of representation.85 For if the sovereign is the state as regards its capac-
ity to will and act, so when we speak of the people as actor, ‘we mean
a commonwealth which is willing, commanding, and acting through
the will of one man’.86 It would be very hard to find a more politically
armoured unity than this unity in trinity and trinity in unity.

84
Ibid., p. 228.
85
I thank Kinch Hoekstra for drawing my attention to this point.
86
Hobbes 1998, p. 77.
 CONCLUSION

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you

know to be a fiction, there being nothing other. The
exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that
you believe it willingly.
Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
One of the two rival theories of representation we have inherited in the
Western tradition—representation as mimesis as opposed to represen-
tation as poiesis—asserts that representation is tied up to something
pre-existing, something that is already objectively ‘out there’ in the
world. On this view, authority is vested in the represented, which is
granted not only priority, but also superiority over its representation,
like an original over its copy. A copy is a derived or secondary object:
nothing but an image endowed with resemblance. And representation
is understood as a one-way relation, running from the represented to
the representation, which is to be judged in terms of its visual part-to-
part correspondence to what it represents. Transposing these ideas to
the world of politics, we find a conception of political representation
with which Hobbes would have been familiar. This conception saw ‘the
people’ as something emerging independently: that is, as a purposive
collective entity that was immediately present to itself, and naturally
capable of holding ultimate decision-making authority. Conceived as
self-standing, the sovereign people was taken to be prior, as well as
superior, to its representation, which needed to be in some way like
what was being represented, if the people was to be fully restored to
presence. In other words, the main features of the macrocosmic politi-
cal community had to be reflected in the microcosmic community of
the representative body, whose role it was to image the people and act
as the subordinate agent of its will.
Hobbes was convinced that this view rested on a misunderstand-
ing of the role of representation in the arts as well as in politics. He
concurred that some element of resemblance was often involved in
the process of representation. For example, representational art asks
its beholders to juxtapose their perceptions with their memories in
order to ‘see’ resemblances, and recognise the realism of the pictures.
236 conclusion

But as Hobbes is quick to note, the cooperation of the beholder in the

production of the picture’s representational effect is required because
of the double role the representation plays within the perceptual act.
The perceived realism of the picture is not natural, or a matter of real
resemblance between image and subject. It is rather the product of
human fabrication, an artefact of current pictorial practice, resting on
an actual difference between the depicted subject and its representa-
tion. Only the aesthetic gap between the two makes pictorial creation
and the realism of the picture possible, which means that if the rep-
resentation is seen as its subject it is always both despite and because
of the differences between them. Resemblance may be an aspect of
representation, but for Hobbes it can neither fully explain nor com-
prise it entirely.
Hobbes goes further in his distinction between representation and
resemblance, and stresses that representations need not resemble that
which they represent, even in outward appearance. Everywhere he
looked, Hobbes saw artworks which, despite their substantial represen-
tative claims, lacked direct real-world referents. They wanted any cru-
cial dependence upon real similitude, and were not therefore, strictly
speaking, ‘images’, but false likenesses, testifying to man’s power to
form representations through the imagination by a sort of mental
collage. Yet these simulacra took on their own life force and consti-
tuted objects of worship in their own right, as worshippers showed
little or no regard for the absence of similitude in them. If this were
not enough proof of representation’s deviating successfully from its
purported subjects, Hobbes provides many other examples of images
representing something else by association or mere convention, while
eschewing any similarity with that which they stood for. What these
artefacts showed was that representation could be arbitrary, and things
wholly manufactured from the power of their representation. Mimetic
representation could not account for the whole spectrum of represen-
tational strategies Hobbes found at work in the visual arts. Represen-
tation in the arts had a strong kinship with representation in politics
in that it too played a constitutive role and enjoyed a fair degree of
Hobbesian sovereignty.
Hobbes sees a power in representation that goes far beyond a mere
mimetic function. Representation is no pale imitation of a flesh-and-
blood original. On the contrary, it harbours a distinctive generative
capacity, the power to convert a weak force into a powerful one. This
is what happens whenever an insignificant stone is made to stand in
 conclusion 237

for a god or when multiple small pictures morph into a master-image,

which represents them all as one expanded figure, returning meaning
back to their original multiplicity; or, indeed, when the wayward mul-
titude is converted through representation into an impressive unity,
capable of acting like its constituents’ protective agency. From arts to
politics, Hobbes’s writings are permeated with a conception of repre-
sentation as a transformative force, propelled by man’s imagination
to create new artefacts, which are in turn capable of enlarging and
refashioning man’s world. But because of its power, representation is
also potentially subversive; there is always the possibility that repre-
sentation will devolve into uncontrolled power, and it therefore needs
to be governed closely by the sovereign.
In aesthetics and politics alike, it is creativity that marks out rep-
resentation as a dynamic force. Hobbes takes representation to be
responsible for ingenious artworks; and the commonwealth is, for
him, the ultimate paradigm of the artwork capable of emulating God’s
work of creation. Representation generates things. It shapes them into
being. It creates new realities, equalling, if not excelling, those set up
by nature. This poietic power, this world-building capacity, which
Hobbes ascribes to representation, disturbs the order of priority tra-
ditionally assumed by mimetic theories of representation. That the
representation is always necessarily secondary to the represented is a
postulation that Hobbes throws into question. If representations per-
form an essential role in calling what they represent into being, then
the representation must be prior. And as Hobbes inverts the scheme
of dependence from the represented to the representation, he effects a
major reversal of the role of representation in politics. Representation
is no longer an appendage, something derivative of an external politi-
cal reality, whose independent presence it simply iterates. What makes
Hobbes distinctively modern is his conception of representation as a
freestanding element in the construction of political reality itself. For
Hobbes, there can be no politics, no organised society and no state
outside representation.
This reversal of the representative relationship is accompanied by
another structural change of great importance. When Hobbes analyses
the nature of representation, he sees it less as a fixed product than as
a complex interactive process involving not just the creators and/or
manipulators of representations, and their intentions, but also, and
critically, their recipients, in a whole series of acts of interpretation,
meaning-making and re-creation. To Hobbes, representation cannot
238 conclusion

simply be equated with an object or action endowed with certain char-

acteristics. For while we often say that, for instance, a painting, or
an idol, represents something, Hobbes stresses that it can serve this
representational function only in the presence of a beholder, who
approaches the painting, or the idol, with certain hidden assumptions,
determining much of what he sees in the painting itself. Hobbes is
clear that just as it would be wrong to assume that the representation
plays a merely passive role in the perceptual act, so it would be wrong
to ignore the performative quality of all seeing. Representation is never
a one-way relation. It is never solely about how things are represented.
At least as important, if not more, is how they are seen. Representation
must therefore be controlled on the level of perception as well as pre-
sentation if sufficient superintendence is to be retained over the mean-
ing of the representative relationship. Hence Hobbes’s reminder that
one of the greatest battles of the representative sovereign, especially if
a king, is to persuade his subjects to see themselves in him, and him
as their sole legitimate representative, representation being successful
to the extent that subjects come to incorporate this view as a reflex.
But if for Hobbes the competency of viewers is a determinant factor
in all representational exchanges, it is more so in politics. Representa-
tive politics, more than any other form of politics, openly professes its
artificiality, and depends critically on the cooperation of subjects—on
their ability to engage in the correct mode of sight—to be credited
with the very power it needs to produce its effects. This means that
without a prior reformation of the eyes, there could be no vindication,
or practical triumph, of Hobbes’s representative state.
But before the foundations can be laid for this new building, the
ground must be cleared. With its reliance on representation as its
foundational concept, Hobbes’s new science of politics is conditional
on being able to replace what he deems to be the reigning ‘pathologi-
cal’ mode of sight with a ‘rehabilitated’ one. Hobbes, as we have seen,
holds that the pathological way of seeing is lost in mimetic illusion
and literal-mindedness. When contrasted with Hobbes’s own use, the
latter’s use of the mirror-metaphor as a metaphor of vision offers a
clear indicator of their different brands of representational theories.
For whereas in the pathological way of seeing the mirror is taken
as an emblem of visual images reflecting the way reality actually is,
in Hobbes, the idea of the mirror is taken as proof that image and
reality are in effect different things, and must remain distinguished.
Because it fails to hold this distinction, the pathological way of see-
 conclusion 239

ing loses itself in identity, and takes all appearance, all semblance of
being, for a real existence. In contrast, Hobbes’s theory of perceptual
representation insists that to appear is not to be, and appearances are
not things real or existing in the world outside, but outward motion
as it appears to us. In the pathological view’s conflation of seeming
and being Hobbes detects the source of the superstitious belief in two
parallel worlds, one visible, the other invisible; one material, the other
immaterial. Deluded duplex vision results in belief in a duplex reality,
which feeds two separate powers, the civil and the ecclesiastical, each
competing for the allegiance of subjects, to the great advantage of the
latter, as man’s fear of the other-worldly is always greater. Hobbes is
convinced that this is a fear intentionally enhanced by the manipula-
tion of artificial representations, pretending to embody supernatural
presences, and to possess extraordinary powers. In these images, rep-
resentation no longer operates by dint of mere mimesis: i.e., by copy-
ing its objects. Instead it claims to replace the representation with the
represented, as what is represented is now declared to be present in
the representation itself. Whether this is the Virgin Mary inhabiting
her icon, Christ substantially present within the bread and wine of the
Eucharist, or the English people personally present in Parliament, as
the English theory of representative presence claimed, the pathologi-
cal way of seeing is woven together with a view of representation in
which the represented is believed to be literally, bodily or substantially
present in its image’s material form. Literal-mindedness in reading
representations, both mental and external, leads to civically crippling
phantasmagorical confusion.
A new way of seeing, for a new representative relation: these are the
twin axes upon which Hobbes’s political project turns. In both the arts
and in politics, we have seen him advocating forms of representation
which openly avowed their own artificiality, without ceding their self-
construction as convincing objects of representational illusion. This
distinctive form of representation which Hobbes holds up contrasts
with the type of representation from which he believes the founders of
the gentile commonwealths derived obedience, and the Roman church
extracts much of its current power.1 As conceptualised by Hobbes,

1
However, and despite Hobbes’s direct criticism of the notion of transubstantiation
(as seen in Chapter 1 above), commentators continue to equate Hobbes’s covenant of
representation with the Catholic notion of real presence. See Picciotto 2009, p. 87.
240 conclusion

representation is a self-conscious artifice, which produces an illusion

of reality without deceiving the viewing public about its manufactured
nature. By contrast, in its pagan and neo-pagan forms, representation
is unreflective, and owes its illusionistic effects to a conjuring decep-
tion, whereby the contrived nature of the representation is deliberately
masked under the pretence of the physical embodiment of the repre-
sented, usually a supernatural agency. In Hobbes’s view, despite its
hold over credulous men, this illusionistic form of representation, with
its attempt to pass itself off as a living embodiment of an other-worldly
force, suffers from a critical vulnerability, which he is determined to
exploit: it can be unmasked. This also means that illusionistic repre-
sentation cannot serve as a basis for an everlasting human construc-
tion of the kind Hobbes’s representative state must be.
For Hobbes, representations must rather present the viewer with a
doubled reality, which requires a simultaneously two-tiered response,
leaving two different points of view suspended in a creative tension.
Probably the clearest example of this comes from the theatre, which,
as we have seen, Hobbes uses as a compelling site for thinking through
representation in politics. In the playhouse, we are simultaneously
confronted with the staging of a fictional character and the real pres-
ence of a performing actor. As the actor embraces the doubleness of
his role, as performer and character, the theatre produces a doubled
experience, at once re-presentational, and implying a departure from
reality, and presentational, and bringing the illusion of reality to life
on stage. This leaves the audience in a complex double engagement
with the illusory stage world and its awareness of the play as a play.
Where the balance between these two aspects of theatre is severely
disrupted, the audience may fall into one of two possible extremes.
Absolute illusion allows the theatre to produce a contagious power of
affect so violent that it can easily lead to collective disorder or even
group psychosis, as the Abdera episode discussed in Chapter 2 aptly
illustrates. But if the actor does not partly disappear into the illusion
of character, and his words and actions sound like things scripted
in a text, we will leave the theatre unaffected by what was always,
in our eyes, a representing actor struggling to fit a represented role.
For Hobbes, representations are at their most successful when they
avoid both extremes and produce doubled experiences, which are
held together in an appropriate balance. Given their doubled reality,
representations require their beholders to experience them as image
and object, as artefact and reality, as contrived and authentic, as re-
 conclusion 241

presentational and presentational. These are not mutually exclusive

viewpoints, between which beholders can, at best, intermittently shift,
but rather viewpoints they must entertain simultaneously, and leave
unresolved, in a mutually productive relationship. The protean flex-
ibility of representation resides precisely in this parallax structure.
Hobbes’s view of how representation ought to function structur-
ally has a direct bearing on his conclusions as to how representational
politics should work. Its parallax structure, in particular, sheds critical
light on a whole series of dual aspects of his theory of political repre-
sentation that may otherwise be viewed as contradictory. In effect, it is
not uncommon to find commentators on Hobbes’s conceptualisation
of representation taking one of the aspects that compose its doubled
reality for the whole reality of it. One example among many is to be
found in the work of Frank Ankersmit. In his book Aesthetic Politics,
Ankersmit distinguishes between what he deems to be two fundamen-
tally contrasting theories of representation, the mimetic and the aes-
thetic, both of which originate in the arts, but spread to politics. The
mimetic theory follows the principle of resemblance, and sets as the
ultimate aim of representation the production of an absolute identity
between represented and representation. In opposition to this, the aes-
thetic theory conceives representation as substitution, and advocates
the need for an aesthetic gap or a difference between represented and
representation, as the locus of artistic creativity. Having established his
two ideal-types, Ankersmit takes Hobbes to be exemplary of the trans-
lation of the mimetic idea of representation into the world of politics,
‘since the representatives have their words and actions owned by those
whom they represent’.2 But there is a problem with this. Hobbes’s
thinking on representation, with its interplay of two contrasting, but
mutually constitutive perspectives, undermines the dichotomy of iden-
tity and difference Ankersmit sets as his point of departure. To appre-
ciate rightly what Hobbes is doing, a capacity for double vision must
be retained.
Ankersmit is right in maintaining that Hobbes’s theory of political
representation reproduces the psychologically oppressive identity logic
of direct democracy. Hobbes’s theory generates an absolute coinci-
dence between people and sovereign, represented and representative,
as for him ‘the people’ does not exist except as united in one sovereign

2
Ankersmit 1996, p. 78, n. 2.
242 conclusion

representative whose will must count as the will of everyone. But this
is also an identity which springs from a radical difference between the
entity which originally gives itself in representation (the multitude)
and the representation they create of themselves (‘the people’). This
constitutive difference, this gap between the two poles of the repre-
sentative relationship, is the space Hobbes carves out for generative
political action and the interpretative work of political leadership. For
the function he ascribes to his sovereign representative is not that of
representing in the sense of imitating what is already there: that is, a
multitude violently divided by passions, interests and boundless rights.
Rather, the sovereign must overcome this divisiveness by representing,
in the sense of constituting or enacting into being, their corporate iden-
tity: that is, the person of all of them considered as one single unity.
In other words, the identity between ruled and ruler does not come,
in Hobbes, at the cost of the separate agency and creative autonomy
of the representative: it presupposes it. The two perspectives of identity
and difference which Ankersmit separates into two distinct theories of
representation live, in Hobbes’s theory, not at odds with one another,
but in a mutually constitutive relationship.
The same can be said of many other seemingly contradictory aspects
of Hobbes’s theory of political representation, which, when properly
considered, re-emerge as entirely interdependent. Hobbes calls upon
us to combine the faculties of judgement and fancy systematically, to
hold together, in the same view, two dissimilar perspectives about our
representational relationship to the state and its sovereign represen-
tative. These two perspectives are, for him, equally indispensable, as
they enact one another and are the only way of making the state come
to be.3 Men will act as rationally committed authors who continually
authorise their sovereign’s actions only from fear of a state that they
believe exists as a virtually irresistible external agency. In other words,
if the state is ever to have the power to act as a state—i.e., a protec-
tive agency, capable of ensuring obedience—it must first compel its
subjects to obey it. Accordingly, Hobbes requires us to see ourselves
both as the autonomous makers of the state and as subjects bound by
a coercion that is also rationally willed. Just so he asks us to consider
ourselves as belonging both inside the state, as its constitutive parts

3
As mentioned in Chapter 1 above, this interdependence was first noticed by Noel
Malcolm. See Malcolm 2002, p. 228.
 conclusion 243

and the fountain of its power; and outside it, as part of a submissive
crowd suspending its disbelief as they stand in awe of a power far
greater than the sum of its parts could have generated. And just so he
makes us regard ourselves both in perfect identity with the state, as
the person embodying our fundamental interest in living together in
peace, whose actions we must therefore own up to as if our own; and
in perfect separation from it, as we find ourselves denied any say, or
any right to question, decisions taken by the sovereign in the name of
‘the Public’, i.e., in our own name. In sum, Hobbes’s theory of politi-
cal representation makes us all stand in front of a mirror where each
of us finds himself doubled in two geminated, but very different parts,
which must be put into action if a state is to be born.
My study has reconstructed the inner logic of Hobbes’s thinking on
representation by bringing to the fore the two perspectives from which
he wants us to see the representative relationship, in both arts and
politics.4 But where it has moved well beyond previous discussions of
representation in Hobbes is in reuniting the different elements which
make up his theory of representation, in its more general sense, into
a coherent whole. As I have shown, these elements correspond to the
different forms of representation Hobbes believed were integral to the
life of a modern state, as they are what enable the state to function suc-
cessfully. In him we find, therefore, a theory of political representation
in which the political is also necessarily aesthetic, is also necessarily
theatrical, is also necessarily juridical, and is theological too.
The tendency in commentators to separate the elements of repre-
sentation in Hobbes is deeply rooted, beginning more than forty years
ago in the work of Hanna Pitkin. Pitkin saw Hobbes approaching
representation from one single angle, which led her to locate his dis-
cussion of the concept in a politico-juridical rather than an aesthetic
framework. Many commentators have since followed in Pitkin’s foot-
steps and have attempted to shed light on the uniqueness of Hobbes’s
conceptualisation of representation by reducing it to one of its dimen-
sions whilst treating the remaining aspects as mere gloss. This has often
resulted in a downplaying of the aesthetic and theatrical representa-
tional forms and practices which, as I have argued, are integral to it,
in favour of its juridical-political contractual armature, founded on the

4
In a development of Noel Malcolm’s earlier insight; see Malcolm 2002, pp. 227–8.
244 conclusion

notion of authorisation.5 In bringing together all four main aspects of

representation in Hobbes, while highlighting their necessary comple-
mentarity and focusing attention on their political significance, I have
established that much is lost in treating his thinking on representation
as a self-contained area of his political theory, instead of viewing it as
part of a much wider pattern of Hobbesian theorising about human
thought and action in relation to images, fictions and roles of differ-
ent kinds. A close-up perspective, as Hobbes rightly warned, can be a
form of blindness.
To determine how important it is to step back in order to see the
full picture of Hobbes’s thinking on representation, one just has to
think of how the power of portrayal emerges from this book as a key
resource of representative politics. When someone claims to represent
‘the people’, as Hobbes’s sovereign does, he must also be able to back
up his claim by offering the people a public representation of them-
selves in which they may find themselves reviewed, in which they may
find themselves retrospectively ‘imaged’. In particular, the people must
be made to visualise the collective entity which embodies their most
fundamental interests in peace, security and commodious living, so
that they may identify with it, and willingly accept unified responsi-
bility for its actions. Hobbes’s new representative state, in which ‘the
people’ was sovereign, but indirectly, required one such identification
figure. Therefore, as I have shown, for Hobbes, the ability to construct
and aptly disseminate a convincing portrait of ‘the people’ is a critical
part of acting out representative power relations. Image-wars between
competing visualisations of ‘the people’ (or of the representative in
which they unite) mark the beginning of the end of a unified com-
monwealth. Hence Hobbes’s concern with the dispersal of the powers
of portrayal, and his determination to keep the authority to define

5
This too can be seen as starting with Pitkin, for whom Hobbes’s dramaturgical
metaphors do not survive a more accurate analysis and do not actually bear out his
conclusions. See Pitkin 1967, especially pp. 23–8. The idea that theatricality in Hobbes
is no more than an instrument of abstract conceptualisation of the authorisation of
power in a purely contractual framework finds an echo in Robert Weimann, according
to whom, in Hobbes, ‘the business of delegation and authorisation’ constitutes ‘the act
of representation itself’ as displaced onto a ‘particular economic and judicial frame
of reified relations and references’. See Weimann 1996, p. 12. More recently, Paul
Kottman has argued that the essential bond between personhood and theatricality is
reduced by Hobbes to a rhetorical figure. Kottman 2008, p. 72.
 conclusion 245

which representations can enter the public space of appearance in the

sovereign’s control.
The making of images is indispensable to the process of political
representation on account of the figurative nature of our belief sys-
tems. As Hobbes explains, sovereign power has its ultimate seat in
popular opinion. Opinion of power is power. And to bring about belief
in the sovereign power by representing it publicly in an image is the
surest way to bring about the power which is represented. ‘Seeing is
believing.’ This is a maxim affirming the power of vision and of the
visual image in the production of belief, but it also encapsulates the
basic principles of Hobbes’s imagistic psychology, which recognises
an intrinsic power in all things we ‘see’, exactly as we are made to see
them. ‘For not truth, but image, maketh passion.’6 The power of the
image to solicit the passions and transform opinion, a lesson Hobbes
draws from classical rhetoric, represents a singular opportunity for
political aesthetics to shape our opinions and re-orient our behaviour,
by reaching deep into our imaginative processes and pre-program-
ming our political beliefs through the visual priming of our minds. In
politics, as in the arts, whenever power becomes salient in an affect-
ing image that enters the imagination lastingly, it solicits feelings of
admiration and terror, fear and wonder, reverence and respect, simul-
taneously. That is, it produces the kind of continued and passionate
disposition to obedience from which Leviathan acquires its power.
Thus Hobbes’s need of a frontispiece: an image, constructing Levia-
than in popular psychology as a perennial, awe-inspiring presence,
ousting all others.
Hobbes’s anamorphic image of Leviathan is a complex image of
double representation, which secures the visual co-existence of the
individual members and the corporate unity subsuming them, in ways
that allow for the delineation of the reciprocal relations between sub-
jects, sovereign and state. Leviathan is shown as having a crowned sov-
ereign as its head. The contours of the sovereign’s figure also form the
outline that prevents the colossus’s parts from disuniting, and falling
back into a warring multitude. Peace can only be found under a single
representational authority. His composite body shows Leviathan to be
the effect of the clustering of many little individuals. Like the scales of
the biblical beast, or the plates of a coat of mail, they come together for

6
Hobbes 1969b, p. 68.
246 conclusion

protection, and lend their common power to the construct. They make
up Leviathan, and are the fountain of the god-like might it exudes.
But all prideful authorship needs to be subdued, if it is not to be re-
ignited at the expense of lasting political order. Therefore Leviathan’s
monstrous projection over a pacified human-modified landscape is a
stark reminder of the foolishness of any attempt to defy its supremacy
by extricating oneself from it, and in this sense works less as an image
of Leviathan than of what is to be imagined and feared about it. Levi-
athan’s public visual representation is indeed no likeness approximat-
ing the outward appearance of a thing we might have seen, or may
come to see, resembling it: it rather captures a wholly artificial being,
which cannot be extracted from its representations, in verbal, visual
and human forms. Leviathan is an artefacted god which the multi-
tude is nevertheless justified in fearing passionately, as this is a fear
conducive to ends posited by reason. Persuasion, Hobbes insists, is at
the heart of the exercise of authority, and in the image-wars engulfing
early modern politics he devised a political icon founded on his sci-
ence of politics which aimed to usurp the place of religious icons, and
superstitious fears, everlastingly.
But if Hobbes sees political representation as inseparable from
image-making, and particularly inextricable from the power of collec-
tive portrayal, I have also shown we would be wrong to equate Levia-
than with a static representational image, sealing up political unity
once and for all.7 For although Hobbes is adamant that visual rep-
resentations act on their beholders and more importantly can cause
them to act in desired ways, they are not agents, at least not in an
ordinary sense. And yet, for Hobbes, representation is co-extensive
with the government’s power to act, which means that to represent
politically consists primarily in decisive action, in authoritative perfor-
mance. This presupposes a power of collective interpretation which is
a power of voice, but also a power of setting goals for collective action
that is exercised in the name of all and binds all to its consequences.
To conceptualise this representational power we have seen Hobbes
turning concurrently to the worlds of stage, law and business, not least
because they were concurrent worlds in important ways.8 In all three
of them men engaged routinely in contractually transacted exchanges,

7
For one such attempt, see Kottman 2008, pp. 77–96.
8
See Agnew 1986.
 conclusion 247

in which they were required to personate themselves or others, while

expertly deploying fictions to expand the limits of human possibility.
This was certainly the case with the lawyer, who was delegated author-
ity to come before the court to represent his client’s best interests,
even if this client was sometimes a non-person, whose consent to his
representation and interests were best determined without the client’s
input. The lawyer’s representation of the client’s intentions and agency
typically required interpretation, the discretion to exercise judgement,
as well as theatricality, a constitutive part of many of the legal fic-
tions which formed the basis of important legal institutions. Contract,
role-playing and fiction were also an integral part of the stage-actor’s
life. The early modern actor made his living from honing man’s natu-
ral capacity for representation and then offering it for consumption
against payment. The actor’s capacity to construct personae deter-
mined his exchange value, as assessed by theatregoers looking to see
actors perform words and actions on stage that stood convincingly for
the words and actions of others. Similarly, Hobbes’s sovereign has his
value determined by how well he sustains the performance of power
in a singularly consequential theatrical production.
Hobbes uses actors in tribunals and theatres to construct politi-
cal representation as performance, dynamically constructing political
unity in the very process of enacting it. And Hobbes’s sovereign is pre-
sented as the artificial person entitled to impersonate all others with a
freedom of constructive interpretation which allows no control, except
that of the role he plays. But when the disunited multitude appoints
a sovereign, he is only given a spare line from which to construct his
political performance: we give you the power, and you keep the peace,
whatever it takes. How the sovereign takes this line and develops it
into a fully fledged political part, producing a collective subject capable
of effecting peace, is his own business, and the very stuff of politi-
cal representation. One thing is certain, however: Hobbes’s sovereign
incurs a failure of representation, which would also be a failure of
state, if he does not put his dramaturgy of power in the service of
the construction of Leviathan as a ‘Mortall God’, whose terrifying
appearance is capable of grounding a public assent as compelling as
the contagious power of affect produced by theatre. Hobbes’s theory of
representation explains why it is rational for us to act from our role as
authors to authorise the sovereign to bear our common power. But in
the absence of the theatrical intensification of that power to the level of
an affecting tragedy, it would fall short of moving us to step into role.
248 conclusion

And the corollary to this is that political stagecraft with no grounding

in the rational principles of politics would also be nothing but smoke
and mirrors. When married to such principles, however, it becomes a
necessary means of their fulfilment.
Hobbes’s is a theatrical state, engaging its subjects in a unique dou-
bled dramaturgical experience. For the subjects always experience the
state both in imagined spaces, as the magnified spectral figure they
watch from a respectful distance; and in everyday spaces, as imper-
sonated by different official men of state whose performative power
is derived from and master-choreographed by the purveyor of all rep-
resentational authority: the sovereign. However, whatever the nature
of their encounter with the state’s person, it must be clear to subjects
that there is an impermeable barrier separating them from what hap-
pens on the political stage, even if the fiction of the state depends
entirely on their endorsing it and assuming unified responsibility. To
put it crudely, they cannot intrude upon the sovereign’s monopoly on
their collective being and expression. In this sense, Hobbes’s theatre
of politics is constructed against the typical early modern dramatic
experience, where it was not always certain who wielded what author-
ity in the playhouse, and the balance of power could shift from players
to audience, whose capacity for counter-performance was omnipres-
ent. In part, Hobbes’s own theatrical version of political representation
stands closer to the future modern theatre of illusion, as it seals off the
audience from the sovereign performance, in order to return them to
their passive role as spectators who give up their judgement to be fully
co-opted by the politics of what is being represented onstage in their
name.9 However, Hobbes’s is only a theatre of illusion of sorts. It seeks
credibility, not faith. It acknowledges its own terms of engagement,
and posits the rational principles justifying its enactment. Moreover,
given the state’s unfolding in multiple parts, some of which are enacted
as perfectly localised shows of power, in the everyday spaces the audi-
ence inhabits, the ‘fourth wall’ separating the stage from the audience
in the modern theatre is, in Hobbes’s theatre of politics, repeatedly
breached, as subjects find themselves spoken, touched, protected, con-
scripted, imprisoned, by state officers addressing them directly with
words of command which they cannot disown. Hobbes’s theatrical

9
As famously put forth by Diderot in the essay ‘De la poesie dramatique’. See
Diderot 1965, p. 231.
 conclusion 249

state achieves its meaning and import in performance, by creating a

range of different relationships with its audience.
It sometimes feels easy to dismiss the continuing relevance of
Hobbes’s thinking on representation in an age of democratic poli-
tics. He made it clear that in allowing ourselves to be represented
we agreed to act according to someone else’s will, whilst renouncing
any independent will of our own in matters of political concern. He
showed how the politics of popular consent could produce an author-
ity so incontestable that it would hold a complete monopoly on col-
lective expression, and give us ‘one’ voice at the expense of silencing
all others. This made representation a very rigid process. It enabled the
sovereign to impose—and impute—his will on and to his subjects by
mere dint of being their representative, at the same time as it disabled
the subjects from exercising any influence, control or judgement over
a representation of themselves with which they might not always be in
agreement. With such absolutist beginnings, there are, it seems, good
reasons for democrats to suspect not only Hobbes’s particular form of
representation, but the representative form itself.
And yet, when seen from a different angle, Hobbes’s thinking on
representation looks remarkably different. It shows a surprising flex-
ibility, in allowing for virtually anything to be represented, and points
therefore towards ways in which the concept of representation can help
us think creatively about problems we face in contemporary politics.
His notion of representation by fiction, in particular, allows us to con-
ceive of forms of representation which need not rely on explicit con-
sent, electoral or other (e.g. non-state-centred, more informal forms of
representation), just as it allows for the diversification of the objects
of representation beyond individuals (e.g. to include abstractions, such
as the environment, or the still non-existent, such as the unborn), and
even beyond the state, as long as the fiction of the collective personal-
ity of larger political units is made credible by its supra-national rep-
resentatives and people have good reasons for believing it.10
Hobbes can justly be credited with establishing representation as the
foundational principle of modern politics. More than 350 years later,
representation remains central in almost all areas of political life. This
makes us, as citizens of representative democracies, the distant heirs

10
For all these possible extensions of Hobbes’s conception of representation by
fiction, see Brito Vieira and Runciman 2008.
250 conclusion

of what is still, in important aspects, a recognisably Hobbesian ven-

ture. Against the ‘democratical gentlemen’ of his day, Hobbes showed
how the indirectness of representation played a vital role in consti-
tuting collective political agency. A people’s voice, a people’s goals,
a people’s demands and a people’s will are, he insisted, consequences
rather than presuppositions of a relation of representation. He consid-
ered any attempts to present ‘the will of the people’ as existing prior
to and independently of the process of representation as naively natu-
ralising, and carrying disastrous political consequences. And he saw
distinctively how a mimetic, mirror-like concept of representation,
asking the representative to reflect the social body, fell short of ensur-
ing proper representation. It favoured a static form of politics, the
politics of ‘being something’—which, in truth, had no ‘being’ to be, as
the body politic had not previously achieved identity—over a dynamic
politics of ‘becoming something’ which sought to constitute retrospec-
tively the very unity that it claimed to represent. In Hobbes’s view,
only the latter was genuinely representational and could support an
effectively transformative politics, capable of projecting itself into the
future. These are all forewarnings worth remembering in the face of
a renewed radical democratic call for a move ‘beyond representation’,
driven by the very complicity in fictions of presence, authenticity and
immediacy which Hobbes rightly exposed as a flawed foundation for
both society and politics.11 Rather than attempting vainly to step out
of representational politics, we should be seeking better ways of repre-
senting in the context of a democratic polity which has moved beyond
the Hobbesian commonwealth, and under which it is now recognised
that it is impossible to produce a people without fracture except by
depriving it, as Hobbes did, of outlets of contestation of its state-
centred representation. But if in demanding more, not less, represen-
tation, we are challenging Hobbes, we are also ultimately reinforcing
his main claim: that representation is both necessary and desirable in
modern politics. As he made clear, representation underpins the cre-
ation of stable society and government—which also means we should

11
Democratic theory remains, on the whole, hostile to the idea of representation
(see, for instance, Barber 1984), and calls for a return to unmediated forms of politics
remain central to the political programme of radical democrats (see Tormey 2006).
This anti-representative prejudice, conjoined with a hostility to the role of fiction in
politics, has spread to a number of recent historical studies of the idea of political
representation, such as Friedland 2002, Arnold 2007 and Kottman 2008.
 conclusion 251

beware of opening the state to more forms of representation than are

compatible with unified responsibility for decisions—just as it under-
girds the possibility of political resistance, which he tried to occlude
conclusively. Our ability to construct competing representative claims,
and to bring dispersed constituencies into a relation with themselves
through the process of giving them voice, is essential to giving the peo-
ple, also in its irreducible diversity, an independent presence, which
keeps state-based representation in check. To eschew representation
is, therefore, to eschew politics itself, and with it to lose the ability to
shape collectively the world in which we live.12
Hobbes’s key insight is that representation in politics derives from
representation in the theatre and is best understood as performativity,
or interpretative action by an actor who performs the fiction of our
unity into being. This insight provides the foundations for ways of
thinking about politics which are still relevant to the politics of today.
Hobbes’s theatre of politics is indeed a peculiar theatre, which works
to construct as well as expose mystifications of power. Its audience is
not simply reduced to an awed crowd, steeped in passivity by an illu-
sion of representation which gives Leviathan its overwhelming actual-
ity. They are also invited to go behind the scenes to see themselves
embedded in the mechanics sustaining the sovereign performance, in
what could be described as a meta-theatrical breakdown of the barriers
governing much of political illusion.13
The emancipatory potential of this backstage detour is indubitable.
In analogising the sovereign with the masked actor, Hobbes tells us,
his audience, that the sovereign is not somebody cast supernaturally by
a divine playwright acting beyond human awareness, but the artificial
person we ourselves have co-authored to represent us all considered as
one entity—a state, embodying our interest in peace and delivering us
the security of the civil condition. In recasting the sovereign as a repre-
sentative of ourselves, Hobbes lays bare the artificial nature of author-
ity so starkly that he unwittingly—but decisively—clears the way for
the current continuous assertion of its artificiality through regular
elections, where political authority is undone and re-created by the

12
See Brito Vieira and Runciman 2008.
13
Whereas the enchantment of Hobbes’s politics through its theatricalisation has
been noted, the demystifying potential of his theatrical analogy is normally overlooked,
as seen in George Shulman’s otherwise very perceptive analysis. See Shulman 1989.
252 conclusion

public, in full public view, making it apparent that any representative’s

crowning is purely transient.14
Similarly, when Hobbes uses theatrical impersonation as a model
for thinking of rule as a role which the sovereign is charged with
playing, the power invested in the office of sovereignty emerges as an
essentially impersonal power, separate from any particular individuals
assuming it. Each representational public office carries duties which
consist in the end for which public offices were created: the good of
the people. And if Hobbes’s sovereign is an actor, and rule is a role car-
rying duties, its performance must necessarily allow for the possibility
of misrepresentation, despite Hobbes’s dismissal of misrepresentation
as a legitimate route for contestation on the part of the represented.15
At the same time as Hobbes closes down any counter-performance
on the part of the subject, however, he also makes it clear that rep-
resentation is not a juristic exercise, sealed once and for all, but a
continuing relationship, which cannot successfully produce its effects
except with the ongoing collaboration of the represented. Hobbes’s
representational politics requires a conjoint exercise in political imagi-
nation, whereby the representative offers a clear projection of what is
being represented, so that the represented may find themselves present
to themselves as ‘a people’ through it. This means that although the
unity of the representative is indispensable for the people’s unifica-
tion in one person, it is not sufficient: this unity must be constantly
performed and re-created by a collusion of imaginations between the
represented themselves and between them and their representative.
The ultimate source of a sovereign’s power lies in his subjects’ credit-
ing and approving his representation of their corporate self, and in
their concomitant willingness to play their role as subjects, who put
on their masks to join in the day-to-day social performance of order,
which sustains the political order of the commonwealth.
By making political rule dependent on the apt representation of a
fiction, the fiction of a unitary political subject, ‘a people’, in whose
name all political decisions are made, Hobbes reaffirms politics as a
world-making activity, as the site for our collective reinvention. For

14
See Kateb 1981, pp. 357–74.
15
Misrepresentation occurs whenever the sovereign neglects his task of ensuring
us peace, security and the necessities of life, although in Hobbes’s view we cannot do
anything about it, as his actions are ours, except if they put our preservation at risk.
 conclusion 253

despite his insistence on peace as being conditional on the representa-

tion of a single unity, the constitutive dimension of this representation
means that no particular ‘one’ unity is natural, or necessary; collective
identities are therefore essentially re-inventible (which, pace Hobbes,
opens the door to orderly political competition between representa-
tives offering contrasting visions of the people to the people, calling for
the public to judge them, in order to gain their electoral support). And
as Hobbes asks us to see Leviathan—the modern state—for what it is,
a fiction, in whose maintenance we collaborate, there being nothing
other, he reminds us that the ultimate political truth is to know that it
is a fiction, which we want to believe willingly in order to bring it to
life and live together in peace. This lends a sense of potent theatricality
to the whole Hobbesian project, which works by directing our vision
back onto ourselves:
Nosce teipsum—Read thy self.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript Sources

London

British Library
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Harl. 6796: Hobbes, Latin Optical MS

Herald’s College
MS. I. 11

Bakewell, Derbyshire

Chatsworth
Hobbes MS D.5: Questions relative to Hereditary Right. Mr Hobbes

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 INDEX
Abdera (Greece), collective madness in
134–6, 240
Accetto, Torquato, Della dissimulazione
onesta 91–2
Act Against Dissolution (1641) 191
and n
Act of Uniformity (1559) 104 and n
acting, meanings of word 86n, 132
actor(s),
and authority 148–53, 242
and hypocrites 98–102
as model for personhood 142, 247
in Roman law 149
Adam, as public person 186
Aeschylus, Agamemnon 75n
aesthetic, political value of 7
aesthetic representation 15–18, 241
agency,
and authorisation 174n
collective 194, 206, 250
person and 147
representation as 2, 15–16
state and 143
Albericus de Rosciate 160n
algebra 55n
allegory, Fanshawe’s use of 67–8
ambassadors, acting as private servants
201
Ames, William, covenant theologian
185n
anamorphosis 63–4, 72–3, 245–6
catoptric 64, 65
dioptric 64, 65–6
optic 64–5
subliminal messages 68
subversive aspects 67 and n
anger, of vainglorious man 115–16
Anglo-Venetian circle 91n
Ankersmit, Frank, Aesthetic Politics
241, 242
Answer to Bishop Bramhall 211,
218–19, 223
Answer to Sir William Davenant’s
Preface before Gondibert (1650) 64,
68–9, 139–40
anthropomorphic images, powers of
42–5
Apostles,
Holy Ghost working in 211, 231
personation of Holy Spirit 214
and plurality of representers 218
Aristophanes, The Frogs 134
Aristotle 211
notion of sense 21, 24
on substances 209–10
art 3
anamorphic 66–7
as form of action 17
see also artists; image(s)
artifice,
and nature 142
representation as 239–40
artificial personality 84, 251
artificial persons,
corporations as 147
as representatives 147–8
artists,
and creation of perspective 59, 60,
61
images of God from imagination
26–7
intentions of 10
use of names for religious images
41–2
assemblies, as representative 184
attributed action, Hobbes’s theory of
105 and n, 153
Aubrey, John 43n
Brief Lives 75
authorisation 151–2, 172–3, 174–5, 244
covenant of 155–6, 247
Hobbes’s theory of 5–6, 12–13
of regular systems 194
and representation 5–6
authority 204
counterfeited 130–1
display of 130 and n
questioned by vainglorious man
116–17
representation and 151, 251
for state to act as person 171
symbols of 34
authors,
and actors 148–53, 242
276 index

and authority 149, 151–2 Cavendish, William, Earl of Newcastle

ownership of plays 155 90n
authorship, fiction of 154–5 on education 136–7
Autreserre, Antoine Dadine D’, De Cervantes, Miguel, Don Quixote 112
Fictionibus Iuris Tractatus Quinque and n
168n Charles I, King 124
Eikon Basilike 34–5
Bacon, Francis 91 and legal fiction of the king’s two
Barish, Jonas 102–3 bodies 127n
The Antithetical Prejudice 83 and public entertainment 137
Bartolus of Saxoferrato 160 statue of 30
Bayly, Lewes, The Practice of Pietie Charles II, King, copy of Leviathan 68
(1631) 210 children,
Behemoth (completed 1668; published guardianship of 155–8
posthumously 1682), potential for reason of 79
on representation by Parliament Church,
190 juridical personality of 153 and n
theme of hypocrisy 99n ministers of 222–3n
beliefs, as private 88 and n, 89 Cicero 211
Bellarmine, Cardinal 221 De Oratore (roles of orator) 220–1,
Berger, John 59 224–5 and n
Blackstone, Sir William 131n, 147–8n, on dissimulation 90
204n on duty of magistrate 163
body politic, on orator Antonius 82
unity of 164–6, 232 City of London 196
see also politics civil law, sovereign as author 199
Boethius, definition of ‘person’ 209, Civil War, and legal fiction of king’s
209–10n, 220, 224 natural and political person 127n
Bosse, Abraham, frontispiece of Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of 178n
Leviathan 68 clergy,
Boulduc, Jacques 57n and illusion of Eucharist 49–50
Bramhall, Bishop John 76 and n manipulation by 18, 71–2, 98
on Hobbes’s Trinity 216 and n, use of anamorphic art 67
217n, 231 Cluverius, Philip 53n
The Catching of the Leviathan 211 coercion 177
Brazen Serpent 30–1 and voluntary action 173
authorisation of 28 cognition, Hobbes’s theory of 20–1
bread, Coke, Sir Edward,
as presence 46–7, 239 on personhood 147n
as representation 49–51, 165–6 on representativeness of king 162n
Bredekamp, Horst 44n on representativeness of Parliament
Bridge, William, covenant theologian 190n
162n, 185n collective agency 194, 206, 250
Brutus, Stephanius Junius (Duplessis- collective identity 244, 253
Mornay), Vindicae contra tyrannos collective madness 134–5, 240
(1579) 149 and n collective responsibility 197, 206, 207,
251
Calvin, John, on sacrament 45–6 collectives, representation of 159–60,
Cardan, Jérôme 91 218
Castiglione, Baldassare, The Book of the colonial government 196
Courtier (1528) 91 comedy, base, moral effects of 139 and n
Caus, Salomon de 64n common law,
Cavendish, Margaret, Marchioness of and dissolution of corporations
Newcastle 76n 191n
 index 277

sovereign’s tacit authorisation of De Homine (1658),

199n
commonwealth,
by acquisition 173n
by institution 166
metaphorical visualisation of 16
and uniformity of worship 103–5
unity of 164–6, 232–3
see also covenant; state
competency, legal 81
conatus (endeavour) 110
conflict, centrality of 7
conscience, interpretation of word
54–5n
constables, authority of 203–4
Constantinople, Council of (381) 212n
corporation(s),
as artificial persons 147–8
and concession principle 196n
as fictitious persons 159–60
immortality of 191n
legal notion of 13, 159–60, 163
legal rights of 160 and n
unity of 161
Counter-Reformation 25
covenant,
of authorisation 155–6
multilateral agreements in 173
as performative metaphor 176
of representation 172–3
representing into being 176–80
as unconditional grant of authority by
people 158–9
covenant theologians 185–7, 185n
creators see artists
Cromwell, Oliver,
and dis/simulation 124–7
and fiction of king in Parliament
126–7 and n
and power of symbolism 124–5
purges of images 30n
crowds, power of 107–8
curious perspective 63–6
Davenant, Sir William 69, 76
A Proposition for Advancement of
Moralitie, By a New Way of
Entertainment of the People
(1653) 139
Gondibert 58n, 139–40
Hobbes’s Answer to 64, 68, 139–40
De Cive (1642) 162, 168n
on Parliament as mediator 187
on state as one person 161
and the personation of God 226
and perspectival illusion 58–9
on private worship 106
Trinity in 211
Declaration of the Lords and Commons
(1642) 126
Declaration of Sports 137–8
defensive leagues 194
delusion,
and artifice 72
in curious perspective 63
democracy,
direct 241, 250
and political representation 6–7,
249, 250–3
demonology 24n
Devonshire, Earl of 91n
Dialogue of the Common Law 174
difference, and identity 241
Digges, Dudley 168n, 205n
on king as representative all 162
on power of king over Parliament
192n
dis/simulation 90–8
to avoid conflict 107
as benign (constructive) 96–7
as enlightened self-interest 98
‘honest’ 90
licitness of 90–1
as necessary 12
and outward conformity 91
religious 104–5
and self-deceit 110
and theatricality 94
discretion, importance of 89, 96,
115
discrimination,
as judgement 31
in social acting 93
dismemberment 76
and dioptric anamorphosis 66n
diversity,
sealed out by sovereign representation
181–2
and unity 182–3, 233
divine right, theories of 32, 189n
Donne, John 209, 232
‘double vision’ 17, 71–2, 239
of audience in theatre 143, 240–1
to interpret metaphor 56–7, 238
dreams, and vainglory 113–14
Dryden, John 77
du Verdus, François 48n, 51–2
278 index
Dubreuil, Jean, Perspective Pratique
(1640-9) 66 and n
East India Company 196
education 138
value to public order 136
Edward IV, King, funeral 44n
effigies, in funeral processions 44–5,
44–5n
Eikon Basilike (1649) 34–5
elections,
from below 186
and parliamentary accountability
189–90n, 251–2
by sovereign’s authority 195
Elements of Law 112n, 131, 168n
corporations 160
on House of Commons 187
Elisha, prophet, and Naaman 105
Elizabeth I, Queen,
High Commission on Religion
227n
on spectacle of power 123 and n,
124
English Optical Treatise 61–2
eternity, understanding of 217n
eucharist,
compared with creation of unity of
body politic 165
as presence or representation 45–53
Euripedes,
Andromeda 134–5
Medea 66n, 75–6
faces, artificial and representative 222
facial expressions, and dissimulation
94–5
family,
as collective body 195
as example of hypostasis 221n
father as representative 156 and nn
as private person lawful or unlawful
195
Fanshawe, Sir Richard, use of allegory
67–8
fiction,
in images 17–18, 20, 26, 38, 42, 244
literary 133 and n, 134
of politics 14, 120, 169, 250 and n,
252–3
representation by 147–8, 153–60,
167–73, 193, 201, 225–6, 249
theatrical 11–12, 75, 82, 145–6, 240,
247
and vainglory 111, 112 and n, 113
see also legal fictions
Filmer, Sir Robert,
Observations Concerning the Originall
of Government (1652) 60n
on representativeness of Parliament
191n
‘Foole’,
Hobbes’s 114–15
see also natural fools
foreign power, authorisation by 194
Foucault, Michel 112
Gauden, John, probable author of Eikon
Basilike 34n, 35
Gauthier, David 174n, 200n
geometry 55 and n
glory,
honour as 115
see also vainglory
God,
and authorisation of images 28–9
as God-actor 225
human representatives of 226
images of 23–32
as natural person (author) 220
nature of (as incomprehensible) 217,
228
personation on earth 211–13
representation of 13, 230
substance of 221–2
three roles (functions) of 213–19,
220, 225
and transfer of authority 225
unity of 228
visualisation of 25–6
Godden, Thomas, recusant divine
35n
Golden Calf 28–9
Gondibert 139–40
Preface (1650) 58n
Goodwin, Thomas, covenant theologian
185n, 186
Gouge, William, covenant theologian
185n
Great Seal of England, symbolic power
of 125–7
Greenblatt, Stephen 120
guardians ad litem 157
guardianship, of legally incompetent
persons 155–8
Guarini, Battista, Il Pastor Fido, 1647
translation 67
 index
Hakewill, William, MP 183–4
Hall, John, poet 87
Haller, William 162n
heat, and madness 135
Henry VII, King, funeral 44–5n
Hereditary Right manuscript 190n
‘histrionic’, Hobbes’s use of term 98,
99n
Holy Ghost,
as artificial person 220
as personation of God in Apostles
212, 215, 231
honour, visible signs of 115, 118
humanism 210n
Hunton, Philip 162n
hypocrisy 97, 98–102
of Presbyterian preachers 98–102
‘hypostasis’ (substance) 221–2 and nn
iconoclasm 30, 46
anamorphic art as device of 67
iconoclast movement 25
identity,
and difference 241
with state 243
idiots see ‘natural fools’
idolatry,
and misrepresentation 26–7
as worship of image itself 31, 43
idols 24
juridical personality for 154
material 32–4
statues in procession 43–4
illusion,
in anamorphic art 66–7
of perspective 58, 60
of representation 62, 239–40
in sacraments 49
image-worship, legitimate 27–9
imagery,
and anamorphic art 67
orator’s use of 132–3
political significance of 17
image(s),
anamorphic 64–5, 237
construction of 4, 246
destruction of 25, 30
as embodiment 31
experience of 22–3
of God 23–32
Hobbes’s definition of term 19–20
mental 22, 23
perceptual 22–3, 238–9
power and counter-power of 29, 245
279
and reality 10, 113, 236
representative meaning 1, 38, 236
as resemblance 222, 235–6
of saints 38–42
signification of 19–20
sovereign as 32–8
of state 170–1
as symbol 34, 236–7
types of 10
imagination,
and passion 109, 133
simple and compounded 26
and vainglory 110, 113
‘in the person of ’, meaning of phrase
223 and n
inanimate objects, juridical personality
for 153–4
individuals,
and collective responsibility 197, 207
equivalence in representation 198
representation in state 181–2
Innocent III, Pope 47
Innocent IV, Pope 170n
insignia, symbolic power of 125–7
Institutes of Justinian, guardianship 156n
irregular systems (collective groups)
194
Italian opera 140
James I, King,
funeral 30n, 45
on spectacle of power 123–4 and n
writings of 32–3 and n
Jaumes, Lucian 15n
Hobbes et l’état représentatif moderne
4n
Jesus Christ,
as artificial person 220
divinity of 230 and n
earliest images of 40n
and Kingdom of God 229
as personation of God 211–12, 214
power of 230–1
powers of teaching and persuasion
215, 230–2
as public person 186
words at Last Supper 47
Jonson, Ben,
Hobbes’s friendship with 76
life-as-theatre 111
judgement 31
faculty of 93, 95–6
right of 103–4
suspension of 123, 143
280
judges, as representatives of sovereign
204–5, 204n
judicial rulings, accountability of
205–6n
Julius Caesar, honour of Thensam &
Ferculum 44
juridical representation 145–209
and covenant 155–6, 158–9, 176–80
of non-persons 153–8
Parliament 187–93
personhood 146–9, 159–60
roles of state 198–206
of sovereign 180–7
subordinate 193–8
king see sovereign
king in parliament, fiction of 126–7
and n
Kingdom of God 229–31
as civil reality 230
kings, elective 175n
Kottman, Paul 78n, 142 and n, 244n
language,
as equivocal 53–4
as representational 54
as symbolic 40–1
words 47, 50–2
Last Supper, Christ’s words 47
Latimer, Robert, Hobbes’s schoolmaster
75
law,
medieval corporate 159
misinterpretation of spirit of 204–5
sovereign authorisation of 199
and ubiquity of state 200
use of rhetoric 133–4
Lawson, George 172–3n, 193, 201n,
203
lawyers, personation by 220–1, 224–5
and n, 247
‘learned madness’ 77, 79–80
legal fictions 249
of authorship 154–5
identification of representative with
person represented 168–9, 187
and n
juridical personality of non-person
153–8
of king in parliament 126–7 and n
sovereign as 143, 180
state as 145–6, 170, 177, 248–9
Leicester, Earl of 191
index
Leviathan,
acted as doubled reality 134–5
biblical context 42n, 57–8
as fictitious person 170–2
frontispiece 42, 73, 122, 245–6
as impersonal bearer of sovereignty
143–4
as metaphor 57–8, 57n
metaphorical visualisation of
commonwealth 16
as theatre 122, 248–9
linear perspective 58–63
Lipsius, Julius 90–1
local government 196
Locke, John 199n
Long Parliament,
Ordinances (1643 and 1644) 25
permanence of 191 and n
Lord Chancellor, and wardship 156,
157
Louis XIII, King, Niceron’s figure of
67
Louis XIV, King of France, and power
of spectacle 124
Lucian, Greek satirist 134–5
Lucy, William 224
on artificial persons 148
Machiavelli, Niccolo, on dissimulation
90–1
‘mad-men’,
inability to avoid extremes 109
lack of legal competence 155–6
lack of reason 79
madness,
collective 134–5
Quixote’s 114–15
magistrate,
as image of sovereign 32, 34
as personification of city 163
see also ministers, public
Maignan, Emmanuel, Minim friar 48,
64n
Malcolm, Noel 16–17, 62
on illustration of Leviathan 69n
man, and person 78–82
defining parts 79
dual role in commonwealth 78–9
as natural person 78–9
powers of play 120
maps, signification and representation
52, 52–3n
Marsh, John 162n
 index
Martel, James R. 11n
Martinich, A.L. 77n
Mary, Virgin, statues of 43
mask-wearing 12, 145
and virtuous behaviour 144
mask(s),
and persona 85–6, 209–10n, 225n
Roman theatrical 2
and social convention 85, 93–4,
107–8, 144
sovereign’s 121–2
Master of the Revels 155
medallions, representing king in
Parliament 126–7
mediation 2, 187
memory, and sense perception 61
Mersenne, Marin 67n
metaphor(s) 8
Baroque theory of 65n
deceitful use of 54–5
image of state as 171
Leviathan as 57–8, 57n
power of 55–6
as representations 53–8
Micanzio, Fulgenzio 91n
mimesis,
in Parliament’s representation of
people 182, 188–9, 190–1n
and representation 18, 235, 236, 241
ministers, public see public ministers
misrepresentation 23, 252 and n
and idolatry 26–7
modalism 214–15
monarchomach treatises 149 and n,
163
on inferior magistrates 202
monarchy,
mixed 232–3
see also sovereign
Montaigne, Michel de 91
Mordecay, King of Persia and (Book of
Esther) 128
Moses,
clarification of role of 222–3
as God’s lieutenant 28, 229
as personation of God 211–12, 213,
214
relationship to God 215
mother, dominion over child 171–2
names,
as marks and signs 41–2 and n
representational character of 39, 41–2
281
‘natural fools’ 80, 81
and definition of ‘man’ 80
lack of legal competence 155–6
natural person,
as author and actor 148–9
concept of 78–9, 81, 147
God as 220
liability for actions 148–9
representation of 157
natural theology 228
nature, state of, theatricality in 94, 142
Neptune, stone representing 33–4, 40,
236–7
Nerney, Gayne 15n
Nicaea, Council of (325) 212–13n, 227
Niceron, Jean François,
figure of Louis XIII 67
Perspective Curieuse (1638) 64n, 65,
66 and nn
non-person,
juridical personality of 153–8
representation of 153, 157
observer,
and perspective images 59, 60–1,
62–3
and representational meaning
10–11, 238
Ockham, William of 160
office,
as duties 121–2, 179 and n, 180
see also magistrate; public ministers
officers of king, distinction from officers
of kingdom 202n
Old Testament, Book of Esther 128
opinions, private beliefs 88 and n, 89
optical device, to view dioptric
anamorphoses 66, 68–9
Ordinances,
(1642, 1647, 1684) against stage-plays
and theatres 102 and n
(1643 and 1644) against images in
churches 25
Owen, John, covenant theologian 185n
ownership,
and authority 174
definitions 151 and n
pagan gods, personation of 226
pagan images, renamed as saints 39–40
Paganini, Gianni 210n
paradiastole, compared with metaphor
53–4n
282 index
Paris, Minim convent 67
Parker, Henry,
and parliamentary case against king
162
on representativeness of Parliament
182, 183n, 188–9
on sovereign authority 150
Parliament 187–93
aspirations to sovereignty 188–9
case against king 162
claim to monopoly over
representation 37, 150, 182, 189n
dissolution 191–2
and electoral accountability 189–90n
as identical with people 182, 188–9,
190–1n
as mediator between king and people
187
MPs as public men 185
as subordinate association 196
as temporary creation of king 191–3
as trinity of kings, lords and commons
232
Parliamentarians, ascending theory of
politics 150
passion,
kindling of 132–3
nature of 109–10
people,
inhering in sovereignty 163–4, 186,
235, 241–2
as a multitude 164
as originating agency 149–50
visualisation of collective entity 244
perception,
non-pictorial 10
see also sense perception
Peripatetic natural philosophy 21
Perkins, William, covenant theologian
26n, 185n, 186
person,
Boethian definition 209, 209–10n
capacity for action 214
concept of 9
defined in relation to God 213–14,
223–4
externalities 87–8
fictitious persons 153–60, 170–3
and man 78–82
natural/artificial distinction 83–4,
142–3, 147–8
private and public 87–9, 92–3,
184–5
see also artificial persons; natural
person; personhood
persona,
legal use of 77–8
and mask-wearing 85–6, 209–10n,
225n
theatrical 2, 78
persona ficta, doctrine of 159–60, 170,
193
personation 11
of God 211–14
by lawyers 220–1, 224–5 and n, 247
legal use of term 86–7n
origin of term 86 and n, 132
personhood,
actors as model for 142, 247
collective 159–60
and impersonation 85
and legal competency 81
as legal construct 146–7
and personation 211
and play of social roles 82
and rationality 81
as self-construction 146
and theatricality 244n
perspectiva artificialis, theory of 58–9
perspective 58–69
creation and appreciation 63n
curious 63–6
linear 58–63
persuasion, and imagery 133, 141, 246
phantasms 21–2 and n, 239
fear of 239
pictorial representation 3, 235
Pitkin, Hanna 15, 155, 243–4, 244n
The Concept of Representation 4n, 16
Pliny the Elder 3n
‘plot’, meanings of 100 and n
plurality, and unity 69, 72–3
poiesis, of representation 1, 235, 237
political associations,
authorisation of 195
collective responsibility in 197
dissent from 197
types 196
political power,
and representation 150
theatricality as source of 143–5, 244,
248
political representation 2n, 3–4, 37,
235
constitutive power of 8, 237
and democracy 6–7, 249, 250–3
 index 283

of individuals 181–2 Puritans,

see also Parliament attack on theatre 83, 102 and n
political stage, and shattering of illusions denunciation of Mass 46
117–18 destruction of images 46
politics, ideals of transparency 12
ascending theory of 150 as imposters 101
of theatre 136–41
theatre of 118–31, 248–9 Quintilian 3, 58n
see also body politic on rhetoric 133
popular sovereignty 163 Quixote, Don,
portraits 27 ‘learned madnesse’ 77, 114
religious iconography of royal 33 vainglory of 111–15
and n ‘quixotic’ personalities 108–9, 110–15
power,
constraints on 179–80 rationality, and personhood 81
pictorial representation of 17 reality,
signs of 118–19 and appearance 60
and spectacle 123–4 optical 59
symbols of 34, 35–6, 123, 125–7 and representation 70–1
theatricality of 120 reason,
theatricality as source of 143–5 as defining of man 79
and worship 103 and imagination 140–1
prayers, improvised 99, 103 recreation, lawful 137–8
Presbyterian preachers, theatricality of regular systems 194–8
98–102 private 194–5
Preston, John, covenant theologian unlawful 198
185n public,
pride 110 independent 194
see also vainglory subordinate 194–8
private associations 194–5, 196, 197 religion,
processions, effigies carried in 44–5 Hobbes’s minimal faith 227–8,
and n 227n
Protectorate, and symbolism of Great power of images in 25
Seal 125–6 state organisation of ancient 226
Protestantism, and role of visual theatricality of 102–7
24–5 see also worship
Prynne, William 162n religious belief, origins 24
on theatre 97 Renaissance, and perspective 58–9
public entertainment 194 ‘renunciation thesis’ 174n
political advantages of 137–8, representation,
139–41 ‘acting for’ 16, 36, 37
public interest, and sovereign’s actions and authority 151
180 concept of 1–8
public men, representative character of constitutive powers of 158, 198, 236
185–6 dualism in 71
public ministers, as dynamic 16–17, 70, 237, 250, 252
constraints on action 203 and imagination 132
investment of authority in 129–30, as instrument of power of sovereign
200–4, 252 128–9
Moses as 222 and n juristic models 8
public person, theological doctrine of of non-person (inanimate things)
186 153–8
Pufendorf, Samuel 145, 154n origin and meanings of word 1–2
284 index
and political power 150
power of 123–4, 236–7
productive character of 70, 122–3, 165
realism of 134
‘standing for’ 16, 36, 37
subordinate 129–31
in visual images 10, 70–1
see also juridical representation;
political representation
représenter (to exhibit) 130
resemblance 222, 241
compared with representation 18–20,
235–6
responsibility,
collective 197, 206, 207, 251
and collective agency 206
ownership as 151
persons and 148–9
revenge, for humiliation 116
rex imago dei 32, 33
rhetoric,
and theatre 131–2
as theatricality 98–9
and use of imagery 132–4
rights,
alienation of 174 and n
and authorisation 174–5
transfer of 175 and n
ritual, church 46
role models, aspirational 111, 113
Roman Catholics, and Act of
Uniformity 104n
Roman law,
and concept of actor 149
and concept of ownership 151n
corporations in 163
guardianship 156n
Rome, Church of 47
Ross, Alexander, vicar of Carisbrooke
215
Runciman, David 173n, 181n
Sabellianism, heresy of 214–15
sacral authority, instability of 33n
saints,
images of 38–42
representational meaning of 40–2
Sander(s), Nicholas, defence of religious
images 53n
Sarpi, Paolo 91n
Scholasticism 46, 110, 217n
Scripture,
interpretation of 228–9, 231
misinterpretation of 57n
self, transparency of 12, 85, 96–7
self-deceit 110
self-interest, enlightened 98
self-knowledge 184
sense, Aristotelian notion 21, 24
sense perception 18, 20–3
and perspective art 61 and n
Shakespeare, William,
and acting 132
As You Like It 82
productions of plays 77
Shelton, Thomas, translation of Don
Quixote 112n
Short Tract on First Principles (1630–1),
phantasm 22n
Sibbes, Richard, covenant theologian
185n
sight, familiar deceptions of 60
signification,
man as actor 87
in transubstantiation 50–1, 50n
signs,
interpretation of 87–8
social codes 87–8, 89, 94–5
simulation see dis/simulation
Skinner, Quentin 15n, 171nn
Small Morals 91
sociability,
and dissimulation 93–4
as not natural 85
social convention 85, 87–8
and deference to power 118–19
dramatic artificiality of 144
and playing of roles 95–6, 144
Somer Islands Company 196n
Sorbière, Samuel, translation of De Cive
161
Sorgi, Giuseppe 163n
soul, compared with sovereign 167
sovereign,
as artificial person 163, 251
as author and actor 199
authorisation of associations 195–6
and collective person of subjects
186–7n, 249
constraints on power of 179–80
duties of 179–80
and forms of public worship 27–8
as image 32–8
as image of God 32–3, 32n
as impersonal 169–70
interdependence of private and public
interest 180 and n, 202–3 and n
legal ubiquity of 204 and n
 index 285

and ministers 200–3 unopposability of 175–6

obedience to 105, 238, 239, 242 visible power of 119–20
and Parliament as mediator 187 see also commonwealth; sovereign
persona of 121, 124 Stillingfleet, Edward, Bishop 35n
powers over Parliament 191–3, subjects, as co-authors of covenant 177
191n subordinate representation, dangers of
as public person 184–5 193–8
relationship of state to 13, 166, 167, substance,
226 hypostasis 9, 221 and n, 223–5
representations of authority 128–31 intelligent 209, 221, 223–4
as representative of God 36–7, 226, and symbol 36
230, 231 and accidents 47-8, 209-10
as representative of people 4, 162, of Trinity 218–19, 221, 223-5,
181, 183–5 232–3
representative role of 178 and n supernatural see phantasms
representativeness of 180–7 superstition,
as single representative 183–4 and in church ritual 46
n, 189n objects of 25
theatricality of power 123–4, 247 see also idolatry
and unity of state 169, 193, 200, 242 symbols,
unlimited power of 178 of authority 34, 119
see also state images as 34, 236–7
sovereign authority 13, 149, 178–9 of power 34, 35–6, 123, 125–7
people’s recognition of 190, 241–2, systems,
245, 247 irregular 194
and roles of state 199–206 see also regular systems
symbols of 119
usurped by subordinate representative Tacitus 90 and n
129–31 Ten Commandments, Second 30
sovereign performance 168–9, 168n, Tertullian, Trinitarian orthodoxy 209
251 Tesauro, Emanuele 65 and n
sovereign will, notion of 161–2 theatre,
sovereignty, analogy with sovereign performance
scope of 162, 166–7 168–9, 168n, 251
unified political and religious 228 ancient 132n
spectacle, and authorship of plays 154–5
and power 123–4 compared with anamorphosis 73
public utility of 136–7 double vision of audience 143,
spies, acting as private servants 201–2 240–1
state, early modern 100–1
authority of 7, 206, 207 etymology 73
as collaborative political fiction 146, medieval 132n
170 as metaphor for politics 11–12,
collective agency within 194–8 240–1
compulsion to obedience 242 moral effects of 139–40, 139n
control over images 244 of politics 118–31, 248–9
dramatic artificiality of 144 politics of 136–41
and image-worship 27–8 and n powers of 131–6
as person 158–76 Puritan ordinances against 83, 102
and private beliefs of citizens 88 and and n
n, 89 reflexivity of 100–1, 113
relationship to sovereign 13, 166, and rhetoric 131–2
167, 226 state-regulated 138–9
as type of corporation 160, 163 temporary covenant in 145–6, 194
286
theatre-state 122, 168–9, 248–9
and world as stage 83–9, 111
theatricality 11, 117, 252–3
and human behaviour 77, 142
and personhood 244n
of preachers 98–102
of religion 102–7
self-conscious (in Elizabethan and
Jacobean plays) 100–1
and social conventions 94
as source of political power 143–5,
244, 248
world as stage 83–9
of worship 102–3
theatrum mundi, concept of 82n
theology, natural 228
third parties,
and guardianship 157–8
representing non-persons 154
Thomas Aquinas, St 49
Thomas White’s ‘De Mundo’ Examined
(1642–3) 161
throne, as symbol of power 35–6
Thucydides 53n
towns, as subordinate associations
196n
trade, associations of 196
tragedy, powers of 134–6
‘translation thesis’ 174
transparency of self, Puritan ideal 12,
85, 96–7
transubstantiation, doctrine of 46,
47–8, 239n
Trent, Council of (1545–63) 25
Tricaud, François 151n
Triennial Act (1641) 191 and n
Trinity,
Council of Nicaea and 212–13n
dogma of 13, 209–11
Hobbes’s philological reconstruction
13–14, 210–11
Hobbes’s revisions 219–26
immanent 217 and n
as political analogy 227–33
as temporal constructions of divine
persons 216
three persons as three representatives
211–13
tutors, guardians in Roman law 156nn
index
unity,
and diversity 182–3, 233
and plurality 69, 72–3
universities 196
vainglory 110–11
and political ambitions 116–18
of Quixote 111–15
and reaction to humiliation 115–16
and theatricality 117
versatility, in social role-playing 95–6
visibility, as essence of power 118
vision 10
mirror-metaphor and 238
see also double vision; observer
visual, power of 132, 246
Vita (poem) 75
Voltaire, on power of spectacle 124
Ward, Richard 162n, 190n
wardship, of children 156, 157
Weimann, Robert 244n
Weldon, Sir Anthony 124n
Westminster Assembly of Divines,
Larger Catechism (1648) 185n
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646)
217n
Williams, John, Bishop of Lincoln 30n
wine,
and dissimulation 92
as presence 46–7, 239
as representation 49–53, 165–6
Wollheim, Richard 61
words,
figurative or literal 47, 50–2
of institution 51 and n
see also language; writing
world as stage 83–9, 111
worship,
commanded by sovereign 36
private 103–4, 106–7
public uniformity 103, 104–6
semi-public 106–7
theatricality of 102–3
see also religion
Wray, Sir John 185
Zwingli, Ulrich, on transubstantiation
46, 50 and n