The two faces of personhood: Hobbes, corporate agency and the personality of the state
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885117731941 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJPT
Article
The two faces of
personhood: Hobbes,
corporate agency and the
personality of the state
Sean Fleming
University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
There is an important but underappreciated ambiguity in Hobbes’ concept of person-
hood. In one sense, persons are representatives or actors. In the other sense, persons
are representees or characters. An estate agent is a person in the first sense; her client
is a person in the second. This ambiguity is crucial for understanding Hobbes’ claim that
the state is a person. Most scholars follow the first sense of ‘person’, which suggests
that the state is a kind of actor – in modern terms, a ‘corporate agent’. I argue that
Hobbes’ state is a person only in the second sense: a character rather than an actor.
If there are any primitive corporate agents in Hobbes’ political thought, they are repre-
sentative assemblies, not states or corporations. Contemporar y political theorists and
philosophers tend to miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ idea of state
personality because they project the idea of corporate agency onto it.
Keywords
Authorization, corporate agency, early modern political thought, Hobbes, representa-
tion, state personhood
One of the central claims that Thomas Hobbes makes in each of his major political
works is that the state is a person. However, he is not clear what kind of person it
is. Hobbes scholars have tried to fill in the blank. While Quentin Skinner (1999)
argues that Hobbes’ state is a ‘purely artificial person’, David Runciman (2000b)
counters that it is a ‘person by fiction’. Runciman has apparently won this debate,
since most scholars, including Skinner (2005: 178; 2009: 346–347), now agree that
Hobbes’ state is a person by fiction (e.g. Abizadeh, forthcoming; Brito Vieira, 2009:
150–160; Turner, 2016: 213–214). The issue appears to be settled.
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(1) 5–26
!The Author(s) 2017
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1474885117731941
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
Corresponding author:
Sean Fleming, University of Cambridge, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT, UK.
Email: srf44@cam.ac.uk
Yet there remains a deeper ambiguity in Hobbes’ claim that the state is a person,
which follows from the fact that he defines and uses ‘person’ in two opposite ways.
In one sense, ‘a Person, is the same that an Actor is’ (Hobbes, 2012 [1651]: XVI.
244). In the other sense, ‘a Person, ... is he that is Represented’ by an actor
(Hobbes, 2012 [1651]: XLII. 776). An estate agent is a person in the first sense;
her client is a person in the second. Is the state a representative person or a rep-
resented person – an actor who plays a role, or a character whose role is played?
I argue that Hobbes’ state is not a fictional actor, as it is commonly understood,
but a fictional character of a very specific kind.
The debate about Hobbes’ idea of state personality is of much more than his-
torical interest. Hobbes’ theory of the state has a prominent place in philosophical
debates about the nature of collective action, where it is often described as a rudi-
mentary account of corporate agency (e.g. Erskine, 2001: 75; List and Pettit, 2011:
7, 76). I argue that these interpretations of Hobbes depend on a mistaken equation
of ‘person’ with ‘agent’. Contemporary philosophers and political theorists tend to
miss what is unique and valuable about Hobbes’ theory of the state because they
project the idea of corporate agency onto it.
The article has five sections. The first describes the tension in Leviathan
between Hobbes’ definition of ‘person’ and his claim that the state is a person.
On one hand, he says that persons are actors or representatives. On the other, he
says that the state is a person but not an actor or representative. The second
section resolves this tension using Hobbes’ alternative definition of ‘person’ from
Chapter 42 of Leviathan, which instead defines persons as representees. I show
that this sense of personhood is essential for understanding how Hobbes uses
‘person’ throughout his political works. The third section revisits Hobbes’ theory
of the state in light of the Chapter 42 definition. I argue that Hobbes’ state is best
understood as a character rather than an actor. Whereas a Hobbesian assembly
is a fictional actor, Hobbes’ state is a fictional character. The fourth section
challenges contemporary interpretations of Hobbes’ theory of the state. I show
that it is not a rudimentary theory of corporate agency, as it is often described,
but a forgotten alternative to thinking of the state as a corporate agent. The
fifth section shows that, if there are any rudimentary corporate agents in
Hobbes’ political thought, they are representative assemblies. What makes
Hobbes’ idea of personhood unique and valuable is that it decouples personhood
from metaphysical conceptions of agency; it explains how states and other entities
can be persons even though they do not have any intrinsic capacity for inten-
tionality or action.
The Skinner-Runciman debate
Hobbes defines the state or ‘Common-wealth’ as a ‘Multitude [of men] united
in one Person’ (Hobbes, 2012 [1651]: XVII. 260).
1
Although he had developed
an elaborate typology of persons in the previous chapter, he does not tell the
reader what type of person the state is. Nowhere does he provide an explicit
answer. His many descriptions of the state invite confusion: ‘by Art is
6European Journal of Political Theory 20(1)
To continue reading
Request your trial