¹ “Hobbes's Concept of Representation—I,” this Review, Vol. 58 (June 1964), pp. 328–340Google Scholar.

² The Elements of Law was not published until 1650. De Cive appeared first in Latin, and was not published in English until 1651, the same year that the Leviathan appeared. All references to Hobbes's works in this article are to SirMolesworth's, William edition of the English Works (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1839–1845)Google Scholar, henceforth abbreviated E. W. The Tönnies, edition of the Elements of Law (Cambridge University Press, 1928)Google Scholar is more accurate and complete, but does not differ with respect to the passages cited here; hence I cite Molesworth throughout for convenience.

³ For the purposes of this kind of comparative study, almost all the commentaries on Hobbes suffer from one of two complementary weaknesses. Some choose to ignore temporal development in his thought, treating his writings as a single consistent body of material and citing now an early work, now a late one. This is most characteristic of Warrender's, HowardPolitical Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford, Clarendon, 1957)Google Scholar, but it is also true, for example, of Oakeshott's, Michael introduction to his edition of the Leviathan (Oxford, Blackwell, 1957)Google Scholar.

Others, that do not ignore temporal develop-ment, instead tend to overemphasize it, treating certain ideas as radical innovations which had in fact already been introduced in earlier works, perhaps at a different point in the argument. This tendency seems to be more characteristic of continental commentators, such as Gadave, René, Thomas Hobbes (Toulouse: Ch. Marques, 1907)Google Scholar; Landry, B., Hobbes (Paris, 1930)Google Scholar; Polin, Raymond, Polilique et Philosophie chez Thomas Hobbes (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1953)Google Scholar; and Tönnies, Ferdinand, Thomas Hobbes (Stuttgart, Fr. Frommans, 1925)Google Scholar.

⁴ E. W., II, 65, 68; III, 154–7; IV, 119–121.

⁵ Ibid., III, 155–6: “For though they obtain a victory by their unanimous endeavor against a foreign enemy; yet afterwards, when either they have no common enemy, or he that by one part is held for an enemy, is by another part held for a friend, they must needs by the difference of their interests dissolve, and fall again into a war amongst themselves.”

⁶ “The wills of individuals do not run about inside one another in a sort of fluid ubiquity.” Hogan, James, Election and Representation (Cork University Press, 1945), p. 118Google Scholar.

⁷ E. W., IV, 121–2.

⁸ Ibid., 129, 91. For a detailed analysis, see Warrender, op. cit., chs. 2–4.

⁹ E. W., IV, 69: “… a man can no more say he will will, than he will will will, and so make an infinite repetition of the word; which is absurd, and insignificant.”

¹⁰ Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Le Contrat Social, in Oeuvres Computès (Paris, Libraire Hachette, 1905–1912), III, 318Google Scholar:

“Le souverain peut bien dire: ‘Je veux actuellement ce que veut un tel homme, ou du moins ce qu'il dit vouloir’; mais il ne peut pas dire: ‘Ce que cet homme voudra demain, je le voudrai encore’; puisqu'il est absurde que la volonté se donne des chatnes pour l'avenir, et puisqu'il ne dépend d'aucune volonté de consentir à rien de contraire au bien de l'être qui veut. Si done le peuple promet simplement d'obéir, il se dissout par cet acte, il perd sa qualité de peuple; à l'instant qu'il y a un maitre, il n'y a plus de souverain, et dès lors le corps politique est détruit.”

¹¹ E. W., IV, 69–70, 117.

¹² Ibid., 122.

¹³ Ibid., 127; italics mine.

¹⁴ Ibid., 122 italics mine.

¹⁵ Ibid., II, 69; italics mine.

¹⁶ Ibid., 68.

¹⁷ Gadave, op cit., p. 92: “Hobbes cependant ne prononce pas le mot dans le De Cive, parce qu'il n'admet pas encore la chose; sans doute, il dit, bien que ‘la volonté de cet homme sera tenue pour celle de tous’; mais c'est en fait, la volonté de cet homme qui s'exerce; c'est son droit à tout qu'il réalise dans les actes de souveraineté. Il n'y aura de représentation véritable que lorsque tout ce que voudra le souverain, c'est chacun des particuliers qui le voudra par son intermédiaire.”

¹⁸ E. W., III, 157–8.

¹⁹ Landry, op. cit., p. 203.

²⁰ E. W., II, 89. This desire of Hobbes's to create a union with but a single will of all, has led many commentators to compare his theory with Rousseau's. See for example, Davy, Georges, Thomas Hobbes et Jean Jacques Rousseau (Oxford, Clarendon, 1953)Google Scholar; Gadave, op. cit., pp. 100–1; Polin, op. cit., p. 233; Tönnies, op. cit., p. 214; Hogan, op. cit., pp. 115–6; von Gierke, Otto, Johannes Althusius (Breslau: M. and H. Marcus, 1913), pp. 116, 202, 300Google Scholar; Zweig, Egon, Die Lehre vom Pouvoir Constituant (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1909), p. 76Google Scholar; Loewenstein, Karl, Volk und Parlament (Munich: Dreimasken, 1922), p. 34Google Scholar.

Both theorists are trying to express the idea that the members of a society in some sense participate in that society's rules, even at the moment when they disobey them. But Hobbes is driven more by a search for peace and order, Rousseau by a search for freedom within order.

There are Hobbesian passages which clearly foreshadow the idea of a “real” will, as when he argues that “the will of the people contains within it” the will of each subject (E. W., II, 98; IV, 140). But more characteristically Hobbes differs from Rousseau, just because he does not deny the reality of each man's separate will.

For one thing, Hobbes would not argue that a man can be “forced to be free”; for him, the liberties of the subject are in the silence of the laws (Ibid., III, 206). One is free to do what is not forbidden. Where there is law, one is no longer free, even if that law was made by one's own will.

In the same vein, Hobbes does not (after all) claim that the criminal has willed his own punishment, but only that he has authorized it (Ibid., III, 160, 163; Oakeshott, op cit., p. lvi). The criminal is no longer free to will on that subject, but of course it is to be expected that he will will; he cannot help it. The subject always has a “natural and very will,” even where he has authorized the sovereign to will for him (E. W., IV, 140–1). That is how disobedience is possible, and why Hobbes treats it as an instance of contradiction: “that whereas he first ratified the people's acts in general, he now disalloweth the same of them in particular.” (Ibid.)

Another important difference lies in the fact that Rousseau's general will “is always right and tends always to the public advantage,” and this is why it is the citizen's real will, from which he deviates only in error. The general will is impersonal and for the good of all; it constitutes the best solution to any problem.

Hobbes never claims that the sovereign has perfect knowledge, or that his decisions are always the best possible (Oakeshott, op. cit., p. xii). He simply says that it is of overriding importance to all, that decisions be made by a single sovereign. The worst possible condition is anarchy or war, the state of nature, and to escape it one must have a single, sovereign will. Thus it is in everyone's long-range interest (Hobbes does not say “what everyone ‘really’ wants”) that the sovereign should decide, even where his decision is foolish or partisan or oppressive. Hobbes thus presupposes only one general good: peace and order. Rousseau presupposes a general good on each particular issue.

But I think that Carl Friedrich distorts Hobbes's view on this point when he says that for Hobbes “The preservation of order by a monocrat, be he ever so tyrannical, is truly representation of the people simply because the desire for order is known to be a basic desire resulting from man's primordial fear of his fellows”; Constitutional Government and Democracy (Boston, 1950), p. 263Google Scholar. If that were so, no authorization would be necessary at all.

Of course, Rousseau also rejects the very representation that Hobbes embraces.

²¹ This further step is another way in which Rousseau departs from Hobbes. For Rousseau would say that at the moment the people are assembled to designate a sovereign, they are in fact the supreme power in the community. “And if this is true, it seemed incredible to Rousseau that those who hold this power should give it up without qualification or condition”; Frankel, Charles, “Introduction” to his edition of The Social Contract (New York, Hafner, 1951), p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar. See also note 32, below.

²² E. W., III, 151.

²³ Ibid., IV, 207.

²⁴ Ibid., 122; italics mine.

²⁵ Ibid., II, 69.

²⁶ op. cit., p. 237.

²⁷ E. W., IV, 146; italics mine.

²⁸ Ibid., 147.

²⁹ Ibid., II, 158.

³⁰ Ibid., 70.

³¹ Ibid., 99–100.

³² That the people ceases to exist as soon as it appoints a sovereign is, Rousseau's objection to representative government: “Le peuple anglois pense être libre, il se tromp fort; il ne l'est que durant 1'élection des membres du parlement: sitôt qu'ils sont élus, il est eaclave, il n'est rien ….

“Quoi qu'il en soit, à l'instant qu'un peuple se donne des représentants, il n'est plus libre; il n'est plus.” op. cit., pp. 361–2.

³³ op. cit., p. 236n.

³⁴ E. W., III, 151.

³⁵ The questions whether the laws of nature oblige, whether there is any obligation in the state of nature at all, and if so, what sort of obligations these are, are the most difficult arising out of Hobbes's thought. The fact is that Hobbes says contradictory things on these subjects. Warrender (op. cit., part I) does by far the best job of welding the contradictions into a single, consistent body of doctrine; but by its very neatness the result is no longer quite faithful to Hobbes. It may be that Hobbes intended his inconsistencies, or it may be that he was not aware of them as such; I incline to the latter view.

³⁶ E. W., IV, 121–2.

³⁷ Ibid., II, 91.

³⁸ Ibid., 89–90.

³⁹ op. cit., pp. 134–8. Warrender is apparently unaware that authorization performs any particular functions in this respect; see note 77. below.

⁴⁰ I owe this in sight to Tönnies, op. cit., pp. 302–5.

⁴¹ E. W., IV, 127–8, 138–9.

⁴² Ibid., II, 96–7.

⁴³ Ibid., III, 162.

⁴⁴ Compare Tussman, Joseph, “The Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes,” unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1947, p. 96Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ E. W., III, 158.

⁴⁶ “Schon die ungrammatische Form verräthier, dass der Gedanke der Vertretung überwiegen will, aber nicht völlig durchgedrungen ist.” op. cit., p. 303.

⁴⁷ “Political Theory,” p. 96. Compare also his Obligation and the Body Politic (New York, 1960), p. 59Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Warrender, op. cit., p. 234.

⁴⁹ Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (Everyman's, ed.; New York, 1920Google Scholar, Bk. III, part iii, sec. 8; see also his “Of the Original Contract,” in The Social Contract, SirBarker, Ernest, ed. (New York, 1960), p. 161Google Scholar.

Nor is Hume's criticism obviated by saying Hobbes's doctrine is a logical rather than an historical one. Why logically assume away authorization but leave men with contract? Why is the one more “natural” than the other?

⁵⁰ E. W., IV, 122.

⁵¹ Ibid., and also II, 69.

⁵² Ibid., IV, 123.

⁵³ The whole problem is well treated by Polin, op cit., esp. pp. 229–38.

⁵⁴ E. W., IV, 123.

⁵⁵ Tussman, , “Political Theory,” p. 71Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ E. W., IV, 128.

⁵⁷ Ibid., II, 68, 74–5.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 70; IV, 130.

⁵⁹ Ibid., II, 75.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 68.

⁶¹ Ibid., IV, 122.

⁶² Ibid., II, 91.

⁶³ Ibid., 75. This is as close as Hobbes ever comes to the realization that he has taken an unnecessarily restricted view of his own system, before he escapes the problem by the concept of representation. See the discussion of rights, below.

⁶⁴ E. W., II, 82–3; III, 204–5; IV, 129.

⁶⁵ Op. cit., pp. 113–4.

⁶⁶ Ibid., pp. 18–21.

⁶⁷ E. W., III, 165.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 118. See also II, 17–8; IV, 88.

⁶⁹ Polin, op. cit., p. 232; Gadave, op. cit., p. 99.

⁷⁰ “Political Theory,” p. 100.

⁷¹ E. W., III, 158–9.

⁷² The exception is a Leviathan passage concerning the right of punishment, in which Hobbes reverts to the earlier approaches. Even if each man retains the right to protect himself and has only agreed to help the sovereign punish others, the question remains, where does the sovereign get the right to punish anyone at all?

“Before the institution of the commonwealth, every man had a right to everything, and to do whatsoever he thought necessary to his own preservation; subduing, hurting or killing any man in order thereunto. And this is the foundation of that right of punishing, which is exercised in every commonwealth. For the subjects did not give the sovereign that right; but only in laying down theirs, strengthened him to use his own, as he should think fit, for the preservation of them all: so that it was not given, but left to him, and to him only …” (E. W., III, 297–8).

The thing about this argument is that by the Leviathan it has become quite unnecessary. Hobbes need only point out, as he does elsewhere in the book, that the criminal has authorized his own punishment in authorizing all that the sovereign will do. There is no need for any right to punish, nor for the transfer of that right, beyond this simple fact. When a man is to be punished it is to be expected that he will resist, but he is not free to will “officially”; he has committed himself, he is punishing himself.

For a point of view opposite to that developed here, see Kaplan, Morton A., “How Sovereign Is Hobbes' Sovereign?” Western Political Quarterly, (June 1956), pp. 390–1, 395Google Scholar.

⁷³ E. W., III, 322; II, 166–7.

⁷⁴ See Warrender, op. cit., pp. 125–34. As Warrender points out, this argument is much weakened in the case of sovereignty by acquisition, where the sovereign is party to the covenant. However, it can be argued that in the establishment of a commonwealth by acquisition, the sovereign merely promises to spare the lives of the conquered people at the time the covenant is made; so that afterward he has already performed this obligation and owes none further, to his subjects. See E. W., III, 190.

⁷⁵ E. W., III, 163.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 137.

⁷⁷ At least one interesting passage in the Leviathan suggests that Hobbes's preference for monarchy rests on a conception of the public interest, on a conception of what sort of “maintenance” it is that a political sovereign “procures.” For, by contrast, in his discussion of corporations within the commonwealth, and how they may be governed by representatives, Hobbes says that a company of merchants engaged in foreign trade is best governed by a democratic assembly of its members.

His reasoning here is very suggestive, and has not received the attention from commentators I think it deserves. Hobbes says: “The end then of these bodies of merchants, being not a common benefit to the whole body, … but the particular gain of every adventurer, it is reason that every one be acquainted with the employment of his own; that is, that every one be of the assembly, that shall have the power to order the same; and be acquainted with their accounts. And therefore the representative of such a body must be an assembly, where every member of the body may be present at the consultations, if he will.” E. W., III, 217–9.

To my account of the significance of the authorization of the sovereign, Warrender offers an alternative, but (I think) mistaken interpretation (op. cit., pp. 109–110, 129–131, 178). He says the authorization of the sovereign does only this: “it means that the conduct of the sovereign cannot be a moral affront of which the citizens may take note, and authorization serves to indemnify the sovereign from accountability to the citizen on such grounds.” (Ibid., p. 110).

It seems to me that the reason the subject cannot have a valid claim against the sovereign is not because he has released the sovereign from accountability, but because the sovereign is incapable of violating any obligation to him. This is a result of authorization, but it is a very different thing from resignation of accountability. The very passage Warrender cites shows that it is absence of obligation and not absence of accountability that is crucial (Ibid., p. 131; E. W., III, 200).

But, more important, to say authorization signifies only that the sovereign is not accountable to his subjects, is to miss its most significant function. As we have seen, authorization is a source of obligation to the sovereign. Through it, the sovereign is empowered to commit his subjects as if his will were theirs.

I would suggest that Warrender misses this point because he thinks that all the subject's obligations arise from contract alone. Hence he concludes that authorization merely means the subject cannot judge the sovereign or hold him to account. Warrender says that this is what “makes the sovereign an authority” for the subject (op. cit., p. 130). But an authority is not just someone whom we do not presume to judge; it is someone whose judgment we accept. Similarly, the subjects have not merely agreed to refrain from judging the sovereign; they have agreed to let him judge for them.

Finally, Warrender says that the subject is not morally responsible for the sovereign's commands, because “one person cannot take moral responsibility for another person's action” (ibid., p. 110). But this is exactly backward. What Hobbes says is that the sovereign is responsible, and not the subject, if the sovereign commands something contrary to the law of God and the subject does it (E. W., II, 152; IV, 140–1, 185). And surely this is possible only if one man can be morally responsible for the actions of another. One is morally responsible only for one's own “natural and very will,” and not for what the sovereign wills in one's name.

⁷⁸ “Under such circumstances representative government would obviously be such only in name, for a permanent mandate in a representative system is a contradiction in terms.” Garner, James Wilford, Political Science and Government (New York, 1928), p. 642Google Scholar; italics mine.

“All do not authorize [the sovereign[ to act as a representative in any literal meaning of the term …”; Kaplan, op. cit., p. 395; italics mine.

⁷⁹ Kaplan, op. cit., p. 400.

⁸⁰ De Grazia, Alfred, Public and Republic (New York, 1951), p. 9Google Scholar.

⁸¹ The phrase is from Stevenson, Charles L., Ethics and Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944)Google Scholar, ch. 9. As thereat of my paragraph may suggest, however, I have certain quarrels with Stevenson's concept.

⁸² In my experience, undergraduates are often misled in just this way. Once it has been brought to their attention that Hobbes uses the concept of representation, they frequently jump to the conclusion that the sovereign is, indeed, required to consult his subjects' wishes and pursue their interest.

⁸³ De Grazia, op. cit., p. 25. Note that this passage is inconsistent with the previous one cited from De Grazia (note 80, above).