Imagining Leviathan: Hobbes’s Aristotelian Notion of Fiction and the Problem of Representation

ABSTRACT

Hobbes is often portrayed as a thinker who anticipated modern constructivist ideas of fiction and representation according to which reality is simply a social construction. This article questions this view in two ways. First, it clarifies Hobbes’s reflections on fiction, by comparing his discussion of images as either “resemblance” or as “the representation of one thing by another” in the Leviathan, with his thoughts on fiction and imagination, particularly in De Corpore and De Homine. Second, it shows that these two notions of images correspond to two ideas of fiction, one based on a combination of Aristotle’s concept of the imagination and Hobbes’s conceptualization of the laws of motion, and the other that centres on language and how meanings are assigned to signs and words. I argue that, although Hobbes hardly succeeds in combining these two ideas of fiction, what they share is that neither can be interpreted as an anticipation of modern constructivist theories of representation.

KEYWORDS:

• Hobbes
• Representation
• Fiction
• Leviathan
• Aristotelianism

Acknowledgement

For valuable comments on earlier drafts, I want to thank Antoon Braeckman, Timothy Stanton, and Johan Olsthoorn. I also want to thank two anonymous referees for constructive feedback, the editors of The European Legacy and Neri Sevenier for her help in every step of the administrative process of the manuscript revision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. Ankersmit, Political Representation; Bourdieu, “La représentation politique”; Brown, “Speaking for Nature”; Brito Vieira, The Elements of Representation.

^2. The main classical studies on this issue are Strauss, The Political Philosophy; Zarka, Hobbes; Skinner, “Hobbes on Representation,” and Reason and Rhetoric; Oakeshott, Hobbes. On Hobbes’s theory of the imagination, see Lemetti, “The Most Natural,” and Imagination and Diversity; Herrero, Ficciones políticas. Also particularly insightful is Leijenhorst, The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism.

^3. Brito Vieira, The Elements of Representation; Douglass, “The Body Politic”; Lemetti, “The Most Natural.”

^4. Stanton, “Hobbes and Schmitt,” 165–66.

^5. Brito Vieira, The Elements of Representation, esp. 235–53.

^6. An excellent balance between the two levels can be found in Douglass, “The Body Politic”; Foisneau, “Elements of Fiction”; Camellone, “Il potere della visione”; Olsthoorn, “Leviathan Inc.”

^7. Douglass, “The Body Politic”; Foisneau, “Elements of Fiction”; Camellone, “Il potere della visione.” On fiction and personhood, see Olsthoorn, “Leviathan Inc.”

^8. Agamben, Stasis; Bredekamp, “Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies.” Strauss, The Political Philosophy; Herzog, “Hobbes and Corneille”; Tralau, “Deception, Politics and Aesthetics.”

^9. Douglass, “The Body Politic.”

^10. The nature and role of images as resemblance has been neglected in the scholarly literature on Hobbes. Neither Tuck in “Hobbes and Descartes,” nor Leijenhorst in The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism, deals with this distinction in depth. In describing images as resemblance, Brito Vieira writes in The Elements of Representation that “Hobbes is referring to the psychology (as opposed to the reality) of sense perception” (22), but she does not delve into this claim any further.

^11. Hobbes, Leviathan, 449. Hereafter page references to Leviathan are cited parenthetically in the text.

^12. Leijenhorst, “Jesuit Concepts,” 362.

^13. To better contextualize Hobbes’s theory of knowledge and as a critique of Peripatetic gnoseology, see Leijenhorst, The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism and “Sense and Nonsense,” esp. 89–92. On the relationship between Hobbes’s natural and political science, see Strauss, The Political Philosophy, esp. 166–202.

^14. See Tuck, “Hobbes and Descartes,” and Tuck’s detailed discussion in the “Introduction” to Leviathan, 12–179. On this, see also Leijenhorst, “Sense and Nonsense.”

^15. This section draws on the conclusions of Leijenhorst in The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism, chaps. 1 and 2, and on Leijenhorst, “Sense and Nonsense.” In both studies one can find what to my knowledge is the best analysis of the relationship between Hobbes and Aristotelian-scholastic theories of sense perception.

^16. Hobbes, De Corpore, IV, 25.

^17. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1, 11, 1, 370a28–a29. Hobbes’s Aristotelian source is found in Leijenhorst, The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism, 91 n. 159.

^18. For a reconstruction of the complex relationship between Hobbes and Aristotle see Sorell, “Hobbes and Aristotle,” whereas an excellent reconstruction of Hobbes’s relationship with the Renaissance tradition of commentaries on Aristotle can be found in Brett, “The Matter, Forme and Power.”

^19. Aristotle, De Anima, III, 3.

^20. Leijenhorst, “Sense and Nonsense,” 93.

^21. Pitkin, The Concept, 61–92.

^22. Lemetti, “The Most Natural,” 69: “To Hobbes, the matter of imagination is limited to the experience and in this sense imagination is reproductive, but because its results are not, it is also productive.” See also Lemetti, Imagination and Diversity, 71: “That the conceptions of mind are ultimately matter in motion does not mean that everything should be analysed in these terms.”

^23. Hobbes, De l’homme, 374.

^24. Hobbes, Man and Citizen, 38.

^25. Hobbes, De l’homme, 374.

^26. Hobbes, The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, in Hobbes and Bramhall, 81.

^27. Hobbes, Elements of Law, III, 1. The best analysis I could find on this is in Douglass, “The Body Politic,” esp. 128–32.

^28. Hobbes, Man and Citizen, 55–56.

^29. Hobbes, The Questions, 81.

^30. Hobbes, De Mundo examined, chap. 28.2, quoted in Douglas, “The Body Politics,” 132 n. 25.

^31. For more on this, see the comprehensive analysis of Springborg, “Hobbes’s Materialism,” esp. 825–26.

^32. Arp is right to claim that “the passions of pleasure and pain exist within a framework of a complex human nature and manifest themselves in the context of complex social interactions that include physical as well as other natural and artificial elements.” Arp, “Re-thinking Hobbes’s,” 19.

^33. Hobbes, Man and Citizen, 85.

^34. Hobbes, De l’homme, 460.

^35. In the Leviathan, 157, Hobbes defines assemblies that can be sovereign as either artificial or as fictitious, appearing to imply that artificial things are fictitious.

^36. For more on this, see the traditional Jaume, “La théorie.”

^37. Skinner, “Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person”; and Runciman, “What Kind of Person.”

^38. See Douglass, “Authorisation and Representation”; Crignon, “Representation”; and Sagar, “What is the Leviathan?”

^39. On this point, however, Sagar disagrees in “What is the Leviathan?” 89.

^40. On this matter, however, there is considerable disagreement between Skinner, “Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person,” Runciman, “What Kind of Person,” and Douglass,“Authorisation and Representation.”

^41. See Canning, “Law, Sovereignty and Corporation”; Mulieri, “Marsilius of Padua on Representation.”

^42. Hobbes, Man and Citizen, 35.

^43. Ibid., 35.

^44. Tralau, “Deception, Politics and Aesthetics,” 5; Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric, 271.

^45. See, e.g., Hobbes, Leviathan, 46, 1.

^46. Hobbes, De Cive, VI, 9, in Man and Citizen, 178–79.

^47. Douglass, “The Body Politic,” esp. 141–43.

^48. Agamben, Stasis, 71.

Additional information

Funding

I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the FWO (Research Foundation - Flanders).

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Mulieri

Alessandro Mulieri, PhD, is currently employed by the Research Foundation of Flanders as a senior postdoctoral research fellow at KU Leuven, Belgium. His current research is especially concerned with the history of late medieval and early modern republican political thought and twentieth-century counter-Enlightenment political philosophy. His work has been published in the European Journal of Political Theory, History of Political Thought, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, History of European Ideas, and Philosophy and Social Criticism.