TH 1.1. Hanna Pitkin on Hobbes and the concept of representation

Professor Hanna Pitkin is scrutinizing Hobbes’ contribution to the concept of political representation in several works from her doctoral dissertation, through articles in scientific journals (Pitkin, 1964) to her publication “The Concept of Representation” (Pitkin, 1967). Here is provided a brief summary of her reflections on Hobbes’ concept of representation, as provided in “The Concept of Representation”. This summary adheres strictly to Pitkin’s analysis but is far from exhaustive so you are, of course, advised to complete the reading by referring to the original text. 

As already mentioned, Leviathan is focused on the justification of political obligation within ‘civil society’ as opposed to ‘natural society’, or the state of war of each man with every other. To denote the transition Hobbes uses the device of the social contract – that men create commonwealth by contracting – and his concept of representation – that they authorize one among them as their representative.

Hobbes' analysis of representation (which is expressed almost entirely in chapter XVI: ‘Of Persons, Authors and Things Personated.’), Pitkin observes, proceeds from the notion of a person, to a distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ persons, and finally to the classifying of a representative as a kind of artificial person. A natural person is one whose words and actions are considered his own; a feigned or artificial person is one whose words and actions are considered those of someone else.

Hobbes is reflecting if there was some sort of possession related to actions as ownership is to property. The analogous idea for actions, Hobbes considered, is authority, which Hobbes defines as the right to perform the action. ‘And as the right of possession is called dominion; so the right of doing any action, is called AUTHORITY. So that by authority is always understood a right of doing any act; and done by authority, done by commission, or license from him whose right it is.’ Hobbes, as Pitkin points out, calls the man who actually performs an action the ‘actor’, and the one by whose authority he acts, who gave him the right to act, the ‘author’.

Prof. Pitkin further elaborates on the relationship between author and actor as viewed by Hobbes. In particular there are two types that we will mention here. What happens, when the represented are inanimate objects, children, or lunatics? Authority in these cases must come from elsewhere, by those that are owners or governors of those things. Besides the artificial persons authorized by someone other than the one they represent, there are artificial persons who are not authorized by anyone but themselves. How is this possible? Hobbes is suggesting that every act is an act of representation – if not of someone else, then of oneself. There are persons who, in one way or another, pretend to be authorized by someone else, but in fact are not. The simplest and most obvious example of an unauthorized artificial person of this kind is the fraud or swindler. When someone fraudulently pretend to have authority, and so makes a contract with a third party, then the alleged author is not bound by it but the actor himself.

With authority comes responsibility. Or does it? One of the most important notions of Hanna Pitkin on Hobbes’ clarification of the concept of representation is that in terms of duties and responsibilities the representative is in much more favourable and less responsible position than the represented. The author is bound by any covenant made on his authority, but he is also responsible for any breaches of the law of nature he has authorized. The rights and privileges accrue to the one who is authorised, the obligations and responsibilities to the one who authorizes.

To a significant extent the sovereign's duties, as Hobbes clarifies, are deriving from the initial purpose he was established for: ‘The office of the sovereign, be it monarch, or an assembly, consisteth in the end, for which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people; to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the author of that law, and to none but him’.

Rationality is crucial for obligation, according to Hobbes: one can be obliged only if he is capable of knowing his obligation and capable of having sufficient motive to perform the action it prescribes. Both of these conditions presuppose rationality: in its absence one cannot be obligated, and hence cannot enter into valid agreements, like the authorization of a representative. Someone who cannot be held responsible for his own acts cannot assume responsibility for the acts of another.

A further aspect of the ownership of actions emerges, which involves control over action, or limitation on it. The important point to recognize is that the duties of the sovereign are his duties as sovereign rather than just representative. A Hobbesian representative cannot have duties as representative. If he does something outside his authorization he is not representing at all, but has exceeded the limits and the sovereign's authorization has no limits. Consequently, although the sovereign has duties, they are not duties to his subjects, and a subject can never justifiably disobey or criticize his sovereign on the grounds that the latter is violating his duty.

Hobbes set himself the problem of creating a lasting union out of a multitude of separate men with separate conflicting wills. He made this a formal problem, and solved it with his theory of representation. Behind the verbal game lies a real problem of the creation of political consensus, the peaceful settlements of disputes, the development of community. In the solution of these actual political problems, representation can play an important part.

The final assessment of Hanna Pitkin on Hobbes account on the concept of representation is that it is true but too narrow and partial which allows for criticism and suggestion of different hypotheses, but then these suffer the same weakness.

Something to reflect upon: According to Pitkin’s interpretation of Hobbes work, the only way in which the sovereign could have acquired an obligation to other people (as distinct from obligations to God) is by covenanting and he has not covenanted; he has only been the beneficiary of the covenant among his subjects. But is this really the case with the English monarch? No doubt, Hobbes was aware of Magna Carta – the charter that limited the liberties of the king on behalf of his barons signed in 1215, which was not even the first document of its kind, being preceded by the Charter of Liberties from 1100. Is it possible that Hobbes hinted that by covenanting the English king has surrendered the right to represent to new representative institution such as the Parliament?

TH 1.0. Thomas Hobbes and Political Representation

Tomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is generally considered to be the first and probably the only major political theorist who provided a “fully developed, systematic account of the meaning of the concept of representation” (Pitkin, 1967).

Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 in Westport, near the town of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England in the family of a curate, who fled to London and left his family under the care of his brother. The young Thomas received excellent humanistic education, centered on the study of classic languages – Latin and Greek (it was Hobbes who would later translate for the first time in English Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War’ and by the end of his life – Homers’ Iliad and Odyssey). Influenced by his teacher Robert Latimer, he went to Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he took his bachelor degree in 1608. Immediately after that Hobbes started working as a tutor, companion and secretary for the family of William Cavendish – a landowner from Derbyshire, and, since 1618, the first Earl of Devonshire. Hobbes would keep that position for the following three decades until 1638.

Hobbes was promoted by the Earl of Devonshire but was not accepted by the burgesses and was unsuccessful as a candidate of the borough of Derby for election to the Short Parliament (1640). The turmoil of the epoch affected Hobbes in considerable degree. Expressing royal support during the transition from monarchy to republican commonwealth was most unhealthy and after the dissolution of the Short Parliament and the arrest of likeminded fiduciary of King Charles I, Hobbes fled to Paris, where he would reside for the following eleven years. It is in Paris that Hobbes would complete in 1651 his magnum opus, his most famous political treatise – ‘LEVIATHAN Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of A Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil’ (named after the enormous biblical beast that Hobbes likened to the political entity of men). The publication of Leviathan, just like the circulation of his earlier pro royalist treatise ‘The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic’ put Hobbes in a delicate position – he managed to strain his relations with the exiled Court and to scandalise the Catholic church. Accused of departing from his principles Hobbes half fled and half returned to England in early 1652, where he lived to the end of his life in 1679. Even in the late years of his life Hobbes did not find peace, threaten by persecution and accusations of heresy, but managed to avoid them patronised by the king.

The ‘Leviathan’ (1651) is an attempt to explain and justify political obligation in so firm and unequivocal a manner, as to leave no possibility of anarchy, rebellion, revolt, or civil war. Hobbes begins with an examination of what the world is like in the absence of political obligation or civil society, in man's "natural condition." The state of nature is to Hobbes a state of war, the struggle of each man with every other for survival. There is no mutually recognised authority, no mutual trust. What becomes crucial, therefore, is the transition from this state of nature to "civil society," in which government and political obligation exist. To explain this transition Hobbes uses not only the device of the social contract but also his concept of representation. In his own words: 

“A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men do agree, and covenant, every one, with every one, that to whatsoever man, or assembly of men, shall be given by the major part, the right to present the person of them all, that is to say, to be their representative; every one... shall authorize all the actions and judgements, of that man, or assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and to be protected against other men.” 

Hobbes’ notion of representation is confined almost entirely to chapter XVI of Leviathan, which is called "Of Persons, Authors and Things Personated." This has been a subject of analysis for a number of scientists. In a series of short summaries we will provide these views here, on ‘repregov’.

[Source: Skinner, 2002; Pitkin, 1967]

Roman jurists, corporations and the theory of representation

In approaching the scope and essence of public law, Roman jurists made an important contribution to the theory of representation.

The development of the concept of a state or municipality as an entity existing apart from its members is of fundamental importance. It is probable that jurists made use of the writings of philosophers in developing their ideas, such as the Stoic classification of bodies (corpora) and a body composed of separate elements (a people, a legion and a herd). Another example is the notion of a body whose members change yet which retains its identity.

The notion that a body could retain its identity in spite of changes of membership was the essential background for the jurists' development of a theory of corporations as entities having an existence separate from that of its members and accordingly having rights and duties separate from theirs.

By one philosophical route or another, the jurists appear to have satisfied themselves that there could be such a thing as a body of constant identity yet changing parts. It was then their task to answer the question what legal acts that body should be able to perform, or who should perform those acts for it. There are clear statements recognizing the existence of a corporation: money owed to a collectivity (universitas) is not owed to the individuals who comprise it (and vice versa); such things as theatres and stadia belong to the universitas and not to the individuals who comprise it.

The jurists also developed notions about representation of the universitas by its 'organs'. Although it is disputed which corporate bodies were regarded as having capacity to be represented in this way, it is quite clear that this was true of municipalities.

The praetor's edict itself provided remedies to be used in actions for and against municipes. The municipality could be represented both by its magistrates and by agents specially appointed to represent it (adores); their election or appointment was a matter of public law, but they could represent the municipality in private-law transactions. This is the basis of a theory of representation.

[Source: The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (2005), p. 630-631]