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?
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