Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy

Volume 69, 2018

Political Philosophy

Persona Civitatis and Thomas Hobbes’s Definition of a Commonwealth

Contra Quentin Skinner’s and David Runciman’s influential accounts that aim to prove what kind of person the Hobbesian state is, in Leviathan Thomas Hobbes compares a commonwealth to an artificial man or an artificial God, but never to an artificial person, nor to a fictitious person. The commonwealth, therefore, should never be constrained to its persona civitatis since, besides its group personality, it also comprises “the multitude”, i.e. flesh and blood people disposed to act in a certain way. The analysis of Hobbes’s definition of a commonwealth will show that, although group personality (persona civitatis) symbolises unity through representation and although it is essential that this unity exists, we cannot simply identify it with the state. Hobbes’s state, therefore, should be defined as an entity that encompasses both material (“men”) and formal elements (persona civitatis).