Blackwell Reference Online

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Hobbes has two ways of explaining the authority of the sovereign in Leviathan . One involves the idea of authorizing a person or persons to be the sovereign; the other involves the idea of alienating one's rights to some things. Each way has some advantages for establishing what Hobbes wants to make of sovereignty, and he tries to meld them into one account. But his account is arguably inconsistent. Let's consider authorization first. Hobbes's theory of authorization depends upon his distinction between actors and authors. An actor is a person whose actions are not owned by her but by someone else. The actions of a stage actor, for example, may be said to be owned by the author of the lines that the actor recites. However, by an actor, Hobbes means something more like an agent, as in the terms, “real estate agent” or “talent agent,” that is, a person who represents another person in some business dealing or other practical affair. (The theory being discussed here is sometimes called “the agency model” (Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition , pp. 264–5).) By an author , Hobbes means not so much a published writer as a person who has the responsibility for some action. An author then is the human being who owns the actor's action or to whom an action is attributed. When a human being acts for herself, she is both the actor and the author ( L 16.4–15). According to ... log in or subscribe to read full text