Thomas Hobbes

This article presents a reading of Carl Schmitt’s Concept of the Political, in recourse to lesser known works of his such as Dictatorship and On the Three Types of Juristic Thought and in light of a hypothesis developed while examining his comment to Concept, going back to the German re-edition of the latter in 1963. There, Schmitt offers an interpretative scheme he has himself named “Hobbes-Crystal”, encapsulating not only a suggestion of how to decipher Hobbes, but also Schmitt’s own approach (...) to politics as Political Theology. As I argue below, the relevant comment also hints at Schmitt’s opposing stance to Natural Law as a legal paradigm and philosophical tradition. I show how this is supported by the Concept’s main text and other works mentioned above, proceeding to claim the former functions on a double-level: Schmitt‘s nominalist inquiry in the concept, circular in itself (although favourably supported by a sup-posedly mere description of what is “the case”) sits on premises which not only have not been articulated openly, but also contradict the nominalist proceeding. Bringing both insights to-gether and fleshing them out by close reading, I show that Schmitt’s nominalism presupposes his adversary stance towards Natural Law. Examining the arguments for this position of his and endorsing Oliver Marchart’s work in history of political theory, I read the nominalist façade of the Concept as a case of postfundamentalist criticism of Natural Law, which Schmitt’s Hobbes studies were formative to. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars have delved deeper into the intricate connections between Thomas Hobbes’s political and religious doctrines. It is now widely recognized that religion plays a central role...

This article examines Thomas Hobbes’s notorious claim that “fear and liberty are consistent” and therefore that agreements coerced by threat of violence are binding. This view is to a surprising extent inherited from Aristotle, but its political implications became especially striking in the wake of the English Civil War, and Hobbes recast his theory in far-reaching ways between his early works and Leviathan to accommodate it. I argue that Hobbes’s account of coercion is both philosophically safe from the most common (...) objections to it and politically superior to the seemingly commonsensical alternatives that we have inherited from Hobbes’s critics. (shrink)

Western philosophers have made significant contributions to the establishment of government around the world. Philosophers like Plato, Locke, Hobbes, and Machiavelli dramatically influenced the government system not just in foreign countries but also in the Philippines. Hence, this seminar paper explored the political notions of four Western philosophers and positioned them in Duterte’s six years of presidency. In pursuit of this study, the researcher employed a systematic literature review. A systematic review process is used to collect articles, and then a (...) qualitative approach is used to assess them. The researcher came up with four major themes in this study particularly (1) Duterte is a Dictator, not a Philosopher-King, (2) Violators of natural rights, (3) the Sea-monster of Davao, and lastly (4) Love, fear, cruelty, and Duterte. Thus, the researcher concurred that all of the philosophical ideas of the four Western philosophers did not fit or even violated during Duterte’s six years of presidency in the Philippines. (shrink)

In his newest monograph, David James offers an elaborate, well-wrought reflection on human freedom and its limits by considering five canonical modern philosophers: Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Judging from the table of contents, the book appears to be a work in the history of philosophy: each of the chronologically organized chapters examines a different aspect of necessity, history, and freedom in one of the five philosophers just mentioned. By focusing on those thinkers, James tracks a progression in the (...) modern reflection on the nature of freedom and its relation to constraint. Specifically, he argues that such a progression culminates, with Marx, in finally getting the right understanding of the... Read More. (shrink)

Locke bases his moral and political philosophy on his doctrine of the ‘law of nature’. Scholars have debated the content and grounding of this law and its relationship to Christian theology. The ambiguities of the Lockean natural law’s content are traceable to an unclear grammatical construction in a crucial passage of the Treatises of Government, which can be resolved by following out a related set of arguments in that work. The ambiguities of the Lockean natural law’s grounding can then be (...) resolved by the hypothesis, strongly supported by textual evidence, that Locke relies tacitly on the reasoning of a parallel passage in Hobbes. Lockean natural law rests on neither atheistic nor specifically Christian premises but on a hypothetical natural theology. Locke’s conclusions from that natural theology represent an attempt to follow out Hobbesian logic while also tightening it up on one important point on which Hobbes himself appears to vacillate. (shrink)

In the early iterations of his political thought, The Elements of Law and De Cive, Hobbes proposed a new account of the nature of the people. In Section 2 I describe Pufendorf’s critical response. Pufendorf’s theory of the people is a neglected aspect of the political argument of the De Jure. Just as neglected is Locke’s theory of the people in Two Treatises of Government, though there is better reason for neglect in Locke’s case, in so far as he fails (...) in his major work of political philosophy to present anything resembling a theory of the people at all. In Section 3 I bring Locke’s thinking about the people into clearer focus. In the concluding Section 4 I explore some of the weaknesses of his position. (shrink)

My paper ‘Hobbes and the Motivations of Social Contract Theory’ was published in this journal in 1994. In this contribution I explain the background that led me to write that paper at an early stage of my career, relating the explanation to my education as a student at UCL, and, briefly, at Harvard and contrasting the methodological approaches I experienced in the two departments. The Hobbes paper itself offers a type of ‘rational reconstruction’ of Hobbes, drawing on the logic of (...) different social contract arguments, and while there is much in the paper I still agree with, it assumes an approach to Philosophy that I would not adopt now. (shrink)

Hobbes’s account of the individual’s right to resist sovereign authority is nuanced. His allowance for cases in which a sovereign’s command falls outside the terms of the social contract, despite recent reappraisals, cannot rescue him from the accusation that his system is contradictory. It has been suggested that some Hobbesian rights can be transferred whilst others are quarantined, or that it is the institution of law, rather than the particular commands of the sovereign, which Hobbes ultimately upholds. By reconsidering Hobbes’s (...) concept of sovereignty alongside his theory of natural law, I argue that his system remains in tension with itself. Hobbes’s prioritisation of sovereign judgement over that of the individual, when combined with the principles he retains from the natural law tradition, renders his theory of resistance irreconcilable with his position on sovereignty. (shrink)

(Early) Modern social contract theories reject the idea that legal and political institutions are grounded in an alleged natural ordering or hierarchy of human beings, and instead argue that only government by a public (and not private) authority can fulfil the idea of justice as freedom and equality for all. To be authoritative and not just powerful, governing institutions must be shared as ours in this irreducible sense. I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful freedom brilliantly transforms this (...) tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory—his accounts of human nature (“moral anthropology”) and historical societies (“the principle of politics”)—as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception not only of rightful external freedom but of rightful human freedom in particular societies—with their histories—on planet Earth. With these arguments at hand, we can also better appreciate the importance of realizing that the four possible political conditions for Kant—anarchy, barbarism, despotism, and republic—are ideas of reason, which means that they are never perfectly realized. Hence, historical societies we are not either in the state of nature or in civil society. In addition, in historical societies founded on principles of freedom, there are pockets of injustice or pockets that are devoid of justice that can only be captured by means of one of the three political ideas that are not constitutive of the republican legal-political framework. Kant’s four ideas therefore give us more tools with which to capture the nature of different political forces and challenges facing us in our historical societies. (shrink)

Jeffrey Collins’ new book aims to presents Locke’s views on religious toleration in the light of Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy. At first blush, Hobbes seems an unusual choice as a point of co...

Locke refrained from engaging explicitly with Hobbes in any of his writings. Locke’s policy of non-engagement should be interpreted, we argue, neither as evidence of his lack of interest in (or ignorance of) Hobbes’s arguments, nor as an attempt to conceal from the uninitiated Locke’s covert Hobbesian commitments. Locke’s silence reveals rather than conceals. What it reveals is an absolute determination to “distinguish between the business of civil government and that of religion, and to mark the true bounds between them”. (...) Approached in this way, precisely because Locke’s account of the “business of civil government” says nothing about ecclesiastical government, the second of Two Treatises can be read, in its entirety, as a powerful critical response to Hobbes. To see why, it is necessary to grasp that Part iii of Leviathan (“Of a Christian Common-wealth”) is integral to Hobbes’s positive argumentative purposes in the work. (shrink)

An introduction to the special issue on Hobbes and Locke: Meaning, Method, Modernity.

Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries explores philosophical ideas, theories, and arguments that are central to early modern discussions of slavery. Jorati explores a topic that is widely neglected by historians of philosophy: debates about the morality of slavery in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century America and Europe. Slavery and Race: Philosophical Debates in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries explores philosophical ideas, theories, and arguments that are central to early modern discussions of slavery. It is a companion (...) volume to Jorati's Slavery and Race: Philosophy Debates in the Eighteenth Century (OUP 2023). (shrink)

This chapter considers the extent to which individual and common good are compatible within Thomas Hobbes’s philosophy. It explores Hobbes’s notion of “good”, and considers how he allows for the existence of “real” individual goods. Next, it examines Hobbes’s definition of common good as that which is “good for the commonwealth”. It is the sovereign who decides what is good for the commonwealth, but just as there are real individual goods, there are real common goods. Real goods for the commonwealth (...) are those things that preserve its existence. It is argued that, in Hobbes’s theory, real individual goods are compatible with real common goods; moreover, it is this compatibility that ensures the stability and prosperity of the commonwealth. However, a condition in which all laws are directed to the real common good, and citizens see where their own real good lies, is an ideal, not a realistic political scenario for Hobbes. Real politics requires defusing potential conflict between individual goods and the common good in a different way: namely, by encouraging citizens to accept the sovereign’s judgement of what is “good”. Nevertheless, there are limits to what subjects will accept. Tracing the theoretical compatibility between real goods for individuals and for commonwealths in Hobbes’s thought shows how the preservation of a Hobbesian political community relies not only on citizens accepting the sovereign’s judgement, but also on the ability of sovereigns to see the real common good. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes’s radical tendency to view natural law as a means of individual self-preservation sparked critical responses among natural law theorists in England and continental Europe. This chapter compares how two of Hobbes’s immediate successors and critics – Richard Cumberland and Samuel Pufendorf – dealt with the potential conflict between self-interest and the requirements of natural law. The chapter shows how both intended to reply to Hobbes in their own distinctive ways by attempting to show that the ultimate aim of (...) natural law, imposed by God, obligated people to promote the common good of humankind as a whole rather than mainly function as the means for individual and social utility. They did not, however, consider self-interest to be merely destructive for social cooperation and natural law. Both argued in their distinct ways that self-interest is the most effective motivation for people to consider the advantage of others and it leads them to promote the common good. This chapter also points out notable differences between Cumberland’s and Pufendorf’s treatment of the relation between the private good and the common good. (shrink)

La famille a longtemps t considre comme une unit sociale compose de trois relations simples : mari-femme, parent-enfant et matre-serviteur. Mais la fin du dix-huitime sicle, la dimension affective de la famille devient prpondrante, ce qui en exclut progressivement les serviteurs. Cette tude se penche sur le moment crucial de l'histoire des ides ou le paradigme familial est en train de changer, en s'intressant aux discours sur la famille d'une srie de penseurs issus de la tradition du droit naturel moderne (...) et des Lumires cossaises. Dans un effort constant de replacer chaque relation analyse dans le cadre de la famille, et la famille dans l'argument politique et philosophique plus gnral dfendu par ces auteurs, cette tude montre que la famille, loin d'tre une question subsidiaire, joue un role important dans la comprhension des rapports sociaux cette poque. (shrink)

The following essay aims to elaborate a comparative study between the political theories of Kant and Hobbes, based on the second part of the Kantian essay Theory and Practice. The first part of the essay studies the legitimizing sources suggested by Kant and Hobbes to explain the need for a civil state. The second part analyzes the three republican principles suggested by Kant and compares them with the Hobbesian proposal. The third part studies the direct critique of Kant to Hobbes; (...) it shows how Kant presents his critique in a way that highlights his principle of independence, absent in Hobbes. Finally, starting from an important point of convergence between the authors – the defense of an absolute duty of obedience –, other interpretative possibilities are explored in order to investigate the possibility of finding a recognition or a prudent openness to the question of disobedience. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This article discusses the effects of the political structures that emerged with the civilization process on human nature in Hobbes. Hobbes constructs the state of nature in an area where humans can live their nature completely freely. Although this situation creates a certain area of freedom for human nature, when it comes to social relations, this freedom endangers the lives of all people. As is known, Hobbes' solution on this issue is to build political structures such as states that will (...) benefit everyone, rather than people acting as in the state of nature. However, what I am trying to draw attention to here is whether human nature is dispensable with this transition. My main purpose in this article will be to show that even if there is a change in human position, his nature repositions itself as a fundamental determinant that in a sense manages and shapes all processes within political structures under different appearances, as in the state of nature. In the article handled for such a purpose, it is shown that human nature is no longer possible to remain in its pure form and has transformed into something that we can deal with through a political relationship. The basic view defended in this article is that with this new situation, which we can call the emergence of political nature, human nature emerges as a new force shaping the entire political field. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article argues that Thomas Hobbes' analysis of insult or ‘contumely’ prefigures recent developments in moral and political philosophy in striking ways. Specifically, Hobbes's concerns about the dignitary harms in hate speech went well beyond ‘fighting words’ to the essential role played by expressions of hatred and contempt in making and unmaking social hierarchies. Hobbes’s sensitivity to contumely’s subtle power to constitute social in/equalities recalls recent work in feminist and critical race theory. Yet his expansive solutions – both negative (...) and positive, legal and ethical – also shed light on the difficulties faced by aspirationally egalitarian societies in their efforts to eradicate contempt today. (shrink)

My aim in this chapter is to survey some of the most important developments in thinking about essence in the early modern period, highlighting ways in which thinkers in the period gradually depart from the medieval Aristotelian tradition. In this tradition, essence is thought of as selective, explanatory, and kind-determining. Whereas in the beginning of the early modern period some figures (such as René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Margaret Cavendish, and Anne Conway) still adhere to this traditional view, later figures (including (...) Benedict de Spinoza, G.W. Leibniz, and John Locke) reject it. (shrink)

Las distinciones conceptuales propuestas por Thomas Hobbes reflejan el problema político de considerar lo múltiple en la unidad o la convergencia de innumerables cuerpos, deseos y pasiones en la consolidación de una voluntad soberana unitaria. Ejemplo de ello son las nociones de potentiae (potencias) y potestas (poder), junto a otras como multitud y pueblo o súbditos y soberano. Todas ellas reflejan el problema de la estabilidad del Estado y su legitimidad institucional: la necesidad de generar, de manera continua, un poder (...) común. Con la intención de formular una lectura democrática, el propósito de este artículo es relacionar una lectura iconográfica del frontispicio del Leviatán con la presencia/ausencia de un cuerpo indómito. El trabajo concluye que un rasgo esencial de la teoría política hobbesiana es el sentido de lo democrático fundamentado en la presencia ineludible de cuerpos colectivos que deben ser representados. (shrink)

Auch wenn man davon ausgehen kann, dass Tocqueville von Hobbes gehört hatte und dass er auch zumindest die vom englischen Philosophen vertretenen Hauptthesen kannte – etwa über Arthur de Gobineau –, so ist nicht ganz klar, ob er ein Werk von Hobbes gelesen hatte. In der ersten Démocratie erwähnt er zwar ausdrücklich den homo puer robustus, der im De Cive von Hobbes auftaucht, aber es scheint eher so zu sein, dass Tocqueville diese Hobbessche Charakterisierung des Menschen nur indirekt über Rousseaus (...) zweiten Discours kannte – er selbst hat keine Quelle angegeben. In einem Brief an Sedgwick aus dem Jahr 1856 schreibt er allerdings ausdrücklich, dass, aus der Sicht der Europäer, die Amerikaner „den puer robustus von Hobbes“ darstellen (OC VII, 177). (shrink)

In this chapter Mikko Jakonen emphasises the importance of economy in Hobbes’ theory of international relations. Economy was a crucial issue for Hobbes’ political theory. Yet, economic activity is not situated solely in the domestic sphere. For Hobbes, the different phenomena involved in international economics, such as free trade, trade corporations, monopolies, and colonies, all raised the question of how the sovereign could regulate international economic activity.

This book articulates international political theory in dialogue with economics on several questions. It asks: how has modern international theory been adjusted and nourished by economic ideas, theories and practices? How far has the distinctive contribution of some theorists to international theory been informed by their views on economy? What has been the impact of the theory of the state for economic and international theory? What sort of economic thinking has led to revise the debates constitutive for the modern international (...) realm? How have economic debates been rhetorically connected to political debates in the field of international relations? (shrink)

It is rare that we have Arthur Schopenhauer and Thomas Hobbes in the same publication, and when this occurs, it is usually aimed at exploring their dissenting political views. However, this study is based on the belief that both philosophers have significant similarities in their theories about the creation of the individual as a human being. Schopenhauer and Hobbes have, in their constructions, the pessimistic view of human nature and, furthermore, there are prominent similarities in the construction of the human (...) machinery, similarities that at times appear to merge. The goals that Hobbes and Schopenhauer had when they wrote their works were different, however, what we show in this study is that pessimism is a prolific path for philosophical theory. (shrink)

This article presents a new understanding of how the context of Restoration debates around toleration, magisterial authority and political obligation impinged upon Locke’s mature thought. It proposes that prominent Anglican clergymen, by utilising Hobbist ideas in their arguments for religious conformity, transformed the debate around toleration. In particular, Samuel Parker’s Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie’s potent mix of Hobbism, theological moralism and Scholastic natural law led to important nonconformists, such as Owen and Ferguson, reshaping their arguments in response. They were forced (...) to make an argument upon first principles as to precisely why Parker’s naturalistic account of ecclesiastical authority was inadequate to justify their own particular view of religious institutions. Crucially, the specific features of Parker’s argument, led to John Humfrey, a largely overlooked figure, developing a set of ideas that preconfigured Locke’s later thought. This article then highlights Locke’s creative engagement with the ideas of his time, by charting the changes to Locke’s ecclesiology and view of natural law from 1667-1674, alongside the similar conceptual shifts made by Humfrey. (shrink)

This article explores Thomas Hobbes’s political translations of Euripides’s Medea and, particularly, his representation of the Dionysian ritual of killing and dismembering a sacrificial victim (sparagmos). To answer the question of what forms political theology may take in modernity, I contend that Hobbes seeks to reverse the political theological meaning of ancient Greek sparagmos—which was originally depicted in Euripides as a legitimate religious sacrifice whose objective was to reunify the polis—by turning it into a senseless act of political violence that (...) will dissolve the civil state into competing interest groups or body parts. If Hobbes seeks to expel religious sacrifice from his political state into archaic pre-history, however, the article goes on to argue—via Bramhall, Schmitt, and Cavarero’s revisionary readings of his work—that the philosopher’s critique of Medea ends up bestowing a legitimacy upon the tragic heroine that disarticulates the political theological unity upon which his Commonwealth is founded. In the tragic figure of Medea, Dionysian sparagmos returns to dismember and even potentially consume the body parts of the Leviathan. (shrink)

In 2022, the Brazilian Armed Forces reaffirmed an old interventionist ideology that marked the history of the Republic of Brazil. The text seeks to show that such military ideology does not find a pretext in the history of modern political ideas. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), at first, and then Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), two ideologists who shaped today's understanding of the State, understand representative institutions in disagreement with any non-submission of the FFAA to Political Power. In this way, the ideology of military (...) intervention is, according to the history of ideas, incompatible with the modern conception of the State. (shrink)

El trabajo llama la atención sobre un problema poco atendido por los filósofos contractualistas el cual puede presentarse a manera de pregunta: ¿Cuál es la posición original de los individuos que pactan un acuerdo de fundación de la sociedad civilizada? Para efectos del presente trabajo recurriré a la propuesta de contrato social en De Cive (1642) y Leviathan de Thomas Hobbes (1651). El trabajo defenderá la tesis de que el camino sugerido por Hobbes apela a un recurso que, a pesar (...) de ser presentado como de vital importancia en su teoría contractual, resulta inútil. Tal recurso es el que se refiere al pacto de sociedad. A pesar de que este paso fundamenta la vida civilizada finalmente es abandonado por el autor teniendo que recurrir a la fuerza coactiva del soberano para hacer cumplir lo prometido en el pacto. La razón es que los seres humanos son egoístas y tienden ineludiblemente a ser bribones: la fuerza coactiva del soberano tiene que corregir tales comportamientos. La conclusión que alcanzo a vislumbrar es que la mesa de negociación en la posición inicial sólo podría estar conformada por algunos individuos cautos, y, muchos bribones y tontos. Este conjunto de individuos con diferente percepción del significado del interés social justificaría el gran peso del argumento de la coacción gubernamental posterior al pacto de sociedad hobbesiano. (shrink)

El artículo analiza la cristología de Thomas Hobbes con el propósito de entender una de las principales causas de su descrito como un pensador cristiano o, incluso, ateo, lo que afecta eventualmente la validez de su teología política. El autor sostiene que si bien Hobbes hace uso de la Biblia como fundamento de su filosofía política, su recepción del cristianismo en general no es enteramente correcta, debido a que está fuertemente influenciada por su decisión política en favor del absolutismo. Esta (...) posición política lo lleva a escoger textos ad-hoc que apoyan su teoría y a rechazar otros que no lo hacen, dejando así fuera importantes aspectos del cristianismo, uno de los cuales, el más central, es la naturaleza de Jesucristo como Dios-hombre y la interpretación contractualista del federalismo judío. El artículo hace uso de estudios de reconocidos investigadores (Elazar, Pangle, Kraynak, Ratzinger entre otros) y el autor concluye que Hobbes exhibe una visión reduccionista del cristianismo que influye en su teología política. (shrink)

This paper challenges the colonial reading of Thomas Hobbes’s use of America. Firstly, by analysing all the references and allusions to America in Hobbes’s writings, I claim that Hobbes simply uses America to support his central theory of the state of nature, showing the fundamental significance of a large and lasting society to our being and well-being. Secondly, I argue that Hobbes’s use of America does not serve a second purpose that is similar to Locke’s justification of English land appropriation. (...) Even extending such a Lockean colonial theme from Hobbes’s theory would fail due to Hobbes’s unique property theory. Lastly, with a more nuanced contextual analysis of Hobbes’s involvement in the Virginia Company and relevant textual analysis, I propose that Hobbes is not only not a supporter of English colonialism, but rather an opponent of the Virginia Company, imperial expansion, and colonial conquest. I am not denying the fact that later thinkers like Locke develop Hobbes’s notion of the American state of nature to justify European colonization in America. However, the received history should not be confused with Hobbes’s own writing purpose. Nor should we ignore Hobbes’s opposition to imperial expansion. (shrink)

The idea that the Leviathan frontispiece offers a visual summary of the contents of the work is widespread. However, the analysis of the frontispiece often under-explores Leviathan's text or leaves certain iconographic elements aside. In discussions of the Scholastics ‘Dilemma’ emblem, for instance, the image is commonly reduced to a representation of ‘logic’ or ‘scholasticism’, leaving aside the intricate interrelationship between the objects present in the image and their connection with the content of the book. This paper argues that this (...) image helps understanding Hobbes’ critique of Scholastic doctrines and their political effects in Leviathan. For Hobbes, these supposedly pure philosophical concepts either in logic (trident of the ‘Syllogism’) or metaphysics (‘Real/Intentional’ bident) hide a central part of Scholastic thought: a ‘seditious’ political conception claiming that the Pope has an indirect right to temporal power in affairs concerning spiritual matters theory (‘Spiritual/Temporal’ and ‘Direct/Indirect’ bidents). The Scholastic model made the common people believe that the Pope would have at least as much authority as the Sovereign. When faced with the choice between obeying either the Pope or their Civil Sovereign the subjects would find themselves in a dangerous ‘Dilemma’. (shrink)

In this article I describe the implicit conceptualization of social order which exists in Death Stranding — localized in both the setting and the mechanics of the game — and compare it with the conceptualization of Thomas Hobbes’s “Leviathan”. First, the theoretical tension between Death Stranding and “Leviathan” is traced: the speculative conceptualization of the Leviathan and the procedural conceptualization of Death Stranding are compared by clarifying the role that the concepts of action, authorization, right and sovereignty play in Hobbesian (...) theory and the video game. Sec­ondly, the theoretical tension between the political and natural capacities of the Sovereign according to Hobbes is explicated; with the help of mate­rial from Death Stranding, a variant of its resolution is proposed, suggest­ing the conceptualization of the Sovereign-without-a-body: an instance devoid of physical capacity and materiality, yet still capable of maintaining social order as a product of its activity. Subsequently, attention is paid to the mechanics of state expansion in Death Stranding: I describe and analyze how the Sovereign-without-a-body’s messenger — the protagonist of the video game — interacts with people outside the Sovereign’s zone of influ­ence, convincing them to consent to return to the commonwealth. This theoretical move makes it possible to supplement Hobbes’s binary scheme of the state of nature and commonwealth with a third concept — the state of memory, in which the memory of the Sovereign turns out to be a deci­sive factor influencing whether the commonwealth will be restored to its former boundaries. By explicating the Hobbesian theory of imagination, I demonstrate that — in the state of memory — the Sovereign is contingent, not fully defined, and virtual. (shrink)