ABSTRACT This article aspires to make two original contributions to the vast literature on Hobbes’s account of the nature and person of the commonwealth: (1) I provide the first systematic analysis of his changing conception of ‘person’; and (2) use it to show that those who claim that the Hobbesian commonwealth is created by personation by fiction misconstrue his theory of the state. Whereas Elements/De Cive advance a metaphysics-based distinction between individuals (‘natural persons’) and corporations (‘civil persons’), from Leviathan onwards Hobbes contrasts individuals acting in their own name (‘natural persons’) with representatives (‘artificial persons’). These changes notwithstanding, Hobbes retains the same corporate conception of the state throughout. On the prevailing ‘fictionalist’ interpretation, the sovereign brings the commonwealth into existence by representing it. I argue, rather, that as an incorporation of natural persons, the commonwealth becomes one person through the authorized (i.e. non-fictitious) representation of each constituent member singly by one common representative (‘the sovereign’).

中文翻译：

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利维坦公司：霍布斯论国家的性质和人

摘要 本文希望对霍布斯关于共同体的性质和人的描述的大量文献做出两个原创性贡献：（1）我对他不断变化的“人”概念进行了首次系统分析；(2) 用它来表明那些声称霍布斯联邦是由虚构人物创造的人误解了他的国家理论。尽管 Elements/De Cive 在个人（“自然人”）和公司（“公民”）之间提出了基于形而上学的区分，但从利维坦开始，霍布斯将以自己的名义行事的个人（“自然人”）与代表（“人工”）进行了对比。人’）。尽管发生了这些变化，霍布斯自始至终都保留了相同的国家企业概念。在流行的“虚构主义”解释中，主权者通过代表它使联邦得以存在。相反，我认为，作为自然人的合并，联邦通过一名共同代表（“主权者”）单独授权（即非虚构）代表每个组成成员而成为一个人。