Mimesis in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651)

Mimesis: The background of a key term

Each valence of mimesis, theatrical, anthropological, poetic and linguistic, belongs to a history of scholarship. Mimesis appears as an entry in several types of encyclopedia, including the A Companion to Aesthetics (Cooper, 1992), the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Craig, 1998), the Encyclopedia of the Renaissance (Grendler and Renaissance Society of America, 1999), the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (Kelly, 1998) and the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Brogan, 1993). The variety of encyclopedias claiming mimesis as a relevant entry reflects the wide provenance of meanings the term mimesis has enjoyed.

Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis focuses on the poetic dimension of mimesis, tracing what this term implies in several seminal texts of the western traditions (Auerbach, 2003). Scholars of literature have followed in this tradition using discussions of plot structures or poetic mimesis as a lens to examine literature from Shakespeare to modern fiction (Nuttall, 1983; White, 1973; Spariosu and Bogue, 1984; Prendergast, 1986; Scodel, 1999; Melberg, 1995; Weber, 2004). Linguistic mimesis has been addressed by commentators on classical poetry criticism, early modern art historians and philosophers, all of whom discuss the metaphor of sight for knowledge. While scholars of poetic mimesis are interested in literary depiction of historical movement, scholars of linguistic mimesis pursue the question of whether or not and how words create images that can serve as bases for knowledge claims (Gray, 1987; Swan, 2005; Kleinberg-Levin, 1993; Kleinberg-Levin and NetLibrary Inc., 1997). The linguistic dimension of mimesis gained relevance with the rise of empiricism, a period to which Hobbes was witness, because early scientific communities developed standards for language use in their search for method, often mentioning the mimetic quality of some types of language use (Shapin and Schaffer, 1985; Shapin and Barnes, 1976; Dear, 1985).

Anthropological mimesis is addressed by Michael Taussig’s book Mimesis and Alterity (Taussig, 1993), and identified by Gebauer and Wulf’s comprehensive book Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society (Gebauer and Wulf, 1995). Victoria Kahn’s article ‘Hobbes, Romance, and the Contract of Mimesis’ is the first to identify mimesis as an important dynamic in the state of nature (Kahn, 2001a). The ‘problem of mimetic desire’ she identifies, is the problem I term ‘anthropological mimesis’ (ibid.: 5). Réne Girard addresses the problem of mimetic desire in his interpretations of plots featuring this imitative tendency (Girard, 1961). ³ The tradition of investigating the theatrical dimension of mimesis through the ideas of theatrum mundi and theatricality is also long. Minos Kokolakis has compiled all of the citations of theatrum mundi in the history of western philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Cervantes (Kokolakis, 1960). William West’s Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe addresses connections between theatricality and epistemologies, and is a detailed examination of the significance of the theatrum mundi conceit in early English culture (West, 2002). Tracy Davis and Thomas Postlewait have also reviewed the meaning of the theatrum mundi as it pertains to early modern England in the seminal collection, Theatricality (Davis and Postlewait, 2003).

Theatricality has also been linked to political authority in anthropological studies such as Clifford Geertz’s Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-century Bali (Geertz, 1980). The modern state has been found to have a spectacle-like character by anthropologists including Edelman and Kertzer (Edelman, 1988; Kertzer, 1988). Stephen Orgel (Orgel, 1975), Stephen Greenblatt (Greenblatt, 1988), and Stephen Mullaney (Mullaney, 1988) have each examined the spectacular nature of political authority and the theatrical aspects of society in early England. In the genre of political theory, Michael Rogin’s groundbreaking book Ronald Reagan: The Movie (Rogin and NetLibrary Inc., 1988) brought out dimensions of theatrical and poetic mimesis in the American executive branch. In all of the secondary literature, the four themes of mimesis I have identified as distinct concepts have overlapped. Where theatrical mimesis is discussed, the poetic form that facilitates the text as staging the action is also pointed out. Poetic structures often put on display the consequences of anthropological mimesis. Linguistic mimesis has to do with words making images and therefore the text’s ability to be like vision, evoking the emphasis on what is seen, also emphasized in theatrical mimesis. Each concept of mimesis has its own tradition of analysis, yet is not sealed off from its relationship with the other forms, as each is related to what we would now term the aesthetic aspects of social and political life.

Mimesis in the tradition of Hobbes criticism

In focusing on the mimetic dynamics involved both in the disorders of the state of nature and in the account of constitutive power as it constructs normative and political order, this approach to Hobbes’s Leviathan deepens Victoria Kahn’s argument that mimesis is ‘both a source of conflict and a solution to the problem of political obligation’ in Leviathan (Kahn, 2004: 141). ⁴ According to the delineations I have made, anthropological mimesis belongs on both sides of the equation, while theatrical and the dynamic between anthropological and poetic account for the ‘solution’. Michael Oakeshott (Oakeshott, 1991) and Sheldon Wolin (Wolin, 1970) have identified the poetic dimensions of mimesis under the guise of the mythological and dramatic character of the text, respectively. Terrence Ball notices the linguistic dimension of mimesis as a central problem of the text, but comes to a different conclusion about citizenship than does this reading (Ball, 1985). Likewise, George Shulman’s analysis of Leviathan (Shulman, 1988, 1989; Shulman and California Digital Library, 1989) is similar to mine in that he identifies the constitutive power of the multitude but like Ball, Wolin and Oakeshott he does not see the ongoing ethical and political relevance of the constitutive power Hobbes attributes to the future subject-citizens in the form of the power of the imitative arts.

Challenging the Humanism/Science divide

My reading of the Leviathan challenges the traditional divide in the secondary literature between humanistic- and scientific-centered readings. I do not argue that Hobbes’s epistemological claim has to do primarily with a ‘borrowing’ from the mechanical sciences for politics. In my view, Hobbes doubles the foundation of his epistemological claims: he relies on the knowledge-as-seeing metaphor, but he relies on mechanical and mimetic explanations of how men come to ‘see’ something, including themselves. Hobbes emphasizes that the constitution of a new commonwealth takes place in the appearing world, and the mutual appearance of covenanting persons is its condition. Hobbes radically revalues mimesis against Plato’s critique of mimesis in the Republic. This thesis, about the positive value of mimesis for the construction of norms and political community, makes my reading of Hobbes’s relation to Plato the exact opposite of Paul Kottman’s (Kottman, 2008). ⁵

He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind: which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be only to consider, if he also find not the same in himself. (Hobbes, 1996[1651]: 11)

Hobbes makes two related claims about how poetic mimesis, or the style of the text, will affect what the reader sees. He does not claim the text will have the same effect on everyone, but the idea that the text can move, or set into motion a change in the state of the knowledge, self-knowledge and ethical orientation of its reader, is suggested by the citation above. The effect cannot be the same, because Hobbes does not claim that men are mirror images of one another, but that the workings of the passions in one man are similar to the workings of passions in another. Hobbes implies that everyone’s blood moves mechanically through his body according to the same principles, even as he acknowledges that men’s bodies can be sensitive to external stimuli in radically different ways (Hobbes, 1996[1651]: 31, 37, 38, 39). Leviathan promises to show the reader the grounds of the passions of mankind or how the passions move in principle, even while he recognizes the singularity of individual responses to empirical stimuli. The sense of motion that Hobbes relies on in creating the logic of Leviathan, is a movement that entails the generation of norms, and so has a normative quality. Hobbes’s combination of science and moral philosophy reads like slippage from fact to norm, because that is exactly the movement men in the state of nature need to undertake and undergo to exit their condition in favor of the civil state. The general man initially self-presents as an aristocratic warrior, then as a party to the covenant, and ultimately as a citizen. In each of these stages, his relationship to himself and others takes on an increasing normative rigidity.

While Hobbes’s mechanico-materialist explanation of the body accounts for men’s constant motion forwards towards the satisfaction of desires, this is not the only explanation of how men respond to what they see with movement. In terms of theatrical and anthropological mimesis, men present one another with performances, which in turn are spectated and responded to. Poetry, in terms of plot, and linguistic mimesis are also ways of presenting men with images they see and respond to. Seeing and responding to what is seen relies on a view of the presentation of images and perception but in a way that is irreducible to the mechanico-materialist explanation of the body and psychology. Reading Leviathan through the lens of the senses of mimesis at play does not negate, but rather complements, the mechanico-materialist understanding of the body and psychology that Hobbes initially posits. The mimetic reading does not require denying the mechanico-materialism in any way. Tracing Hobbes’s invocations of theatrical, anthropological, poetic and linguistic mimesis back to classical sources shows how he accounts for the political and ethical movement that occurs in Leviathan as it can be connected to ancient discussions of mimesis.

Leviathan’s poetic mimesis: How the pre-ethical man becomes good

The poetic dimension of mimesis in Leviathan depicts the pre-ethical man in the state of nature going through a process of recognition and reversal, recognizing right reason, and adhering to the normative order of the laws of nature in order to covenant (Hobbes, 1996[1651]: 21, 111; Aristotle, 2002: 50a34a, 52a15; Cave, 1988: 2, 3). This man is pre-ethical or anormative in the sense that he does not reliably organize his actions with the guidance of the laws of nature or any other set of socially agreed-upon norms, although they may inform his power relationships with others. From the perspective presented later in the text, that following the laws of nature defines what it means to be ‘good’, the man in the state of nature could be termed ‘bad’ (Strauss, 1963). ⁶ Hobbes presents a portrait of an ethically ambiguous man becoming a norm-abider in order to inspire in the reader the same type of ethical change, as the reader follows the general man. In the introduction’s promise to show the reader how to govern, Hobbes argues that he teaches this to the reader by showing him the general man’s passions. Hobbes’s employment of poetic mimesis has two clear precursors in classical literature, Aristotle’s Poetics and Petrarch’s ‘On his own Ignorance and that of Many Others’. According to Aristotle, in looking on as the protagonist suffers from the consequences of his hamartia, the reader or spectator of a tragic drama undergoes catharsis, widely interpreted as a training of the passions (Aristotle, 2002: 49a34, 53a10, 60b12; Yanal, 1982: 502; Stinton, 1975: 226; Schütrumpf, 1989: 140). Leviathan borrows from Aristotle’s Poetics because the idea his readers’ passions may be in need of training accords with the prominent role Hobbes assigns to the passions in his account of ethical becoming.

Hobbes’s invocation of nosce teipsum also alludes to Petrarch’s view of the ethical improvement possible in the confrontation between an ethically ambiguous reader and the poetic dimension of mimesis (Petrarch, 1948: 124). Hobbes, following Petrarch, and revaluing Plato’s observation about poetry’s ability to affect men, does not denounce the ethical malleability of men, as Plato does, but uses it to argue for ways in which a man can better himself (ibid.: 104; Gillespie, 2008: 46). ⁷ Petrarch advocated reading as a path to self-knowledge, thematizing the conscience as a mode of critical self-examination (Petrarch, 1948: 103, 104, 105; Gillespie, 2008: 67). Petrarch revalues role-playing in the intersection of anthropological and textual mimesis, as a means of arriving at self-consciousness and a new relationship between knowledge, self-knowledge and ethical orientation. He argues that the force of the text arises out of the reader following the character’s ethical transformation from bad to good. Instead of arguing that the reader or spectator will become morally ambiguous himself, Petrarch argues that in identifying with a bad man who becomes good, the reader or spectator becomes self-conscious of his own desire to travel the same path (Petrarch, 1948: 104, 105).

Petrarch records his experience reading Cicero, claiming it ignited his own path to ethical personhood. Petrarch also recalls Augustine’s confession that his path from ethical depravity to goodness was inspired by reading Ambrose and Cicero’s Hortensius (Petrarch, 1948: 105, 110, 113). In each case, the poetic dimension of mimesis has an effect on the reader’s natural propensity to engage in imitation in a learning process. If we consider the poetic dimension of mimesis successfully appeals to its reader’s natural tendency to imitate, then Hobbes’s reader is invited to follow the example of a bad man becoming good, arriving at self-knowledge or awakening his conscience through reading (Oakeshott, 1991: 309). In reading accounts of bad men who became good by listening to their conscience, the reader learns how to engage his conscience in critical self-examination. The reader learns about himself, namely, that his conscience can be the source of his ethical improvement, as he reads about men who ethically improved themselves in this way.

Here the certainty of the efficacy of the sovereign’s threat of violence to order political obligation fades, and the interplay between poetic and anthropological mimesis at play in Hobbes’s textual strategy reveals a more vulnerable aspect to the generation of normative consensus. Awakening the reader to self-knowledge is a project that can fail, especially since it involves a learning process. The teleology of the learning process of the general man depicted in the state of nature, towards a conscientiousness of the limitations of his power and knowledge is constructed through Hobbes’s choices as an author. While Hobbes presents his text as inevitably having the effect of bringing the reader to a more ethical self-consciousness, this project can fail, because the reader is not obliged to consent to the necessity of the plot construction. This point is made in James Martel’s reading (Martel, 2007). Martel draws attention to the contingency of the Hobbesian project of encouraging his readers to follow him. Since what he is advocating is a citizenry of careful readers, there can be no pre-determined politics that follows from such an activity, and in so encouraging, Hobbes in fact belies a confidence in the citizen that has long been overlooked. ⁸ While Plato warns against the possibility that poetry can destabilize souls as it incites imitative behavior, in my view, Hobbes’s invocation of nosce teipsum attempts to employ the poetic dimension of mimesis for exactly this purpose, following Petrarch’s thesis that a reader can be led to an ethical reversal as a text facilitates self-knowledge. Imitating the bad man who becomes good, for Petrarch is the way a text can be effective, or teach the reader – reorganizing the relationship between knowledge, self-knowledge and ethical orientation predominating in him.

[T]he true moral philosophers and useful teachers of the virtues are those whose first and last intention is to make hearer and reader good, those who do not merely teach what virtue and vice are and hammer into our ears the brilliant name of the one and the grim name of the other but sow into our hearts love of the best and eager desire for it and at the same time, hatred of the worst and how to flee it. (Petrarch, 1948: 105)

For Petrarch, the educative text works on the will of the reader, not just his intellect. Only by showing the reader the worst consequences of his or her tendencies, can a desire for moral rectitude be sown. The style of the moral philosopher must not be, as Plato recommended, to avoid exposing the reader or auditor to all reprehensible behavior, but the opposite, to show it and its consequences so that goodness is loved, not because it is the only aspect of human behavior he or she has been exposed to, but because the worst aspects of man, which could ruin his personality and his fate if he does not love virtue, have been shown to the reader. Hobbes’s stylistic choices reflect the fact that he appreciated the ethically malleable character of men, and notices, following Petrarch, that bad men can become good through reading.

Hobbes follows Aristotle’s Poetics and Petrarch’s ‘On his own Ignorance’ when he creates a scene of ethical change in Leviathan. As though following Aristotle’s analysis, the Leviathan depicts a moment of recognition and reversal, because the plot depicts the future subject-citizens becoming self-conscious of the limitations of their reason and power. The reversal and recognition occur as a consequence of the extreme scene of the state of nature, the general men recognize the rules of right reason, the laws of nature, and reverse their comportment to abide by the normative standards preconditioning the rule of law (Hobbes, 1996[1651]: 71). Since Hobbes says that these laws are known in foro interno, or in the consciences of the persons who covenant, then the ethical transition from natural right pursuer to natural law follower involves an awakening of the conscience.

In depicting a moment of Aristotelian recognition and reversal, or Petrarchian ethical betterment, Leviathan responds to book III of the Republic, where Plato’s interlocutors discuss anthropological mimesis or the tendency of youth to imitate in a natural learning process as a feature of behavior in the condition of the absence of known and agreed-upon transcendental standards of the good. In the Republic, these standards and the appropriate education of the youth are under discussion. In Hobbes’s Leviathan, the problem of the state of nature is that in the absence of an agreed-upon authority, men have disincentives to recognize an objective standard by which to form their desires (Kahn, 2001b). Instead, each man proposes his own judgment of what this objective standard should be as the objective one, as a means to gain dominance over others (Hobbes, 1996[1651]: 33). Leviathan depicts men looking to one another to establish what is desirable, and evaluating one another’s status by reading signs of honor and dishonor in one another’s comportment (ibid.: 33, ch. X). The reason a man reads these signs is to try to ascertain his own place in the social hierarchy (ibid.: 87, 88).

In Leviathan, the anthropological dimension of mimesis serves as explanation for normative and political disorder. In the state of nature, men use language strategically in the competition for social dominance (Hobbes, 1996[1651]: 33). The problem of mimetic desire motivates men to disagree with one another on the definitions of terms, impeding the development of civil society by turning any normative consensus into an argument, so that the rival cannot win the upper hand through his use of language. While the poetic and linguistic dimensions of mimesis show how men can create order, the anthropological dimension of mimesis explains conflict. In this kind of conflict, there is no teleological end. The anthropological dimension of mimesis does not certainly move in one ethical direction, because the mutual imitation of the natural, social learning process can lead to normative agreement or disagreement. The anthropological dimension of mimesis does not itself explain how the multitude construct the political authority under which they will live. Instead, it explains the ground or the dynamics of imitation between men out of which normative order has to arise. In arguing that there is no teleological end to conflict based in the anthropological dimension of mimesis, I am arguing that the state of nature develops into the civil state on account of Hobbes’s employment of poetic mimesis, and the future subject-citizens’ employment of the linguistic and theatrical dimensions of mimesis.

In Leviathan, men can come to agreement on definitions and meanings of terms when language use in the public sphere is perspicuous. Hobbes uses ‘perspicuity’ to refer to the clarity that can arise out of the structure of a text (poetic mimesis), the clarity that arises out of a clear image in words (linguistic mimesis) (Hobbes, 1996[1651]: 10, 36 37; Gray, 1987). ⁹ Hobbes’s employment of the linguistic dimension of mimesis as relevant for the establishment of ethical norms draws Leviathan into relation with the Latin rhetorical tradition. Skinner explains that for Quintilian and Cicero, making images with words was considered a way of moving one’s readers or auditors around to the author’s or speaker’s point of view (Skinner, 1996: 83, 11). The ability to move readers or auditors, in other words the force of imagistic language, is termed vis in the rhetorical tradition (ibid.: 55, 98). In addition to noting that mimetic language can exert a force in showing the auditor what one is saying in order to move him, Quintilian and Cicero also argue that this kind of force does not conflict with the pursuit or communication of knowledge. Both giants of the Latin rhetorical tradition argue that there is a rhetorical style appropriate to the goals of philosophy by emphasizing that mimetic language amounts to painting something in its truest color (ibid.: 104). In this tradition, perspicuous language is a way of presenting knowledge in its truest color, and it carries with it a force or vis when presented in this way, and for both, the force of well-written or well-spoken language aids learning. The Latin rhetorical tradition’s view on the power/knowledge of mimetic language use led early modern scientific communities to rely on this standard of written language when developing norms for scientific reports (Shapin and Barnes, 1976: 241; Dear, 1985: 152). A proposition can count as true or part of a discourse of knowledge, for Hobbes, if the speaker or author presents ‘evidence’ in words to the auditor (Hobbes, 1928: 64; Skinner, 1996: 308). Presenting evidence through mimetic language was the standard adopted by the Royal Society, and was adapted from the poetry of Horace to Galileo’s description of the elegance of geometry.

In my reading of Leviathan, Hobbes employs the linguistic dimension of mimesis to describe the knowledge/power that the general man employs to rise above the disorders of anthropological mimesis and recognize the laws of nature. The creation of the norms preconditioning the rule of law, or the simultaneous recognition of the laws of nature, relies on the agency on both sides of the dynamic, the speaker or author has agency over what he writes or says, or the image he draws in words for others, and the reader or auditor has agency in how he ‘sees’ what is being said (Martel, 2007: 2). Everyone has to ‘see’ that the laws of nature constitute the causes of peace, and ‘see’ this so vividly that the result is consensus and norm abidance. Mimetic language accounts for how men can teach each other by creating images with words. It is a way of thinking about the political possibilities arising out of language use, and so informs how citizens relate to one another as agents in founding and maintaining political authority.

Mimesis as a complement to mechanico-materialism

This reading complements interpretations accounting for the foundation of the commonwealth solely on the basis of Hobbes’s mechanico-materialist psychology (Spragens, 1973: 68; Watkins, 1989: 17–18; Frost, 2008: 112). The mechanico-materialist psychology explains how men’s passionate states are produced in a reactive way to external stimuli in their environments. Samantha Frost has written a compelling account of Hobbesian men as ‘thinking bodies’ alternately limited by their passionate reactions to others and external stimuli, and yet still capable of ethical action. Frost’s reading comes to a similar conclusion to my own, but through a very different path. We both notice that normative order depends on the future subject-citizen’s ability to be self-conscious about how his acts or gestures will be seen or read by others. I argue that the self-consciousness that facilitates this kind of ethical behavior, which involves thinking about how one’s actions will affect the passionate states of others, is brought about through poetic and linguistic mimesis for Hobbes. Hobbes’s interest in the human body as operating on the basis of mechanical principles is complemented with the role played by the genealogies of mimesis because it illuminates how he combined his humanistic education and interest in the sciences. Rather than accusing Hobbes of having made the fallacious leap from factical, mechanical man to normative obligation, by employing mimesis Hobbes illuminates how men together formulate norms and become attached to them. Hobbes’s account of how men act as agents employing constitutive power/knowledge, is as indebted to an engagement of mimesis as it is to his employment of the mechanical sciences. Mimetic dynamics explains how men can act as agents in arriving at the normative conformity requisite for the rule of law, and affect the norms and under which they live. This is a way of tracing Hobbes’s normative philosophy back to its classical precursors, to show that Hobbes updated classical discussions of mimesis to cohere with his mechanical worldview. Mechanically, the empirical environment can move a man’s passions, and yet through the agency involved in soliciting imitation or imitating, men can move one another’s. The reason that the two types of readings have not been distinguished previously is due to the fact that Hobbes does not foreground the fact that he has two different accounts of what men see. On the one hand, empirical vision affects the body in the mechanical way. On the other hand, men act as agents in helping one another ‘see’ what they are saying, and this kind of vision can also affect man’s passionate make-up.

Mimesis – historically in the classical literatures and in the Leviathan – entails a force that is not mechanical force. The poetic dimension of mimesis refers to the mimetic dynamic between author and reader, and Hobbes hopes the text will elicit a similar ethical reversal in his reader as he depicts in the general man. The relevance of poetic mimesis is that it draws attention to Hobbes’s agency in plotting the text – contributing, through vivid language use, the ‘force’ involved in the general man’s ethical change. Hobbes both portrays the shift in ethical orientation as the result of an individual’s self-knowledge, and plots scenes of social context, leading to the moment of recognition and reversal. Instead of centering the plot on one protagonist, as ancient tragedy does, Hobbes pluralizes the hero, turning each person in the state of nature into the character who undergoes a recognition and reversal.

It is not only the exogenous force of the sovereign’s sword at play in the genesis of political community. Mimesis refers to the endogenous constitutive powers at play, and in the case of anthropological mimesis, it refers to disconstitutive pressures. ‘Perspicuity’ is a kind of language use that has a force yet is nevertheless associated with truth and self-knowledge (Plato, 2003; Plato, 1987; Cicero, 1968; Cicero, 2001). ¹⁰ Hobbes, and the general men he depicts, can employ it. When men as agents help one another see the importance of abiding by a norm, for example, they are directing the passions of others, and others are responding. Hobbes’s own perspicuous language use, in the vivid scene of life as nasty, brutish, and short, is a postwar scene where each man finds himself alone reflecting on his lack of knowledge and power. This passage employs the same kind of language recommended for all scientists by the Royal Society, its truth content and its force are both attributable to its vividness (Dear, 1985).

The focus on mimesis illuminates man’s capacity to generate norms, in the sense of men’s ability to construct normative consensus out of a situation in which they are acting in a way that can only be characterized as ethically ambiguous. Explaining Leviathan through its poetic and linguistic mimesis reveals in what sense Hobbes thinks of himself and others as ethically responsible agents. Since men can also make each other see in words, they can be held responsible for what they show others in language, and for their interpretations of what they see. Hobbes also presents men’s agency in using mimetic language to make others see what he is saying. Since self-recognition entails an organization of the passions that is distinct from the ethical ambiguity prevailing in the state of nature before the laws of nature are obeyed, then linguistic mimesis is implicated in man’s ability to direct the passions of others. The general man in the state of nature changes from pursuing natural right to abiding by natural law because he sees himself differently, either less certain of his ability to find out causal relations by himself, or less certain of his power (Hobbes, 1996[1651]: 76, 101, 20). Since Hobbes sets out the reader’s goal as ‘seeing himself’ in the general man depicted in the text, and the state of nature comes to an end when the general man listens to his conscience, at which point he co-creates the appearance of the sovereign through a performance he also spectates.

An important way in which the reading according to mimesis complements the more scientific reading, is that it clarifies that the agency of constitutive power is not individualistic but social in character. Hobbes has a non-literal explanation of how men see, that is essentially social. In presenting one another with images in words, in the dynamic between reader and author, there is agency on both sides of the dynamic and the normative conformity arises out of the interplay. This means that Hobbes’s inheritance of mimesis, subverts the readings that claim that Hobbes’s depiction of a highly individualistic citizen is not necessarily the case in the constitutive moments of the commonwealth. When men are exiting the state of nature constituting the civil state, they are negotiating ethical and political norms in a social dynamic, not simply responding to stimuli as individualized units.

A focus on mimesis exposes the non-teleological dimension of the text. When taking into consideration the idea that norms and the commonwealth are formed through poetic, linguistic and anthropological mimesis, one can see that political authority remains a contingent achievement. Mimesis reveals that states of nature do not necessarily move from natural order to social order. The idea of a natural order is itself misleading, because the activity of learning through anthropological mimesis depends on shared cultural horizons.

In structuring Leviathan according to the ethical lessons of Aristotle and Petrarch, Hobbes suggests that the transition from the state of nature to the civil state entails changing one’s image of oneself, becoming self-reflective in a way that eases the desire to dominate and facilitates one’s acceptance of the reciprocity required by the laws of nature. This interaction between poetic and anthropological mimesis in the reader’s imitation of what she or he sees in the text, reinforces the idea that mimesis is about the normative potential in social life, only contingently realized. Mimesis as provocative of self-reflection is not only about how the author works on the reader. Linguistic and theatrical mimesis are means by which men can provoke self-reflection in one another. Recognizing the ability of language and images to provoke new self-understandings is at the center of Leviathan. Anthropological mimesis expresses the sense in which a man’s perception of himself has something to do with the performances he witnesses in others, which implies that men influence one another in the movement of self-reflection. Hobbes is illuminating the way behavior changes after men become self-conscious of their lack of knowledge and power and realize that reciprocal social relations, while precluding individual dominance, can address the knowledge/power weaknesses men experience in the extreme stage of the state of nature. Hobbes draws on mimesis to describe constitutive knowledge/power, which centrally concerns norm formation, constitution and governance. Showing others in a way that is so vivid that it creates consensus is the way in which the mimetic dynamics are integral to the formation of norms.

The constitutive powers of the mimetic arts suggest that the general man retains these powers in the context of the civil state. The general man participates in the constitution of the polity by knowing how to know himself in the sense that he has to respond to mimetic language use in order to participate in the formation of his society’s normative consensus. Leviathan remains a text that is centrally about knowledge and power rather than a sophisticated account of law and legitimacy. The ongoing constitutive power in Leviathan, open to citizens who act in the roles of sovereignty and those who critically spectate them, could contingently form a political space, a space in which questions of legitimacy could be posed. Reading the Leviathan focusing on citizen know-how and power illuminates the alternative to the authoritarian character of the Hobbesian commonwealth. Attention to mimetic dynamics demonstrates why there is political agency involved in the citizens’ obedience to the political authority they generate in covenanting.