Leviathan on a LeashPub Date : 2020-11-17DOI: 10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691206462.003.0005
Sean Fleming
{"title":"Succession","authors":"Sean Fleming","doi":"10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691206462.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.23943/PRINCETON/9780691206462.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines issues of identity, such as whether changes in a state's population, territory, government, or constitution alter its personality and hence negate its responsibilities. According to Thomas Hobbes, the corporate identity of the state is created and sustained by representation. The state has a corporate identity because it has an authorized representative who speaks and acts in its name. This identity persists as long as the state has a continuous 'chain of succession', or an unbroken series of representatives. The chapter shows that this Hobbesian account of corporate identity solves many of the identity problems that arise in cases of revolution, annexation, secession, absorption, unification, and dissolution.","PeriodicalId":256307,"journal":{"name":"Leviathan on a Leash","volume":"03 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129229893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hobbes and the Personality of the State","authors":"Sean Fleming","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv11vcdrd.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11vcdrd.7","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter lays the groundwork for the Hobbesian theory of state responsibility. It first sets out to determine what exactly Thomas Hobbes means when he says that the state is a person. Scholars of state and corporate responsibility, and even many Hobbes scholars, have failed to appreciate the novelty of Hobbes' idea of state personality because they have projected the idea of corporate agency — the core of the agential theory — back onto Hobbes. The chapter shows that it is possible to recover a novel understanding of state personality from Hobbes if one resists the urge to read him through the contemporary literature on corporate agency. What makes Hobbes' idea of personhood unique and valuable is that it decouples personhood from metaphysical conceptions of agency; it explains how states and other entities can be persons even though they do not have any intrinsic capacity for rationality, intentionality, or action.","PeriodicalId":256307,"journal":{"name":"Leviathan on a Leash","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131382100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}