1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...

Part III: The Leviathan as the signifier of the symbolic
In this section I show how the Leviathan functions as the signifier of the symbolic order itself, by way of
two different theories of language, that of Lacan and speech act theory. Starting in the state of nature,
argument unfolds following the movement of the Hobbesian narrative itself, out of that state.
The State of Nature, Where the Sound and Fury Signify Nothing
An inherent disconnect between the signifier and the signified lies at the core of Hobbes’s moral
philosophy and of what John Watkins (1989, 104) has called his ‘humpty dumpty theory of meaning’.
This resonates strongly with Lacan’s conception of language. In the state of nature, which, as Watkins
(1989, 104) puts it, ‘consists of a multitude of humpty dumpties’, words mean only what the utterer
intends them to. Consider this well-known passage from Leviathan’s (1946, 32) chapter VI:
But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his
part calleth good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile
and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with
relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so;
nor any common rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects
themselves; but from the person of man, where there is not commonwealth; or, in a
commonwealth, from the person that representeth it (…)
That, in the state of nature, the meaning of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are to be taken from the ‘person of man
[sic]’ points uncannily in the same direction than Lacan’s signifier. Signifiers here are naturally empty;
and in the state of nature they are appropriated by individuals for whatever suits their purpose, since in
it nothing fixes moral predicates to a set of commonly accepted meanings of what constitutes the good.
That is precisely the role of the Leviathan. 19
The state of nature is, in the strongest possible sense, a space of meaninglessness. No collective
action is possible. Humans cannot understand each other since the same words hold different meanings
19 A century ahead of Kant, the Leviathan is also a personification of the Kantian moral imperative and
thus the founding point for the law.
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