THE RIGHTS TO PUNISH AND RESIST PUNISHMENT IN HOBBESS LEVIATHAN

In the Leviathan, Chapter 14 and elsewhere, Hobbes ascribes a nice versatility to the individual: as incipient subject he has the power to authorize his own punishment, and as actual subject he has the right to resist that same punishment. Later, in Chapter 28, Hobbes expresses a different view, denying there that a person with a right to resist punishment can authorize another to punish him. Having thus disqualified the personal authorization ground of the sovereign right to punish, Hobbes undertakes in Chapter 28 to find another basis for that right. He settles on the incipient sovereign's right of nature-his right to perpetrate mayhem. But this shift proves unsuccessful. Hobbes does not account for the sovereign right to punish by assimilating it to the right to enact hostility. The fact is that, in the Leviathan, Hobbes exhibits neither the sovereign right to punish, nor hence the sovereign, or the commonwealth.