Introduction

Abstract

The image in Figure 1 is very familiar to scholars of political philosophy. The figure of the great man made up of many single men, sword in one hand and crosier in the other, symbols of worldly and spiritual power respectively, ruling over a vast territory, is the image that Hobbes wanted on the title page of his Leviathan. And this image is indeed the symbol of the latter: the Leviathan State, to which men give their freedom in exchange for protection, does not appear in the guise of the biblical monster of the same name, the Leviathan, but as a great man consisting of many individuals whom he himself resembles.