Lecture
HIL E3
Urbanism Beyond Neoliberalism

Portraits Iv: Territory/PoliticsFrançois Charbonnet in conversation with Daniel Niggli

In the chapter XVI of his Leviathan: Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated (1651), Hobbes defines the person as he “whose words and actions are considered, either as his own or as representing the words and actions of another man (…)” accordingly delineating two subcategories: that of the natural person—when the words are his own—and that of the artificial person—when these are representing the words and actions of another; he further states: “Of persons artificial, some have their words and actions ‘owned’ by those whom they represent. And then the person is the ‘actor’, and he that owns his words and actions is the ‘author’, in which case the actor acts by authority—but is not the author (…). So that by authority is always understood a right of doing any act, and ‘done by authority’, done by commission or license from him whose right it is.”