The Two Bodies of Hobbes and Rousseau

Hobbes and Rousseau relied heavily upon the time-worn metaphor of the body politic to describe and explain their respective political visions. But while Rousseau's use of the metaphor is largely accepted by scholars as a congruous and illuminating extension of his political thought, Hobbes's use of it is regarded as an instance of mere rhetoric, which is philosophically incompatible with his broader mechanistic voluntarism. This article questions the interpretive double-standard applied to Hobbes's and Rousseau's work and shows how their iterations of the body motif are remarkably similar in aesthetic structure, in rhetorical intent, and in the performative role they play within Hobbes's and Rousseau's political design. Certain features of Hobbes's thought that scholars have judged to be incompatible with his body metaphor-such as voluntarist contract and the rival metaphor of the machine-were also employed by Rousseau, and are easily reconciled. The body metaphor was enormously important to both Hobbes and Rousseau for its rhetorical ability to exhort against factionalism, enjoin organic cohesion, and emphasize the existential indispensability of political sovereignty. These parallels suggest that their political aims are comparable, and that Hobbes's reputation as a mechanistic voluntarist deserves review.