ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the concept of 'civil person', as developed by Thomas Hobbes in both On the Citizen and Leviathan. This is where the idea of political subjectification takes its first steps in modern political theory. Such a process of political subjectification is meant by Hobbes as a process of construction of the 'artificial person' of the State. The chapter considers a recent reading of Hobbes's theory proposed by Giorgio Agamben. It expresses that instead of promoting a rejection of modern political theory in the name of messianic politics, it is more advisable to look into the differences between monarchy and aristocracy, on the one side, and democracy, on the other. Hobbes defines a multitude as being without unity, since 'unity' is achieved only through collective subjectification and artificial personalization of the Leviathan. Agamben expresses that Hobbes already knows that distinction between the population and the people which Foucault will place at the beginning of modern biopolitics.
