You reject this decision. How can it still count as your act?
1. A Private Decree
Select a speaker to issue the command. The others maintain their distinct private judgments.
Notice: Five distinct private judgments remain. Matching words do not institute authority. Whose act is this? It is only their own.
2. Institution
Choose who will represent them: one person or an assembly. Each person makes the following undertaking to the others.
Exact quotation · Chapter XVII
"I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner."
Each covenants with the others to authorize the same representative. They own its public acts as authors and unite their strength for peace and defense. The sovereign is not a party to this covenant.
An assembly bears one public person; the historical crown depicts monarchy but does not limit Hobbes’s account to monarchy.
3. One Public Act
Choose someone who disagrees. See how the public act is still attributed to them.
The public act traces back to them as author while their contrary private judgment remains. Authorization need not mean liking decisions; there is no general protected-expression guarantee.
4. Boundary Cases
The commonwealth acts in your name. Test the limits of this authority.
This person disagrees with the decision. Their disagreement does not end the representative’s authority.
This person remains free to refuse an order to kill themselves. That refusal does not by itself dissolve the commonwealth or give them immunity from punishment.
Final military defeat and no protection ends corresponding obligation. One bad policy/crime never equals final defeat.
How can you own an act yet remain free to resist it?
Further thought: AI
If an AI can produce a public voice, what would make it authorized to speak for anyone?
Teaching diagram
Before institution · Separate private persons
Wait until dawn before closing them.
Keep the gates open; the travellers have not returned.
Keep the gates open tonight for supplies from the river.
Keep the gates open tonight; warn the town first.
Send out a guard instead of shutting the gates.
Close the gates tonight.
Covenant: each with the othersAuthorization: the representative acts in their name.United Strength: for peace and defense
