Potentia and potestas in Hobbes’ Leviathan

Abstract

In the Leviathan, power can be understood in two different senses, which are carefully discriminated in its Latin version by the use of the terms potentia and potestas to translate, depending on the context and the type of power concerned,
the English power. Potentia and potestas, although types of power of a different nature – one, the physical power that bodies have to take effect on each other; the other, the juridical power, out of which legal effects as justice itself come about –, are mutually implicated in the intertwining of juridical representations. This article aims to explore the consequences that follow from this ambivalent concept of power to think about justice and natural right.