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The Organized Body

In: Organization Philosophy

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Scott

    (University of St Andrews)

Abstract

The title page of Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) is engraved with an image of the sovereign state as a body composed of a multiplicity of smaller human figures. The significance of this image for me here is that Leviathan is a pragmatic constitution of and for the material bodies of the people.1 Leviathan is an assemblage of corporeal parts brought under a unified relation to constitute a greater, more powerful, corporate body. Its power is symbolized by its massive sword and crook, secular and sacred authority invested in one entity. The constitution of individuals into a greater force is affirmed by the detail of Leviathan’s head, presented as a single great ‘organ’. If Leviathan’s active power is constituted by the power of its elemental bodies, the intellect needed to guide that power is a multiplicity of embodied minds unified into one great mind. This thesis examines the two complementary movements involved in this constitutional process: how multiple bodies are organized into larger, more powerful ones, and how sensations impinging on those bodies become thought. This double movement I invoke by the term organization.

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Scott, 2010. "The Organized Body," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Organization Philosophy, chapter 1, pages 9-33, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-27755-7_2
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230277557_2
    as

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