In his book, Philip Pettit engages in a pleasingly thorough, step-by-step analysis of Thomas Hobbes's political system as it devolves from his theory of language. Pettit begins with the insight that for Hobbes, language is “an invented technology, not a natural inheritance” (p. 2). This singular fact leads Hobbes to some radical conclusions. Contra Descartes, Hobbes does not need to resort to some nonmaterial soul as the basis of our rational and independent thought. Instead, for him, such thought is merely the working out of the process of language itself. Thus, whereas for Descartes, thought is the source of speech, for Hobbes it is the other way around. The Hobbes that emerges here is a radical materialist; as Pettit puts it, “[for Hobbes] there is no ghost in the machine. Human beings are machinelike the whole way through” (p. 28). As an invention, language may be purely accidental, but it has huge implications for what it does to and for human beings. With language we learn to make classifications, to anticipate the future, to compare ourselves with others; in short, we are formed into the human beings that we have come to see as natural, although nature itself has nothing to do with it, as Pettit shows.

In his careful, logical process, Pettit shows how the acquisition of language leads to three important capacities: the ability to ratiocinate, to personate, and to incorporate. Ratiocination allows us to connect the meaning of words to events in the world around us. Personation allows us to speak on behalf of ourselves or some group, in order to form contracts and associations. Incorporation allows us to actually form bodies based on those contracts, to become “bodies politic.” With these abilities, language enables us and indeed requires us to come together. While language is the source of so much human potential, it also allows us to lie, to desire what we do not deserve, to hold ourselves as being worthy of more than others, and to generally think and act in ways that are anathama to a good polity. Accordingly, Pettit tells us that for Hobbes, we need one more linguistically produced device—the sovereign—in order to save us from the dark side of language. The sovereign serves as the ultimate determiner of meaning, a central figure to unite and hold together the bonds that we form as linguistic beings.

Quite often, the author's analysis tracks Hobbes so closely that it is hard to see what he actually thinks of his system. For example, it is somewhat difficult to tell whether he condemns or praises Hobbes for his practice of “redefinition.” While Hobbes condemns the practice—very widespread—of changing the meaning of words in order to fulfill ones own desires (since the basic agreement on meaning is the source of all order in Hobbes's view), Pettit nonetheless points out that Hobbes himself uses the same technique “again and again, to outmaneuver his opponents by switching from the meanings they gave their terms to the meanings that suited his purposes better” (p. 54). For his own part, Pettit simply notes the grumblings of a figure like John Wallis who says of Hobbes that “he'll tell you that by chalk he means cheese: and then if he can prove that what you say of chalk is not true of cheese, he reckons himself to have gotten a great victory” (p. 54).

Similarly, it is not clear whether Pettit approves of what is perhaps Hobbes's most audacious example of changing of meaning: his (re)definition of freedom. Against the republican model of freedom as a kind of collective self-determination, Hobbes proposes a notion of freedom that is famously limited as freedom from obstruction—that is, freedom to do whatever you want so long as the law is silent (and nothing else interferes either). Such a model promises little—Pettit calls it “thin” (p. 140). Here again, rather than offer explicit approval or disapproval, he mainly notes that such a model has become the basis of much of contemporary liberal thought, inspiring utilitarians and their ilk to produce their own models of freedom.

A final way in which the author keeps his cards close is in terms of the all-important figure of the sovereign. At several points, he calls this figure “Draconian” (p. 142), suggesting that it is perhaps too harsh a remedy. Yet, he goes to great lengths to establish the irrefutability of Hobbes's justification for sovereignty. The sovereign must be above the law, illimited and absolute, exactly because of the role it must play in linguistic determinations. Without such a clear authority, we would revert to “the state of second nature” (p. 99), which, Pettit astutely notes, is for Hobbes not an original state where humans are prelingual (as they are for Rousseau) but rather a state where we already are marked by language while remaining bereft of any real limitations on what we can say and do.

Pettit may hold himself back, but his careful treatment of Hobbes does suggest certain paradoxes in the system he describes (paradoxes that may be intended neither by the author nor by Hobbes himself). If Hobbes establishes sovereign authority through the act of redefinition, what does this do to or say about the central role of meaning that he insists upon throughout his text? Is Hobbes resorting to the tricks that he decries in order to definitively end such tricks once and for all? Even if the answer is yes, can Hobbes so definitively seal the door of definition behind himself? Although he denounces redefinition, he also demonstrates through his own usage of this technique how viable and powerful it is; his example is therefore something of a counterargument to his insistence that there is only one game in town—the sovereign power to define (Hobbes himself is, after all, a private citizen, “author” of his books but not of the nation).

The picture of Hobbes that emerges in Pettit's text is perhaps less a would-be “great definer”—a proto sovereign in his own right—and more a street fighter. He is prepared to do what it takes to establish a firm linguistic order, but at the same time, he must hope that his readers follow rather than imitate his linguistic innovations. In his close following of Hobbes's argument, Pettit ultimately models Hobbes's own technique of assertion: The logic is seductive, even beautiful, but it relies on such bedazzlement to actually ensure its smooth and orderly functioning.