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Page 1 of 3

  • 3 - The Fact of Fiction

  • from Part I
  • Edited by Ewa Atanassow, Bard College, Berlin, Thomas Bartscherer, Bard College, New York, David A. Bateman, Cornell University, New York
  • Book:
    When the People Rule
    Published online:
    23 November 2023
    Print publication:
    09 November 2023, pp 57-72
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  • Summary

    In describing the significance of the idea of popular sovereignty, Tocqueville alluded to its theological properties, indicating that its power relies at least in part on belief. Edmund S. Morgan declared, The success of government [...] requires the acceptance of fictions, requires the willing suspension of disbelief, requires us to believe that the emperor is clothed even though we can see that he is not. I trace the long lineage of these observations, focusing mainly on three formative moments. The first is Platos Republic, in which Socrates anticipates reason of state, by allowing rulers to lie, to protect the state. The second is Hobbess appeal to consider society as though it had emerged from a social contract, which shaped modern political thought from the seventeenth century to the present. The third is Rousseaus observation that the legislators work involves an undertaking that transcends human capacities and, to execute it, an authority that is nil, a problem that he proposed to solve by means of a civil religion. The continuing relevance of these observations not only poses important challenges, but also presents opportunities, for popular sovereignty.

  • 12 - Absolute Chaos, Absolute Order: The Rhetoric of the State of Nature in the Discourse of Sovereignty

  • from Part IV - Monarchy, the State of Nature, Religion and Iconography in European Perspective
  • Edited by Cesare Cuttica, Glenn Burgess
  • Book:
    Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe
    Published by:
    Pickering & Chatto
    Published online:
    05 December 2014, pp 177-186

  • Summary

    When Thomas Hobbes advanced his elaborate and, in many ways, novel theory of absolute sovereignty, he claimed that it was equally applicable to monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, ‘for either One, or More, or All, must have the Soveraign Power (which I have shewn to be indivisible) entire’. Hobbes's own preference for monarchy, coupled with the imagery of Leviathan, convinced many of his readers that his theory was the groundwork for an absolute monarchy of the kind that ruled France. Thus, in 1651, the republican William Rand noted,

    For that Empire the Whale holds in the Sea is a fit resemblance of the Monarchy [Hobbes] would establish, submitting all to the will of a man who many times measures right by this power, & by potency of Lusts, has little more reason then a Whale, & under whose government the Law of Liviathan is established vz: That it be right & fit that the great fishes eat up the little, as it is in France at this day & elsewhere.

    Many readers concurred with this assessment, but some looked more closely at the awesome image of the sovereign which adorns the frontispiece of Leviathan, and noticed that his body is composed of his subjects. This detail encapsulates Hobbes's attempt to justify absolute sovereignty by means of a radical contrast between civil society and the state of nature, a condition of radical uncertainty, in which individuals are the bearers of rights and the ultimate authors of sovereignty.

Images of Anarchy
  • The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes's State of Nature
  • Ioannis D. Evrigenis
  • Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    14 July 2014
  • Hobbes's concept of the natural condition of mankind became an inescapable point of reference for subsequent political thought, shaping the theories of emulators and critics alike, and has had a profound impact on our understanding of human nature, anarchy, and international relations. Yet, despite Hobbes's insistence on precision, the state of nature is an elusive concept. Has it ever existed and, if so, for whom? Hobbes offered several answers to these questions, which taken together reveal a consistent strategy aimed at providing his readers with a possible, probable, and memorable account of the consequences of disobedience. This book examines the development of this powerful image throughout Hobbes's works, and traces its origins in his sources of inspiration. The resulting trajectory of the state of nature illuminates the ways in which Hobbes employed a rhetoric of science and a science of rhetoric in his relentless pursuit of peace.

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