Hobbes and Schmitt

TY - JOUR

T1 - Hobbes and Schmitt

AU - Stanton, Tim

N1 - Columnated text (i.e. 8 p = 16 p)

PY - 2011/6/19

Y1 - 2011/6/19

N2 - Many commentators are unpersuaded by Carl Schmitt's interpretation of Hobbes’s political theory which, to their minds, remakes Hobbes in Schmitt’s own authoritarian image. The argument advanced in this essay comprises three claims about Hobbes and Schmitt and the ways in which they are construed. The first claim is that these commentators are bewitched by a picture of authority which biases their own claims about Hobbes, perhaps in ways that they may not fully appreciate. The second claim relates to Hobbes’s individualism. On Schmitt’s account, it was this individualism that opened the barely visible crack in the theoretical justification of the state through which it was worm-eaten by liberalism. This essay argues that Hobbes’s individualism is not what Schmitt or his critics take it to be. The individualism that figures in Hobbes’s discussions of covenant and conscience, pace Schmitt, is an illusion, albeit one that lies at the very basis of his conception of the state and animates his understanding of the relationship between protection and obedience that sustains it. The essay concludes with a few remarks about the wider implications of the argument it advances.

AB - Many commentators are unpersuaded by Carl Schmitt's interpretation of Hobbes’s political theory which, to their minds, remakes Hobbes in Schmitt’s own authoritarian image. The argument advanced in this essay comprises three claims about Hobbes and Schmitt and the ways in which they are construed. The first claim is that these commentators are bewitched by a picture of authority which biases their own claims about Hobbes, perhaps in ways that they may not fully appreciate. The second claim relates to Hobbes’s individualism. On Schmitt’s account, it was this individualism that opened the barely visible crack in the theoretical justification of the state through which it was worm-eaten by liberalism. This essay argues that Hobbes’s individualism is not what Schmitt or his critics take it to be. The individualism that figures in Hobbes’s discussions of covenant and conscience, pace Schmitt, is an illusion, albeit one that lies at the very basis of his conception of the state and animates his understanding of the relationship between protection and obedience that sustains it. The essay concludes with a few remarks about the wider implications of the argument it advances.

KW - Thomas Hobbes

KW - Carl Schmitt

KW - rights

KW - liberalism

KW - Leviathan

KW - authority

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79959374500&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.11.007

DO - 10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.11.007

M3 - Article

SN - 0191-6599

VL - 37

SP - 160

EP - 167

JO - History of european ideas

JF - History of european ideas

IS - 2

ER -