Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Hobbes 5; Problem: Einheit unter atomisierten Individuen -> Leviathan, gottgleiche Macht (St. Anselm: Definition Gottes); Grundlage absoluter Macht nicht in Gott, sondern in menschl. Schwäche; Religion als natürlich und falsch

Kurzinhalt: It is no longer an almighty being who gives existence and the meaning of existence to absolute power. On the contrary, it is powerless beings who create Leviathan to remedy their weakness. Absolute power is no longer God's representative ...

Textausschnitt: 29b But can this absolutism really succeed in realizing its aim of creating a political unity from radically separated and independent individuals? Certainly it is easy to imagine that individuals obey the sovereign because they are satisfied with the peace he guarantees, or because he threatens them with punishments. Certainly we can conceive of individuals who are strangers to each other becoming one because they have a common representative. But is not this unity through a single Representative, on which Hobbes insists, largely abstract? Based exclusively on the covenant, is it not precisely a simple agreement, and therefore unreal? (Fs; tblStw: Politik)

29c In fact, individuals can constitute a real unity only if they are similar or homogeneous. The Hobbesian political problem is to hold together atoms that are both foreign and similar to each other. What makes them enemies is what they have in common; and what makes them capable of living together is also what they have in common. What do they share? Their fundamental passion for power, for ever-increasing power, a desire ceasing only with death; men differ only in the degree of intensity of this desire. It is because they are transformed by this desire that they are perpetually in a state of war, latent or declared. Simultaneously, what makes their unity so difficult is also what makes it possible. If individuals are the quanta of power, then in order to unite they must construct above themselves a quantum of power incomparably superior to their own. More precisely, they must construct above themselves the greatest power they can imagine, a power such that one cannot imagine a greater one. This is the definition of an unlimited or absolute power. (Fs) (notabene)

30a I have said that Hobbes deduced the political institution from the rights of the individual and from them alone. This is not entirely exact: the individual not only has rights, he also has a nature. Leviathan can guarantee the individual's rights by unifying the body politic because both Leviathan and man are constituted by power: there is basic homogeneity between the state and society. The device of representation is supported by a conception of man's nature that extends beyond the idea of rights. The "artisan" of absolute power is capable of fabricating that power because, in his being, he too is power, or rather desires power. In this sense, the Hobbesian individual remains something of a political animal. (Fs)

30b This individual greedy for power is powerless in the state of nature. What then will he sacrifice in order to accomplish something? Not his power, which is nonexistent or ineffective, but his right to do as he pleases. So as to make a certain power from his impotence he constructs an absolute power above himself. The traditional religious interpretation of royal power signified that the king linked himself directly with God, that he was accountable only to Him, that he was his lieutenant or representative, and that consequently he participated in the omnipotence or sovereignty of God. But the case of the Hobbesian absolute power is completely different. It is no longer an almighty being who gives existence and the meaning of existence to absolute power. On the contrary, it is powerless beings who create Leviathan to remedy their weakness. Absolute power is no longer God's representative, but mankind's; its transcendence no longer has its origins in God's strength but in man's weakness. (Fs) (notabene)

30c Leviathan's power is therefore such that men cannot imagine a greater one. Such a definition reminds one of Saint Anselm's definition of God: ens quo majus cogitari nequit (a being such that a greater one is inconceivable). From this nominal definition, Anselm concludes that God exists according to the "ontological" argument.1 What Hobbes's presentation suggests is that this being does indeed exist, that it actually organizes the human world, but that it is fabricated by men. The political institution is the human device permitting men to make effective and efficient this "idea of the greatest power" that in their impotence they are naturally led to imagine. There is no more subtle way of suggesting that the construction of Leviathan reproduces the genesis of the idea of God: in following the construction of the Hobbesian body politic, we are witnessing the elaboration of the idea of God. Hobbes shows us both how the natural situation of men leads them to conceive of the idea of God, and how human art can appropriate the meaning of this idea, revealing its vanity by this very art. The political art establishes that religion is both "natural" and "false," and why it can be one or the other without contradiction. (Fs)