Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Hobbes 6; Gehorsam: Gott - Souverän (Leviathan); Aristoteles's Politik; Naturzustand: Mensch vor d. Gehorsam (Kirche, Staat); M. als Individuum (Konstrukt; Neutralisierung d. Priesters usw.); Locke, Rousseau gegen Absolutismus (da wieder Bund mit Kirche)

Kurzinhalt: The state of nature is the condition of men before any obedience to the city-state or Church, a condition from which it is possible to construct a body politic invulnerable to the conflict between state and Church. Certainly, in Hobbes's doctrine ...

Textausschnitt: 33a In presenting the dominant ideas of the Hobbesian doctrine, I have placed the emphasis on the themes and difficulties that determined the subsequent development of political thought. I have deliberately neglected—and paradoxically so, given the principal idea of this essay—Hobbes's direct criticism of Christianity. I have tried to suggest that the positive logic of the Hobbesian construction is more fundamental than the direct criticism of religion. Hobbes draws the plans for a body politic invulnerable to Christianity since it reproduces its meaning, making it effective. However, so that the explanation is not incomplete, I must say a few words about Hobbes's radical and influential criticism of religion. (Fs; tblStw: Politik)

33b The question is the following: what happens to the duty to obey the sovereign when he orders an action contrary to the subject's idea of God's law or will? What happens to the sovereign's sovereignty in face of a religion that orders men to obey God rather than other men? What I have already said contains the response: everything that is human falls within Leviathan's power, and thus religion also. However much religion may have its origins in God, it still addresses itself to men and is preached by men. Without ever contesting the principle that it is better to obey God than men, Hobbes limits its application so much that this principle becomes politically inoffensive, incapable of moving the masses of men. Moreover, and more radically, he reinterprets the meaning of Christian revelation in such a way that obedience to God tends to merge with obedience to the sovereign. (Fs)

33c On the first point, Hobbes's argument is simple but devastating. To believe that God spoke to certain men is to believe that these men speak the truth, it is to believe them. The necessity of a human intermediary means that to believe in a revealed God is to believe men. Now, experience teaches us that men are readily liars, or more exactly, that the elevated idea they have of their wisdom often leads them to believe themselves inspired by God. Besides, those who believe themselves to be inspired most often attract partisans, who call themselves disciples. Thus those inspired by God hold a power whose extent depends on the number of their partisans. We know that the desire for power is men's dominant, primordial desire. Therefore we should not be surprised if many an individual, through sheer desire for power, proclaims himself inspired by God. Does not Scripture itself—the Old as well as the New Testament—insist on this point, that there are false prophets? Indeed, that for one truly inspired prophet, there are a hundred or four hundred false ones? The lesson of secular experience is just as clear: each time that an individual or a group of individuals claims to be inspired by God, those who listen to them must be skeptical: the probability is that they are impostors. The safest action is to recognize as prophets only those who are judged as such by the sovereign. If men are convinced by Hobbes's arguments, it is not very likely that any prophets, true or false, will have many disciples. (Fs)

34a There remains the case of those who, instead of simply following the prophets, believe themselves to be prophets. Whether sincere or liars, they are inaccessible to reason. Thus they ought to be left to the sovereign's judgment; he will decide whether they constitute a danger to civil peace. If he judges them to be dangerous, the sovereign will use public force to ensure that they can do no harm. The operation will be easy because, thanks to Hobbes's warnings, they will have hardly any disciples. The claims of the "prophets" or "saints" who played such a role in the English Civil War will cease to be a major political threat; they will pose only a simple problem of law and order. (Fs)

34b One can wonder whether Hobbes's triumph here is not too complete and even somewhat imprudent. If every claim of divine inspiration is as radically suspect, is not the very root of Christianity in danger? Would one not have to suspect the Apostles and Christ himself? Hobbes asserts that he has no stake in the matter, that he is only reminding us of the vigilance recommended by scripture. Therefore, he accepts that there are (or at least were) true prophets, on whose witness the Catholic church and Protestant confessions are founded. Conceding this—and Hobbes had to concede it if he wanted to avoid suffering the fate reserved for false prophets—a new task faced him. He had to show that scripture itself, exactly interpreted, actually professes Hobbes's own political doctrine: that is, that the civil sovereign is absolute also in religious matters. We shall not follow him in his exegesis. Its conclusion is that it is all the same whether ones says "Church" or "body politic composed of Christians": there is no place in the human world for another representative. There is no need for a power other than civil power. (Fs)

34c The fundamental question of the Hobbesian doctrine is that of obedience: whom does my conscience tell me to obey? The question is fundamental because if the response is uncertain then civil war ensues. And yet this question is new, or at least the intensity with which Hobbes and his successors ask it is. Of course, in a sense, the question of obedience is always posed in real political life. Yet, it did not play a major theoretical role in the Greek formulation of the political problem. For the Greeks, the important questions were: what is the best political regime? Who is best qualified to command, the people, the rich, the wise, or a man of exceptional virtue? These are the questions Aristotle poses in his Politics. (Fs)

35a It will be said that the two approaches are essentially the same. If I know who must command, I know whom to obey, and conversely. Here the similarities end. According to Aristotle, the one who commands must be the bearer of the most important human good, the most politically significant, the "best" human good. The candidates whose claims are rejected (actually, only corrected and moderated) also draw their inspiration from significant goods, although they are less important. For Aristotle, to answer the question "Who must command?", is to decide on the basis of a hierarchy of goods; but the goods that are not chosen survive and even obtain some portion of power, once the decisive choice has been made. For Hobbes, on the contrary, the one who has the right to demand obedience has all rights, those who do not have this right have none, or rather have only the rights conceded by the former. Gradation is replaced by exclusion, by polarity between an absolute assertion and an absolute negation. How did the logic of gradation, a logic that seems much more suitable to the complexity of human affairs, come to be replaced by the logic of exclusion? (Fs)

35b Within the human world, the assertion of the primacy of a certain good does not entail the total exclusion of other goods; on the contrary, it only implies that they are recognized as somewhat inferior goods. If, however, one compares the human world as a whole with the religious world, the question is no longer what element of the human world must command, but which world—human or divine—must command. But how can these two incomparable worlds, the human and the divine, be "compared"? They are incomparable because each of them, in a different way, is self-sufficient. Within a human city-state, the pretensions of wealth cannot ignore those of liberty, nor can they completely ignore those of wisdom. But the priest, who reveals God's truth and heals sin through the sacrament, has little in common with the citizen who defends the rights of wealth, or freedom, or even wisdom. (Fs)

35c Therefore the human and the religious worlds cannot be compared, and yet it is necessary to decide between their respective claims. If peace is at last to be achieved, a third world must be constructed, one where the conflict will lose all urgency because it will lose its meaning. But constructing a new world does not seem within man's power. What is to be done? If the two worlds are in conflict, it is because they are in contact. In this sense, they do have something in common. This common ground, the locus of their conflict, is man himself. Not man as member of the human city (since the church claims him), nor man as faithful member of the Church (since the human city claims him), but the man who belongs to neither of these two cities. This man's name is already known to us: he is the individual. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (15/10/14): Sehr wichtig, das Individuum in diesem Sinn zu erfassen.

36a Of course, the individual does not exist as such. Each "individual" is always already a member of a human city and also a believer within a church. But insofar as he is needed by both realms, each of which wants to snatch him away from the other, he belongs to neither one; he exists as "individual." In other words, the individual "exists" insofar as he hesitates in his obedience and is considered "prior to" his choice of obedience. Since all men are the target of the twofold claim of which I am speaking, all of them can be considered as individuals. It can be objected that this is a purely abstract point of view, leaving the reality of the conflict intact. But if, starting from this idea of the individual, I succeed in conceiving of a viable political institution, then this inexistent individual will come into existence as citizen or subject of this institution. If that is possible, we will have created this third world which appeared to be beyond our grasp. (Fs) (notabene)

36b To fulfill its function, this new political institution by its very constitution must prevent the individual from being claimed by either the old city or the old Church. The obedience to which the individual will be subjected must be invulnerable to the criticisms and claims of the former candidates for power. They are the candidates of the human city—virtue, riches, liberty—as well as those of the divine city—the law or grace which comes from God, the doctrine revealed by Him, and the men who take their inspiration from this doctrine. The particularity of the new obedience is that it will be indisputable in principle. Of course, one will continue to hear the old claims, those of the rich, the poor, the wise, the priests. But their impact will be blunted by the absolute character of the obedience founding the new city. They will be neutralized. The new political institution will envelop and surmount the old conflict which seemed insoluble. The conflict will undoubtedly survive but in domesticated form, confined to the subpolitical level of "society." (Fs) (notabene)

36c Let us imagine then that all men are individuals, that is, men prior to obedience. Let us imagine the state of nature. In this state, men are not subjected to the prestige of wise men, the seductions of the rich, the intimidations of the strong, the preaching of priests; prior to any secular or religious society, they are equal and free. The body politic that they would form from this condition would be necessarily invulnerable to the claims of the rich as well as those of the poor, those of the strong as well as those of the priests. None of these categories would inspire the foundation of the institution, thus none of them would enter into its essential constitution. (Fs)
36d What I have just tried to suggest is the raison d'être of the state of nature in Hobbes's work. It is the key notion of political reflection, one that will remain crucial for more than a century, during the formative period of modern liberal regimes. The state of nature is the condition of men before any obedience to the city-state or Church, a condition from which it is possible to construct a body politic invulnerable to the conflict between state and Church. Certainly, in Hobbes's doctrine, the state of nature does not appear as a mere hypothesis needed by the project of surmounting the conflict between politics and religion, but as the reality produced by the actual conflict: the war of all against all. This is why Hobbes prefers the expression natural condition of mankind to that of "the state of nature." But essentially, the state of nature is not a state of war. We are going to observe this in studying Locke and Rousseau. The generating power of Hobbes's doctrine stems from the fact that with him the respective aspects of the hypothesis and reality of the state of nature are indistinguishable. And they have to be if the hypothesis is to be plausible, if the political art to come is to have a support in nature. And yet Hobbes authorizes his successors to distinguish between the two aspects. Once the plausibility and fecundity of the hypothesis are established, the possibility arises for anyone to modify its terms so as to realize better the end for which it was first conceived. (Fs) (notabene)

37a From Hobbes to Locke and Rousseau, the idea of the body politic will amount to absolute sovereignty variously conceived, founded on and deduced from a state of nature. I have tried to show the theologico-political origin of this notion which has become so unfamiliar to us. If it continued to prevail until the end of the eighteenth century, that is because the motive giving it birth remained effective. Here, however, a nuance must be added. For even if Locke and Rousseau were as concerned as Hobbes to abolish religion's political power, even if Rousseau concluded the Social Contract by extolling Hobbes for having reduced the duality of political and religious powers to the unity of the civil sovereign, it is still true that their principal enemy was no longer the political power of religion. Rather, it was a phenomenon that seems to be strictly political, namely absolutism. (In Rousseau's case, it was also the social, political, and moral reality of inequality.) Locke and Rousseau do indeed seem to turn against Hobbes, and it is important that we understand why. The fact that they criticize Hobbes for having given arguments to absolutism does not mean that they do not share the intention that led Hobbes to construct his Leviathan. They simply observe that real absolutism, instead of accomplishing Hobbes's intention, actually gets in its way: it is through absolutism or its protection that religion retains political power. Therefore they criticize Hobbes's doctrine in order to carry out his intention more effectively. (Fs) (notabene)

37b At the same time, it is true that the beginning of the implementation of the Hobbesian program—what is called the "rise of absolutism"—induces difficulties unfamiliar to Hobbes's original problem. The "third world" or "third city" had begun to live its own life. Consequently, if this life turned out to be unsatisfactory, it was proof, in Locke's eyes and especially in Rousseau's, that Hobbes's program had been imperfectly conceived. They remained faithful, however, to Hobbes's fundamental instrument, the state of nature; they simply thought that he did not make all possible use of it, that he did not interpret it radically enough. They reckoned that by interpreting it more radically, they would be in a position both to carry Hobbes's program through to a successful conclusion, and to deal with the disadvantages that his program's implementation had begun to reveal. (Fs)