Leviathan

Selected excerpts for the introduction to the book Leviathan by Menachem Lorberbaum published by Shalem. The book by Thomas Hobbes is a classic book from 1651 that defined how a modern state should be run

The State of Israel is caught in the grip of the theological-political situation. The question of the legitimacy of the state, that is, the question of the source of the supreme political authority of the sovereign authority, accompanies the State of Israel like a shadow throughout its years of existence. The question arises as a constant challenge to the sovereignty of the state, both in the framework of the polemic between the nationalities, both on the part of those with universalist views, and on the religious side. At the same time, fundamentally the problem is not unique to Israel. Its roots are in the beginning of the conception and design of the modern state and it was clearly expressed for the first time in Thomas Hobbes's book, Leviathan (1651).

The book Leviathan, like Thucydides' Peloponnesian War (which Hobbes translated from Greek), or Plato's Politea, was written out of the author's anxiety at the breaking of the political tools. The immediate background for his writing was the distress caused by the civil war in England. This war was conducted intermittently from the time when Henry VIII (8-1547) broke away from the Church in Rome in 1491, until the reign of William of Orange

(1702-1650) in 1689, and the end of the legislation regarding the supremacy of Parliament in 1701. Thomas Hobbes (1679-1588) lived to an extreme old age and witnessed closely key episodes of the ongoing war over the image of the English polity - especially the fall of Charles I (1 -1649) and his execution, the rise of Oliver Cromwell (1600-1658) to the position of head of the republic and the return of Charles II (1599-2) to the throne in 1630. In his book Hobbes deals with the fundamental questions of the establishment of political society, and the source of political legitimacy and the religious of the sovereign.

Unlike Thucydides, Hobbes understood that the historical analysis of the events that led to the disintegration of political society was not enough: a new political science was needed. Leviathan is supposed to give his readers the knowledge of "the real rules of politics" - from a realistic, objective view of the state of human nature - thus serving as a substitute for the Platonic political utopia. If he fails in his mission, Hobbes claims, his words will be nothing but Platonic nonsense. Indeed, the book was notorious in its day, both among the royalists, among the republicans, and in the church. And yet, over the years, it has become a founding basis of the theory of the sovereignty of the modern state, the one that was resurrected from the purgatory of the war over the nature of the binding meaning of religion and politics in shaping human life. The state that was created from this theological-political reactor, is to a large extent the image of the state inherited by the entire modern world, and the Jewish people within it, and it is that which finds its symbolic, linguistic and conceptual expression in Leviathan.

Hobbes probably began writing Leviathan at the beginning of 1649, when he was in exile in France, while King Charles I was executed. Hobbes fled England in November 1 in a hurry without packing his belongings for fear of being persecuted by the Long Parliament for his support of absolute sovereignty. Leviathan appeared in bookstores in England in the spring of 1640. It was written in an English version but also in a Latin version, which was published in Amsterdam in 1651 as part of the publication of all Hobbes' writings. Since then the book has been published in many editions.

Hobbes's political doctrine is part of his general consideration of human nature and the foundations of science. Leviathan thus presents a broad Gothic meaning. In what follows, we will outline only the heads of the chapters of the book's overarching argument on the questions of the motives of the political association, the legitimacy and authority of the sovereign, the social contract and the relationship between religion and the state.
Classical political science sought to anchor the legitimacy of the political framework in nature. Hobbes's perception is the opposite: the political situation is presented in the book as a departure from the state of nature, and as a situation contrary to it. In the state of nature, humans are inevitably caught in a war of everything against everything. Therefore, man's life in the state of nature is "[a] lonely, poor, miserable, animalistic and short life". Hobbes's concept is an important landmark in the development of modern consciousness in that it places man in front of nature, and establishes the concept of human sovereignty against him. The technological ideology that enslaves nature to the will of man is ultimately derived from this claim of sovereignty. The political situation is nominated here against nature, in other words culture stands against nature.

Has the state of nature ever existed in human history? I don't think it is necessary to say so. There is no doubt that Hobbs believes that there are moments in human history when humans reach a state that cannot be defined except as the state of nature. Thus, for example, in the moments of the disintegration of a state in a civil war, the intra-state war consumes it. But the analysis of the concrete history of the country is not the important thing for Hobbes here. His discussion of Leviathan was intended to shape a kind of genealogy of the state. That is, Leviathan is busy uncovering and shaping the states of consciousness that make the political situation necessary for human existence and the prosperity of the human race. Based on this analysis, Hobbes seeks to propose a concept that will preserve the legitimacy of sovereign authority. The state of nature is therefore primarily a theoretical template designed to enable the aforementioned heuristic thought experiment to illustrate to the subjects how fragile the line that distinguishes order from chaos is. Those historical events in which an actual political society decays reinforce the importance of the heuristic template.
It is important to note that the dynamic that makes the chaos of the state of nature a constant possibility is not a product of human evil. Machiavelli wanted to guide the prince in a world where "so many are not good" and therefore he concludes that "a prince who wants to be preserved, it is necessary for him to learn to be able to be not good". The world that the prince is forced to deal with is an evil world. But Hobbes does not focus on the moral action motives of individuals but anchors his position in a socio-political analysis of power and its place in human existence. Hobbes defines power functionally: "A man's power (in general) is the means he has in the present to obtain some apparent future good." The need to preserve our power is what creates fundamental conflicts between humans:

"Therefore, I posit first, as a general tendency of the entire human race, a constant and restless desire to gain strength after strength, which does not end except at death. And the reason for this is not that a person always hopes for a more intense pleasure than he has already won, or that he cannot be satisfied with moderate strength, but who cannot guarantee the strength and means to live well that he now has, without acquiring more."

Hobbes moves the focus of the conflict that prevails between people from the area of ​​their intentions to the area of ​​interests that stand at the foundation of their lives, and essentially their ability to satisfy them, thus he moves the infrastructure that underlies political thought from morality to sociology. It is not evil but power that is at the center of the matter and the fundamental question of politics is the question of power management and its channeling.
The solution to the conflict of human power, and to the war of all in all its derivatives, is the position of a superior power that is greater than the power of any particular person. This force will be able, due to its great and threatening power, to ensure the proper arrangement of all the other forces and to discourage their harmful use. This solution was defeated by a designer with the help of two components. One is the sovereign, the supreme power; The second is the social contract that dictates the terms of the regulation of power.
The concept of sovereignty was introduced into modern political science by Jean Bodin, in his essay on the Republic. But it was Hobbes who prepared the theoretical foundation that made sovereignty the central concept of the modern republic. The Hemibinian monarchy was fundamentally pluralistic. This monarchy was seen as a political super-association of many autonomous forces such as the nobility, the church, the townspeople, the Jews and others. The modern state, on the other hand, and under the influence of Hobbes' theorization, is monistic in its ambitions. The sovereign concentrates in his hands all the supreme rights of war and peace, legislation and justice. The concept of sovereignty at the political level is analogous to the concept of the 'I' at the personal level in modern philosophy. The extent of the state's domain as the extent of its sovereignty. States differ from each other in being sovereign and in their position as sovereign towards each other. Sovereignty is the condition of individuation of the modern state; And the sovereign is able to serve in this role thanks to the supreme power that he concentrates in his hands. And so it is whether it is one person, or whether it is an assembly or a group of people (as far as Hobbes is concerned, it is clear that he tends to centralize the power).

Sovereignty is indeed prepared from a factual situation of concentration of power but also from the establishment of its constitutional legitimacy. This is the function of the contract, or covenant. The potential subjects join together in an agreement formulated as follows:

"I give up my right to govern myself, and give authority to this person, or to this assembly of people, on the condition that you also give them your right, and authorize all their actions in a similar way."

The mutual relinquishment of private rights is a relinquishment in favor of a sovereign whose power is great enough and threatening enough to ensure that the subjects remain obliged to their mutual relinquishment. The creation of this association empowers the sovereign himself by channeling to him the joint power of all the subjects. Therefore Hobbes continues and declares:

Since this is done, the crowd that is thus united in one man is called Medina, in Latin Civitas. This is the creation of that great leviathan, or better (if we speak more reverently), that mortal god to whom we owe - [since we are] under the immortal God - our peace and protection. Because of this authority given to him by every private person in the country, he has such a great use of the power and strength delegated to him to such an extent that the horror of this allows him to coordinate everyone's desires for peace at home, and mutual help against their enemies from outside. And therein lies the essence of the state, which is (in order to define it): "One man, which a great multitude, by virtue of the mutual alliances between each one with the other, have made themselves - each one - the initiator of their actions, for this purpose that they may use their strength and their own means, as they find beneficial , for their safety and for their general protection."

The state is the greatest generator of human power and is therefore the most suitable to balance the totality of private forces for the purpose - the security and prosperity of the subjects. At the same time, Hobbes' realism does not let up for a moment because he does not romanticize or beautify the monstrous nature of this force, and calls it by the name of an animal of huge mythical dimensions, Leviathan, who, as the scripture says, is "king over all the sons of Shatz" ( Job Ma: 20).

This complex mechanism of the birth of the state highlights the special nature of the interdependence between the sovereign and the subjects. The power of the sovereign is necessary for the formation of the state, but legitimacy on the part of the subjects is itself a source of principled power and it enables an increase in the holding of the total power into a political power. The subjects for their part gain security and peace, which are the key to their prosperity, in return for renouncing their natural freedom. From these purposes of the association the scope of its validity is derived. Also, it is the normative construction of the conditions of consent of the subjects that enables the derivation of the rules of justice that will guide their conduct in the country. Therefore, Hobbes invests a lot of effort in formulating the rules of justice. At the same time, it is clear that the sovereign is not subject to them since it is the condition for their illness.

This discussion highlights a fundamental duplicity in the role of the sovereign. In one respect, the sovereign remains in the state of nature in relation to the subjects - he is outside the contract in that his role is to ensure the mutual stipulation between the subjects; But all this out of a desire to function within the framework of the contract. In other words, given the extent of the sovereign's dependence on the subjects, it seems that he too has clear interests in the normative conduct of the state and his own within it. Furthermore, it is quite clear that Hobbes understood that the price of the transaction cannot include the sacrifice of the lives of the subjects, because it goes against the fundamental purpose - peace and security. Therefore, the state cannot compel military conscription - it can only hope that the sovereign's subjects will understand the political achievement of securing their happiness and will be willing to volunteer to fight for it.

Hobbes' conception of power, and the conception of the sovereign's role and power, all point to the religious underpinnings of this thought. As implied in the above quote by Hobbes, the state, and especially humanity in the form of the sovereign, are shaped in the image of God: "To that mortal God to whom we owe - [since we are] under the immortal God - our peace and protection". This design is the core of Hobbes's political theology: it is characterized by the secularization of the basic pattern of divine sovereignty and its structural copying into a human creation, the sovereign state. But Hobbes's interest in religion does not end there. Religion has an unusual driving force and is therefore the source of organized power that clearly competes with that of the state.

Political theology is therefore not only intended to establish religious legitimacy in the political imagination of the subjects but also to confirm the state's claim to sovereign supremacy over established religion. The sovereign is the final arbiter when it comes to worship and the public tenets of faith, not the priesthood and clergy. The fact that Hobbs devoted more than half of the book to the reinterpretation of the devoted religion in his society, the Christian religion, on the basis of his natural political theology (chapter no), indicates the depth of his understanding of the theological foundations of his political philosophy, and his understanding of the ongoing urgency of the question of the relationship between the state and religion .