Sovereignty

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Hobbes on the convenant

April 11, 2011 in Hobbes, Law, Society, Sovereignty | No comments

La rendición de Breda, by Diego Velázquez

A covenant, supposing the alledged transfer of rights under the duty of enhancing the preservation of every single member, is sealed by every man. This pact reverses the unsustainable brutality and confusion reigning in the state of nature and transforms barehanded man into citizen, into members of a higher entity, of the commonwealth. To this purpose, an extensive theory of contract, based on Roman legal doctrine, was deployed. But let’s detail the legal features of this figure: a covenant is a compromise based on trust.(1) The covenant supposes an agreement among men, able to transfer rights and becoming subjects of right, individuals instituting a sovereign, absolute vis-à-vis other individuals. A commonwealth is defined by its two partakers, sovereign and individual.(2)

Thus arises the duty of every man to protect and defend the commonwealth that assures his existence and the development of his activities.(3) The roman principle pacta sunt servanda, according to which the covenant had to be observed by both parts, served as corollary to the aforementioned theorems and stabilized the gained settlement.(4) Contractualism was the device used in order to articulate the passage from nature to society, from man to individual, from the war of all against all to the institution of an absolute power.

(1) “In all contracts where there is trust, the promise of him that is trusted, is called a COVENANT.” Elements of Law I,15, 9.
(2) Thus, his definition of sovereignty “…one person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence.” Leviathan II, 17, 13.
(3) Leviathan A Review, and Conclusion, 4.
(4) “Die Begründung verläuft also umgekehrt wie in den Gedankengängen „göttlichen“ Rechts: weil die Staatsgewalt allmächtig ist, hat sie göttlichen Charakter. Ihre Allmacht aber ist ganz anderer als göttlicher Herkunft: sie ist Menschenwerk und kommt durch einen von Menschen eingegangenen „Vertrag“ zustande.” C. Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols, Stuttgart, 1983, pp. 50-51.

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Hobbes’ simultaneous constitution of individual and sovereign

March 22, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Sovereignty | No comments

Velazquez The Forge of Vulcan

A double contract is issued, horizontal among individuals, and vertical with the sovereign, transforming the former into subject and citizen. Still the simple dissolution of one of the contract’s extremes did not imply the resolution of the other. The sovereign could not be deposed by the people, he remained absolute; the institution was irrevocable. The moment of the covenant was conceived subtly enough not to admit any real constitution of the aggregate of men as a persona, as an actual body, impeding the conformation of an incipient democracy. The transfer of rights had to be done en masse. The two axis were constituted simultaneously, the individuals (horizontal), and the sovereign (vertical). After the vertical institution the gathering of individuals disappeared and became a tumult, there was no constitutive body, no way back.

The individual was incarnated in relation to other men that did not belong any more to his kinship or family, to any common lord or fiefdom, but that agreed with each other, by means if their express will, for their personal interest as independent moral actors. The individual was created ex suppositio, tacitly, preceding the pattern of the sovereign’s institution.

The foundation of the state, apparently a simple device in the administration of power, entailed the causation of two personae, “and he that carrieth this person, is called SOVEREIGN, and said to have sovereign power; and every one besides, his SUBJECT.”(1) The institution of the state was the relational composition of a sovereign and a concrete socialized being that was subjected to this novel power and took part in the establishment of a new social arrangement where all men, independently from their rank, position, or wealth, recognized each other both as apt members and founders of a social agreement, of a commonwealth.

(1) Leviathan II, 17, 14.

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Hobbes on actor and author

March 20, 2011 in Hobbes, Society, Sovereignty | No comments

Velazquez-Meninas

Hobbes’ claims incorporated and dispersed the theory of persona he developed and applied to the bearer of sovereignty. Author and actor were linked by means of a theory of representation in which the actor represented the author in a concrete occasion; general representation is granted to the sovereign. Both actor and author have to constitute a persona to be able to act, to achieve a ‘unity of action’, similar to the soul as the principle of activity in man. The conversion of the king in the persona ‘sovereign’, was the counterpart of man becoming the persona capable to contract, to alienate rights, the individual. Both were mutually entailed and the plane of construction rendered stable and power-full.

Man had to be faced directly with the sovereign, without any of the intermediate instances proper to the feudal system. This relation was forged by a new conception of man that allowed him to contract and alienate his rights before, entering into a bound, first to be subjected, -constitution-, and thence creating a sovereign authority, –institution-, and becoming citizens. This interim lied down the foundation of a new being that opted for his his self-preservation rationally to persevere among other equals, who recognized a single case of authority instituted commonly.

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Hobbes on convention and authority

March 18, 2011 in Hobbes, Society, Sovereignty | No comments

Jakob Jordaens 016b

The sole common agreement among people for the attainment of common goals, what is called societatem mutui tantùm auxilij, based only on horizontal cooperation, was cast aside. This could not suffice to maintain cohesion and execute the natural law, in the horizontal rapport the private good is apt to collide with the common good. Thus the simple convention among people was no guarantee of peace and security, no way out of the state of nature. The solution required the institution of a vertical axe of authority, the origin of sovereignty.(1) Instead of agreement, submission became the only countermeasure to the undisciplined and self-absorbed human nature, instead of sharing, transferring. The existence of several wills aiming at a single effect, –consent-, is differentiated from the ‘involving of many wills in one’, denominated union. Both the common agreement and the institution of the sovereign are moments of the same movement:

A multitude of men, are made one person, when they are by one man, or one person, represented; so that it be done with the consent of every one of that multitude in particular. For it is the unity of the representer, not the unity of the represented, that maketh the person one. And it is the representer that beareth the person, and but one person: and unity, cannot otherwise be understood in multitude.(2)

(1) “Since therefore the conspiring of many wills to the same end doth not suffice to preserve peace, and to make a lasting defence, it is requisite that in those necessary matters which concern peace and selfe-defence, there be but one will of all men. But this cannot be done, unlesse every man will so subject his will to some other one, to wit, either Man or Counsel…”De Cive V, 6. Wills are equated, summarizing the defining feature of individuality.
(2) Leviathan I, 16, 13.

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Hobbes on the pactum societatis

March 17, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Sovereignty | No comments

'Gaius Mucius Scaevola Confronting King Porsenna', oil on copper painting by Bernardo Cavallino

There appears to be an internal contradiction in the state of nature for everyone wanted the best for himself, but the aggregate state, a continuous and restless competition for everything, was not liveable for the individual.(1) The very logical outcome was incompatible with its premises, a reductio ad absurdum that makes it untenable and requires a solution. The way for an agreement is expedite, but still the ability to renounce to this intrinsic state of affairs, -which is rational according to its principles-, in order to achieve an optimal state, is not clear. How do people stop fulfilling their initial inclination for all things, to achieve a safer and more satisfactory setting? How is this short-sighted rationality exchanged by a state that is globally more rational but whose change is inconsistent with any local decision? For men still prefer present goods to future ones.(2) Only the commonwealth avoids mediate irrationality, -for no man desires war but their appetites are conflictive-, by reducing immediate rationality or penalizing it. A pact or convention institutes this postponement of satisfaction to attain a higher though immanent good.

By means of a pactum societatis the mutual agreement of the members in the state of nature is accomplished. They surrender partially their rights in order to achieve the foundation and institution of an external power, the political power is borne by the mutual acknowledgement of the desperate creatures in the state of nature. They do not only trade their rights vis-à-vis the instituted sovereign, they also yield a horizontal agreement among them, they are not simple desire-driven creatures, men, they recognize each other, overcoming their solipsist self-conception as individuals. This common understanding alters the comprehension of the other and of one-self, for instance equality is transmuted into proportionality.(3) Men are mutually obliged and recognize the value of the foundation in which they partake as atoms in a body. They constitute the body political but remain individuals, founders of the very conditions of their existence; aftermath of the circumvention of the state of nature. Man was naturally free, no self conception was needed; it was mediated by society.

(1) De Cive, I, 13.
(2) De Cive, III, 32.
(3) “…its necessary for the obtaining of the Peace, that they be esteemed as equal…” De Cive, III, 13. Another example concerns the economic burdens to be borne by the citizens according to their onus and benefits, thus proportional also “…equality of reason between the Burthens and the Benefits.” Ibid., XIII, 11. Note the relation between reason and proportion in the aforementioned sense of method both geometrical and cognitive.

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Hobbes and human nature at the origin of authority

March 1, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Society, Sovereignty | No comments

Steen Argument over a Card Game

To overcome this degraded situation, to attain preservation, subjection was required, the constitution of the subject by a self-interested alienation of his rights. Otherwise strife, envy, inequality and preeminence became omnipresent. Only the bonds of authority and submission can fasten the predatory and frightened man and constitute a living together.(1) The feebleness and incapacity of man to maintain his life in the state of nature could only be undone with the establishment of a vertical axe of power, -an institution-, rather than a mere multiplicity of interactions at a horizontal level, -a constitution. According to Hobbes, it was not the mere union de facto of men that accomplished the egress from the state of nature. The existence of an authority de iure became indispensable, a common power, a civil government able to assure the end of the “…miserable condition of war.”(2) A unity of will and power that defined the institution of a commonwealth.(3)

Moral philosophy could be rephrased by focusing on the human being stemming from the previous analysis of his insertion in nature: by the rearrangement of elements and the consequent erosion of the given plain of consistence. Firstly, as a body with faculties, then, as an individual excised from other equals, with no common values. Next, the necessity of subjection was to be depicted to attain a peaceful order. The institution of sovereignty was based on the constitution of the already given, already fashioned, self-interested individuals. Lastly, a state of society was achieved by this institution and from it loomed a socialized apt purveyor of laws: the citizen. Socialization required subjection departing from an analysis of man as an individual. Leibniz intended to attain a preestablished harmony because there was none, when the plane of construction already incorporated individuals that were not relating naturally, when they had already, at least conceptually, been torn from the existing social tissue and became object of knowledge and subjects. Hobbes’s solution instead resorted to obedience, to command, to force, to avoid the further disintegration and collision of the bristly monads.

(1) “…each man is an enemy to that other whom heneither obeys nor commads…” De Cive IX, 3.
(2) Leviathan, II, 1, 1.
(3) “…the multitude so united in one person, is called a COMMONWEALTH, in Latin CIVITAS. This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defense,” Leviathan, II, 1, 13.

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Hobbes on the possibility of a common good

February 12, 2011 in Hobbes, Individual, Sovereignty | No comments

Theotokópoulos, Doménikos - Allegory with a Boy Lighting a Candle in the Company of an Ape and a Fool (Fábula) - c. 1600

Aquinas had maintained the superiority of common good, to him “bonum commune est maius et divinius quam bonum unius.”(1) On the other hand, the refurbishing ot the noetic space resulted in an individual that would follow bonum sibi; actions are all licit for there is no order, no given social arrangement. This mutual rivalry is an all against all struggle;(2) it is the end of industry, culture, and every work that defines man’s incorporation to society, undermining the ability to prosper. Society was not a stable, static, dimension of human life, but product of an empowered man rather than a natural state granted by God’s design.

Hobbes presented an epidermology, a science about the contact of concealed bodies with each other, in which the only viable access to the other required from a formulation of the self.(3) This approach established a split with the accepted Christian creed, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mark 12-30) that became, after a process of erosion, “that every man do help and endeavour to accommodate each other, as far as may be without danger of their persons, and loss of their means, to maintain and defend themselves.”(4) A dislocation of the concept of love takes place consistently, “…desire and love are the same thing; save that by desire, we always signify the absence of the object; by love, most commonly the presence of the same.”(5) Love is equaled to desire, to the restless struggle of appetite. Also the appreciation of the other suffered a striation operated by the concept of liberty, that shifted from an active attitude, ‘love’, to a passive solipsistic ‘accommodation’ with the caution required by self-preservation. The other is only recognized in the sense that his lack of recognition would disturb peace. It did not entail an absolute axiom, like in Christian thought, but rather a means, an instrument, to the proper state of welfare: peace.(6) “The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them.”(7)

(1) Following Aristotle’s preference for the whole to the part, “the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part,” Politics I, 2 (1252 a).
(2) Leviathan I, 13, 8-9. “…and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
(3) “And though by men’s actions we do discover their design sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own, and distinguishing all circumstances; by which the case may come to be altered, is to decipher without a key…”, Leviathan Introduction, 3.
(4) Elements of Law II, 16, 8 (italics mine).
(5) Leviathan I, 6, 3.
(6) “…so also is it of the second table of the divine law, Matth. 22, 39, 4o: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two laws depend the whole law and the prophets; which is not so to be understood, as that a man should study so much his neighbour’s profit as his own, or that he should divide his goods amongst his neighbours; but that he should esteem his neighbour worthy all rights and privileges that he himself enjoyeth;” Elements of Law I 18, 6.
(7) Leviathan I, 13, 14.

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Sovereignty criticisms (and III)

July 21, 2010 in Ontology, Power, Sovereignty | No comments

The rejection of sovereignty also implied a certain denial of a unified geometry from whose center power emanated uniformly. Foucault opted to investigate the particular disciplines and discourses that display a polimorphous, distributed, institutionalized power. Thus sovereignty as a classical concept, maintaing the form of a unique instance, had to be tempered by a local analysis of certain concrete practices. Governance also refers to a plurality of activities, procedures and instances in charge of attaining political results. The idea of governance without government also hints at this transformation of power without sovereignty, subjectivity without individual.(1)

A brilliant analysis of the standing of sovereignty is offered in Mairet’s work, Le Principe de Souvereinété. To him sovereignty has exhausted all its potential and thus only remains as a residue. It does not convey any horizon of future, but will decay for its revolutionary hallmark has already vanished; its functionality achieved. The absence of novel projects, new possible planes of construction, leaves it half-dead, only waiting for future configurations, to definetly transform, erode it. It only remains, according to our definition, as an insisting concept; it cannot evolve.(2) Sovereignty is also related to the decline of the individual conceptualized as a locus of will.(3) Auschwitz implied the crucifixion of the idea of individual, both the moral subject and the massification of torture and death, Hiroshima the forclusion of sovereignty and the ultimatum of the late medieval superior non recognoscens, sovereignty had to cede when external power can annihilate all prospect of life.

(1) We could trace certain dyadic relations between man and state, subject and power, and the one that will be analyzed, sovereignty and individual.
(2) “Notre siècle qui s’achève est celui de l’achèvement de la souveraineté; avec lui la souveraineté prend fin car elle s’accomplit.” G. Mairet, Le principe de souverainteté. Histoire et fondements du pouvoir moderne, Paris, 1997, p. 162.
(3) “Si donc la moralité de mon action procède de sa possible universalité, il faut que l’individu cesse d’être individuel, en quelque sorte.”Ibid., p. 177.

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Sovereignty criticisms (II)

July 14, 2010 in Sovereignty | No comments

Tantamount happens with the individuals that face anonymous relations, the debilitation of the state tends to an occlusion of its sovereignty. Both psychological and sociological aspects debouch in the analysis of bureaucracies and international relations, canvassing a distributed system of governance, marking the displacement of executive functions and, in the particular case of the EU, also legislative ones, to supra-statal institutions. On the specific challenge set by the European Union on sovereignty,(1) Sorensen has highlighted the possibility of a post-modern, empirical, statehood that really imposes a horizon of transformation to the classical concept of sovereignty.(2)

Especially contended in the basic definition of sovereign state, knitting together the elements of people, authority, and territory, is the latter aspect. Rather than denying sovereignty the question has been directed towards its localization, its emplacement. In an apparent opposition but in a consistent manner appears the debate on globalization as an erosion, a dissolution or a transformation.(3) Transformation or whithering away, has to be assessed according to sovereignty’s interaction with those other contents that provided with our canonical understanding, conforming its conditions of existence, configuring a plain of consistency.(4)

The relation between the questioning of sovereignty and post-modernity is widespread in the literature.(5) In this sense, it is often referred to the will, to the capacity of action of the state rather than the assertion of power.(6) Sovereignty thus becomes a relevant discourse in the processes of construction and deconstruction of social representations.(7) Sovereignty is thus assessed as a discursive praxis privileging certain understandings, values and interests.

(1) Cf. N. MacCormick, Questioning Sovereignty. Law, State and Nation in the European Commonwealth, Oxford, 2001. M. Wind, Sovereignty and European Integration. Towards a post-Hobbesian order, Houndmills, 2001. J. Habermas, “The European Nation-State -Its Achievements and its Limits”, Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the nation, New York, 1996. J. Habermas, “The European Nation-State and the Pressures of Globalization”, New Left Review 235, 1999, pp. 46-59. N. Walker, Sovereignty in Transition, Oxford, 2003.

(2) G. Sorensen, “Sovereignty: Change and continuity in a fundamental institution”, Cf. R. Jackson (ed.), Sovereignty at the Millenium, Massachusetts, 1999. Sorensen distinguishes between a constitutive aspect of sovereignty, based on the central tenets of territory, people and government, that has not suffered any alteration, and a regulative aspect, with an ample content, among which he refers to non-intervention and reciprocity, that has been modified, and an empirical statehood that is experiencing profound shifts in economic relations, the polity’s structure and the redefinition of nationhood.
(3) J.A. Camilleri and J. Falk, The End of Sovereignty? The politics of a shrinking and fragmenting world, Aldershot, 1992. For a grasp at possible future alternatives cf. D.J. Elkins, Beyond Sovereignty. Territorial and Political Economy in the Twenty-First Century, Toronto, 1995. “What I see is the beginning of the unbundling of sovereignty as we have known it for many centuries -but not always. Scholars examining changes in mentalities or social epistemologies have remarked that significant, epochal change frequently could not be grasped by contemporaries: the vocabularies, categories, master images available to them were unable to capture fundamental change. Suffering from the same limitations, all we see is the collapse of sovereignty as we know it. But it seems to me rather than sovereignty eroding as a consequence of globalization and supranational organizations, it is being transformed.” S. Saasen, Losing Control? Sovereignty in an age of globalization, New York, 1996, pp. 29-30.
(4) “…associated with the concept of state sovereignty, although only fully articulated by Hobbes, is the idea of the undifferentiated individual as the basic social entity facing the power and majesty of the state as embodied in the monarch.” R.E. Dowse and J.A. Hughes, Political Sociology, Chichester, 1986, p. 98. R. Lapidoth, “Sovereignty in Transition”, Journal of International Affairs 45(2), 1992, pp. 326-346. G.H. Von Wright, “The crisis of social science and the whithering away of the nation state”, Associations 1, 1997, pp. 49-52. W.G. Werner and J.H De Wilde, “The Endurance of Sovereignty”, European Journal of International Relations 7(3), 2001, pp. 283-313. D. Philpott, “Usurping the Sovereignty of Sovereignty?” World Politics 53(2), 2001, pp. 297-324. D. Philpott, “Sovereignty: An Introduction and Brief History”, Journal of International Affairs 48, 1995, pp. 353-68.

(5) Cf. R. Jackson (ed.), op. cit. J.A. Camilleri and J. Falk, op. cit.

(6) “Though the state will continue to perform important administrative and other functions, the theory of sovereignty will seem strangely out of place in a world characterized by shifting allegiances, new forms of identity and overlapping tiers of jurisdiction.”J.A. Camilleri and J. Falk, op. cit., p. 256.

(7) T.J. Biersteker and C. Weber “The social construction of state sovereignty”, T.J. Biersteker and C. Weber (eds.), State Sovereignty as a Social Construct, Cambridge, 1996. J. Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty, Cambridge, 1995.

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Sovereignty criticisms

June 15, 2010 in Sovereignty | No comments

The criticisms on sovereignty can be sensed from diverse perspectives. To some late marxist thinkers sovereignty has been revamped obtaining the form of empire(1) that would be able to fulfill the fundamental liberal project of uniting politics and economics. On the other hand, Westphalia supposed the modern installment of sovereignty(2) or, at least, in the sense of long-term processes, a signpost of its acceptance, of its central character within the plane of construction. It implied the independence of the alledged sovereign states, their supremacy by excluding, after the Thirty Years War, the intervention of external actors in the religious affairs of another state, thus securing the system afforded by the Treaty of Augsburg. The reprehension of clasical Westphalian sovereignty and its depiction of the state as self-centered, unified and compact, stems from an interior without an ultimate centered authority, and an exterior that is meddled in a complex set of interactions, distributing the decision-making process into several nodes, an array of systems and instances of governance.(3) A parallel criticism has been shown regarding the individual, decomposing the unity of the ‘I’ into diverse tendencies and processes without a central instance.

Tantamount happens with the individuals that face anonymous relations, the debilitation of the state tends to an occlusion of its sovereignty. Both psychological and sociological aspects benefit from the analysis of bureaucracies and international relations, canvassing a distributed system of governance, marking the displacement of executive functions and, in the particular case of the EU, also legislative ones, to supra-statal institutions. On the specific challenge set by the European Union on sovereignty,(4) Sorensen has highlighted the possibility of a post-modern, empirical, statehood that really imposes a horizon of transformation to the classical concept of sovereignty.(5)

(1)“The passage to Empire emerges from the twilight of modern sovereignty,” M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire, Cambridge, 2000, p. xii. Similarly Schmitt also coined the concept of Reich differentiating it from mere imperialism. Open frontiers, decentralization, flexibility define a concept of Empire that does not resemble anymore the European imperial projects. Hardt and Negri also represent a current of political philosophy that, against liberal individualism, observes the appearance of a novel subject: multitudes. This is another case of the aforementioned accepted entailment of individual and liberalism: a rejection of the political doctrine seemingly conveys the execretion of its anthropolical counterpart. On multitudes cf. G. Agamben, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, New York, 2004. P. Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an analysis of contemporary forms of life, Massachusetts, 2004.
(2) Cf. G.M. Lyons (ed.) Beyond Westphalia?: state sovereignty and international intervention Baltimore, 1995. D. Croxton, “The peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the origins of sovereignty”, International Historical Review, 21(3), 1999, pp. 569-591. D. Philpott, “Westphalia, Authority, and International Society”, R. Jackson (ed.), Sovereignty at the Millenium, Massachusetts, 1999. S.D. Krasner “Problematic Sovereignty”, S.D. Krasner (ed.), Problematic Sovereignty, New York, 2001.
(3) Cf. F. Hinsely, op. cit.
(4) Cf. N. MacCormick, Questioning Sovereignty. Law, State and Nation in the European Commonwealth, Oxford, 2001. M. Wind, Sovereignty and European Integration. Towards a post-Hobbesian order, Houndmills, 2001. J. Habermas, “The European Nation-State -Its Achievements and its Limits”, Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the nation, New York, 1996. J. Habermas, “The European Nation-State and the Pressures of Globalization”, New Left Review 235, 1999, pp. 46-59. N. Walker, Sovereignty in Transition, Oxford, 2003.
(5) G. Sorensen, “Sovereignty: Change and continuity in a fundamental institution”, Cf. R. Jackson (ed.), Sovereignty at the Millenium, Massachusetts, 1999. Sorensen distinguishes between a constitutive aspect of sovereignty, based on the central tenets of territory, people and government, that has not suffered any alteration, and a regulative aspect, with an ample content, among which he refers to non-intervention and reciprocity, that has been modified, and an empirical statehood that is experiencing profound shifts in economic relations, the polity’s structure and the redefinition of nationhood.

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