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1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 239 The Sovereign and the Social: Arendt’s Understanding of Hobbes1 Annelies Degryse K.U.Leuven ABSTRACT. In this article, I claim that Arendt understands Hobbes not only as the theoretical father of totalitarianism, but also of what Arendt calls ‘the social.’ I do so by first presenting her view on imperialism and the rise of the bourgeoisie as a general framework. Then, I focus on her reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan. Hobbes gives birth to a state that asks for absolute obedience, depriving all his subjects of political, or (for Arendt) participation rights. This leads to Arendt’s understanding of sovereignty as domination. According to Arendt, Hobbes’s Leviathan not only gives rise to power politics, but also to totalitarianism. Hobbes’s new model of politics is reduced to a function of society and has ‘socialized’ men. Politics is reduced to government, while human beings are reduced to bourgeoisie. As I show, these changes give rise to another monster, the social, or what Pitkin calls ‘the Blob.’ Thus, Hobbes is not only the theoretical father of totalitarianism, but also of ‘the Blob.’ This leads me to sketch Arendt’s metaphysics of presence, that is, how only actual acting brings about the political. To do so, I contrast Arendt with Claude Lefort’s theory of democracy. KEYWORDS. Arendt, sovereignty, Hobbes, the social, Schmitt, Lefort A ccording to contemporary political theory, the “Westphalian model of state sovereignty” is in crisis. This model, which presupposes “a dominant and unified political authority whose jurisdiction over a clearly marked piece of territory is supreme,” has been put under pressure by the recent developments of globalization and the increasingly multicultural character of today’s society (Benhabib 2004, 116). However, this is not the first time that the model has been put under pressure, nor is it only now under scrutiny for the first time. In 1920, Hans Kelsen already formulated his alternative conception of sovereignty as “supreme legal authority” and argued for a Grundnorm, a ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ETHICS NETWORK 15, no. 2 (2008): 239-258. © 2008 by European Centre for Ethics, K.U.Leuven. All rights reserved. doi: 10.2143/EP.15.2.2032369 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 240 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 hypothetical norm upon which all other norms (of a single legal system) would be based (1960, 627). Hannah Arendt formulated another critique of sovereignty. After World War II, she expressed the widespread belief that sovereignty was no longer a workable concept. In her work, Arendt refers to state sovereignty, national sovereignty, as well as to popular sovereignty, but they all have one thing in common: the tendency towards domination and control, possibly even leading to totalitarianism. In view of the more recent debates on sovereignty, I will address Arendt’s understanding of the concept, focusing on Arendt’s reading of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, which can be found in The Origins of Totalitarianism. The second goal of this article is to show how Arendt’s reading of Hobbes not only leads her to her negative view of sovereignty, but also to her understanding of what she will later call ‘the social.’ In 1998, Hanna Fenichel Pitkin published her excellent book The Attack of the Blob. Pitkin uses this metaphor, referring to the kitsch science-fiction film The Blob (1958), to explain Arendt’s concept of the social and how it seems to be “alive, eating and growing” in the work of Arendt. In chapter five of her book, Pitkin argues that “the birth of the Blob” can be traced back to Arendt’s masterpiece The Origins of Totalitarianism. Agreeing with Pitkin about its origins, I claim that Hobbes is the theoretical father of ‘the Blob.’ Or, to formulate things a bit more precisely: by giving birth to the great Leviathan, he also brings forth the Blob, “consuming human beings and grow[ing] with each meal” (1998, 4). The Leviathan and the Blob are both monstrous creatures, making totalitarianism possible and threatening the political. Both deprive human beings of the public-political domain and the possibility of having genuine political experiences. The third and final goal of this article is to show how this reading of Hobbes also already entails (what Rudi Visker has called) Arendt’s metaphysics of presence, which I will explain by contrasting Arendt’s reading of the Leviathan to Claude Lefort’s theory of democracy (2007, 424-5). — 240 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 241 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES IMPERIALISM AND THE POLITICAL EMANCIPATION OF THE BOURGEOISIE Arendt’s reading of Hobbes is part of “The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie,” the first chapter of the second part called “Imperialism,” of The Origins. As Margaret Canovan puts it, “in a nutshell, Arendt’s claim was that twentieth-century totalitarianism had been made possible by latenineteenth-century imperialism” (1992, 29). To make it clear how this is the case, I will first sketch the broader argument of “The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie.” In the next section, I go into Arendt’s reading of Hobbes’s Leviathan itself. Arendt uses the term imperialism very specifically, referring to a historical phenomenon that took place between 1884 to 1914 (OT, 123). With the term, she does not refer to the (in her view) historically earlier empire-building and colonial conquests, but to a kind of political rule necessitated by capitalism and its adherents, the bourgeoisie (OT, 130). According to Arendt, this new social class was, at first, not interested at all in politics and government, but was well contented “with every type of state that could be trusted with protection of property rights” (OT, 138). As we will see later, this disinterest is in fact caused by the Hobbesian state. As capitalism ran into the boundaries of domestic markets, it needed new territory to expand capital and wealth. As Arendt puts it, “when the nation-state proved unfit to be the framework for the further growth of capitalist economy,” the bourgeoisie turned to politics, making the limitless expansion of territory its main foreign policy goal. By turning to politics, the bourgeoisie not only imported the language of successful businessmen, but also economic dynamism, into the political realm, making expansion the ultimate goal of foreign policy (OT, 124): The bourgeoisie turned to politics out of economic necessity; for it did not want to give up the capitalist system whose inherent law is constant economic growth, it had to impose this law upon its home governments and to proclaim expansion to be an ultimate political goal of foreign policy (OT, 126). — 241 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 242 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 The introduction of the economic principle of “never-ending accumulation of property,” brought about the “aimless accumulation for power” (OT, 137). Only by accumulating power could property be protected. “Only the unlimited accumulation of power could bring about the unlimited accumulation of capital” (OT, 137). According to Arendt, it was the parliamentary system that “allowed the liberal bourgeoisie to gain control over the state machine,” a thesis that she shares with Marx (OT, 97). But the bourgeoisie never won “a decisive victory” in the state: National institutions resisted throughout the brutality and megalomania of imperialist aspirations, and bourgeois attempts to use the state and its instruments of violence for its own economic purposes were always only half successful (OT, 124). However, by conquering foreign peoples, the nation-states “aroused national consciousness and desire for sovereignty among the conquered people, thereby defeating all genuine attempts at empire building” (OT, 127). This nationalism would ultimately catch up with the conquering nation-states, destroying their own rule of law and giving way to totalitarianism. Arendt’s account of imperialism at first glance seems somewhat Marxist, and is definitely indebted to Marxist ideas. However, it is distinct from Marxism in that, in her account, the originally economic principle becomes a political principle in its own right. For Arendt, imperialism is not an economic phenomenon, but a political one: “Imperialism must be considered the first stage in political rule of the bourgeoisie rather than the last stage of capitalism” (OT, 138). HOBBES AS THE THEORIST OF THE BOURGEOISIE For Arendt, the political theorist who formulated the theoretical framework of this ‘new’ political phenomenon of power accumulation was — 242 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 243 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES Thomas Hobbes. He was the philosopher who expressed the values of the new social class, sketching “an almost complete picture, not of Man but of the bourgeois man, an analysis which in three hundred years has neither been outdated nor excelled” (OT, 139). Let me now present to you Arendt’s reading. Arendt understands Hobbes’s Leviathan as a careful theoretical construction of a new body politic out of “the political needs of the new social body of the rising bourgeoisie” (OT, 140). To do so, Hobbes starts from what is, in Arendt’s eyes, a deformed conception of human being. He depicts man as having only one passion, the desire for power, as being driven only by his individual interests, which he needs to defend against others. For Arendt, this “being without reason, without the capacity for truth, and without free will – that is, without the capacity for responsibility” is no longer human, and she emphasizes that this being would never be able to found any body politic whatsoever, since he feels no loyalty to his country or fellow-man (OT, 139). This solitary and private being cannot create lasting bonds between himself and his fellows, let alone build a community. His relations are limited to temporary and limited exchanges of goods and power. According to Arendt, Hobbes was aware of the shortcomings of his picture of man. She claims that “[i]t would be a grave injustice to Hobbes and his dignity as a philosopher to consider this picture of man an attempt at psychological realism or philosophical truth” (OT, 140). He depicted man as such for a specific reason: so man would fit the needs of the Leviathan. Only by depicting man as such, could Hobbes derive the public good from private interests: Hobbes’s Leviathan, exposed the only political theory according to which the state is based not on some kind of constituting law – whether divine law, the law of nature, or the law of social contract – which determines the rights and wrongs of the individual’s interest with respect to public affairs, but on the individual interests themselves, so that ‘the private interest is the same with the publique’ (OT, 139). — 243 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 244 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 By depicting men as power-thirsty animals, Hobbes could create his state of nature and presume that all men share a common private interest: security. For “[t]heir equality as potential murderers places all men in the same insecurity, from which arises the need for a state” (OT, 120). Out of this state of nature, he developed the raison d’être of the state. In exchange for security, men are willing to give up (what Arendt calls) their “political rights” (OT, 141). The Leviathan arises as a new body politic demanding absolute submission. This Hobbesian state acquires a monopoly on killing and violence, in exchange for which it provides: security against being killed or losing one’s goods. This security is provided by the law, “which is a direct emanation from the power monopoly of the state (and is not established by man according to human standards of right and wrong)” (OT, 141).2 “In regard to the law of the state – that is, the accumulated power of society as monopolized by the state – there is no question of right or wrong, but only absolute obedience, the blind conformism of bourgeois society” (OT, 141). (This partly explains what one might call Arendt’s blindness to law.) But not only law is redefined through Hobbes’s description of the Leviathan; equality, power, freedom, and politics are redefined as well. All political concepts are modified into ‘modern’ concepts, which also explain our understanding of these concepts. Power is understood by Hobbes as “the accumulated control that permits the individual to fix prices and regulate supply and demand in such a way that they contribute to his own advantage” (OT, 139). It is an economic concept referring to the markets, and in the struggle of all men for it all men are ‘equal’ according to Hobbes. They all have the same goal – power – and the same opportunities to reach this goal, as “[w]eakness can be compensated for by guile” (OT, 140). According to Arendt, “only chance can decide who will succeed” in such a society (OT, 141). As a consequence, the meaning of freedom is also changed. This is without a doubt the most important modification for Arendt. In the essay “What is Freedom?,” Arendt summarizes this nicely as follows: — 244 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 245 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES The highest purpose of politics, “the end of government,” was the guaranty of security; security, in turn, made freedom possible, and the word “freedom” designated a quintessence of activities which occurred outside the political realm (BPF, 148). Freedom is understood as freedom from politics, the liberty not to engage in politics. Politics is reduced to the state and to government: [F]or government, which since the beginning of the modern age had been identified with the total domain of the political, was now considered to be the appointed protector not so much of freedom as of the life process, the interests of society and its individuals (BPF, 148). ARENDT’S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES To better understand Arendt’s reading of Hobbes and to put it into perspective, I will present two other interpretations of Hobbes’s Leviathan. The first is one from C. B. Macpherson, presented in his book The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. The original article, titled “Hobbes Today,” appeared six years before Arendt’s first publication of The Origins in 1951.3 The second interpretation is from Arendt’s controversial compatriot Carl Schmitt, in his book The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. I end this section with some general critiques that could be raised against Arendt’s understanding of Hobbes. Together with Leo Strauss, but for different reasons, Macpherson argues that “Hobbes was a characteristic representative of ‘modern’ thought” (Tuck 2002, 113). In his book The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Macpherson argues how Hobbes envisioned the rise of market capitalism as a model for his Leviathan. Instead of describing the English Civil War, Hobbes describes, with his state of nature, the first representation of market society. Macpherson claims that there are several assumptions common to the leading seventeenth-century political theories, most clearly and fully expressed in Hobbes, which are still relevant to the — 245 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 246 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 problems of later liberal-democratic society. One of them is that “[t]he individual is essentially the proprietor of his own person and capacities, for which he owes nothing to society” (1962, 263). Political society is assumed to be “a human contrivance for the protection of the individual’s property in his person and goods, and (therefore) for the maintenance of orderly relations of exchange between individuals regarded as proprietors of themselves” (1962, 264). Arendt’s reading of Hobbes and the rise of the bourgeoisie is in line with Macpherson’s. They both detect and describe the many connections between the conceptual model of Hobbes (and other natural law theories, such as Locke’s) and the coming bourgeois society. The most striking connection between Hobbes and the rise of bourgeois society is found in Hobbes’s descriptions of humans and human relations. Human beings are described by Hobbes as individual agents enjoying full autonomy. The relations they have in the state of nature are simple, immediate, that is, economic relations. One can easily understand this description as the theoretical reflection of the rise of a new kind of society, standing in contrast to feudal society, with its overlapping economic and political spheres. As we have seen, Arendt refutes this description of humans and their relations as one-sided and unrealistic. However, Arendt’s understanding of Hobbes moves away from Macpherson’s. Where Macpherson’s view of the Leviathan sees nothing more than the regulating market commission, securing and guaranteeing the necessary order for business, Arendt’s reading brings her closer to Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of Hobbes in Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. She shares Schmitt’s interpretation of the Leviathan, as an absolute state taking over all power and demanding absolute obedience. Quoting Schmitt: The ‘relation between protection and obedience’ is the cardinal point of Hobbes’ construction of state. It permits a very good reconciliation with the concepts and ideals of the bourgeois constitutional state (1996, 113). — 246 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 247 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES Arendt envisions this state, just as Schmitt does, as “an irresistible and overpowering huge machine” (Schmitt 2007, 46).4 And, like Schmitt, Arendt ignores ‘the right of resistance’ in the Leviathan.5 Hobbes’s theory enhances the passivity of citizens and their self-limitation to the private sphere, in exchange for security. Schmitt and Arendt share a disdain for the bourgeoisie. As Schmitt puts it in The Concept of the Political: The bourgeois is an individual who does not want to leave the apolitical riskless private sphere. He rests in the possession of his private property, and under the justification of his possessive individualism he acts as an individual against the totality. He is a man who finds his compensation for his political nullity in the fruits of freedom and enrichments and above all in the total security of its use (2007, 62). Schmitt reminds us of the fact that, before Tönnies’s interpretation of Hobbes as the theorist of the positiven Rechtsstaates, Hobbes was understood as the theorist of the absolutistischen Machtstaates. In a footnote, Schmitt refers to Vialatoux’s earlier treatise on Hobbes as the father of l’état totalitaire (1996, 76). Again, Arendt agrees. Although the decline of politics already starts with Plato, Hobbes sketches with his Leviathan not an early blueprint of the nation-state, but a blueprint for totalitarianism, as is made clear through a footnote in The Origins (Brunkhorst 1999, 64). In footnote 36, Arendt explains the difference between the Hobbesian state and the totalitarian state. Although she tries to give Hobbes some credit, it seems clear to her that he paved the way to totalitarianism: The coincidence of this identification with the totalitarian pretense of having abolished the contradictions between individual and public interests is significant enough…. However, one should not overlook the fact that Hobbes wanted most of all to protect private interests by pretending that, rightly understood, they were the interests of the body politic as well, while on the contrary totalitarian regimes proclaim the nonexistence of privacy (OT, 139). — 247 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 248 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 So, for Schmitt as well for Arendt, social powers have disturbed the state. They both see a threat of ‘depoliticalization’ in social powers. However, the resemblances between Schmitt and Arendt stop here. For Schmitt, depoliticalization is a reason to reinforce the state (and to promote the third Reich). Arendt chooses the opposite path. She will regenerate the human experience of politics, emphasize the human ability of action and try to avoid the danger of totalitarianism. The least one can say is that Arendt’s interpretation of Hobbes is a bit one-sided. That might also explain why Arendt’s reading of Hobbes has been mostly ignored by scholars. Without discussing it in depth, I offer some general arguments against her reading. Arendt seems to perceive correctly that, according to Hobbes, security is the principal end of the state and that freedom and security are in conflict with each other (Jaume 2007, 207, 203). It is true that Hobbes fights for authority and not for liberty. As Norberto Bobbio puts it in his book Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition: Hobbes never had the slightest hesitation in choosing between the excess of freedom, and the excess of authority. He fears the former as the worst of all evils; he is resigned to the latter as the lesser evil. No matter what commentators say, all his system is founded on the mistrust of liberty (1993, 66-67). Hauke Brunkhorst criticizes Arendt for not having understood how Hobbes founds a Rechtsstaat and how he introduces freedom of opinion by making a strict distinction between morality and law (1999, 65). However, this interpretation of Hobbes is not shared by Bobbio. The latter claims that “Hobbes does not believe in freedom of conscience,” nor does he admit “freedom of thought” (1993, 70-71). Another argument that can be raised against Arendt’s reading is that Hobbes is not the ideologue of the endless accumulation of wealth, nor of power. Tuck points out that Hobbes defends a fundamental natural right — 248 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 249 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES for every individual to possess the material objects necessary for survival. “As long as men teeter economically on the edge of survival, therefore, it is morally wrong (according to Hobbes) for some people to amass more than they need” (Tuck 2002, 82). An argument brought up against Macpherson can also be posed to Arendt. She understands ‘modern’ man as essentially bourgeois, whereas anti-bourgeois attitudes can also be recognized as part of modernity (Tuck 2002, 116). Many more arguments could be presented against Arendt’s reading. This is not my primary aim, however. Instead, I focus on Arendt’s reading of Hobbes in respect of her later philosophical work, because Arendt’s reading of Hobbes is crucial to her understanding of modernity. With the birth of the Leviathan, scrupulous power politics is born, demanding absolute obedience from its subjects, for a specific aim: wealth accumulation. Domination is its strategy, over its subjects as well as over other states. Its birth not only gives rise to all our modern political notions, but also makes totalitarianism possible. But Hobbes’s fatherhood goes beyond the Leviathan: He [Hobbes] outlined the only new body politic which could correspond to the new needs and interests of a new class. What he actually achieved was a picture of man as he ought to become and ought to behave if he wanted to fit into the coming bourgeois society (OT, 143). Hobbes does not describe man as he is, but as he should be. Hobbes’s Leviathan is also the beginning of the ‘socialization’ of men into bourgeois men. Hobbes designs the new blueprint as well as the concept of man who fits into it. Therefore, he is also the father of (what Arendt describes as) the social or the Blob. HOBBES AND ‘THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL’ As already mentioned, in the book The Attack of the Blob, Pitkin uses the metaphor of the Blob, referring to the kitsch science-fiction film The Blob, — 249 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 250 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 to address Arendt’s concept of the social. She traces Arendt’s problematic concept of the social in her work, describing the different meanings that can be found. Pitkin’s reading presents a fruitful way to rethink the concept. She summarizes it sharply as follows: The real-world problem that Arendt intended her concept of the social to address … concerns the gap between our enormous, still-increasing powers and our apparent helplessness to avert the various disasters – national, regional, and global – looming on our horizon (1998, 6). My aim is not to summarize or criticize Pitkin’s understanding of Arendt, but to argue that Hobbes is the theoretical father of what she calls the Blob. While Pitkin gives an extensive overview of Arendt’s thought on the social throughout her work, I will instead focus on a particular section of Arendt’s work, to show how the Blob already obtains its vital characteristics through her reading of Hobbes. In my view, these characteristics are twofold. First, politics is reduced to a function of society. Second, men are socialized as ‘bourgeois men.’ In his book Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition, Bobbio begins by contrasting the new model of natural law thinkers, introduced by Hobbes, with the earlier ‘Aristotelian model.’ Both models envision an initial, pre-political moment of social life against a later (and hierarchically ‘higher’) moment of political rule. But while this is family life in the Aristotelian model, it is the state of nature in the natural law model: In the modern model, the family has thus been suppressed or set aside as the prepolitical society by definition, and it has been replaced by the state of nature. The latter progressively assumes the features of the society in which the network of elemental economic relations develops (1993, 14). In the natural law model, the economic domain is treated as distinct from the political domain. A pre-political and anti-political society arises, guided by its own laws. “This society is the basis upon which political society is — 250 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 251 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES built. The latter is an artificial entity, created by the will of the owners of resources who wish to see their property secured” (1993, 11). Since the modern state was informed by the fundamental ideas of natural law, it is in fact not hard to detect connections between the natural law model and bourgeois society. The contrast between the Aristotelian and the natural law model helps us to better understand Arendt’s reading of Hobbes. Arendt seems to reject the natural law model as such, which becomes clear through The Human Condition, which presents Arendt’s own model. Two reasons, more extensively considered in The Human Condition, are already present in The Origins. First of all, she disagrees with the natural law model in its depiction of human beings and their relations. This model reduced human beings and their relations reduced to economic relations between solitary beings, according to her. In strong contradistinction to Hobbes, Arendt emphasizes that men are not born equal, but become equal through political organization (OT, 301). It should be clear that Arendt does not deny economic relations as such, but rather, for her, they only represent one kind among many other possible types of relationships. One can envision family relations, such as the relations between husband and wife, parent and child, but also the relations between teacher and pupil, between students, between employer and employees, as well as those among merchants. For Arendt, these pre-political relations stand in contrast to the relations among peers that can only arise in the political realm. Arendt presents her idea of human relations extensively in The Human Condition. The whole of all these relationships form the “web of human relationships” (HC, 181). Seen from Arendt’s perspective, Hobbesian society is a reduction of human relations to merely economic ones. What Arendt calls “the rise of the social” in The Human Condition is in fact (for Arendt) the unnatural growth of this kind of relationship. The second reason hangs together with the first. Based on The Human Condition and other texts, one could claim that, for Arendt, the decay of the political already started in antiquity with the disappearance of the polis. — 251 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 252 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 In fact, Arendt claims that even in Athens, democracy was already in decay by the time of Plato and Aristotle (see “Philosophy and Politics” 1990). In this regard, Hobbes is no different from his predecessors. What makes Hobbes different and ‘modern’ is his reduction of politics to a function of society. Even the medieval, Christian attitude still regarded politics as serving a common good distinct from the private good. In Hobbes, this common good is reduced to the sum of all private goods (HC, 35). As we saw earlier, totalitarianism is the reverse of this model: all private goods are reduced to the common good. For Arendt, this reduction of politics gives rise to ‘the social.’ Hobbes introduces the servitude of politics to what we call society, “that curiously hybrid realm where private interests assume public significance” (HC, 35). It is exactly this reduction of politics to a function of society that made it possible for the economic principle of wealth accumulation to become a political principle of power accumulation. Hobbes not only reduces politics to a function of economic society; he also depicts man “as he ought to become and ought to behave if he wanted to fit into the coming bourgeois society” (OT, 143). What Arendt calls the “socialization of man,” referring to Marx, became a reality in her opinion. In the essay “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility” from 1945, Arendt deals with the question of German support and cooperation with the Nazis. Arendt’s answer refers to a transformation of men: The transformation of the family man from a responsible member of society, interested in all public affairs, to a “bourgeois” concerned only with his private existence and knowing no civic virtue, is an international modern phenomenon (EU, 129). According to Arendt, this transformation from a responsible member of ‘society’ (Arendt uses the word here in its traditional sense) to a ‘bourgeois’ enjoyed particularly favorable conditions in Germany, due to the deprivations of the first World War. But the message is clear: not only Germans — 252 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 253 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES were susceptible to the dangers of totalitarianism. All people could have and still can fall into this trap when behaving as merely ‘bourgeois.’ Again, Arendt observes the starting point of this transformation in Hobbes: Deprived of political rights, the individual, to whom public and official life manifests itself in the guise of necessity, acquires a new and increased interest in his private life and his personal fate (OT, 141). The quotation also indicates how Arendt understands ‘political rights.’ For her, they are participation rights.6 By describing the Leviathan as the guarantor of security, human beings are deprived of their right to enter the public-political realm. Deprived of their political rights, people have only the private sphere left in which to manifest themselves. Therefore, humans begin focusing on property and wealth accumulation. They no longer compete in words and deeds in the public-political realm, but instead compare their private life and wealth with each other. They are ‘socialized’ to become bourgeois. When they reclaim their participation rights, they do so as bourgeois, not as citizens; that is, they do so for economic reasons, when the nation-state limits further economic growth. As mentioned before, this was possible through the parliamentary system.7 Thus, Hobbes’s Leviathan does not only give rise to totalitarianism, but also gives rise to the men who give in to totalitarianism. With the Leviathan, the Blob is born as well, as the subordination of politics to society and the ‘socialization of man.’ And while Arendt focuses on the Leviathan in The Origins, she focuses on the Blob in The Human Condition, where she strongly rejects the subordination of politics to society. ARENDT AND THE RISE OF THE SOCIETY Hobbes’s model became the model of modern politics, making all political terms ‘modern.’ For Arendt, Hobbes does not treat the economic domain as distinct from the political domain, but in fact blurs “the old — 253 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 254 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 borderline between private and political” (HC, 38). Arendt describes this ‘blurring’ as “the rise of housekeeping, its activities, problems, and organizational devices – from the shadowy interior of the household into the light of the public sphere” (HC, 38). Arendt’s reading of Hobbes points out one of Arendt’s most important features: her metaphysics of presence. I will explain this by contrasting her view with the theory of democracy of Claude Lefort. Let me start again with Bobbio. Explaining Hobbes’s absolute notion of sovereignty, Bobbio claims that “[b]efore the institution of the sovereign power there is no people, but instead a multitude, a group of isolated individuals” (1993, 54). The birth of the Leviathan unites the single unities into a whole, that is, the people. With the assignment of every individual to a common representative, not only does the sovereign first appear, but also the people and the first separation between the state and society. In the words of Claude Lefort: “Power was embodied in the prince, and it therefore gave society a body” (1988, 17). Through the figure of the prince all individuals are united into the people, represented by the prince. However, this distinction between the locus of power and society “reveals the revolutionary and unprecedented feature of democracy” according to Lefort (1988, 17). For when the prince was beheaded and popular sovereignty came on the scene, the locus of power became “an empty place” that could no longer be occupied by one individual or one group (1988, 17). This empty place allows representatives of the people to address the people. However, no one can take over the stage as a whole. “[T]he exercise of power proves to be bound up with the temporality of its reproduction and to be subordinated to the conflict of collective wills” (1988, 18). Struggle in society is represented as conflict on stage. As such, the political as a stage and its conflicting actors make the struggles in society visible and through these struggles, society can envision and understand itself. Through the formal rules of suffrage, putting new actors with conflicting wills on stage every x number of years, the conflict is instituted in the democratic system: “The erection of a political stage on which competition can take — 254 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 255 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES place shows that division is, in a general way, constitutive of the very unity of society” (1988, 18). Lefort recognizes that what he calls ‘the model of democracy’ hangs together with bourgeois society, as “it made possible the development of commodity relations and rationalized activities in a manner that paved the way for the rise of capitalism” (1988, 17). However, the same critique that Lefort raises against Marx can be raised against Arendt: What he [Marx] calls bourgeois society is certainly characterized by the strengthening of the state, but it is also characterized by the representative system and by the fact that the government must emanate from society as a whole (1988, 35). Arendt’s understanding of Hobbes stands in direct contrast to Lefort’s. For her, the birth of the Leviathan does not give rise to the people and a separation of society and the state. In fact, as we have seen, according to Arendt, it blurs the line between the two. The subordination of each individual to the authority of the common representative is nothing other than the surrender of one’s political, that is, participation rights. For Arendt, the political only comes about where the people themselves are present on stage, speaking and acting. Only then can they experience the public freedom and happiness that action brings. This constitutes what Derrida calls the metaphysics of presence (See also Visker 2007). Derrida uses this term to describe what he considers the fundamental way of thinking of the Western philosophical tradition, that is, that presence is preferred over absence. Throughout her work, Arendt thinks of politics in terms of presence and participation. This makes it almost impossible for her to consider representation. For Arendt, representation stands in opposition to action and participation and is therefore a sign of absence and even indifference towards the political (OR, 273). As she claims in On Revolution: “For political freedom, generally speaking, means the right ‘to be a participator in government,’ or it means nothing” (OR, 218). This metaphysics of presence explains many of her (sometimes disturbing) — 255 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 256 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 views on modern politics. It explains, for example, her critical understanding of democracy: That representative government has in fact become oligarchic government is true enough, though not in the classical sense of rule by the few in the interest of the few; what we today call democracy is a form of government where the few rule, at least supposedly, in the interest of the many. This government is democratic in that popular welfare and private happiness are its chief goals; but it can be called oligarchic in the sense that public happiness and public freedom have again become the privilege of the few. (OR, 269) It also explains her alternative preference for a political structure based on ‘elementary republics,’ which “would spell the end of general suffrage” (OR, 278-279). For Arendt, elementary republics offer multiple stages, allowing more people to act and to experience public freedom. “[O]nly those who as voluntary members of an ‘elementary republic’ … would have a right to be heard in the conduct of the business of the republic” (OR, 279). Only then would the negative freedom as ‘liberated from the political’ be meaningful as the self-chosen absence from the public-political stage. It is exactly this metaphysics of presence that gives rise to many of the general critiques on Arendt, “as the antimodernist lover of the Greek polis.” As Seyla Benhabib summarizes these critiques, “[i]t is said that she views modernity simply as initiating a decline of the ‘public sphere’ of politics” (2000, xxxix). It is also exactly this metaphysics of presence that makes it so difficult to apply her concepts to the contemporary world. In this article, I have tried to make clear three features of Arendt’s thought. First, I have tried to show how Arendt understands sovereignty as domination. I have done so by presenting her view on imperialism and the rise of the bourgeoisie as a framework. Inside this framework stands her understanding of sovereignty, through her reading of Hobbes. Hobbes gives birth to a state that asks for absolute obedience, depriving all its subjects of political, or for Arendt, participation rights. In doing so, it not only gives rise to — 256 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 257 DEGRYSE – THE SOVEREIGN AND THE SOCIAL : ARENDT ’ S UNDERSTANDING OF HOBBES the Blob, but also makes totalitarianism possible. According to Arendt, Hobbes’s new model not only reduces politics to a function of society, but it has also ‘socialized’ men. Politics is reduced to government, while human beings are reduced to bourgeoisie. To demonstrate that the Blob was born through Arendt’s understanding of the Leviathan has been my second goal. This has lead me to my third goal: to sketch Arendt’s metaphysics of presence, that is, how only actual acting brings about the political. WORKS CITED Arendt, Hannah. 1990. “Philosophy and Politics.” Social Research 57 (1):73-103. —. 1994. Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954. Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books. —. 1994. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt. Original edition, 1958. —. 2006. Between Past and Future. London: Penguin Books. Original edition, 1961. Benhabib, Seyla. 2000. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Original edition, 1996. —. 2004. The Rights of Others. Aliens, Residents and Citizens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bobbio, Noberto. 1993. Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition. Translated by D. Gobetti. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Original edition, 1989. Brunkhorst, Hauke. 1999. Hannah Arendt, Beck’sche Reihe: Denker. München: Beck. Canovan, Margaret. 1992. Hannah Arendt. A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Original edition, 1992. Jaume, Lucien. 2007. “Hobbes and the Philosophical Sources of Liberalism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, edited by P. Springborg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kelsen, Hans. 1960. “Sovereignty and International Law.” The Georgetown Law Journal 48 (4):627-640. Lefort, Claude. 1988. Democracy and Political Theory. Translated by D. Macey. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Macpherson, C. B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1998. The Attack of the Blob. Hannah Arendt’s Concept of the Social. Chicago The University of Chicago Press. Schmitt, Carl. 1996. The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol. Translated by G. Schwab and E. Hilfstein, Global Perspectives in History and Politics. Westport: Greenwood Press. — 257 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2 1388-08_EthPersp_06_Degryse 04-08-2008 10:15 Pagina 258 ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – JUNE 2008 —. 2007. The Concept of the Political. Translated by G. Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago. Tuck, Richard. 2002. Hobbes A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Original edition, 1989. Visker, Rudi. 2007. “Pluralisme, participatie en vertegenwoordiging. Hannah Arendt herlezend.” Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 69 (3): 419-444. NOTES 1. I wish to thank all the members of the Centre for Political and Social Theory for their guidance, support and friendship. Also thank you to Hauke Brunkhorst, Seyla Benhabib, Rudi Visker, Remi Peeters, Marieke Borren, and Ralph Palm for useful comments and insights. 2. Compare with Schmitt: “All other conceptions of truth and justice are absorbed by decisions promulgated in legal commands” (1996, 45). 3. It remains unclear to me if Arendt knew of this article; she never refers to it in the bibliography. 4. Compare with Schmitt: “The leviathan thus becomes none other than a huge machine, a gigantic mechanism in the service of ensuring the physical protection of those governed” (1996, 34-35). 5. Compare with Schmitt: “Resistance as a ‘right’ is in Hobbes’ absolute state in every respect identical to public law and as such is factually and legally nonsensical and absurd” (1996, 46). 6. The most explicit statement concerning this can be found in On Revolution: “For political freedom, generally speaking, it means the right ‘to be a participator in government,’ or it means nothing” (OR, 218). 7. Arendt shares this criticism on parliamentarism with Schmitt: “The old adversaries, the ‘indirect’ powers of the church and of interest groups, reappeared in that century as modern political parties, trade unions, social organizations, in a word as ‘forces of society.’ The seized the legislative arm of parliament and the law state and thought they had placed the leviathan in harness” (Schmitt 1996, 116). — 258 — Ethical Perspectives 15 (2008) 2