Blame it on Hobbes -- The Contemporary Crisis of Sovereignty as Breakdown of the

Hobbesian Logic of States

We cannot escape from the fact that the modern world of politics rests within the logic of
the modern state, for good or for ill. And it is from the state that we find ourselves dealing
with the question of sovereignty. For the question of sovereignty is coequal with the
state and rises from the logic and reality of the state. But are these concepts as
interconnected in fact as the origins of these concepts in modern thought suggests?
The current hot topic of the past 20 years in international affairs has been the topic of
sovereignty and the tension between it and human rights (in all its forms, i.e., individual,
political, social, economic). All there has been dozens of examination of all the
theory/intellectual history that underscore this whole issue, not only looking at the
sources of the concept, but also the various historical, socio-political, cultural, and
economic forces that pay a role in how this issue is understood. By now, Kagans article
on Power and Weakness is the most famous of these.
Robert Kagan argued that the world of international relations is divided between
Hobbesians and Kantians. The Hobbesians are realists who see the world resting in an
anarchic system of nation against other nation, where actors pursue their self-interest and
this conflict of interest leads to conflict and to ultimately war and that such a world are
evitable and inescapable. The Kantians are idealists who argue that via the newly
emerged common and shared interests of humanity that emerging from International
Organizations and the system of international law, humanity is now able to transcend the
anarchic system of nation struggling against nation and the need for conflict to settle
disputes.
On one level Kagan accurately is describing the two diverging worldviews that shape our
perceptions of international relations we go forward into the 21st century. Yet Kagans use
of Hobbes and Kant to help frame his two opposing world views is wrong. It is wrong
because Kant is a Hobbesian! That the logic of the Kantian system and the rationale
behind it which shapes a world beyond nation-states rests upon a purely Hobbesian
framework. Here, Jurgen Habbermas has said the same in his response to Kagans article
and book where he argued that Europeans are Kantians and the Americans are
Hobbesians. So the whole debate on this issue rests on the framework established by
Hobbes and underlies is whole understanding of the concept of the state.
The history of the Hobbesian state has been well examined and discussed. Phillip
Bobbitts Shield of Achilles give a rather good short history of how the concept of the
state evolved through its stages as the instrument of princely power to the instrument that
the nation emerged as the dominate political form until the current doubts over the past
40 years. Yet the current break up and challenge to the nation-state and to sovereignty is
as much part of the logic of Hobbesian state as modern understanding of sovereignty
itself. But we must to understand this we must see how Hobbes took a pre-existing
concept of the world of the Middle Ages and refashioned it to fit within his system of

politics. For what Hobbes does is to take what is commonly understood and use it to
frame his radical new project on top of. But the current modern definition of sovereignty
begs the question, where and how it arose and why did Hobbes find it necessary to
maintain it. Clearly there seems to be a connection to the ruler as developed from the late
Medieval concept of Kingship and Royal Rule and the realm of the King controlled and
how it was tied to the King.
From Rule to Sovereignty
The classical world of politics grounded in the polis (as well as the view of politics found
in Christian and Jewish Scripture) speaks not of sovereignty but of rule and rulers. It
could be honestly said that the classical view of politics has no room for sovereignty in it.
Or if there is something akin to sovereignty existent in classical politics it is the concept
of the ruler. But the origin of the word sovereignty comes from the word sovereign and
that word means one who rules or governs. And this takes us to the Middle Ages and the
reality of rulers and those ruling.
When we turn to the middle ages we look at political rule as the de facto rule of a landed
class who offered security to a landless class, or whose land was unprotected or
unprotect-able to the attack of the Barbarians wondering through 4th-8th Century Europe.
As the political world of the Roman Empire collapsed under the waves of barbarian
assaults and the exhaustion in resisting such assaults, political rule ceases to be and what
replaces it as the only form of rule that remains intacthousehold rule. But in the
classical world, political rule was held to be distinct and different in form from household
rule. It was the triumph of the political community (at the time, the polis) to offer itself,
as the body or place where political rule takes place. But the idea of politics and the
possibility of the political community only saw its possibility in the entity of the polis/the
city. But the political viability of the city as a viable form of political rule ceased when
first Philip of Macedons (and later his sons and his sons successors) hegemonic rule
established itself and later when Romes Empire conquered most of the know world of
Europe and the Mediterranean. Although some held at the time the imperial form was not
political and this is another question, but at another level, the empire does offer a version
of political rule, in that it is not truly in its character household ruleand thus retains,
rather shallow at best, the nature of political rule as established by classical thought. But
as Romes empire collapse in the 6th and 7th to the 9th Century, only the household and
household rule remains as an instrument to put together and give rule to the pieces of
what remains.
As we mentioned earlier the feudal system was a social arrangement between those who
had defendable land (land holder and rulers of surviving households) and those whose
land was not defendable or who lost their property by the plundering marauders or those
who never hand land (including those who followed the Barbarian marauders into
Western Europe). The feudal system created a system of loyalties and social obligations
that served as a system of governance and granted some security originally, yet over time
that security grew more and more stable. And when we look at it we see that the feudal
system is little more than the expansion of household rule over other households and a

means to transform the rule of individual households into a system of inter-household

rule that resists the temptation of mere despotic rule.
Now what happens is that the feudal system interacts with the tribal-ethnic divisions in
Europe, and as those more successful land-owners whose ability to gain more and more
people in fiefdom (submissive service) or promising to offer services and obedience to
them became able gain control of larger and larger areas of territory. Often the territory
they were able to exercise control over spanned those of the same kin-ethnic-national
connection. And so emerged the various nations of Europe. Now the classical world
clearly understood this connection with the trend of tribal/national (ethnoi) rule with
kingship. Kingship as a form of political rule is that form that blurs the division between
political rule and household rule that was so important for Aristotle and classical political
thinking. But in the Middle ages the remains of Roman Rule that the Europeans pointed
back to
Originally kings were tribal leaders who the heads of clans agreed to lead them (be he
selected from the ranks of strong military leaders or from selective ruling families). But
over time and as customs solidified, certain families tended to control the right of
succession to the kingship focused on being the rightful and legitimate heir of the
previous king. As although the original European origins of kingship rested on levels of
consent of the major families and tribal leaders, this need to obtain such consent over
time was replaced by mores and customs of familiar succession with a family agreed to
be the royal line.
The Medieval Development in Kingship
One of the major turning points in this history from rule to sovereignty occurs in the
middle ages, about how one thinks about the king and his authority. One must not forget
that the role Christianity, especially in its medieval Roman Catholic form, played in
giving support to claims to rule as ruler (i.e., legitimacy) made by Kings and Princes
them. The Church, being the last and only relic of the Roman Empire that survived in the
West. One must remember that Constantine made the Church a part-tool of the Empire,
so the Church and its Law offered some time to the time of Roman rule under the Empire.
This is why Charlemagnes claim to the title of Emperor rested on Papal support, the
Pope placing the crown on his head sealed the deal. One should not forget that it was
some Church Layer in the pay of Pippin the Short (the father of Charlemagne) realized
that the title of Roman Emperor in the West, taken in conquest by Constantine from
Diocletian, and following Jovian (363-364) again split into two, was never legally
terminated by the successors of Romes Empire in Byzantium. Thus via. this dormant
title does Charlemagnes title gain validity and this new reincarnation of the Roman
Empire occurs, although not among the Romans but the various German peoples. Not
only that Charlemagne and his successors rely upon the Churchs support to litigate its
claim to rule, but so did many other of the tribal Princes and Kings of Europe. And for
this support the Church was given protection and land, and the Pope and many Bishops
were made temporal princes and given a greater degree of financial autonomy.

This association with the Church also led to new ways to understanding the nature of
Royal rule. As various Kings of Western Europe began to centralize power, they came in
conflict with the Pope (the Bishop of Rome) over the redirection of Church monies and
wealth from inside their realms to outside their realm. Such transferring of wealth and
appointment of Bishops not connected to the local Aristocracy nor the local Kings often
threatened their power or control over the people they ruled.
As we mentioned earlier, although the Churchs leading voices, such as St. Augustine,
divided temporal (i.e., earthly/worldly) and spiritual authority, i.e., the City of Man and
the City of God, as the Churchs Princes gained more and more power and wealth they
saw themselves as not only having the authoritative voice not only on spiritual matters
but also temporal matters. This growing temporal control of by the Princes of the Church
began to threaten the power of temporal Princes and Kings, and where such Princes and
Kings were strong [Spain, Portugal, England, and France] they tended to take control of
the Church away from the Bishop of Rome, i.e., the Pope, and where they were weak
[Germany and Italy], they had little control over the ability of Pope and powerful landed
Churchmen (Bishop-Princes). But even when temporal Kings and Princes were able to
fight off/restrain temporal interference from Church Leaders not under their control, they
still heavily relied upon the moral and spiritual authority of the Church to strengthen their
rule. Kings of such powerful nations often lead played key role in local affairs of the
Church, and when the Reformation either joined it and formally took charge of the local
institution of the Church or remained under the authority of Rome, yet still locally
micromanaged the Catholic clergy for the Pope.
Also Christianity brought another dimension to kingly rule. Scripture teaches that the
Kingship of David over the Israelites was the prefiguring of the Messiah, of the Christ,
the anointed one. And with Davids anointment as King the tradition of anointment of
kings signified their connection to Christ, who was Priest and King over all the Kings of
this world. So as individual priests represent Christ as Priest to his Church, Kings
likewise are symbols of Christs role as King and Master of this World. Yet at this time
[during the late Middle Ages] the Church began to talk about Christs two bodies, his
body in the Eucharist and his body as the Church. But given the connection between the
King and Christ, this talk of two bodies began to be applied to kings. Dan Philpott has
give a good summary of what occurs:
In his classic, The Kings Two Bodies (1957), medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz
describes a profound transformation in the concept of political authority over the
course of the Middle Ages. The change began when the concept of the body of
Christ evolved into a notion of two bodies -- one, the corpus naturale, the
consecrated host on the altar, the other, the corpus mysticum, the social body of
the church with its attendant administrative structure. This latter notion -- of a
collective social organization having an enduring, mystical essence -- would come
to be transferred to political entities, the body politic. Kantorowicz then describes
the emergence, in the late Middle Ages, of the concept of the kings two bodies,
vivified in Shakespeares Richard II and applicable to the early modern body
politic. Whereas the kings natural, mortal body would pass away with his death,

he was also thought to have an enduring, supernatural one that could not be
destroyed, even by assassination, for it represented the mystical dignity and
justice of the body politic. The modern polity that emerged dominant in early
modern Europe manifested the qualities of the collectivity that Kantorowicz
described -- a single, unified one, confined within territorial borders, possessing a
single set of interests, ruled by an authority that was bundled into a single entity
and held supremacy in advancing the interests of the polity. Though in early
modern times, kings would hold this authority, later practitioners of it would
include the people ruling through a constitution, nations, the Communist Party,
dictators, juntas, and theocracies. The modern polity is known as the state, and the
fundamental characteristic of authority within it, sovereignty.
The evolution that Kantorowicz described is formative, for sovereignty is a
signature feature of modern politics. Some scholars have doubted whether a
stable, essential notion of sovereignty exists. But there is in fact a definition that
captures what sovereignty came to mean in early modern Europe and of which
most subsequent definitions are a variant: supreme authority within a territory.
This is the quality that early modern states possessed, but which popes, emperors,
kings, bishops, and most nobles and vassals during the Middle Ages lacked.
(Philpott 2003)
This concept of the Kings two bodies give the groundwork for the future talk of the body
politic that will shape not only the discussion of sovereignty but also the modern
understanding of the State and state power. The king is the sovereign, the one with the
authority to rule. The Sovereignty is that which the ruler rules, his realm. Sovereignty is
thus connected to the rulers power over the territory he is master of. It arises from the
fact that claims of rule were tied to specific claim of territory, landed space. Often such
claims were over a whole group of people speaking the same language or dialect and of
the same ethnic and tribal group. Sometime the claim was only one small part of such
ethnic and tribal group. Sovereignty has a connotation to the territorial control of this
piece of peopled space. This all leads us to the modern period, so let us see how this
concept changed in the hands of Modern political thinkers.
The Modern Redefinition of Sovereignty
The modern view of Sovereignty arise at the same time as the breakdown of the Medieval
political system, when various powerful Kings of whole ethnic nations competed for
power with other such Kings and were no longer willing to submit to Papal authority. All
this happens about the time right around the Reformation.
One of the strongest voices of criticism of the Roman Church and the Bishop of Rome
and his interference in temporal matter was the former diplomat Nicolo Machiavelli, who
served in the late Florentine Republic. Before the restoration of the Medici family over
the city of Florence, Machiavelli served as a diplomat of the Republic to many powerful
Courts of Europe, including to the Vatican. His first hand witness to the political intrigue
that lead to the Spanish and later French Invasion of Italy and their power grab over parts
of Italy lead him to be highly critical not only of the current Italian political systems of

City-Republics, but also the role the Vatican played in this sorry story. What Machiavelli
sought was an Italy that would be free from Foreign Control, yet such an Italy would
never come from the current set of political powers that governed Italy, and especially
never from the Vatican and the Roman clergy.
What Machiavelli required was a revolution in thinking about the political system that
would have to govern Italy if it was ever to become free. And for Machiavelli such a
system would be the State lead by and created by a strong and powerful Prince (or
Lawgiver in his other work telling his readers, although those with more leisure given its
size, about all he has learned about politics, The Discourse). For Machiavelli, the State
would be the tool by which the Prince will establish his rule and free Italy from the
foreign powers, including the Roman Church. Yet Machiavellis understanding of the
State was still too tied to a personal ruler and although he sets the state by which the
nation can effectively be governed and governed in such a manner that empowers the
nation that it can seek glory and dominance over its peers. In fact Machiavellis use of the
of the concept of stato as a instrument of princely will to give new modes and orders
suggest that it is an instrument of form, that which give shape to the principality or
republic. That conceptually Machiavellis concept of stato has more in common with
the Greek concept politeia (regime/political system) than with the unit of political
communitythe polis (city)and thus different from how the state as transformed by
Hobbes will appear. For Machiavelli, the state is that which forms and gives shape to the
Princes will and thus gives order to the civic space, be it republic or principality. It is
thus the formal part that give shapes to the whole body of the civic space, as in classical
political thought the politeia shapes the polis whole.
If Machiavelli still to a great degree relies upon an older version of the ruler and bodied
sovereign, Bodin offers a more important transition to the modern conception of
sovereignty as the territorial body politic of a nation or people. Although Bodins
understanding of sovereignty still rests kingly power under the norms of law, and justice
as found in the natural law teaching of the Catholic Church in the late Middle Ages, his
introduction of the concept of the Body Politic provides the needed segway to what
Hobbes does with this concept.
This is done because Bodin is trying to find a place for the recovery and revival of
republican thought and republican rule that followed the renaissance rediscovery of
classical thought and the power of various Italian city-states that have embraced the
concept of the republic. With the recovery of the possibility of republican rule and the
recovery of classical understanding of politics as separate in form from household rule
required either a change of political speech, which at the time spoke of princely rule and
the princely bodyhis body and his territorial body, or a whole new political language.
Given the negative reaction to Machiavellis even minor revolution, any radical break
with the political concepts and language of the past would not be successful. To avoid
the perception that monarchy and the princely system and the new recovery of political
and republican rule are fundamentally different on their level of being and thus
incompatible to each other, Bodin had to find a way to allow both systems to find a
common political language. So using the language of the sovereigns body and allowing

the political community to be understood as this territorial body, Bodin finds a way to
connect these two traditions of rule.
Thus Bodins reading of both the classical republican tradition and classical
understanding of politics to work within the linguistic construct of reality of feudal and
kingly rule. And this was accomplished by separating the civic space from the territory
of the household. One must keep in mind the intimate connection between property
owner and his property (as most clearly expressed in the concept of the Kings two
bodies) and how this would blur household rule and political rule if this connection had
to be extended to non-monarchical/princely forms of rule. Thus the concept of owning of
property of the territory by the ruler had to be extended simply. So the rulers actual
physical body had to be divorced from the territorial body, especially if this concept was
going to be working when speaking about political systems where there was numerous
persons sharing in rule. Thus Bodins treatment of the body politic offers a solution to
this problem, yet at the same time he really had no way to resolve the tension between
monarchy and republican-political rule. Yes they could now talk to each other and
explain their forms of ruling in the same way, but Bodins solution was not a solution but
more of a ruse to mask the problem, so to protect this infant recovery of classical politics
from the ruling order from suppressing it, as previous projects of philosophic/intellectual
recovery had been throughout the Middle Ages.
If Bodins use of the concept of the body politics is ruse to protect the recovery of
classical politics and help restore political-republican rule, Hobbes taking of Bodins
concept and sets it firmly on clear and consistent philosophical ground. Cause it is really
only with Hobbes that the modern concept of Sovereignty gets its clearest formulation
and expression. For Hobbes the formation of the body politics and its sovereign body
arises from the Social Contract, where people consent to from such a body for their
mutual security and protection from the war of all again that nature permits.
For Hobbes the commonwealth that emerges from the social compact is said to be an
artificial person. All too often people misread Hobbes and his discussion here, and read
the creation of the commonwealth with that of an actual incarnate, i.e., bodied, sovereign.
This is far from what Hobbes is up to. The sovereign in Hobbes cannot be embodied by a
single being, in that it is the collective agreement, the collective will of those who agreed
to from the commonwealth. Thus the sovereign is the collective embodiment of the all
those who from the commonwealth and caused it creation out of the chaos of nature.
Thus the sovereign in Hobbes is the collective wills of those who created the political
community via. the social contract. So for Hobbes, the body politic, the commonwealth,
the State and the Sovereign are different terms all ultimately expressing the same thing.
Thus sovereignty is the will of those who form the civic association, body politics,
political community, state, or whatever you call it. Thus in Hobbes reasoning the state is
the whole, not an instrument or part as it was in Machiavelli. Thus Hobbes is much more
radically breaking with classical teaching about the political community than is
Machiavelli, in that for the classical model the ruling element is a part of the whole (that
claims to be acting for the wholes best interest and for its goodyet its still remain a

part of the whole) rather that the body politics or political community in itself. In
classical political thought the ruling part or politieia (regime/political system) is not
identical with the political community, rather its the part that gives shapes to and forms
the given direction by which the political community will go. Whereas for Hobbes, the
state is the whole community, per se, for it is constituted by those who forming it when
they form the social compact that solidity and confirm their creation of one single
community.
Thus for Hobbes the community is a product of human willing, not of mere human
association. So the creation of a community is a product of human will, not human
nature. Thus being a product of human willing, the political community knows no limit.
So the territory of the body politic is not a factor in the logic of Hobbes thinking.
Territory is tied to people who form the community when they join together via the social
contract. So the act of willing to join together that frame the contractual character of the
origins of the state in Hobbes, merely takes for granted given communities of people or
nations. But there is no logical reason within Hobbes framework that contracting parties
must be of the same racial, ethic, or territorial make up. Yes such condition will make
contracting easier, but such parts or limits have no role in the basic logic of the
Hobbesian state.
Here is where Phillip Bobbits account of the evolutionary development of state from its
start as an instrument of princely rule to the nation-state. This history of Europe is the
history of how the nation-state emerged and established the political environment that
allowed for the amazing success of Europe, as compared to other regions of the world
over time. But political scientist and students of international relations err if they think
that the concepts of the state and nation are so interrelated that they are indistinguishable
from each other. The reason why they dont see the distinctive character between the two
and their fundamental difference that the state being a product of human willing and the
nation being a fact arising from human ethnicity and identity that emerged from given
spaced environments and how those spaced environments shaped the given people who
live there).
It has only been since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, that scholars, intellectuals,
public officials, et al have slowly begun to see the crack between the nation and the state.
This crack between these two political concepts emerged following the collapse between
the bi-polar world of the Cold War and all the current talk about the new world of
globalization, where individuals (both actual or corporate) are able to access and interact
not only with the traditional communities and networks provided by the nation-state, but
now to the whole wide world. Recall Francis Fukuyamas timely article in The National
Interest speaking about The End of History. Both in that article, and the book (The
End of History and the Last Man) that was expanded from that article, Fukuyama put for
a modified version of Alexander Kojeves reading of Hegel, that with the end of the cold
war and the triumph over communism, the dialectical conflict over ideologies that have
come to a conclusion. That liberal democracys triumph over communism meant the end
of history as the end of the historical development of the state. Kojeve argued that Hegel
teaches us that the process that starts of the modern state, that Machiavelli coined and

Hobbes ultimately perfected, ultimately concludes with the globalizing of the state so that
the state goes from ruling nations to ruling over the globe.
Where as Kojeve spoke of the movement towards the Universal Homogenous State,
Fukuyama argues that the global networks of International Organizations (IOs) and
global bodies will replace the state per se, especially the nation-state. Even Phillip
Bobbitt, who merely makes note of Fukuyamas famous book and no reference to
Kojeves works, with his take on that the next evolution of the state will be towards what
he calls the market state which in its description sounds rather similar to the system of
liberal global community spoken of by Fukuyama.
Thus in this new world, it has been argued that the old world of nation-states have
become obsolete, or less effective securers of the most needed and most important human
goods. That they have come impediments to the current stages of the modern project of
improving mans estate, that was started with Machiavellis revolution, modified by
Bacon and Hobbes, radicalized by Rousseau, Kant and Hegel. That the concept of the
state has had to evolve through stages, starting with the particular temporal local (initially
with principalities and then nation) and by the logic inherent within the concept of the
state, that it is a product of human willing, argued Hobbes and extended to its logical
conclusions by Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, being limitless, is a globalizing concept that
can encompass and embrace all humanity.
What also makes this possible is the technological revolution that is inherent in the
modern project. Clearly the revolution in communication technology and
telecommunications, combined with the necessities of global competition within a world
market provides the necessary institutional and economic architecture for the emergence
of a possible world state. This new world order although well defined in the sphere of
commerce and trade, is far less defined in the realm of politics. In fact on the level of
politics, it could be argued that the institutions that have helped create the global
economic environment (WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc) were tools whose authority arise
from powers given to them via treaties made my nation states in the Post World War II
environment, especially via the creation of the United Nations. Thus these various
International Organizations (IOs) get their power and their legitimacy from nation-states.
Yet those IOs and the bureaucrats who run those IOs have slowly started to argue for the
transcendence of IOs over nation states and that IOs via their international status may be
the better (i.e., less partisan) executor of international law.
The argument runs that given the evolution in international human rights law, that nationstates are no longer sovereign entities, as they were previously under the Westphalian
system, but rather political entities that must abide by such norms or face the intervention
of the international community. The reason this is so is that nation-states cannot be
trusted as securers of human rights, as seen in the example of Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan and
Rwanda throughout the 1990s. In 1999, in the example of Kosovo, several member
states of the European Union along with the US, militarily intervened in Kosovo arguing
that the Serbian government by violating the human rights of the Kosovar Albanians
forfeited their right to sovereignty and that actors (in this case NATO) acting under the

authority of international human rights law, intervened to force Serbia to cease and resist
all persecutions against the Kosovar Albanians.
Yet not everyone was comfortable with the precedent this action established. Some saw
it as the end of the Westphalian system and the peace and security that that system
provided by restricting the power of state actors to interfere in the domestic policies and
practices of nation-states. That now there could be infinite causes for intervention and
great disputes about what was legitimate and was would be illegitimate grounds for
intervention. Also IOs were just not up to the job of securing human rights. The example
of the UN peacekeepers in both Bosnia and Rwanda are tragic examples of the utter
helplessness of the UN to protect the people they claim to be protecting. And the reasons
for such tragic situations are that the nature of the UN governance in security matters. In
such matters any forceful action requires consensus among the members of the UN
Security Council (and acquiescence of all 5 veto holdersUS, China, Russia, France and
the United Kingdom). But what happens is that the self/national-interest of the various
members will lead them to demand either inaction or less forceful action. In the Kosovo
example, the UN Security Council was bypassed in favor of regional action by NATO,
for the obvious reason that Russia and China would not agree to any forceful action
(either China fearing such precedent could be used against it in the future regarding Tibet,
or because Russia saw itself as the protector of Slavic brotherhood and the integrity of
Serbia from outside non-Slavic forces).
All of the above recounting of recent trends in the community of nations again point to
the idea that we are on the verge of an evolution from the nation to something else and
the instrument for this change has been the concept of the state. Again turning to the
work of Bobbitt, there were see the interaction between the evolving instruments of the
state shaping the way the state has evolved with the character and norms that shape the
order of the various state-actors (i.e., nations at this point of history) and the systems of
treaties they have created to regulate their actions. Bobbitt argues that the trend of
treaties that have occurred since Westphalia to the present have shaped the concept of the
state and the nature of the state and their actions have forced the emergence of treaties to
address and resolve the problems created by state-actors.