Title: Thomas Hobbes as a Theorist of Anarchy: A Theological Interpretation
Abstract: SummaryScholars of international relations generally invoke Hobbes as the quintessential theorist of international anarchy. David Armitage challenges this characterisation, arguing that Hobbes is regarded as a foundational figure in international relations theory in spite of as much as because of what he wrote on the subject. Thus, for Armitage, Hobbes is not the theorist of anarchy that he is made out to be. This article agrees with the general thrust of Armitage's critique while maintaining that it is still possible to imagine Hobbes as a theorist of anarchy. Hobbes is a theorist of anarchy, not in a political sense, but in a metaphysical sense. This conception of anarchy is a reflection of a comprehensive theological account of reality that is grounded in an omnipotent God. Any historical inquiry into the foundations of modern international thought must take account of theology, because theology defines the ultimate coordinates of reality in terms of which the concepts of international thought are intelligible.Keywords: Hobbesanarchytheologyhistory of international thoughtinternational intellectual historyinternational relations theory AcknowledgementsI am grateful for the comments and criticisms of a number of colleagues, including David Boucher, Knud Haakonssen, Ted Hopf, Joshua Mitchell, Luke O'Sullivan, and Nicholas Rengger. I am especially indebted to Terry Nardin, who has made several suggestions that improved the clarity and coherence of the argument.Notes1 E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, second edition (London, 1946), 153.2 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, 112, 176–78.3 David Armitage, Foundations of Modern International Thought (Cambridge, 2013), 70–71.4 R. J. Vincent, ‘The Hobbesian Tradition in Twentieth Century International Thought’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 10 (1981), 91–101.5 This standard distinction between anarchy and hierarchy is found in the influential Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York, NY, 1979), 79–93.6 John Mearsheimer, ‘The False Promise of International Institutions’, International Security, 19(3) (1994/5), 5–49 (12–13).7 John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Greater Power Politics (New York, NY, 2001), 2.8 Hans Morgenthau, Scientific Man Versus Power Politics (Chicago, IL, 1965), 176.9 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, second edition (New York, NY, 1977), 10–11.10 Martin Wight, ‘An Anatomy of International Thought’, Review of International Studies, 13 (1987), 221–27 (222).11 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by Noel Malcolm, 3 vols (Oxford, 2012), II, 188–90, 196.12 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York, NY, 1977), 24–25.13 Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes's Theory of International Relations’, in Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford, 2002), 432–56 (432–33).14 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes's Theory of International Relations’, in Aspects of Hobbes, 433–35.15 Armitage, Foundations, 60.16 Armitage, Foundations, 72.17 Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen, edited by Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge, 1998), 156; Armitage, Foundations, 64.18 See Hobbes, Leviathan, II, chapter 16; Otto Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500–1800, translated by Ernest Barker (Cambridge, 1958), 44–50, 82–83; Quentin Skinner, ‘Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State’, Visions of Politics, 3 vols (Cambridge, 2002), III, 177–208.19 Armitage, Foundations, 64.20 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 192, 196.21 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 414.22 Armitage, Foundations, 70.23 Armitage, Foundations, 71–72. This conclusion builds on the pioneering work of Brian Schmidt in The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (Albany, NY, 1998).24 Armitage, Foundations, 60.25 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 196.26 Patricia Springborg, ‘Hobbes on Religion’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, edited by Tom Sorrell (Cambridge, 1996), 346–80 (350).27 Recent examples include Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago, IL, 2008), chapter 7; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Sovereignty, God, State, and Self (New York, NY, 2008), 104–17.28 Armitage, Foundations, 72–74. The problem of tradition and the historiography of international relations theory is examined in Brian Schmidt, ‘The Historiography of Academic International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 20 (1994), 349–67.29 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, edited by Thomas Gilby and others, 61 vols (London, 1964), XIV, 31; Aquinas, Summa theologiae, XIII, 49–53.30 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, XXVIII, 53.31 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, XXVIII, 21–25; Heiko Oberman, ‘Via Antiqua and Via Moderna: Late Medieval Prolegomena to Early Reformation Thought’, in From Ockham to Wyclif, edited by Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks (Oxford, 1987), 445–63 (451–52); Francis Oakley, Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights: Continuity and Discontinuity in the History of Ideas (New York, NY, 2005), 52–55; Francis Oakley, ‘Christian Theology and the Newtonian Science: The Rise of the Concept of the Laws of Nature’, Church History, 30 (1961), 433–57 (442–43).32 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, XXVIII, 9.33 Francis Oakley, The Crucial Centuries: The Mediaeval Experience (London, 1979) 160–61; Oakley, Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights, 47.34 Aristotle, ‘Metaphysics’, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, revised Oxford translation, edited by Julian Barnes, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ, 1984), II, 1637; Oakley, Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights, 28–29.35 Francis Oakley, The Political Thought of Pierre d'Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition (New Haven, CT, 1964), 20–21.36 Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy: Selections (Chicago, IL, 1951), 44–45; Martin Tamny, ‘Newton, Creation, and Perception’, Isis, 70 (1979), 48–58 (50–54); Oakley, Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights, 29–30.37 Joshua Mitchell, ‘Hobbes and the Equality of All Under the One’, Political Theory, 21 (1993), 78–100 (79).38 A. P. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics (Cambridge, 1992), 48; Oakley, Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights, 31–32.39 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 16.40 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 16.41 Patricia Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine: Leviathan and “The Ghost of the Roman Empire”’, History of Political Thought, 16 (1995), 503–31 (510); Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago, IL, 1965), 173–76.42 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 46, 168.43 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 188.44 Michael Oakeshott, ‘Introduction to Leviathan’, in Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis, IN, 1975), 1–79 (34–35, 64–65).45 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 190, 194.46 Oakeshott, ‘Introduction to Leviathan’, in Hobbes on Civil Association, 36.47 Oakeshott, ‘Introduction to Leviathan’, in Hobbes on Civil Association, 5.48 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 88–89.49 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 114.50 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 66, 91.51 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 102.52 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 102.53 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 10, 70, 117.54 On will and artifice as a tradition in the history of political thought, see Oakeshott, ‘Introduction to Leviathan’, in Hobbes on Civil Association, 7–8.55 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes's Theory of International Relations’, in Aspects of Hobbes, 444–45. Making a jural distinction between domestic and international does not contradict Armitage's contention that a parallel analytical distinction is problematic in light of Hobbes's conflation of the law of nature and the law of nations; hence doing so does not undermine the analogy that Hobbes makes between the relations of persons and the relations of states conceived as persons.56 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes's Theory of International Relations’, in Aspects of Hobbes, 452; Murray Forsyth, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the External Relations of States’, British Journal of International Relations, 5 (1979), 196–209 (201–02); David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations (Oxford, 1998), 160.57 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 370.58 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 370; Malcolm, ‘Hobbes's Theory of International Relations’, in Aspects of Hobbes, 449–51.59 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 556; Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 604. It is worth noting that a version of this argument appears in the same paragraph of On the Citizen that Armitage cites in arguing that Hobbes assimilates the law of nations to the law of nature. See also Martinich, Two Gods of Leviathan, 106–14, 121.60 Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 1053.61 Hobbes, Leviathan, III, 1082. For analysis and commentary, see Noel Malcolm, ‘General Introduction’, in Leviathan, 3 vols (Oxford, 2012), I, 1–195 (47–50).62 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes's Theory of International Relations’, in Aspects of Hobbes, 438.63 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 216; Malcolm, ‘Hobbes's Theory of International Relations’, in Hobbes on Civil Association, 439, 449–50.64 Bull, Anarchical Society, 33–38. Wight's claims for Grotius and natural law are laid out most clearly in Martin Wight, Four Seminal Thinkers in International Theory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, and Mazzini, edited by Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter (Oxford, 2005), 40–44.65 Bull, Anarchical Society, 104–05, 156–58.66 Armitage, Foundations, 71.67 Armitage, Foundations, 8, 18.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-09-22
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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