Hobbes’s Mortal Gods: Six Questions for Ted H. Miller by Scott Horton
January 9, 2012
The last decade was clearly something of a Hobbesian moment in American history. Now, political philosopher and Hobbes scholar Ted H. Miller has written a book entitled Mortal Gods: Science, Politics, and the Humanist Ambitions of Thomas Hobbes, in which he examines the English philosopher’s work and its relationship to court politics, absolutist rule, and the seventeenth-century fascination with practical mathematics. I put six questions to Miller about his new book:
1. If the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes can be separated from that of John Locke on a single practical point, it is probably the notion of accountability of senior political figures. Locke teaches us that no man can be above the law. But for Hobbes, as you note, the sovereign is personified as a law-giver who operates outside the limitations of law. Many in America today believe we are witnessing a resurgence of notions of immunity and unaccountability that benefit the powerful and the wealthy. Is this the legacy of Thomas Hobbes?
It’s a very troubling resurgence. As a proponent of absolutist sovereignty, Hobbes plays a part, but he isn’t alone. Moreover, he might aid more than one perspective on this question. Like absolutists before and after, he taught that sovereign powers ought not to be held to law by their subjects. For some, including Locke, Hobbes’s sovereign is an untamed beast who roams his domain, a threat to subjects rather than a legitimate authority. For Hobbes himself, an unquestionable sovereign is the very condition of an ordered and lawful state. With no last word on the law, chaos results. A sovereign held accountable within the state could not do what a sovereign must: “overawe” subjects and hold them accountable. This unusual status of his sovereign as the exempt keeper of law made Hobbes a kind of beacon to critics of rule-of-law liberals in the twentieth century. They noted that Hobbes’s sovereign might suspend, or destroy and reconstitute, basic law in crisis moments.
Hobbes, however, might offer his own solution to the problem of wealthy and powerful people who stand immune and unaccountable: if they claim this immunity without sovereign warrant, then sovereign powers should exercise their force to hold them to account. Unfortunately, much of the immunity you’ve referenced gets the nod from those who claim sovereign power. Some have described the vast increases in executive power after 9/11 as a form of neo-absolutism. The creeping immunity granted those who do the state’s bidding can be seen in the same light.
remainder: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2012/01/hbc-90008381
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