Thomas Hobbes and the Divine Politics of Anarchy

Abstract

This chapter presents Thomas Hobbes as a theorist of imposed order. The central claim is that Hobbes’s conception of political order, an artificial arrangement arising from will and consent, reflects the intellectual commitments of nominalist theology. Uncovering the theological presuppositions of his thought opens space for an understanding of international order that is quite different from what the ‘Hobbesian’ tradition portrays as a domain of endemic violence. Hobbes is correctly imagined as a theorist of interstate society. The chapter examines the unity of philosophy and theology in Hobbes’s thought, focusing on a recurring analogy between divine action and human action. Human beings make and unmake their world, including the commonwealth, as God created the universe. Modern theorists reproduce these theological ideas when they invoke Hobbes to illustrate the character and consequences of anarchy. Hobbes, conceived as a theorist of imposed order, exemplifies what has become the dominant discourse of international order. The implication is that modern theories of international order might not be as uniquely modern or purely secular as contemporary theorists typically assume.