The Structures of Authority and Political Use of Religious Practices in Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt
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The Structures of Authority and Political Use of Religious Practices in Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt Luke COLLISON September 2020 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University for the award of Doctor of Philosophy. 1 Abstract This thesis examines the structures of authority in the political theories of Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt. In milieux marked by crises of political legitimacy, civil unrest and war, both Hobbes and Schmitt strove to develop new theoretical foundations in support of their conservative visions of the authority of the state. The exhaustion of traditional means of legitimation, such as divine right or romantic ideals of community, demanded innovative alternatives. Though Hobbes and Schmitt drew on a wide range of sources, I argue that religious practices were centrally important. Focussing on questions of the source and genesis of authority, my study argues that in different ways both identify participation as key to the origination of authority. In part one, through a chronological investigation of Hobbes’ works, I demonstrate that he assembles a multi-faceted theoretical support for authority. While the covenant is essential for establishing the artifice of sovereign potestas, I argue that Hobbes progressively supplements this fragile artifice with a series of additional apparatuses: civil worship based on religious practices, authorisation based on theatrical analogies and educational and pedagogical practices drawn from a general, almost polytheistic, conception of religion. However, I show that ultimately Hobbes’ mechanistic psychology undermines his attempt at an integrated and scientific account of worship and pedagogy. In part two, I divide Schmitt’s oeuvre into monarchical and democratic writings. Investigating the monarchical works, I trace his elaboration of a distinctive ‘commissary authority’ from the Roman dictator to the katechon. I show that this ‘personalist office’ can be understood as an attempt to renovate the traditional doctrine of divine right. Returning to the democratic writings of 1923-32, I contextualise Schmitt’s revisionist conception of democracy and focus on the legitimating role of acts of acclamation, understood as an act of assent, rather than legal or contractual consent. I argue that a key influence on this participatory model of authority is Georges Sorel’s energetic and enthusiastic vision of political activity. 2 Acknowledgements This research project would not have been possibly without the support from colleagues at CRMEP and friends. I would like to thank my supervisor Peter Hallward for his dedicated support, encouragement, criticism and provocations over the last four years. His detailed comments on drafts and numerous discussions over the years have helped me immensely. I would also like to thank my second supervisor Howard Caygill and the professors of CRMEP, especially Étienne Balibar and Éric Alliez for their provocative questions, comments and criticisms. In addition, I am grateful for the various discussions and questions concerning my research prompted by reading groups at CRMEP, Brighton University and elsewhere. I would especially like to thank Kyle Moore, Luís Carneiro, Jorge Varela, Melayna Lamb, German Primera Villamizar, Daniel Steuer, Jeronimo Rilla, Cillian Ó Fathaigh and Austin Gross for their assistance with proof-reading, discussion or advice. Finally, I would like to thank Pamela Perniss, for the numerous forms of assistance, advice, criticism and support she has provided over the duration. The research project was generously funded by three-year full-time studentship from Kingston University London. 3 Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Contents 4 Abbreviations 6 Introduction: Hobbes, Schmitt, Auctoritas, Religion and Law 9 1 The Problem of Authority in Hobbes and Schmitt 10 2 Authority, Auctoritas and Power 22 3 Religion, Theology and Politics 29 4 Law and Recht 33 Part I: Thomas Hobbes 35 Chapter 1: Worship, Potentia and Authorisation 36 1 Chivalry or Deceit: Two Visions of Early Modern Authority 39 (i) Lipsius’ Auctoritas and Reason of State 39 (ii) Stuart Chivalry: Charles, Augustus and the Reform of the Nobility 43 2 The Artifice of the Contract 45 3 Worship and Potentia 57 4 Author and Actor 69 Chapter 2: Religion, Politics and Pedagogy 76 1 Hobbes’ Sacred History 79 (i) The Judaic Period: Abraham and Moses 80 (ii) The Regeneration as the Divine Interregnum 82 (iii) The Kingdom to Come 85 2 Authority of the Arbiter: Christianity in the Hobbesian State 86 3 Natural Religion and the Consecration of the State 91 4 Pedagogical Authority: The Divine Right of Sovereign Pastor 97 5 The Aporia of Juridical and Pedagogical Authority 104 Part II : Carl Schmitt 110 Chapter 3: Commissary Authority 111 1 Max Weber and the Bureaucratic Apparatus 114 2 The Commissary Dictator 120 (i) The Task 125 (ii) The Hierarchy 129 3 The Dignity of the Representative 132 Political Theology and Authority 132 Representation 134 4 (i) Mediation 136 (ii) Commission (Stellvertretung) 140 4 The Katechon and Nomos 145 5 The Divine Right of the Katechon 153 Chapter 4: The Energy of Democratic Authority 159 1 ‘Democracy’ in Weimar 162 2 The People and the Enemy 167 (i) The Doctrine of the Volksgeist 168 (ii) The Enemy 172 (iii) Enthusiasm and Energy 174 (iv) Participation 179 3 Acclamation: The People Can Only Cry ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ 180 (i) Acclamation and Democracy 183 (ii) Acclamation contra Voting 185 (iii) The People Can Only Answer 187 (iv) Acclamation as Assent 189 4 State, Movement, People 194 (i) The ‘Concrete’ State Form of the Twentieth Century 195 (ii) The Führerprinzip and Homogeneity 200 Conclusion 204 Bibliography 211 5 Abbreviations Thomas Hobbes 3D Thomas Hobbes, Three Discourses: A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes, Ed, ed. Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene W. Saxonhouse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). AW Thomas Hobbes, Thomas White’s De Mundo Examined, trans. Harold Whitmore Jones (London: Crosby Lockwood Staples, 1976). B Thomas Hobbes, ‘Behemoth, or the Long Parliament’, in The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, Vol. 10: Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, ed. Paul Seaward, Thomas Hobbes, and Paul Seaward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Corresp Thomas Hobbes, The Correspondence: Volume I: 1622-1659 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). DC Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen, ed. Richard Tuck and M. Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Latin edition used: Thomas Hobbes, De Cive. The Latin Version: A Critical Edition by Howard Warrender, ed. Howard Warrender, The Clarendon Edition of the Philosophical Works of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). DCLE Thomas Hobbes, A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). EL Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural & Politic, ed. M. M. Goldsmith Ferdinand Tönnes (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1969). EW Thomas Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (London: J. Bohn, 1845). HE Thomas Hobbes, Historia Ecclesiastica. Critical Edition, Including Text, Translation, Introduction, Commentary and Notes, ed. Patricia Springborg, Patricia Stablein, and Paul Wilson, trans. Patricia Springborg, vol. 31 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008). L&N Thomas Hobbes and John Bramhall, Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Lev Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, with Selected Variants from the Latin 6 Edition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley (Cambridge: Hackett, 1994). Latin edition used: Thomas Hobbes, The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, Vol. 4: Leviathan: The English and Latin Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). I follow the convention advocated by the European Hobbes Society and cite the chapter and paragraph numbers, rather than page numbers. TTE Thomas Hobbes, Three-Text Edition of Thomas Hobbes’s Political Theory: The Elements of Law, De Cive and Leviathan, ed. Deborah Baumgold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Carl Schmitt Where specific terminology is at stake, I distinguish the English and German (Deutsch) page numbers by a preceding ‘E’ or ‘D’ respectively. Otherwise, I cite only the English translations where they are available. 3P Carl Schmitt, ‘Three Possibilities for a Christian Conception of History’, Telos, no. 147 (2009): 167–70. The review essay ‘Drei Möglichkeiten eines christlichen Geschichtsbildes’ was originally published as ‘Drei Stufen historischer Sinngebung’ in Universitas 5 (1950): 927–31. 3T Carl Schmitt, On the Three Types of Juristic Thought, trans. Joseph W. Bendersky (London: Praeger Publishers, 2004 [1934]). CP Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, The Concept of the Political Expanded Edition, ed. and trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007 [1927, 1932]). German editions used: Carl Schmitt, ‘Der Begriff des Politischen’, ed. Emil Lederer, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 58, no. 10 (1927): 1–33; Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen: Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991). Crisis Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988 [1923]). German edition used: Carl Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus, vol. 1 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2017). CT Carl Schmitt, Constitutional Theory,