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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO REAL UNITY AND REPRESENTATION IN HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE BY SARITA ZAFFINI CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2018 Copyright c 2018 by Sarita Zaffini All Rights Reserved To James Yeager, for all your love and support This is more than consent, or concord; it is a real unity of them all, in one and the same person. Thomas Hobbes TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT . vi 1 WHAT IS REAL UNITY? . 1 1.1 The\real unity" of Christ's body in 17th-century England . 6 1.2 Hobbes and the classical tradition of \body politic" . 17 1.3 Hobbes and the \real unity" of Christ: concluding thoughts . 34 2 REAL UNITY AND THE LAW . 41 2.1 Hobbes's Legal Unity . 45 2.2 Christ's Legal versus Real Unity . 55 2.3 Two concepts of unity and representation . 68 2.4 Final Thoughts . 84 3 REAL UNITY AND RHETORIC . 90 3.1 Concord and Hobbes's Commonwealth Narrative . 94 3.2 Concord and Christ's Redemption Narrative . 102 3.3 Hobbes on Rhetoric and Metaphor . 119 3.4 17th-century Attitudes toward Christological Rhetoric . 131 3.5 Reframing the Conversation on Rhetoric in Hobbes . 148 3.6 Final Thoughts . 153 4 HOBBES'S CHRISTOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF REAL UNITY . 158 4.1 Two Heads, Two Bodies . 167 4.2 The Invisible Society . 179 A OLIVER CROMWELL'S LETTER TO PARLIAMENT, 1645 . 190 B CATALOGUE OF \REAL UNITY" USAGES . 194 PRIMARY SOURCES . 219 SECONDARY SOURCES . 229 v ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the influence of theology on Hobbes's concept of political repre- sentation. Although his model of formal authorization between individuals and their chosen sovereign has long been regarded by scholars as a legal rationalist phenomenon, based purely upon consent, the resulting \real unity" of the commonwealth that Hobbes describes is not easily reduced to such rationalist measures. This dissertation argues that Hobbes appropri- ated specific theological tropes referring to Christ as the divine Representative of his church \body" in order to envision a political community with greater social cohesion than was pos- sible through legal-rationalist mechanisms. Adopting this theological motif as the inspiration for an absolutist political vision involved Hobbes in contemporary debates over the appropri- ate application of Christology within the political sphere, a religious controversy that may have had a determinative influence on shifting attitudes toward political representation in England during the Civil War. The first chapter (\What is Real Unity?") examines the historical usage of the expres- sion \real unity" in England during the 17th century and finds that it referred, not to transubstantiation, as several scholars have recently suggested, but to Jesus Christ's divine representation of his church \body." This meaning fully comports with Hobbes's discourse on political representation and amplifies his broader commitment to the image and analogy of the \body politic." Hobbes's usage of the body metaphor is more in keeping with the theo- logical iteration rather than the ancient and classical version, in that it envisions a corporate body that is non-natural in its origin and dependent upon a central, representative figure for its existence and sustenance. Clarifying the referent of Hobbes's \real unity" forces us to reconsider the philosophic and theological significance of the body motif for his concept of political representation. The second chapter (\Real Unity and the Law") examines the relationship between em- bodiment and authorization in Hobbes's concept of representation. The twin mechanisms of consent and authorization ground Hobbes's representation and give the concept its dis- vi tinctly legal and rational qualities. Consequently many scholars have ignored the extra-legal aspects of his theory of representation or judged that they categorically contradict the first foundations of his concept, based largely on the assumption that legal rationales are logi- cally incompatible with those that are extra-legal. This chapter argues that Hobbes assumed precisely the opposite about the compatibility of legal and extra-legal justifications and he was relying upon a theological prototype for his concept of representation that explicitly conjoined them. English pastors of Hobbes's era insisted that Christ's representation of his church-body, along with the unity he shared with it, was both a legal and an extra-legal phenomenon. Hobbes's concept of political representation follows this pattern and should be understood in terms of an expansion, rather than a contradiction, of legality as the foundation of his theory. The third chapter (\Real Unity and Rhetoric") addresses questions raised about the con- ceptual proximity of the expression \real unity" to the metaphor of Christ's \body," and the larger role that rhetoric plays for Hobbes's theory of representation. Many scholars believe that his statement \real unity" is purely rhetorical, and that his larger analogy of the \body politic" is a similar, rhetorical conceit that has an ironic, if not antithetical, relationship with the scientific and philosophical arguments that make up his rational discourse. But this chapter argues that Hobbes explicitly committed to deliver rhetorical metaphors that illuminated rather than obscured his rational discourse, and that the trope of \body politic," conspicuous throughout all his scientific works, deserves to be interpreted according to this stated principle. Moreover, the expression \real unity" is not a metaphorical but a technical term, used by 17th- century pastors and theologians to depict and define a social reality. Hobbes would have known that his phrase would be understood in that way, and he gave no indication that it should be read differently. The fourth chapter epilogue (\Hobbes's Christology and the Politics of Real Unity") ex- amines Hobbes's understanding of Christ's religious role and suggests that he deliberately politicized the Christological doctrine of \real unity" by translocating it from its spiritual vii purview to the realm of human institutions. In doing so, he involved himself in an important theological controversy of his day that had erupted over Christ's ecclesiastical representation and the precise manner in which that divine representation could or should be applied in an institutional setting. Many Christian pastors and theologians held that Christ's \real unity" was an invisible, spiritual reality. They emphatically denied that it could be realized politically and tended to favor decentralized, democratic church/state government struc- tures in order to emphasize this distinction. But some others believed, like Hobbes, that Christ's \real unity" should be manifested politically in church and state structures typified by hierarchical mediation. The doctrinal difference between the two groups may have had a determinative influence on shifting attitudes toward political representation in England during the Civil War. viii CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS REAL UNITY? The Christology behind Hobbes's concept of Representation One of the most memorable passages in Leviathan contains an expression that has befuddled scholars for decades: in Chapter XVII, Hobbes describes the relationship between individuals and their chosen political representative as one which is \more than Consent, or Concord; it is a real Unity of them all, in one and the same Person."1 The phrase \real unity" is not defined by Hobbes, but its inclusion in this text seems to directly challenge the standard assumption that his commonwealth is held together exclusively by bare consent, bolstered by fear. If the civil union in Leviathan entails nothing more than a legal relationship of formal obligation between author and agent, then it can be called only a legal unity (or as Hobbes might have said, a unity of \words only"2). But the expression \real unity" that he uses in this passage connotes something entirely different, and his previous statement about this union being \more than consent" only emphasizes the potentially extra-legal nature of the association in question. The line is problematic, and while earlier Hobbes scholars preferred to pass over it without commentary, many recent theorists have tried to confront and reconcile the tension by suggesting that \real unity" is paradoxical, ironic, contradictory, or even a mistake, and 1. Leviathan, or The Matter, Form, and Power of A Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (London, 1651), XVII.13 (p.260). In order to facilitate reference between the various editions of Leviathan, chapters will be given in Roman numerals followed by the Molesworth paragraph numbers, and the respective page numbers in Noel Malcolm's Clarendon edition will be offered in parenthesis. 2. Ibid., XIV.7,18,31 (pp.200-2,210,216). 1 is certainly not to be understood as genuine unity, in sense either technical or colloquial.3 The most important insight so far along these lines is the connection recently drawn by Philip Pettit between Hobbes's \real unity" and the Roman Catholic \real presence" of transubstantiation, in which the sacramental bread and wine is ontologically transformed into Christ's body and blood. Pettit notes the evocative similarities between this Catholic event and the Leviathan commonwealth narrative, by which the multitude is transformed into a corporate person, however he suggests that Hobbes's appropriation of transubstantiation in this manner (if deliberate) was ironic and even \wicked,"4 given his well-documented disdain for the doctrine.5 Many other theorists have repeated this assessment and interpreted Hobbes's \real unity" as a shrewd joke directed toward Roman Catholicism.6 This chapter questions such interpretations by showing that the proper referent of \real unity" in Leviathan is almost certainly not transubstantiation, as has been assumed, but another Christian doctrine having to do with spiritual embodiment and representation. Using archival evidence from over 400 texts published in England during the 17th century, I 3.