International anarchy and political theology: rethinking the legacy of Thomas Hobbes
Keywords:
Anarchy, International order, International society, Medieval nominalism, Political theology, Realism, Religion, Thomas HobbesCopyright (c) 2022 William Bain; María Cabero López (Traductor/a)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Anarchy is one of the most important concepts in international theory; Thomas Hobbes is regularly invoked to illustrate the character and the consequences of anarchy. This article interrogates the theological aspect of Hobbes’ political philosophy in a bid to move beyond the distorting mythology that has grown up around ‘Hobbesian’ international relations. In doing so, it advances a positive argument that presents Hobbes as a theorist of interstate society that is made and unmade in the way that God made the universe. The concept of anarchy that is attributed to Hobbes is rooted in a theological dispute about the nature of God and the extent of his power, which entails a particular way of constituting and comprehending reality. When the implications of this dispute are taken into account, it becomes evident that anarchy is neither an objective feature of a world composed of independent states nor an inescapable logical condition that follows the absence of central authority. Rather, anarchy is an achievement of thought, born of a particular time and place, which seeks a reflection of itself in the mirror of eternity.
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