Conspiracy : James Martel

7. The Sovereign as Bad Reader

If we now turn back to the question of sovereignty and the sovereign’s right to read for all “Man-kind,” we see that if we apply Hobbes’ determination of how to read a text to his own text(s) we see that the sovereign reading does not come out very well. If we note that the sovereign too is a representative figure, then we can read this figure itself as being a “separated essence.” In depicting the sovereign as consistently trumping and usurping local and individual forms of interpretation, Hobbes may be suggesting, even if inadvertently, that the sovereign does just what the soul does (an idea that is furthered by the fact that Hobbes calls the sovereign the “soule of the commonwealth”).³⁰ That is, the sovereign, rather than standing in for the people, eclipses and overdetermines them with its own (false) meanings and truths.

For this reason, the sovereign, much as with Machiavelli’s prince, is in effect cut off from the kinds of mutual representational processes that go along with forming judgments in a community. Isolated and removed, the sovereign does not benefit from this reading of “all other men.” Instead the sovereign reads only “Man-kind” in the abstract (and indeed, as we have seen, Hobbes does not even trust in this reading, substituting his own reading instead). The sovereign may serve many functions in Leviathan, settling matters of dispute, keeping order and so forth, but in doing so, it risks what is perhaps even more important, the ability of a community to be present to itself as itself in all of its multiplicity. The sovereign trump then is not so much an answer to as the much as the unraveling of Hobbes’ central question in Leviathan ““By what Authority [Scripture is] made Law.”³¹ We see here the possibilities of a yet deeper subversion (and conspiracy) on Hobbes’ part; not just the acceptance of the general right of people to read (which would fit fairly nicely with a more liberalized version of Hobbes such as we have received from him today) but a form of reading that not only coexists with but undermines and usurps the sovereign’s own right to read for the rest of us.

The Kingdom of God and its Aftermath: A Conspiratorial Society?

If there is a conspiratorial method in Leviathan, are there also any hints about what a community that was not eclipsed by its own representational structures would look like? Hobbes gives us a few ideas (or what can be read as ideas since his own intentions remain in question) as to this possibility. For example, in his well-known chapter 16 on Representation, Hobbes tells us that the people are the true “authors” of sovereign authority. He writes:

Of Persons Artificiall, some have their words and actions Owned by those whom they represent. And then the Person is the Actor; and he that owneth his words and actions, is the AUTHOR: In which case the Actor acteth by Authority.³²

Here, we see more evidence of the analogy in the book between sovereigns and authors on the one hand, and subjects and readers on the other. If the people are authors of the state are the readers the authors of Leviathan as well? Generally, however, this statement is read as a kind of trick on Hobbes’ part, part of how he placates the masses with an exoteric reading that is meant to appease. Hanna Pitkin for one writes of this that:

A Sovereign given complete power in perpetuity, with no obligation to consult the wishes of his subjects and no duties toward them which they can claim—surely nothing could be further from what we ordinarily think of as representation or representative government! We read the Leviathan and feel that somehow we have been tricked.³³

But if we see this trick, not as constituting a way to placate masses, but to instruct them in their true power (hence more along the lines of the way we were reading Machiavelli, with Hobbes as a co-conspirator), we see that perhaps this trick is not the endpoint but only the beginning of a kind of textual insurgency on the reader’s part, a way to take back authority from the sovereigns of text and nation.

Another area that is useful to examine is Hobbes’ consideration of what he calls “the Kingdome of God” (in clear opposition to the kingdom of darkness). In keeping with his desire that words not be given overly metaphorical significance, Hobbes tells us that the term “Kingdom of God” cannot be meant to refer to heaven or God’s general power over the universe (or, even worse, the present day Church of his time).³⁴ Instead, Hobbes tells us that this term must refer only to a human kingdom that God was actually king over, namely the kingdom of Ancient Israel.³⁵

This “kingdom” was of immense interest to various thinkers of Hobbes’ own time. The Puritans especially were interested in this kingdom because it suggested that it was possible to have a human kingdom with perfect and divine leadership (in their case as supplied by Jesus Christ). Hobbes’ own interest in this kingdom is no less keen but, unlike the Puritans, who saw a central and undeniable truth emerging from this sort of rule, Hobbes offers a peculiar negativism in his own reading.

In his consideration of God’s kingdom (which comes largely in Part III of Leviathan and also in De Cive), Hobbes tells us that we know virtually nothing about God:

For the nature of God is incomprehensible; that is to say, we understand nothing of what he is, but only that he is; and therefore the Attributes we give him, are not to tell one another, what he is, nor to signifie our opinion of his Nature but our desire to honor him with such names as we conceive most honorable amongst our selves.³⁶

Anything we say about God (in a manner that wonderfully anticipates Walter Benjamin) will, of necessity be an idol, a misrepresentation of God’s own truth. Accordingly, God’s role in the kingdom of God—and perhaps even more in its immediate aftermath—is almost entirely negative in character.

^{30. Hobbes, Leviathan, 2.21, 153.↩}

^{31. Hobbes, Leviathan, 3.33, 267.]↩}

^{32. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.16, 112.]↩}

^{33. Hanna Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). 34.↩}

^{34. Hobbes, Leviathan, 4.44, 419.]↩}

^{35. Hobbes, Leviathan, 4.44, 419. He writes: “The Kingdome of God was first instituted by the Ministery of Moses, over the Jews onely.”↩}

^{36. Hobbes, Leviathan, 3.34, 271.]↩}