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Patricia Springborg
Solo recientemente, quizás a causa de la amenaza del populismo moderno, se ha observado muy agudamente que el problema de la libertad para Hobbes se convierte casi de inmediato en el problema de la anarquía. Así, tenemos una serie de libros recientes que abordan la teoría del Estado y la anarquía de Hobbes, entre ellos Images of Anarchy, The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’s State of Nature de Ioannis D. Evrigenis (2014), Before Anarchy de Theodore Christov (2015), Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought de Daniel Lee (2016) y From Humanism to Hobbes:
Studies in Rhetoric and Politics de Quentin Skinner (2018). Este último sostiene que la descripción de Hobbes del estado de za como un estado anárquico es exagerada, incluso para sus propios estándares, pero la exagera para mostrar a los panfletistas que está parodiando. Estos fueron los panfletos de Londres del lado parlamentario, que repitieron algunos de los argumentos más exagerados a favor de la soberanía popular de los hugonotes franceses radicales, a quienes Hobbes estaba preocupado de refutar desesperadamente.
La razón por la que Hobbes insiste en que la persona del Estado es artificial, el trono del poder, es porque tal persona está moldeada y no preexiste al contrato social que la crea. No es la colectividad de la gente, que existe solo como una multitud desagregada antes del contrato, ni es la persona del soberano, que es simplemente su representante. La persona del Estado debe ser artificial y abstracta, porque si fuera la colectividad del pueblo, su teoría del Estado consagraría la soberanía popular, y si fuera la persona del soberano, consagraría el absolutismo monárquico, y esto Hobbes no lo hará.
Only recently, driven perhaps by the menace of modern populism, it has been so acutely observed that the problem of freedom is for Hobbes almost immediately converted into the problem of anarchy. Thus we have a spate of recent books on Hobbes’s theory of the State and anarchy, including Ioannis D. Evrigenis’ (2014) Images of Anarchy. The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’s State of Nature, Theodore Christov’s (2015) Before Anarchy, Daniel Lee’s (2016) Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought, and Quentin Skinner’s (2018) From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics. Skinner argues that Hobbes’s depiction of the state of nature as anarchic is exaggerated, even by his own standards, but that he overplays it in order to show up the pamphleteers he is parodying. These were London pamphlets on the parliamentary side, which parroted some of the most exaggerated arguments for popular sovereignty of the radical French Huguenots, whom Hobbes was desperately concerned to refute. The reason why Hobbes insists that the person is artificial, the seat of power, is because the person of the State is crafted, and does not preexist the social contract that brings it into being. It is neither the collectivity of the people, who exist only as a disaggregated multitude before the contract, nor is it the person of the sovereign, who is merely its representative. The person of the State must be artificial and it must be abstract, because if it were the collectivity of the people his theory of the State would enshrine popular sovereignty, and if it were the person of the sovereign it would enshrine monarchical absolutism, and this Hobbes will not do.
