From Hobbes to the end of the State
Are we allowing too many
(mis)conceptions, (mis)interpretations and (mis)representations of the
Hobbesian notion of ‘war of all against all’ to justify the ‘Leviathan’; the
existence and endless evils of the state? The simplistic argument is that we
need the state because without the state we will eat each other. Hobbes may
have been writing during war time but he did not quite seem to paint a hopeless
situation in which humanity is trapped in an eternally active state of violence
in the sense that humans must co-exist with such precarity and that the only
way out is the creation of the Leviathan; a monster to tame humanity's
destructive self. The justification for the existence of the state as a
necessity to save us from us; because without the state we are just going to
endlessly devour each other may not be exactly it. The state itself is
intrinsically evil; it eats, destroys and steals from humans than humans can
ever do in the Hobbesian state of nature. The Hobbesian 'war of all against
all' is more of hypothetical on the state of mind, which humanity seem to have
the ability both to actualize and not to actualize. That you are inclined to be
and/or have a tendency to be does not necessarily mean you be. Or are we
helpless in the face of our tendencies and potentialities such that we must be
what we have the potential and tendency to be? If we are to accept that we have
the ability (then what we need is the will power) to tame our tendencies,
including those that relate to who we are, then we surely can think of us as having
the ability to be at war of all against all just as we do the potential and
ability to avoid (decide not to) be at war of all against all. We can kick the
state aside and put our act together. This is especially if we start reading
Hobbes has having understood that the process of (re)constituting the Leviathan
required complex (re)negotiations of power, legitimacy and identity. Our
attempt to do this within the framework of the modern nation-state have failed
for some 372 years, why do we think it will happen this year or the next? The
case to abandon the nation-state project and return to Hobbes’ state of nature
and (re)imagine, (re)invent it and find peace and freedom for ourselves
therein. If we die, we die. We are still dying, re-dying and over-dying within
states, anyway.
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