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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2021

Restoration or Destruction of the Eschaton ? Voegelin’s Reading of Hobbes

Thierry Gontier
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Résumé

The dialogue with Hobbes is central to Voegelin's thinking. While Plato is the emblematic author of the classical tradition and Joachim de Flore that of medieval Gnosticism, Hobbes is the herald of a modernity that Voegelin interprets in terms of spiritual and political crisis, whose expression reached its climax in the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. We replace Voegelin's reading in the intellectual context of the 1930-40s, that of the debate around Hobbes' “liberalism”, whether it is praised as a bulwark against totalitarian barbarism (René Capitant, Collingwood, Oakeshott) or otherwise criticized as heralding it (Joseph Vialatoux, Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt in 1938, Hannah Arendt in the 1940-50s). The latter interpretation, which focuses on the link between liberal individualism and totalitarian collectivism, is the one followed by Voegelin in the Political Religions of 1938, emphazising the pre-totalitarian features of Hobbesian thought: the theory of social contract, by which individuals transfer their personality to the community represented by its chief; the formation of this community as a spiritual entity; the sovereign’s power of control over the conscience of his subjects; the substitution of a purely worldly and secular eschaton (civil peace) for the transcendent Christian eschaton. In his writings from the 1950s (The New Science of Politics, 1952; “The Oxford Political Philosophers”, 1953), Voegelin revises his analysis. He credits Hobbes for having fought against the apocalyptic activism of the Puritans of his time, as well as for dealing with the crucial issue, namely the absence of a Christian civil theology. But Hobbes only reconstructed this civil theology by putting away the eschatology, and amputating the individual of his spiritual personality. The amor sui is no longer a passion to be fought against with philosophical, moral and religious asceticism, but the foundation of a political order oriented towards maximizing the satisfaction of passions, an order which consists in a modus vivendi of selfish interests and which Hobbes does not hesitate to call "justice." Far from having eradicated Puritan Gnosticism, Hobbes is thus the initiator of the second phase of Gnosticism, the secularized Gnosticism that characterizes modernity. Hobbesian authoritarianism differs from that of Plato, which aims to restore the order of the soul and of society. It also differs from the authoritarianism of Machiavelli, who also tried to provide Christianity with a civil theology in order to adapt it to political reality, without questioning society’s openness to its transcendent foundation of meaning.

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Philosophie
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Dates et versions

hal-04622464 , version 1 (24-06-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04622464 , version 1

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Thierry Gontier. Restoration or Destruction of the Eschaton ? Voegelin’s Reading of Hobbes. Bernat Torres Morales, Josep Monserrat Molas. Eric’s Voegelin Political Readings : From the Ancient Greeks to the Modern Times, Routledge, pp.59-73, 2021. ⟨hal-04622464⟩
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