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Abstract: The purpose of this essay is to analyze how populist parties argue for state authority in a way that resembles Thomas Hobbes’s arguments in Leviathan. Moreover, the essay analyzes the characteristics of human nature studied by Thomas Hobbes connecting it to the importance of the National State. The parties analyzed are Sweden Democrats from Sweden, VOX from Spain and Jobbik from Hungary. The research questions are: 1)How do populist parties argue for state authority?  2) How do their arguments resemble Thomas Hobbes’s arguments for state authority in Leviathan? The theories used are related to the study of Thomas Hobbes described in Chapter 13 and 29 in Leviathan related to human nature and state of authority. Moreover, Cas Mudde and Hellström’s theories are used related to populist parties on the right. The method used is a qualitative method which includes an argumentative analysis which aims to explain the essay’s purposes. In conclusion, the analyzed populist parties share the ideas of Thomas Hobbes related to the state of authority and the decrease of corporations in the National State. In other words, the populist parties argue that the national state must be unity and solid in order to defend its own interest and citizens’ interests.

Debatterna om Hobbes och Rousseaus politiska ståndpunkter är långvariga och välpublicerade. Min ambition i denna mylla har varit att koncentrera mig på en fixerad och konstitutiv fråga, nämligen hur deltagande respektive författare tyckte att folket borde vara i fattandet av politiska beslut - sådana svaren formuleras i Leviathan och The Social Contract. Den kontextualistiska metoden synes naturlig för historisk idéanalys, i synnerhet som en betydande del av undersökningen kommer behöva ta itu med hermeneutiska problem: för att ge förståelse åt Hobbes och Rousseaus politiska filosofier är det nämligen nödvändigt att ha kännedom om de kontexter i vilka de formades. Teorin som appliceras är Kuhns teori om paradigm, kompletterad med Foucaults koncept om episteme. Med paradigm respektive episteme menar Kuhn och Foucault ett temporärt a priori-förhållande som definierar den intellektuella räckvidden inom en specifik disciplin. Bakgrunden mot vilken Hobbes Leviathan tolkas är således det stormiga engelska 1600-talet, Richelieus Frankrike (där Hobbes residerade under nästan hela det decennium som föregick skrivandet av Leviathan), hans personliga biografi etc. Kontextualiseringen av The Social Contract inkluderar bl.a. Machiavellis inflytande, Rousseaus personliga biografi, och upplysningen. Hobbes och Rousseau är överens om att suveränen bör ha absolut makt över alla medborgare. Med denna premiss blir frågan hur de definierar suveräniteten central. För Hobbes är suveränen samtliga medborgare sammanfogade till “one and the same Person” i ett förbund där envar avsäger sig sin “Right of Governing” sig själv och transfererar “thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions”. Emellertid  tillägger han att folket endast är “made One Person, when they are by one man, or one Person, Represented [...] For it is the Unity of the Representer, not the Unity of the Represented, that maketh the Person One.”  Rousseaus definition av suveräniteten är allmänviljan omsatt i praktik. Skillnaden mellan allas vilja och allmänviljan är att “while the former considers private interest and is merely a sum of particular wills” exkluderar allmänviljan “the pluses and minuses, which mutually cancel each other out” tills endast det gemensamma intresset återstår.  Efter att suveränen etablerats är alla medborgare, enligt Hobbes, förpliktigade att agera unisont i enlighet med de beslut suveränen fattar. I samma anda är suveränen “the sole Legislator”. Sammantaget är Hobbes mening att en person (eller församling) bör vara enväldig beslutsfattare, och att folket, således, inte bör ha något inflytande i politiska frågor. Det är sant att suveränen beskrivs som samtliga medborgare sammanfogade till “one and the same Person”, men då det är tydligt att denne är en faktisk person (eller församling av faktiska personer) och det är “the Unity of the Representer, not the Unity of the Represented, that maketh the Person One” förefaller detta vara av metafysisk innebörd. Övervägande Hobbes svar på frågan - hur deltagande folket borde vara i fattandet av politiska beslut - är det således tydligt att medborgarna inte vid något skede (efter upprättandet av en “commonwealth”) bör vara delaktiga i den politiska beslutsprocessen.  I kontrast till Hobbes menar Rousseau att suveräniteten inte kan representeras. Vidare anser han att “The people subject to the laws should be their author”. Som vi sett är suveräniteten hos Rousseau identisk med allmänviljan omsatt i handling. När allmänviljan ska definieras i en specifik fråga föreslår Rousseau en “assembly of the people” varpå en motion presenteras och var och en “expresses his opinion on this by voting, and the declaration of the general will is taken from the counting of the votes”. Medelst detta system menar han att varje enskild medborgares makt är lika med suveräniteten delat med antalet medborgare. I The Social Contract argumenterar Rousseau följaktligen för att alla medborgare (endast vuxna män) bör vara jämlika i fattandet av politiska beslut. Ställd inför frågan föreslår Rousseau direktdemokratiska och bindande omröstningar - där alla medborgare tillåts rösta och alla röster är likvärdiga.

In this thesis I will offer an extended discussion and critique of an important social constructivist book, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985), focusing on its reception and its standing in science and technology studies in the fifteen years since its publication. This work claims to be an "origins" story for the modern form of life that we now call the scientific community, and this claim has not itself been contested strongly by other scholars. Central to Shapin and Schaffer's argument for the socially constructed nature of scientific knowledge, is the contrast they find between the community orientation of Robert Boyle and the anti-community stance of Thomas Hobbes. In the course of this thesis, I question the validity not only of this contrast, but of the origins story itself. I suggest that while experimental, communally-practiced science and modernity did emerge together around the end of the seventeenth-century, the qualities of science that Shapin and Schaffer suggest are distinctive of modern science might more accurately be represented as distinctive of modern science. In other words, I suggest that the story of Leviathan and the Air-Pump is not so much an origins story for science as it is emblematic of the early influence of widespread European modernist culture on scientific practices. Leviathan and the Air-Pump is an important case to study in order to unravel the strands of science and modernity because it occupies simultaneously both the early and late margins of the modern period: first, by taking the contested but emergent modernism represented by Robert Boyle as its subject and, second, as a work of scholarship that sits on the far margins of the modern period. My method is to treat Shapin and Schaffer's work as a central primary source for understanding how contemporary science and technology studies scholarship deals with early modern science. A side product of this analysis is to suggest strongly that Shapin and Schaffer's account of the social construction of scientific knowledge is itself socially constructed: that is, it is highly selective in its presentation and interpretation of historical evidence. I also consider what the implications may be for separating modernity from science, and for thinking about how science might be practiced in the age that will follow -- perhaps is already following -- the modern period. / Master of Science

Phénoménologie de l'espace politique est une étude à la fois généalogique et phénoménologique d'un sujet auquel la philosophie ne se confronte que rarement, à savoir l'espace politique. Les principaux acteurs en sont Maurice Merleau-Ponty et Jan Patočka. Il s'agit donc d'une thèse de philosophie contemporaine, pour ce qui concerne les auteurs étudiés, tandis que l'objet de notre recherche est politique - comme en témoigne le fait que même l'expression «espace politique» n'est pas utilisée dans le domaine philosophique. Puisque notre objectif est de conduire une recherche à la fois politique et phénoménologique sur l'espace politique, il sera essentiel de l'aborder simultanément de ces deux points de vue. Il s'agira en effet de tracer une généalogie de l'espace politique, précédée par une étude phénoménologique du concept d'espace et de celle de mouvement. Nous en tirerons l'idée centrale de la partie plus proprement politique, à savoir l'opposition, dans la pensée politique moderne, entre apparition et représentation, ou en d'autres termes, entre immédiateté et médiation, que l'on peut trouver respectivement chez Machiavel et Hobbes et chez les auteurs qui, au XXe siècle, ont étudié leurs œuvres, notamment Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jan Patočka et Carl Schmitt. C'est à partir de ces concepts d'apparition et de représentation, et de leur opposition, que nous allons développer une analyse à la fois phénoménologique et politologique de l'espace politique. / Phenomenology of Political Space is an attempt to provide both a genealogical and a phenomenological account of a subject that philosophy rarely confronts, namely political space. Our analysis thus encompasses all the dimensions of political space - political, historical, geographical, and juridical - without dismissing any of them. It aims at showing the intrinsic connection between phenomenology and modern and contemporary political thought. It does so by identifying the two opposing models of political space, respectively shaped by Machiavelli and Hobbes, which we claim correspond to two opposing systems of visibility: a logic of appearance versus a logic of representation. It then moves to the contemporary phenomenological approach and gives both a phenomenology of movement and a phenomenology of political space. The central idea is the opposition, in modern and contemporary political thought, between appearance and representation, or in other words, between immediacy and mediation, as the terms are used respectively by Machiavelli and Hobbes, as well as by other authors who, in the twentieth century, studied their works (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jan Patočka, Carl Schmitt). Our current research focuses on both their conceptions of movement, desire and fear; and on their interpretation of political space.

[pt] Com o fim da II Guerra e a queda do III Reich, ganha ímpeto um ataque jusnaturalista ao positivismo jurídico sob o fundamento de que ele foi o pensamento jurídico predominante na Alemanha da República de Weimar e que continuou sendo durante o regime nazista. Desta forma, o positivismo teve responsabilidade tanto pela queda da república quanto pelo funcionamento genocida do regime de Hitler. Iniciando-se com um artigo de Gustav Radbruch, tais ataques prosseguiram nas vozes de diversos antipositivistas e neoconstitucionalistas como Fuller, Dworkin, Alexy e, mais recentemente, David Dyzenhaus, jurista com quem a presente tese procura debater. Contra estes argumentos, pretende-se aqui refutá-los a partir das categorias fantasmagoria e hostilidade, extraídas do pensamento político-jurídico de Thomas Hobbes. A primeira procura demonstrar que o pensamento jurídico nazista era calcado em uma forma transcendental e eseencialista de pensar, implicando uma concepção do direito como algo já dado e que deveria ser realizado. A segunda determinava que, para realizar esta fantasmagoria, a forma jurídica poderia ser completamente afastada, de modo que o regime nazista, na verdade, seria antipositivista. Com isto, tanto a partir da teoria de Hobbes quanto de exemplos históricos, a presente tese procura afastar tal mito sobre o positivismo, afirmando que, ao contrário, o pensamento jurídico nazista era mais próximo do jusnaturalismo, e que as teses antipositivistas e neoconstitucionalistas de abertura do direito à moral, ao contrário do que pretendem, podem acabar por fornecer meios de ascensão de regimes autoritários, de modo que uma interpretação formal do direito deve ser vista como mais adequada do que uma jurisprudência de princípios. / [en] With the end of World War II and the fall of the Third Reich, a jusnaturalist attack on legal positivism gained momentum on the ground that it was the predominant legal thought in the German Weimar Republic and continued to be so during the Nazi regime. In this way, positivism was responsible both for the fall of the republic and for the genocidal functioning of the Hitler regime. Starting with an article by Gustav Radbruch, such attacks continued in the voices of several antipositivists and neo-constitutionalists such as Fuller, Dworkin, Alexy and more recently David Dyzenhaus, a jurist whose arguments this thesis intends to debate. Against these arguments, the objective here is to refute them with the help of the concepts of phantasmagoria and hostility, extracted from the political-juridical thought of Thomas Hobbes. The first concept seeks to demonstrate that Nazi legal thinking was modeled on a transcendental and essentialist way, implying a conception of law as an a priori that should be realized. The second concept determined that in order to realize this phantasmagoria, the legal form could be completely removed. Thus, the Nazi regime, in fact, would be anti-positivist. Thereby, both with the help of Hobbes s theory and historical examples, this thesis aims to dispel such a myth about positivism, stating that, on the contrary, Nazi legal thought was closer to natural-law, and that the anti-positivist and neo-constitutionalist theses, contrary to what intend or claim, may ultimately provide help to authoritarian regimes seize power. Thus, a formalist law interpretation must be seen as more appropriate than an interpretation based on principles.

This thesis aims at furthering our understanding of the constitutional structures and processes of sui generic associations such as the European Union. The thesis argues that the problematical constitutionalisation of the European Union has highlighted the limitations of the political thought that has served as the basis of political associationalism since the Treaty ofWestphalia (1648) and the publication of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651). These limitations have resulted in the European Union being described, for want of a better expression, as sui generis. The thesis advances the argument that in order to be in a position to understand constitutional relations in a 'non-statal' setting, what is needed is an alternative variant of political thought that is not based in or dependent on the societas canon that originates with Hobbes. One source of such political thought can be located in the work of Johannes Althusius (1557-1638) who, writing in the city of Emden in the Holy Roman Empire in the early 17th Century, described a constitutional structure of a political association that differs in significant features to the centralised state theories of the societas canon. The thesis also argues that the traditional concepts of constitutionalism and political association applied to sui generic constitutionalism are hampered by the inherent weaknesses of modem political and legal vocabulary. Despite being used ad infinitum in the constitutional discussions on the European Union, there is not a precise definition of either the term 'constitution' or treaty' in political or legal theory. Althusius' work avoids this weakness, due to the fact that the centralised state does not enjoy the same position it does in the societas canon, and so the need to classify 'intra' or 'inter' state relationships does not exist to the same degree. While taking the European Union as a workable model of a sui generic association, this thesis does not aim at solving the European Union's constitutional problems or offering a more suitable term to describe its nature. Rather, based on an analysis of Althusius' work, the thesis aims to offer an alternative understanding of the problems that result from the constitutionalisation of sui generic associations.

To the author's knowledge, this is the first systematic study of the concept of enmity in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Examining this important category does not only elucidate the concept itself, but also provides an opportunity to reconnect fragments of Hobbes's thought that are increasingly being treated as disparate subjects. It is suggested that the notion of enmity can shed further light on related aspects of his political philosophy, including human competitiveness, the roles of fear and trust, the evil of violent death, the status of rebels, and his theory of international relations. In addition, the subject invites a rethinking of Hobbes's place in the history of political thought. It is argued that he was among the first to make enmity a central subject of political philosophy. This seems to be related to Hobbes's break with the traditional notion of natural sociability, as a consequence of which he describes the natural condition of mankind as a war of all against all. Although Hobbes depicts human beings as natural enemies, he holds that enmity does not exclude the possibility of reconciliation; individuals can supposedly overcome their hostility through subjection to a sovereign. These views give rise to a dynamic distinction between public and private enmity, according to which outright hostility can be transformed into private rivalry if human beings renounce their natural right of war. Conversely, subjects become public enemies if they rebel against the sovereign. Hobbes's views on natural enmity and reconciliation also have important implications for his theory of international relations. This thesis particularly highlights the possibility that states can be decomposed and reassembled after a foreign invasion, which precludes wars of annihilation.

This thesis examines the politics of foundations in modern political thought through a reading and immanent critique of Hobbes’s Leviathan. I argue that his thought exemplifies a specifically modern problem of foundations insofar as he must establish political and scientific foundations on the basis of precisely the impossibility of foundation. Hobbes’s account of political founding and the establishment of scientific foundations is first and foremost a response to a condition of finitude in which foundations are no longer given or available but nevertheless demanded. While it appears that Hobbes describes the finitude of ‘Man’ and natural bodies and derives his political theory from these, in fact for Hobbes these no longer provide given foundations for political thought, but must themselves be posited in acts of political and epistemological projection. Hobbes’s politics of foundations therefore demands that we fabricate political and scientific foundations for ourselves and act as if they are not incalculable postulations but calculable necessities. I call this the problem of projection, in which political knowledge is possible only because we make it and posit it ourselves. Through a reading of the role of the metaphor of making in Hobbes’s account of political origins and sovereignty, I argue that this reading of Hobbes’s politics of origins as the institution of foundations in the face of the impossibility of foundation exposes finitude as a groundlessness to which there is no necessary political response. It does not necessarily demand the production of foundations through the institution of sovereignty. Hobbes’s Leviathan therefore provides a site in which we might begin to ask more precise empirical and theoretical questions about the transformative possibilities in the modern politics of foundations. / Graduate

<p>The question this essay sets out to answer is what role God plays in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, in the book “Of a Christian Common-wealth”, in relationship to humans as moral beings. The question is relevant as the religious aspects of Hobbes’s thinking cannot be ignored, although Hobbes most likely had rather secular and sceptical philosophical views. In order to answer the research question Leviathan’s “Of a Christian Common-wealth” will be compared and contrasted with two contextual works: the canonical theological document of the Anglican Church, the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), and Presbyterian-Anglican document the Westminster Confession (1648). Also, recent scholarly works on Hobbes and more general reference works will be employed and discussed. Hobbes’s views provide a seemingly unsolvable paradox. On the one hand, God is either portrayed, or becomes by consequence of his sceptical and secular state thinking, a distant God in relationship to moral humans in “Of a Christian Common-wealth”. Also, the freedom humans seem to have in making their own moral decisions, whether based on natural and divine, or positive laws, appears to obscure God’s almightiness. On the other hand, when placing Hobbes in context, Hobbes appears to have espoused Calvinist views, with beliefs in predestination and that God is the cause of everything. Rather paradoxically it not unlikely that Hobbes espoused both the views that appear to obscure the role of God, and his more Calvinistic views.</p>