RT Article
T1 Sovereignty Over Communion: Heterodox Salvation in Hobbes’s Leviathan
JF Political theology
VO 24
IS 4
SP 384
OP 400
A1 DeCook, Travis 1976-
LA English
PB Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
YR 2023
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1848746687
AB This essay argues for a new understanding of Hobbes’s idiosyncratic depiction of eschatology in Leviathan, and for its relationship to his depiction of sovereignty. In his radical portrayal of salvation, the highest good is maintenance of physical existence free of physical harm. Communion with God is denied, on the basis of fellowship between God and humankind purportedly being inimical to divine sovereignty. Hobbes effectively reduces the affective experience of God to fear and the desire for self-preservation. This article contends that the political significance of Hobbes’s eschatological innovations is not only a matter of devaluing salvation so as to lessen its political threat. It is also a matter of locating the experience of earthly sovereignty, constituted by remoteness and power, in the eschaton as well as in this world. This transformation of the affectivity of eschatological hope, I argue, can be seen to shore up earthly sovereignty.
K1 Affects
K1 Experience
K1 Sovereignty
K1 Eschatology
K1 Salvation
K1 Leviathan
K1 Hobbes
DO 10.1080/1462317X.2022.2078547