Homo Sacer in Hobbesian Terms

Hobbes in Leviathan calls the liberty of an individual under the sovereign, and free from the tyranny of all against all violence as an artificial commonwealth man. In modern language we would probably call it political rights. It is interesting to compare Hobbes' artificial man with Agamben's Homo Sacer , in Hobbesian terms, homo sacer is a man entirely under the sovereign yet denied the just bonds of the artificial commonwealth man.

From Chapter 21 of Leviathan :

But as men, for the attaining of peace and conservation of themselves thereby, have made an artificial man, which we call a Commonwealth; so also have they made artificial chains, called civil laws, which they themselves, by mutual covenants, have fastened at one end to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given the sovereign power, and at the other to their own ears. These bonds, in their own nature but weak, may nevertheless be made to hold, by the danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking them.

Agamben discusses Homo Sacer in terms of the all against all meme, and comes to the conclusion that the state of nature is a state of exception. Homo sacer is unique in that the individual cannot be sacrificed by the sovereign, but it is bare life, one that is without political rights and denied judicial redress, yet totally and entirely under the power of the sovereign who has judged them as a life not worth living, but at the same time unable to remove their physical life.

In Hobbesian terms homo sacer has been denied the artificial chains through the actions of the sovereign (executive) while still being under the whim of the sovereign. Homo sacer has been deemed a life not worth living by the state, yet is in the judicial no man's land as the sovereign does not kill the individual, nor grant them judicial relief. This is the origin of the camp that is outside of Leviathan's description of the sovereign and commonwealth man.

Permalink, Homo Sacer in Hobbesian Terms, Mar 2007, cam

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