Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)

Thomas Hobbes's great influence on power in politics is his solution to the problem of power politics. The phrase power politics has a long history, generally tracking schools of political realism in Western political thought and practice. Many associate power politics with the international relations of “the great powers,” each pursuing his or her own national interests, or simply their rulers' interests. In its most general form, power politics refers to the sort of hard-boiled realism associated with the ancient Greek historian [Page 322]Thucydides who recorded many instances of might trumping right in the long battle between Athens and Sparta, and many early doctrines of political rule where a polity's own interests are accorded higher priority than are ideals of disinterested “justice.” Thus, power politics means that interests of power drive politics, crushing alternative interests such as justice or merit or desert: used in this sense, to have a “political” interest means to have an interest in accumulating and wielding self-interested powers.

What holds for polities can also hold for individuals. Notable radicalized versions of power politics are presented by the character Thrasymachus in his confrontation with Socrates in book one of Plato's Republic, and by the character Callicles in a similar confrontation with Socrates in Plato's Gorgias. From a Socratic perspective, power politics emerges as the default position in politics. Hence, what is argued in the political fictions of Plato reinforces the grim political realism recorded in Thucydides' History, where the noblest forms of political rule protect a people against the self-interested use of power by antagonistic regimes.

Ancient practice becomes modern doctrine through Hobbes's contribution to the power politics story. One of Hobbes's earliest works was his translation of Thucydides' History, which appealed to Hobbes's growing interest in the theory and practice of political power (see Borot in Sorell, pp. 311–315). By the time Hobbes wrote his major work, Leviathan, that interest has developed into perhaps the first full-blown theory of power politics in Western political thought. Whereas Plato invites us to witness Socrates trying to convert Thrasymachus and Callicles away from their realist professions of power politics toward idealist theories of justice, Hobbes senses that conversion is often unreliable because it lacks the power to enforce compliance. Hobbes's preferred strategy is to use fire to fight fire: impose an all-powerful ruler to restrain the disorder arising from competing power-hungry individuals. Leviathan paints a picture of unredeemed self-interest of people tending to “a condition of war of every one against every one” (Leviathan, ch. 14; see Ryan in Sorell, pp. 216–225).

Hobbes's version of a Socratic conversion away from endemic natural war is presented in Leviathan's code of laws framing a just civil peace. All that Plato can do in his two dialogues is silence the protagonists of power politics: we never really know whether Thrasymachus or Callicles were persuaded away from their self-interested power perspectives, or whether they simply went through the motions, waiting for Socrates to move on. In many respects, Hobbes's Leviathan is a realist's response to Plato's idealist Republic. For Hobbes, given that personal power politics is the problem, the solution is a kind of impersonal power politics managed by a powerful but representative government.

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