Hobbes and the Nomos of “original distribution”

Abstract

The article takes as its starting point the Foucauldian interpretation that Hobbes proposes to remove the “discourse of war” from the historical genesis of sovereignty and replace it with a “juridical-contractualist” foundation. By reabsorbing “sovereignty by acquisition” into “sovereignty by institution,” Hobbes (according to Foucault) polemicize with both parties that faced each other in the English Civil War, the monarchical and the parliamentary. What remains overshadowed in this interpretation is the major stake in the conflict, namely the status of private property and the right to levy taxes. By bringing this dimension back to light, the article demonstrates the deep modernity of Hobbes’s position, based on a conception of the political institution of property in the Nomos of an “original distribution,” as distinct from both the feudal-patrimonial conception of property based on the “right of conquest” and the liberal conception of property as a “natural right” (and therefore pre-political).