Although forms of absolutism have been around since the beginnings of recorded history, Thomas Hobbes is one of the most prominent formulators of modern political absolutism, along with Jean Bodin.
In 1651, Hobbes published Leviathan, his most famous book. The usual understanding of his political theory is drawn from the first half of the book. Hobbes presents what he considered to be a logical argument, the conclusion of which is that society needs to be ruled by an absolute monarch.
As envisioned by Hobbes, the absolute monarch should have limitless and unconditional power, or very nearly so. Hobbes views anarchy as an imagined natural state of humans prior to the formation of a commonwealth. In this primal state, human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” in one of his most famous phrases. Government arises as the result of a social contract, in which each individual, simultaneously with other individuals in the same society, cedes power to the monarch.
The fact that this cession is done simultaneously in a mutually-agreed-upon act is what puts the “common” into commonwealth. But once made, this social contract is irrevocable.
By 1679, the Leviathan had been on the market for twenty-eight years, variously loved and hated. The common understanding of the book, based primarily on the first half of the text, was established as the received view of Hobbes.
It was in 1679 that Jacques-Benigne Bossuet began to write his Politique tirée des propres paroles de l'Écriture sainte. This book was his systematic exposition of political absolutism. Bossuet, born in 1627, was younger than Hobbes, who’d been born in 1588.
Responding to Hobbes, Bossuet hoped to formulate a version of absolutism which was perhaps more humane than the version found in the Leviathan. To do this, Bossuet looked to place limits and conditions on the power of the monarch.
“The king of Hobbes is a less restrained and probably harsher ruler than Bossuet’s,” writes historian Eugen Weber.
Bossuet begins by stating that “royal authority is sacred,” paternal, and “subject to reason.” Each of these constitutes some limiting factor. There are limits on how kings may use power, and on the purposes for which they use power, as Bossuet writes:
The kings must respect their own power and use it only to the public good. Their power coming from above, as we have said, they must not believe that it belongs to them to be used as they please; but they must use it with fear and restraint, as a thing which comes from God and for which God will call them to account. Kings should therefore tremble when using the power that God has given them, and think how horrible is the sacrilege of misusing a power which comes from God.
By labelling royal power as “paternal,” Bossuet places upon monarchs the moral obligations and duties of parenthood. Parents are ethically responsible to care for their children, and by observing the care that they give, parents are judged as good or bad. Kings, as “paternal” rulers, are subject to a similar evaluation.
Bossuet further requires that monarchs use their power only in ways which are “salutary to mankind.” He admonishes kings to “use” their power “with humility.” He points out that kings have power ab alio — from outside themselves — and that therefore it is entrusted to them, yet it is not inherently or intrinsically theirs, even if it is innately theirs. Bossuet writes that kings “are endowed with” power “from outside.” Concerning power, he states:
Fundamentally, it leaves you weak; it leaves you mortal; it leaves you sinners; and burdens you with greater responsibility towards God.
A further bridle on royal power is Bossuet’s demand that it is subject to reason. Although it will be a large interpretive question as to exactly which royal actions are rational and which are not, it is nonetheless clear that this is intended by Bossuet to be some form of limit on monarchical action.
Bossuet is clearly differentiating himself from Hobbes. Although Bossuet had begun writing the book in 1679, he added sections to it between 1700 and 1704. Parts of the text are therefore more than half a century later than the Leviathan.
Although raw temporal dislocation does not prove that Bossuet’s theses are different from Leviathan’s, it does show that Bossuet had ample time to reflect both on Hobbes and on the historical events of that half century.
In any case, it is plausible to argue that Bossuet’s monarch is not as invincible as the monarch in the first half of Leviathan. Bossuet boldly places limits and moral boundaries on monarchs in a way which Hobbes does not.
There is a less common understanding of Hobbes — a reading which includes the second half of Leviathan in addition to the first half — and this less common interpretation would yield a monarch who is more clearly under a moral yoke and less likely to engage in capricious actions to which his subject must unquestioningly submit. More emphasis on the second half of Leviathan might yield a kinder, gentler Hobbes — one who’d be in some ways similar to Bossuet’s vision of a more benevolent ruler.
