The Leviathan Becoming a Cephalophore: Primogeniture and the Transition from Sovereignty to Governmentality

James GRIFFITH

doi:https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.789093

Article Details

The Leviathan Becoming a Cephalophore: Primogeniture and the Transition from Sovereignty to Governmentality

Authors:

James GRIFFITH

Publisher:

Bursa Uludağ University

Main Topics:

Sociology and anthropology

Journal:

Kaygı. Bursa Uludağ University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Journal of Philosophy 2020 Vol.19 Issue 2, pp.464-484

Document Type:

Article

Publication Date:

9/2020

Document Language:

English

Document ID (Org No.):

2000519084

Frequency:

Bi-Annual

eISSN:

2645-8950

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.789093

Abstract:

 

For Foucault, Hobbes is important for the transition from sovereignty to governmentality, but he does not always go into great detail how. In “Society Must Be Defended”, Hobbes’s reactions against the political historicism of his time lead him to an ahistorical foundation to the state. In Security, Territory, Population, his contract is emblematic of the art of government still caught in the logic of sovereignty. Management techniques, one of which being inheritance laws like primogeniture, inducing changes in a population’s milieu so that its interest is properly directed allow the art of government to escape this logic. Hobbes supports primogeniture, but its historical position in the common law makes this support unexpected. This article examines the historical context of primogeniture and the reasoning for Hobbes’s support of it in light of Foucault’s claims about him in order to give more precision to those claims. The result is that primogeniture as a law of nature produces the family as an interested unit of the population. Yet this interest is itself historicized, so Hobbes’s attempt to de-historicize politics did not fully succeed.

Article Details

The Leviathan Becoming a Cephalophore: Primogeniture and the Transition from Sovereignty to Governmentality

Authors: James GRIFFITH

Publisher: Bursa Uludağ University

Main Topics: Sociology and anthropology

Journal: Kaygı. Bursa Uludağ University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Journal of Philosophy 2020 Vol.19 Issue 2, pp.464-484

Document Type: Article

Publication Date: 9/2020

Document Language: English

Document ID (Org No.): 2000519084

Frequency: Bi-Annual

eISSN: 2645-8950

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.789093

Issues

Authors:

James GRIFFITH

Publisher:

Bursa Uludağ University

Main Topics:

Sociology and anthropology

Journal:

Kaygı. Bursa Uludağ University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Journal of Philosophy 2020 Vol.19 Issue 2, pp.464-484

Document Type:

Article

Publication Date:

9/2020

Document Language:

English

Document ID (Org No.):

2000519084

Frequency:

Bi-Annual

eISSN:

2645-8950

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.789093