The Many Moses's of Hobbes's Leviathan: Covenant, Sovereignty, and Authority

• In Event: Theories of Sovereignty: Bodin, Hobbes, Mazzini, and Tocqueville

Abstract

The figure of Moses has been an under-theorized key for Hobbes’s theorization of sovereignty via personation and covenant. In Parts III and IV Moses takes on surprising, even seemingly conflictual personas: he becomes a representation of part of the trinity, an embodiment of sovereignty, a unifier of civil and religious authority, and an exemplar of leading by consent of the people. Focusing on Hobbes’s analysis of Moses illustrates the interconnectedness of representation, sovereignty, and authority around the conception of covenant. It also affirms how deeply embedded obedience is in Hobbes's understanding of sovereignty. And yet, the Moses that appears in Leviathan is not the Moses of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish political thought. This Moses is a mediator, not a personator of covenant. This Moses helps create a community through covenant, in which authority is agonistic and continuously circulating among the people and God. Moses thus provides a framework for exploring an alternative model of sovereignty and authority that is explicitly non-personated and non-imagistic, while still founded in covenant and covenanting.

Author

• Sarah Greenberg, Cornell University