1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
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experience and unimpeded desires. Hobbes ‘natural man’ is the creature that does exactly as it<br />
pleases, takes exactly what its wants, call<strong>in</strong>g whatever suits its momentary appetite ‘good’ and<br />
whatever displeases him, ‘evil’. It wanders without any moral compass, his wants unh<strong>in</strong>dered. What<br />
Hobbes offers, I suggest, is fact a phantasmatical representation of the pre-verbal <strong>in</strong>dividual prior to<br />
its encounter with the symbolic and castration tak<strong>in</strong>g hold. Hobbes state of nature is an apt depiction<br />
of the world of Lacan’s <strong>in</strong>fant who, unaware of its limit, experiences itself as all-powerful. Its<br />
primordial liberty is what is ‘lost’ <strong>in</strong> order to enter the social order; but it is also, however, a<br />
fantasmatical liberty, an expression of this illusion of omnipotence. Seen <strong>in</strong> this light, what Hobbes<br />
draws out perhaps more than any other social contract theorist is the extreme vulnerability that<br />
‘natural man’ is <strong>in</strong>, which direly drives him <strong>in</strong>to enter<strong>in</strong>g the contract with the Leviathan. That ‘fear of<br />
death’ is a fundamental fear, ak<strong>in</strong> to that of the slave <strong>in</strong> Hegel’s master-slave relationship. It is not just<br />
the fear of dy<strong>in</strong>g after hav<strong>in</strong>g lived a free life. It is the fear of not be<strong>in</strong>g able to live <strong>in</strong> the first place, to<br />
establish oneself as an autonomous self.<br />
<strong>In</strong> this light, then, <strong>in</strong> the contract that is passed between the <strong>in</strong>dividual and the Leviathan, the<br />
Leviathan is, much more fundamentally than has been recognised, the Other upon whom the self<br />
fundamentally depends <strong>in</strong> order to acquire the means to become herself. That contract serves to<br />
<strong>in</strong>stitute not merely the subject of the monarch, not merely the political subject (or the subject of a<br />
certa<strong>in</strong> k<strong>in</strong>d of political order). Rather it founds the speak<strong>in</strong>g subject itself. It constitutes the <strong>in</strong>dividual<br />
as political animal. This is the true mean<strong>in</strong>g of that symbolic pact: it is an exchange of the freedom to<br />
do however one pleases aga<strong>in</strong>st language and the ability to act politically. It is underwritten, and<br />
here<strong>in</strong> lies Hobbes’ Lacanian <strong>in</strong>sight, by a symbol, the Leviathan.<br />
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