The Constitution of Power through Recognition: God and the Sovereign

Abstract In Hobbes’s philosophy, sovereign political power explicitly mirrors divine power: the earthly sovereign is said to be a mortal God over its subjects. The model of divine power in question is that of an omnipotent and transcendent God with absolute power over His human subjects. However, in this paper I will unearth an alternative model of divine power, half-suggested but then quickly disavowed in De Cive , whereby God’s power would be at least partly constituted by His human subjects’ recognition of it. I will then trace the ramifications of this non-transcendent, recognitive model of power for earthly sovereigns. There are two possible routes by which subjects’ recognition constitutes sovereign power: a right-recognitive route and a power-recognitive route. The De Cive passage amounts to Hobbes’s first attempt to characterise power-recognitive constitution of power, and leads in turn to a thicker and more unruly conception of the social domain beneath the sovereign.