Early Modern Absolutism and Constitutionalism

The idea of sovereignty led to great advances in political and legal thinking. It unleashed the clarifying capacities of general theory abstracted from the complications of established agencies of ruling and administration in particular commonwealths. A focus on the concept of sovereignty facilitated the formulation of absolutist theory, according to which not only must all states be sovereign (or they are not states), but sovereignty therein must be unlimited and undivided (or it is no longer sovereignty). The logic of absolutism has important earlier exponents, but was given its early modern impetus by Jean Bodin (1530-1596). Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) follows Bodin's arguments against limitations on sovereignty and his rejection of mixed or divided sovereignty. Unable to do justice to both thinkers here, I focus on Hobbes, who is more consistently absolutist. Yet historical and conceptual questions remain about Hobbes's own views of limitation, mixture, division, and administration. Considering such questions can illuminate the intellectual history of constitutionalism in a way that an exclusive focus on republicanism and the development of mixed government cannot. While limitations on the highest power in the state were associated most notoriously with Calvinist theories of resistance and justifications of tyrannicide, such limitations were often asserted by those who were conservatives or traditionalists about established systems of administration and control, in which they often had a stake. While mostly regarded now as arch-authoritarians, those who instead swept these systems aside or demoted them to the delegated and discretionary dispensations of the sovereign were perceived as philosophical radicals who cut at the roots of established authority. Some known as absolutists were especially keen to rein in or provide for clear authority over the power of the magistrates, officials, and noblemen who were seen as the primary instruments of subjects' oppression. Although the distinctions are ultimately complicated, the debates also highlight methodological