Empire (16 page)

ist revolution.

For this same reason Schopenhauer reacted even more vio-

lently against Hegel, calling him an ‘‘intellectual Caliban’’ to indicate

the barbarity ofhis thought.23 He found it intolerable that Hegel

would transform the pallid constitutive function of Kant’s transcen-

dental critique into a solid ontological figure with such violence.

This was indeed the destiny ofthe transcendental in the European

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ideology ofmodernity. Hegel revealed what was implicit f

rom

the beginning ofthe counterrevolutionary development: that the

liberation ofmodern humanity could only be a f

unction ofits

domination, that the immanent goal ofthe multitude is transformed

into the necessary and transcendent power ofthe state. It is true

that Hegel restores the horizon ofimmanence and takes away the

uncertainty ofknowledge, the irresolution ofaction, and the fideist

opening ofKantianism. The immanence Hegel restores, however,

is really a blind immanence in which the potentiality ofthe multitude

is denied and subsumed in the allegory ofthe divine order. The

crisis ofhumanism is transformed into a dialectical dramaturgy, and

in every scene the end is everything and the means are merely

ornamentation.

There is no longer anything that strives, desires, or loves;

the content ofpotentiality is blocked, controlled, hegemonized by

finality. Paradoxically, the analogical being ofthe medieval Christian

tradition is resurrected as a dialectical being. It is ironic that Schopen-

hauer would call Hegel a Caliban, the figure that was later held up

as a symbol ofthe resistance to European domination and the

affirmation ofnon-European desire. Hegel’s drama ofthe Other

and the conflict between master and slave, however, could not but

take place against the historical backdrop ofEuropean expansion

and the enslavement ofAfrican, American, and Asian peoples. It

is impossible, in other words, not to link both Hegel’s philosophical

recuperation ofthe Other within absolute Spirit and his universal

history leading from lesser peoples to its summit in Europe together

with the very real violence ofEuropean conquest and colonialism.

In short, Hegel’s history is not only a powerful attack on the

revolutionary plane ofimmanence but also a negation ofnon-

European desire.

Finally, with another act offorce, that ‘‘intellectual Caliban’’

inserted into the development ofmodernity the experience ofa

new conception oftemporality, and he showed this temporality to

be a dialectical teleology that is accomplished and arrives at its

end. The entire genetic design ofthe concept found an adequate

T W O E U R O P E S , T W O M O D E R N I T I E S

83

representation in the conclusion ofthe process. Modernity was

complete, and there was no possibility ofgoing beyond it. It was

not by chance, then, that a further and definitive act of violence

defined the scene: the dialectic ofcrisis was pacified under the

domination ofthe state. Peace and justice reign once again: ‘‘The

state in and for itself is the ethical whole . . . It is essential to God’s march through the world that the state exist.’’24

Modern Sovereignty

The political solution offered by Hegel to the metaphysical drama

ofmodernity demonstrates the profound and intimate relationship

between modern European politics and metaphysics. Politics resides

at the center ofmetaphysics because modern European metaphysics

arose in response to the challenge ofthe liberated singularities and

the revolutionary constitution ofthe multitude. It functioned as an

essential weapon ofthe second mode ofmodernity insofar as it

provided a transcendent apparatus that could impose order on the

multitude and prevent it from organizing itself spontaneously and

expressing its creativity autonomously. The second mode ofmoder-

nity needed above all to guarantee its control over the new figures

ofsocial production both in Europe and in the colonial spaces in

order to rule and profit from the new forces that were transforming

nature. In politics, as in metaphysics, the dominant theme was thus

to eliminate the medieval form of transcendence, which only inhibits

production and consumption, while maintaining transcendence’s

effects of domination in a form adequate to the modes of association

and production ofthe new humanity. The center ofthe problem

ofmodernity was thus demonstrated in political philosophy, and

here was where the new form of mediation found its most adequate

response to the revolutionary forms of immanence: a transcendent

political apparatus.

Thomas Hobbes’s proposition ofan ultimate and absolute

sovereign ruler, a ‘‘God on earth,’’ plays a foundational role in the

modern construction ofa transcendent political apparatus. The first

moment ofHobbes’s logic is the assumption ofcivil war as the

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originary state ofhuman society, a generalized conflict among indi-

vidual actors. In a second moment, then, in order to guarantee

survival against the mortal dangers ofwar, humans must agree to

a pact that assigns to a leader the absolute right to act, or really the

absolute power to do all except take away the means ofhuman

survival and reproduction. ‘‘Seeing right reason is not existent, the

reason ofsome man, or men, must supply the place thereof; and

that man, or men, is he or they, that have the sovereign power.’’25

The fundamental passage is accomplished by a contract—a com-

pletely implicit contract, prior to all social action or choice—that

transfers every autonomous power of the multitude to a sovereign

power that stands above and rules it.

This transcendent political apparatus corresponds to the neces-

sary and ineluctable transcendent conditions that modern philoso-

phy posed at the pinnacle ofits development, in Kantian schematism

and Hegelian dialectics. According to Hobbes, the single wills of

the various individuals converge and are represented in the will of

the transcendent sovereign. Sovereignty is thus defined both by

transcendence
and by
representation,
two concepts that the humanist tradition has posed as contradictory. On the one hand, the transcendence ofthe sovereign is founded not on an external theological

support but only on the immanent logic ofhuman relations. On

the other hand, the representation that functions to legitimate this

sovereign power also alienates it completely from the multitude of

subjects. Like Jean Bodin before him, Hobbes recognized that ‘‘the

main point ofsovereign majesty and absolute power consists of

giving the law to subjects in general without their consent,’’26 but

Hobbes manages to combine this notion with a contractual schema

ofrepresentation that legitimates the sovereign power a priori.

Here the concept ofmodern sovereignty is born in its state of

transcendental purity. The contract ofassociation is intrinsic to

and inseparable from the contract of subjugation. This theory of

sovereignty presents the first political solution to the crisis ofmo-

dernity.

In his own historical period, Hobbes’s theory ofsovereignty

was functional to the development of monarchic absolutism, but

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85

in fact its transcendental schema could be applied equally to various

forms of government: monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. As the

bourgeoisie rose to prominence, it seemed there was really no

alternative to this schema ofpower. It was not by chance, then,

that Rousseau’s democratic republicanism turned out to resemble

the Hobbesian model. Rousseau’s social contract guarantees that

the agreement among individual wills is developed and sublimated

in the construction ofa general will, and that the general will

proceeds from the alienation of the single wills toward the sover-

eignty ofthe state. As a model ofsovereignty, Rousseau’s ‘‘republi-

can absolute’’ is really no different from Hobbes’s ‘‘God on earth,’’

the monarchic absolute. ‘‘Properly understood, all ofthese clauses

[ofthe contract] come down to a single one, namely the total

alienation ofeach associate, with all his rights, to the whole commu-

nity.’’27 The other conditions that Rousseau prescribes for the defi-

nition ofsovereign power in the popular and democratic sense are

completely irrelevant in the face of the absolutism of the transcen-

dent foundation. Specifically, Rousseau’s notion of direct represen-

tation is distorted and ultimately overwhelmed by the representation

ofthe totality that is necessarily linked to it—and this is perfectly

compatible with the Hobbesian notion ofrepresentation. Hobbes

and Rousseau really only repeat the paradox that Jean Bodin had

already defined conceptually in the second halfofthe sixteenth

century. Sovereignty can properly be said to exist only in monarchy,

because only one can be sovereign. Iftwo or three or many were

to rule, there would be no sovereignty, because the sovereign cannot

be subject to the rule ofothers.28 Democratic, plural, or popular

political forms might be declared, but modern sovereignty really

has only one political figure: a single transcendent power.

There is at the base ofthe modern theory ofsovereignty,

however, a further very important element—a content that fills

and sustains the form of sovereign authority. This content is repre-

sented by capitalist development and the affirmation of the market

as the foundation of the values of social reproduction.29 Without

this content, which is always implicit, always working inside the

transcendental apparatus, the form of sovereignty would not have

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been able to survive in modernity, and European modernity would

not have been able to achieve a hegemonic position on a world

scale. As ArifDirlik has noted, Eurocentrism distinguished itself

from other ethnocentrisms (such as Sinocentrism) and rose to global

prominence principally because it was supported by the powers

ofcapital.30

European modernity is inseparable from capitalism. This cen-

tral relationship between the form and the content of modern

sovereignty is fully articulated in the work of Adam Smith. Smith

begins with a theory ofindustry that poses the contradiction between

private enrichment and public interest. A first synthesis ofthese

two levels is confided to the ‘‘invisible hand’’ ofthe market: the

capitalist ‘‘intends only his own gain,’’ but he is ‘‘led by an invisible

hand to promote an end which was no part ofhis intention.’’31

This first synthesis, however, is precarious and fleeting. Political

economy, considered a branch ofthe science ofthe administrator

and legislator, must go much further in conceiving the synthesis.

It must understand the ‘‘invisible hand’’ ofthe market as a product

ofpolitical economy itself, which is thus directed toward construct-

ing the conditions ofthe autonomy ofthe market: ‘‘All systems

either ofpreference or ofrestraint, therefore, being thus completely

taken away, the obvious and simple system ofnatural liberty estab-

lishes itselfofits own accord.’’32 In this case, too, however, the

synthesis is not at all guaranteed. In effect, a third passage is necessary.

What is needed is for the state, which is minimal but effective, to

make the well-being ofprivate individuals coincide with the public

interest, reducing all social functions and laboring activities to one

measure ofvalue. That this state intervenes or not is secondary;

what matters is that it give content to the mediation ofinterests

and represent the axis ofrationality ofthat mediation. The political

transcendental ofthe modern state is defined as an economic tran-

scendental. Smith’s theory ofvalue was the soul and substance of

the concept ofthe modern sovereign state.

In Hegel, the synthesis ofthe theory ofmodern sovereignty

and the theory ofvalue produced by capitalist political economy

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87

is finally realized, just as in his work there is a perfect realization

ofthe consciousness ofthe union ofthe absolutist and republican

aspects—that is, the Hobbesian and Rousseauian aspects—ofthe

theory ofmodern sovereignty.

In relation to the spheres ofcivil law [
Privatrecht
] and private

welfare, the spheres of the family and civil society, the state

is on the one hand an
external
necessity and the higher power

to whose nature their laws and interests are subordinate and

on which they depend. But on the other hand, it is their

immanent
end, and its strength consists in the unity ofits

universal and ultimate end with the particular interest ofindi-

viduals, in the fact that they have
duties
towards the state to

the same extent as they also have rights.33