La grande fracture de la politique moderne sur le pouvoir: Hobbes et la raison d’Etat

Abstract

Modern political thought is crossed by a fundamental divide. This divide opposes the theorists of sovereignty since Bodin, on one side, and the current of conceptions about the reason of state since Botero, on the other. The two currents were born practically at the same time, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. On the side of the thinkers on sovereignty, it is a question of thinking about political autonomy in relation to all other orders of society (religion, economy, various legal bodies, police, public order, etc.). Here the principal question concerns the formation and exercise of political will and its relation to the citizens. On the side of the thinkers on the reason of state, it is no longer political autonomy which is at the centre of reflection, but the relationship between politics and religion. On the other side, the political problem is centred on the question of the preservation of the state (more than the conditions of its acquisition or its growth) and the rules of government practice likely to lead to it. These are not only different but divergent visions of politics and the exercise of power, the implications of which are felt even in contemporary democracies.