Hobbes denies war any role in founding sovereignty

Evidence

Hobbes turns war, the fact of war and the relationship of force that is actually manifested in the battle, into something that has nothing to do with the constitution of sovereignty. The establishment of sovereignty has nothing to do with war. Basically, Hobbes’s discourse is a certain “no” to war. It is not really war that gives birth to States, and it is not really war that is transcribed in relations of sovereignty or that reproduces within the civil power—and its inequalities—the earlier dissymmetries in the relationship of force that were revealed by the very fact of the battle itself. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 113

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the foundational move Foucault reads in Hobbes: sovereignty is constituted by contract, not by the outcome of battle.
• XREF: connects to: Hobbes’s social contract theory suppressed a discourse of permanent civil war — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 115; Hobbes’s theory aimed to eliminate the problem of conquest from politics — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 114

Related

• Hobbes’s social contract theory suppressed a discourse of permanent civil war (similarity 0.86)
• The hobbesian state of nature is permanent diplomatic representation, not actual war (similarity 0.85)
• War is the permanent underpinning of social institutions; this is Hobbes’s great adversary. (similarity 0.83)
• Hobbes’s theory aimed to eliminate the problem of conquest from politics (similarity 0.82)
• War drives the regular mechanisms of power beneath the law (similarity 0.80)
• Conquest founds legitimate sovereignty because the defeated prefer life to death (similarity 0.80)
• Foucault proposed war as the model for understanding political power (similarity 0.79)
• Only the radical will to live founds sovereignty, regardless of will’s form (similarity 0.78)
• Civil society may be structured by perpetual war between forces (similarity 0.78)