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The Spectacle of the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes, Guy Debord and Walter Benjamin on Representation and its Misuses

Dept. of Political Science, San Francisco State University

In this paper, I compare Thomas Hobbes’ notion of demonology with contemporary notions of "the spectacle", an idea articulated by Guy Debord and embellished (albeit in a somewhat different way and with a different name) by Walter Benjamin. I note that despite the three centuries that separate these authors (and despite Hobbes’ apparent enthusiasm for the spectacle itself as displayed in the frontispiece to Leviathan), Hobbes’ notion of demonology very much echoes these later thinkers–understandings. For Hobbes’ demonology is the practice of taking things that are not for things that are, a confusion between representations and reality. The spectacle functions in much the same way, although in the hands of Debord and Benjamin it takes its particular form as a production of capitalism. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes offers these later thinkers a useful distinction between his notions of idolatry and worship, a distinction that helps (particularly in Debord's case) avoid a choice between a lost and true "reality" and the miasma of the spectacle itself. For Hobbes, idolatry occurs when a graven image is taken to actually be God. This is a sin because it replaces God with a representation. In worship, the worshipper knows that the idol is just that, a representation with no truth of its own. This insight, I argue, arms Hobbes against the demonologists that he attacks in his own lifetime. With worship, Hobbes does not need to know "the truth" but can accept representation for what it is. At the same time, he is armed by this realization against the lies of the demonologists because he has the ability to recognize and expose representation as such. This is an insight that I argue helps explain, buttress and flesh out the ideas of Debord and Benjamin, insofar as both of these authors wish to "fight the spectacle on its own terms", that is to say to use image against image and figure against figure.

Law, Culture and the Humanities, Vol. 2, No. 1, 67-90 (2006)
DOI: 10.1191/1743872106lw004oa


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