The Domestic Analogy Revisited: Hobbes on International Order

This Essay reexamines Thomas Hobbes's understanding of international order. Hobbes defended the establishment of an all-powerful sovereign as the solution to interpersonal conflict, and he advanced an analogy between persons and states. Extending this "domestic analogy," theorists following Hobbes have supposed that a global sovereign would prove the solution to interstate conflict. Yet Hobbes himself never proposed a global sovereign, which has led some scholars to diagnose an apparent inconsistency in his philosophy. This Essay seeks to resolve that inconsistency, drawing on Hobbes's theory of the passions and his hope for radical political transformation. Hobbes believed that the solution to international disorder was not analogous but rather identical to the solution to domestic strife: both would be overcome through the establishment of a "well-ordered commonwealth." Hobbes argued that a state capable of securing peace within its borders was unlikely to make aggressive war outside them. The radical transformation he envisaged in domestic politics would thus in itself mitigate and perhaps even overcome international conflict. This "realist-utopian" position aligns Hobbes more closely with later social-contract theorists, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and John Rawls. It also invites a reconsideration of the foundational principles of international law, with implications for contemporary problems from humanitarian intervention to economic integration. Hobbes's realist-utopianism provides a needed corrective not only to the narrowly defined realism that has long claimed his imprimatur, but also to realism's rivals, which unwittingly share its premises. AUTHOR. Associate Professor, Yale Law School. For comments and encouragement across various drafts, I am especially grateful to Richard Tuck, under whose direction this project began, and also to Stefan Eich, Oona Hathaway, Madhav Khosla, David Kim, Amnon Lev, Odette Lienau, Itamar Mann, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Jedediah Purdy, Aziz Rana, Scott Shapiro, and Peer Zumbansen. The Essay was much improved by the insights and criticism of Daniela Cammack, the wonderful research assistance of Cory Adkins and Georgios Dimitropoulos, and the thoughtful suggestions of the editors of the Yale Law journal.