On October 13, Charles S. Maier, a professor of History at Harvard University and a visiting professor at LUISS this semester, held a special presentation of his latest book: Leviathan 2.0. Accompanied by professors Leonardo Morlino, Sergio Fabbrini, Sebastiano Maffettone and Giovanni Orsina, Maier explained why he had decided to tackle a central concept of the history of political philosophy, the Leviathan, which was the mythological figure that Thomas Hobbes used in 1651 to describe his vision of the authoritarian state.
"It was an exercise in periodization," says Maier. "I was asked to contribute an article on global history focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Many historians tend to base this era on the French or the American Revolution, while my intent was to show how both of them are part of the dissolution of Leviathan 1.0, the precursor to Leviathan 2.0, which constituted a new form of authoritarianism that was part nineteenth century and part twentieth century."
At the heart of the book, then, lies the evolution of Western statehood from colonialism until the two World Wars, when states discovered the essential elements of coercive power and legal order. "Hobbes’s Leviathan 1.0 was a state that needed sovereignty and absolutism in order to overcome the power of religion. Leviathan 2.0, on the other hand, emerged during a period of technological transformation in which the importance of territorial control replaced sovereignty."
One of the fundamental themes in Maier’s work is that of territorial control: " Leviathan 2.0 is about the defeat of tribes and communities, or of those who did not have territorial power. The modern state exerts control through the clear representation of territories with exact borders, of the people who belong to these territories, and the powers exerted within and outside of those borders." The totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century are undoubtedly some of the most perverse and extreme manifestations of this redefinition of the state as a unit of control and self-defense, in which "power is exercised through grandiose proclamations about what the state should or should not do."
In conclusion, the book makes reference to recent political and economic crises that have taken place since the Seventies and the hypothesis that a Leviathan 3.0 is being created. "It is a somewhat provocative way of understanding several contemporary utopias that are confronted with the great and ambiguous powers of popular movements. The idea of democracy is being redefined according to the power and appeal that these amazing bodies exert internationally, but the problem is that it does not always work this way." Through an analysis of history and critical thought on the political ethics of the last two centuries, the book outlines the starting point for a reflection on the future: "a reflection which, in looking back, tells us where we should go; or rather, where we should not go."