Theoria

Given what will no doubt lead to an explosion of interest in “police” and “security” in social and political theory circles with the publication of Foucault’s lectures, Security, Territory, Population, (add to that the recently published volume edited by Markus Dubber and Mariana Valverde, The New Police Science), it is interesting to see “the Hobbes of the twentieth century,” Carl Schmitt, discussing the relation between police and state in his book on Hobbes:

The starting point of Hobbes’ construction of the state is fear of the state of nature; the goal and terminus is security of the civil, the stately condition. In the state of nature everyone can slay everyone else; “everyone can do this great feat.” In respect to posing and carrying out this threat are all equal. As Hegel characterized it, “everyone is weak vis-a-vis everyone else.” To this extent “democracy” prevails in the state of nature. Everyone knows that everyone can slay everyone else. Everyone is therefore the foe [note: not enemy!] and the competitor of everyone else – the well-known bellum omnium contra omnes [war of all against all]. In the “civil,” stately condition all citizens are secure in their physical existence; there reign peace, security, and order. This is a familiar definition of police. Modern state and modern police [note: is there pre-modern police?] came into being simultaneously and the most vital institution of the security state is the police. It is astonishing that Hobbes appropriated as a characteristic of the condition of peace brought about by the police the formula of Francis Bacon of Verulam by speaking of man becoming god to man, homo homini deus, whereas in the state of nature man was wolf to man, homo homini lupus. The terror of the state of nature drives anguished individuals to come together; their fear rises to an extreme; a spark of reason (ratio) flashes, and suddenly there stands in front of them a new god. (The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol, 31)

A quick check of my memory suggests this is one of the few places Schmitt makes reference to police or polizeiwissenschaft – at least insofar as the translated works are concerned. Further, the suggestion that Hobbes’ theory of the state is, in a sense, a ‘police theory of the state’ has otherwise been overlooked in the secondary literature. Skinner, for instance, makes no reference to police when discussing Hobbes – and I take Skinner to be one of the foremost authorities on Hobbes at present. Schmitt’s interpretation of homo homini deus is quite interesting and idiosyncratic.

For an interesting summary/discussion of the three first lectures of Foucault’s STP (i.e., up to but not including the infamous “governmentality” lecture), see here.