Facing up to Leviathan
2. No one knows what a body politic can do

By comparing the frontispiece of Leviathan with the royal virtues of the Eikon basilikè, we propose a re-reading of the emblematic of sovereign power, which is as valuable for what it hides as for what it shows. We then evoke the many debates (attributions, interpretations, traditions) that the work has provoked in art history, notably from Horst Bredekamp's investigation, but also in political philosophy, since Carlo Ginzburg's essay defining "the Leviathan, an artificial creation, [which] stands up to those who created it by their pact - those of whom it is made - as an object that fills with fear". What is this fear made of? Of sacred terror, of reverence, of obedience? What if the figure of the sacred king is an optical illusion? These questions force us to redefine the very notion of incorporation.

Contents

• Writing under the rose: Spinoza's wax seal
• The enigmatic effect of the emblem: ellipsis or brachyology?
• Si non caste, tamen caute : praise for hurtful reading, to "remove the petals and prune the leaves, in order to clear the thorns" (Jean-Claude Milner, Le sage trompeur. Libres raisonnements sur Spinoza et les Juifs, Lagrasse, 2013)
• Back to Hobbes, facing the image: Corpus Homo Civis
• "From the fact that, nowadays, the word Libertas is written in capital letters on the towers of the city of Lucca, no one can for all that conclude that a particular person enjoys more liberty there or is more dispensed from serving the State, than he is at Constantinople"(Leviathan)
• In contrast, the royal virtues inEikon basilikè, triumph in defeat
• The frontispiece of Leviathan is "a representation of sovereign power that [...] visibly absorbs rather than defies the revolutionary changes that have just taken place" (Quentin Skinner)
• What the image shows, what it hides: the mortal god of representation, the soul or head of the Republic
• The "easy part" of emblematic reading: the two parts of the triptych of emblematic panels
• In the upper part, "fear dances"(Job): the colossus appears
• Leviathan as sea monster and the maritime empire of the Comonwealth : the floating figure (Reinhardt Brandt)
• The intoxication of sharpness, the vertigo of accuracy: the "Leviathan brothers" and the posthumous descendants of engraving
• Uncertainty of attribution, magical power of the proper name: "Given the Leviathan's delicacy, the alternative of attributing it to a Parisian artist, Abraham Bosse, takes on particular importance", Horst Bredekamp, Stratégies visuelles de Thomas Hobbes. Le Leviathan, archetype of the modern state, Paris, 2003)
• The Egerton Manuscript in the British Library and the drawn prototype of the engraving: in both cases, see the king
• "Leviathan, an artificial creation, stands before those who created him by their pact - those of whom he is made - as an object that fills with awe" (Carlo Ginzburg, Peur révérence terreur. Four Essays in Political Iconography, Dijon, 2013)
• After the plague "no one was restrained either by the fear of god or by human laws": Hobbes translates Thucydides
• Sacred terror and obedience: Shock and Awe
• If "mutual fear" is the cement of the state, how do we designate the enemy?
• Perspective glasses, magnifying glasses or telescopes? The politics of distance and rapprochement (Noël Malcom)
• Making experimental reasoning visible: the political stakes of a scientific controversy (Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the air pump. Hobbes et Boyle entre science et politique, Paris, 1993)
• Is the ideal king an optical illusion?
• And what would happen if this body were decapitated? When the general loses his head, "the crowd pulverizes like a Bologna flask whose point has been cut off" (Freud, Crowd Psychology and Ego Analysis)