Post For Probe: The Mad Monarch

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ShinyBirdTeeth: sparkle sparkle sparkle

buglord posted:

do any of these books talk about when it�s okay to violently overthrow a ruler because I got you in my sights OP

Some of 'em, yeah, and it is a big controversy, because of what we'd now call the monopoly on violence.

Most of the philosophers i've cited have more complicated views than you can fit into a probation, but they are well aware of both republicanism and monarchy and I don't think any of them would completely dismiss the value of parliamentary bodies. When they approve of monarchy and when they stump for absolutism, they often seem to be worried about civil war and the disintegration of society in the absence of a strong central body. Or, in the case of Kant, they are republicans at heart who occasionally say a nice thing about a prince they like (in his case Frederick the Great).

I'd say there's four categories that I've used. First, some folks just mentioned kings or whatever so I quoted them, nothing here to discuss. Second, some people are seriously concerned with the stability of the state and view the king's authority as the final line in the sand. Third, some have ambitions for social reform and/or think the nobility (and clergy) are parasitic, backward, shitheads so they want monarchs to remake their kingdoms. Fourth, there are honest to god crown-and-gown reactionaries like Bismarck or Metternich who are deeply, deeply invested in the whole nobility and monarchy social order.

I. Hobbes and Civil War

The early modern and Enlightenment periods are when absolutism and divine right are developed, and those doctrines are meant to secure social order and the public peace. From a raw power perspective, monarchs started to get a lot richer relative to their nobility and started to rely more on professional bureaucracies to manage their dominions, so it was very tempting to make a grab for unrestrained authority. From a technocratic perspective, people started to figure out economics and regulation beyond "steal from peasants" and they wanted to carry out infrastructure or state-building projects. And from a legal/moral perspective, monarchs had taken a lot more control of the judiciary so that say a Duke wouldn't be holding his own court (and hence always ruling in his own favor against the locals).

Hobbes' own position on the issue is muddy because he explicitly says you can't rebel, but some passages about large forces not being compelled to surrender suggests the contrary. At the time people accused him of saying "You can't rebel...unless you can get away with it." He still goes to bat for the sovereign though, because he's witnessed the English Civil War and all the chaos on the continent. The idea is that if we allow people to take up arms against the authorities, then we'll simply plunge into more violence and more chaos. Dividing the final authority, he thinks, is just an invitation to disaster because then you'd have two parties in the nation each of which with a supposed right to coerce the other into obedience.

Pufendorf and Grotius I think bend more toward resistance while still underlining the obligation to obey. In other words, you have a right to defend your life and if it really comes down to it you could stop a tyrant from killing you, but for all ordinary purposes no you need to obey the law.

For all of these people civil war motivated by religious enmity is right there. They are living through things like the 30 years war and they are not keen to see that legitimated. Their road out is to offer a new defense of the state as founded in the need for safety and the unitary control of violent means. The state alone can kill, because this is what it takes to make society safe. To look at the 30 years war and say, "Sure, rebel whenever you think the king is bad" would be a pretty wild stance.

II. Autocratic Reformers

In the Enlightenment all the way into the early 19th century, a lot of people looked back on the complexity and decentralization of the Empire as a huge embarrassment. A 'proper' state would centralize power and then standardize law, then push out a plan for modernization. That the Holy Roman Empire didn't do any of those things is then supposedly a mark of shame that the German successor states in Prussia and Austria must correct. That really speaks to the reason some people stumped for absolutism: they wanted major social and political change that required a vast amount of concentrated power.

Voltaire, of all people, kept up a correspondence with several absolute monarchs and isn't shy about his intent. He hopes that a rationally-guided central authority will be able to institute much needed reforms and, hopefully, undermine the forces of superstition including but not limited to priests, nobles, and old timey philosophers. He's very much a modernist in the sense that he wants us to take an active role in redesigning the public sphere to be more rational, more productive, and more just. So he's looking to hard-rear end monarchs as the source of power that is able to push aside the forces of the old world. The current king of Saudi Arabia is clearly trying to do this right now and, arguably, some of the populist reformer/dictators of Eastern Europe claim to be doing this.

Autocratic reform is always bizarre, because on the one hand it has a clear technological/moral bent to it and at the same time it is the most extreme manifestation of extra-legal privilege and almost superstitious obedience to a charismatic leader. Russian reformers expect people like Peter or Catherine to tear up the 'backwardness' of their country root and branch. Naturally, many of these reformers think they or people like them should be the wise ones whispering in the monarch's ear...

Because of their internal tension, you can sort of spin their arguments out against their methods. If you want a more rational and well-ordered society, then you probably don't want a tyrant, etc.

III. Pomp and Circumstance

For traditionalists, the thought of revolt against the king is evil. Evil because a rebuke against the natural social order. Evil because the ordinary people harming their betters. Evil because contrary to god's will. All that stuff.

There are in all ages people who are genuinely invested in the sacred character of social hierarchy and they consider any attempt to alter that hierarchy or to call it into question as an act of treason not unlike Satan's rebellion against god. Dante puts Brutus in the grip of Satan for killing Caeser. Some of these people clearly just get off on dominating others and consider freedom to consist in the untrammeled right to abuse one's subordinates. Some of them have spooky beliefs about the nobility and their calling. Some of them are just thoughtless assholes.

Whatever their peculiar motivations, these people do not accept any right to rebel against the king although they often rebel against the king when he challenges their privileges. In that case though, the point is to restore the great chain of being. If someone is really stupid or bad, then killing them and putting a better person on the throne is acceptable, but never say so in public. I think it is Livy who drily relates the death of one of the early kings. He basically says, "Some people say he was taken up into heaven and other people say the nobles drowned him in a lake, then lied about it. One of those is true." I'm very cynical about this last category, because whenever I hear someone proclaiming the special rights of the better sort of people I can't help but see the pettiness and self-deception lurking under the surface.

IV. Now

So what happened to these people? The worries raised by Hobbes, Pufendorf, Grotius, et al never went away: They turned into the modern Rechtstaat idea - i.e. the 'State of Rights' or a state that is legitimate because it protects rights. People are still super worried about the corrosion of social order and the prospect of civil violence, so folks bend over backward to defend the legitimacy of the state. However, that legitimacy now tends to come with some preconditions (and as I mentioned those carve outs were already present to some degree even in the age of absolutism). The so-called Responsibility to Protect pushes it even further to say that a state's international legitimacy is also dependent on the states ability to provide basic protection to the public. I think Hobbes would look at Libya and say that's why you don't make moral carve outs and throw a rock at the R2P people. But those people could point to Stalin and say, but that's why you do and throw a little stone of their own.

I gave some examples, but I think centralizing reformers are still alive and well. They tend not to look for a king-leader though, because most of those would be kings of today pitch themselves to the great mass rather than to technocrats. Honestly, that may just be because in the West technocrats are the powers-that-be so they don't need a champion willing to break all the rules. At various times Erdogan, Putin, and similar have argued they need vast, nearly unlimited power to bust up the old idiocy and make way for the future. I suppose that counts and I dont' think those guys recognize a right to rebel.

The crown-and-gown folks are the most interesting to me. There are still monarchies and aristocracies and some people still treat them as sacred, but I don't think that's as common as it used to be. I figure, at least in the US, we've transferred a lot of that 'majesty' from kings to rich people. In ye olde days, one function of the monarchy/court was to represent the nation in the sense of showing the nation what it was like and what the best form of life was. Those representational functions have passed to presidents and to very wealthy people.