17 - Philosophical kingship and enlightened despotism

Summary

The idea of the philosopher king

The notion of the philosopher king comes from Plato’s Republic. After the Renaissance, Plato’s influence declined, and none of the authors writing about the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the previous volume of the Cambridge History of Political Thought found it necessary to mention this notion at all. But Hobbes concluded the second part of Leviathan (1651), in a characteristically sardonic passage, by placing the concept at the very heart of his political philosophy:

[C]onsidering how different this doctrine is, from the practice of the greatest part of the world,… and how much depth of moral philosophy is required, in them that have the administration of the sovereign power; I am at the point of believing this my labour, as useless, as the commonwealth of Plato; for he also is of opinion that it is impossible for the disorders of state, and change of government by civil war, ever to be taken away, till sovereigns become philosophers. But when I consider again, that the science of natural justice, is the only science necessary for sovereigns, and their principal ministers; and that they need not to be charged with the sciences mathematical, (as by Plato they are,)…; and that neither Plato, nor any other philosopher hitherto, hath put into order and sufficiently, or probably proved all the theorems of moral doctrine, that men may learn thereby, both how to govern, and how to obey; I recover some hope, that one time or other, this writing of mine, may fall into the hands of a sovereign, who will consider it himself, (for it is short, and I think clear,) without the help of any interested, or envious interpreter; and by the exercise of entire sovereignty, in protecting the public teaching of it, convert this truth of speculation, into the utility of practice.

(Hobbes 1991, ch. 31, p. 254)