Prospettive del potere. Anamorfosi del Leviatano in Hobbes e nel Libro di Giobbe

Abstract

The article starts from the analysis of the title page of T. Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) with the aim to stressing its congruence not only with the contents of the book, but also and more generally with the main trend of modern thought based on the problem of knowledge. The icon of the Leviathan, meant as a symbol of political power, is made possible by the optical distance of its observer, which, in order to recognize it, has to posit himself at the proper distance and interpret its appearences correctly. The supreme power does not correspond any more to a theological, ontological, cosmic order bestowed from above, and becomes the political expression of a gnoseological configuration, of man's loneliness in interpreting a reality no more ordered in itself. The relationship of these developments of the Leviathanic symbol with their Biblical sources seems to be loose, but on the contrary its main source, the Book of Job, offers us a penetrating reflection on this regard. The Leviathan that seals the conclusion of the book appears to be incongruous with its central meditation on sorrow and evil, but, as documented by philology, it is the reminiscence of the old funerary and sacrificial aspects of the Semitic gods from which Yahweh derives. Thus the text shows to be secretly aware of the historical origins of the Biblical God. The same God answering Job reveals his merciful face passing through a long religious evolution closely connected with vengeful and violent interpretations of divinity. The Biblical meaning therefore goes beyond Hobbes's use of the Leviathanic symbol, but anticipates its realism, giving us an unexpected interpretative tool of the present globalized world, where the Leviathan is no more the modern State, but a network of power relations extended to the whole planet. Is not the historical theology of the Book of Job suggesting that this very undifferentiated manifestation of power can become the instrument of a spiritual power belonging to a different order?