SOVEREIGNTY AND BIOPOLITICS IN HOBBES’ LEVIATHAN

Lorenzo Bernini

Introduction: Thomas Hobbes is universally considered the founder of Western

modern political philosophy both because of his justification of State sovereignty by social

contract and his individualistic ontology. In the most common interpretation of his theory,

individuals create the State as an artificial person, by an act of their will led by reason. Yet,

at a closer and deeper reading of Leviathan, one may understand Hobbes’ thought, and

consequently the modernity he is supposed to found, in a different way. My paper will try

to demonstrate that in Leviathan sovereignty is associated to biopolitics: individuals create

the State via the social contract, but at the same time the State moulds human beings as

individuals through an extensive use of instruction, education and discipline. Thus not only

the State, but also the individual is an artificial person, and individualistic ontology is not

only the premise but also the result of modern State power.

In order to demonstrate my claim, in my paper I will try to show how Foucault’s

interpretation of Hobbes’ theory in “Society Must Be Defended” is led by a misreading.

Foucault opposes his concept of biopolitics to Hobbes’ concept of sovereignty, while both

in De cive and in Leviathan we can find a profound awareness that sovereignty is tied to

what Foucault calls biopolitics in a fundamental dialectical relationship. Today some

authors (for example Michel Hardt and Toni Negri) use Foucault’s concept of “biopolitics”

and its synonym “governmentality” to name the political power in post-modernity or in the

globalization era (for example of the power of the “Empire”). Sometimes the category of

“sovereignty” is too easily dismissed as a residue of the past. On the contrary an attentive

reading of Leviathan may show that postmodernity is involved in modernity more than one

may think, and that we may still study Hobbes not only for understanding our past, but also

for illuminating our present. In a sort of hermeneutic chiasmus, understanding the first

1
crisis of sovereignty (its upspring in modernity) may help us to understand its present crisis

(its re-definition in globalisation and postmodernity).

1. Sovereignty and biopolitics in Foucault’s thought: Foucault introduces the

concept of biopolitics in his book The Will to Knowledge (1976) and in his courses at the

Collège de France “Society Must Be Defended” (1975-1976), Security, Territory,

Population (1977-1978) and The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-1979). Previously, in his

courses Psychiatric Power (1973-1974) and Abnormal (1974-1975), and especially in his

book Discipline and Punish (1975) he introduced the concept of disciplinary power. These

new categories are used by the French philosopher in order to challenge the modern-

classic conception of State power that Foucault intends as still alive in his

contemporaneity. In Foucault’s opinion, despite their differences, both liberalism and

socialism (even in the freudomarxist theory of sexual revolution) conceive power as a

negative force that sets limits to human freedom, acting different forms of repression. On

the contrary, disciplinary and biopolitical powers have a positive action: they do not

repress but “empower” individuals and populations as determined by the needs of biology

and economy. They mould bodies and characters, they create ways of life, and they put in

form freedoms and desires. Disciplines act on single human beings through education and

training and take out from them working, social and military competences: they constitute

a microphysical «anatomo-politics of the human body». Biopowers act on masses and

regulate biological processes in order to guarantee security, health and and wealth: they

establish a macrophysical «biopolitics of the human race». Both disciplines and biopowers

do not limit, but on the contrary increase and multiply (certain) human abilities and forces

in order to produce docile bodies, obedient citizens, normal individuals, healthy

populations, save and rich societies.

2
 In Discipline and Power, “Society Must Be Defended” and The Will to Knowledge,

Foucault follows a current opinion and considers Hobbes the founder of Western modern

political philosophy, and thus of the modern conception of power as repression. For

Foucault in Hobbes’ theory of sovereignty the power of the State on its subjects follows at

the same time a juridical and a commercial logic: the individuals exchange their natural

right to everything with security, and the sovereign exercises power over them essentially

in two ways: 1) throught law, a limitation of the subjects’ freedom that becomes violence

when they disobey the sovereign’s will, 2) throught withdrawal of money (taxes) and forces

(army) necessary to guarantee social security and defence from another State. In the

classical theory of sovereignty the extreme manifestation of the sovereign’s power over his

subjects is the “right of life and death”: when necessary, the sovereign can require from his

subjects the sacrifice of their life in war in order to guarantee the safety of the State, can

condemn them to death when a heavy crime occurs and considers them not as subjects

but as enemies of the State when they commit the heaviest crime – that is lese-majesty1.

To the negative action of Hobbes’s sovereign over the life of his subjects Foucault

opposes the biopolitics’ positive action over the life of the population:

It seems to me that one of the basis phenomena of the nineteenth century was what may be called

power’s hold over life. What I mean is the acquisition of power over man insofar as man is a living

being, that the biological came under State control, that there was at least a certain tendency that

leads to what might be termed State control of the biological. […] Sovereign power’s effect on life is

exercised only when the sovereign can kill. The very essence of the right of life and death is actually

the right to kill: it is at the moment when the sovereign can kill that he exercises his right over life. It

is essentially the right of the sword. […] It is the right to take life or let live.

1
«The betraying of the strengths, or revealing of the secrets of the commonwealth to an enemy; also all
attempts upon the representative of the commonwealth, be it a monarch, or an assembly; and all
endeavours by word, or deed, to diminish the authority of the same, either in the present time, or in
succession: which crimes the Latins understand by crimina lesae majestatitis, and consist in design, or act,
contrary to a fundamental law» (Leviathan XXVII. 37; cfr. De cive, XIV. 20).

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 And I think that one of the greatest transformations political right underwent in the nineteenth century

was precisely that, I wouldn’t say exactly that sovereignty’s old right – to take life or let live – was

replaced, but it came to be complemented by a new right which does not erase the old right but

which does penetrate it, permeate it. This is the right, or rather precisely the opposite right. It is the

power to “make” live and “let” die. The right of sovereignty was the right to take life or let live. And

then this new right is established: the right to make live and to let die. [“Society Must Be Defended”,

17 March 1976, pp. 239-241]

In Foucault’s opinion, on the level of technologies of power (and not of political

theories), disciplines complements sovereignty only in the course of the eighteenth

century, and biopolitics from the nineteenth century. The French philosopher

acknowledges that already in the seventeenth century philosophers and jurists claimed

that individuals enter into the social contract and constitute the sovereign in order to

protect their lives: life is thus the foundation of the sovereign’s right of life and death, but

eactly for that, as foundament of the contract, life remains outside the contract. As a

consequence, the «juridical model of sovereignty» is «not able to provide a concrete

analysis of the multiplicity of power relations» and of modern power’s hold over human life:

thus in “Society must be defended” Foucault invites his public to «say farewell to the

theory of sovereignty» [“Society Must Be Defended”, 21 January 1976, p. 243], and in The

Will to Knowledge and in interviews about these times he suggests that we need «to cut

off the king’s head in political theory», that is to develop «a political philosophy that isn’t

erected around the problem of sovereignty, nor therefore around the problem of law and

prohibition» [Power/Knowledge, p. 121].

In Security, Territory, Population (1977-1978) and The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-

1979) the relationship between sovereignty and biopolitics becomes more complex than it

is in “Society must be defended” and The will to Knowledge, but in general, according to

Foucault, his project of grasping «the material agency of subjugation insofar as it

4
constitutes subjects» is «precisely the opposite of what Hobbes was trying to do in

Leviathan» [“Society Must Be Defended”, 14 January 1976, p. 28]. Even in the late

seventies, according to Foucault for comprehending how biopolitics works one has to

study the techniques of government elaborated in the literature on the Reason of State

and of Polizeiwissenschaft, and not the philosophical-juridical theories of sovereignty.

Contractualism is for him the theory that modern State has used to legitimate his power, to

make it accept to the will of his subjects by hiding its concrete biopolitical action.

According to Foucault, in contractualism, and especially in Hobbes, the theory of

sovereignty establishes a «subject-to-subject cycle», showing «how a subject –

understood as meaning an individual who is naturally endowed (or endowed by nature)

with rights, capabilities, and so on – can and must become a subject, this time in the

sense of an element that is subjectified in a power relationship» [“Society Must Be

Defended”, 21 January 1976, p. 43]. In this cycle, the will of the individuals, and not their

biological life is involved: the social contract is a pact of submission of individual wills to

the will of the sovereign. But if we read Hobbes’ political works with more attention, we

discover that since the beginning in the modern theory of sovereignty the juridical tools of

sovereignty and the material interventions of biopolitics are strictly related. In Hobbes,

what Foucault calls biopolitics is the secret fundament of the State. Despite Foucault’s

opinion, in Leviathan the sovereign must take into serious account human life both in the

microphysical and in the macrophysical dimensions. Besides the sovereign’s action over

life is not only repressive but also productive: the sovereign has to satisfy and modify

human biological needs in order to create those docile subjects who submits their will to

his. He has to product those conflictual and scary individuals that are necessary in order to

justify his power.

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 2. The Mortal God and its pastoral power: Biopolitical metaphors go across

Leviathan from the very beginning. In the Introduction the State is presented as an

«artificial man» intended for the protection of the natural one:

Sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates, and

other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened

to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves,

that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members, are the

strenght; salus populi (the people’s safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it

to know, are suggested onto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will;

concord, health; sedition, sickness, and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which

the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the let

us make man, pronounced by God in the creation [Leviathan, Introduction].

From chapter XXIV (Of the Nutrition, and Procreation of a commonwealth) we

apprehend as well that «THE NUTRITION of a commonwealth consisteth, in the plenty, and

distribution of materials conducing to life» [Leviathan, XXIV. 1], that money is «the blood of

a commonwealth» and that «plantations or colonies» are its «procreation, or children»

[Leviathan, XXIV. 11].

In chapter XVII (Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Commonwealth) the

relationship between the sovereign and his subjects goes upside down: if the pact among

individuals is the godlike performative speech act that creates Leviathan, at the same time

Leviathan is «that Mortal God, to which we owe under the Immortal God our peace and

defence» [Leviathan, XVII. 13]. From chapter XXX (On the Office of the Sovereign

representative) we realize that the action of this Mortal God on his subject is not only

negative (prohibition, withdrawal and violence), but also positive: if the Immortal God

creates mankind, The Mortal one has to guarantee his subjects to reach the safety, health,

6
welfare and even the happiness that the Immortal God has made possible for mankind on

earth and even further. Thus the sovereign’s right to life and death is not only the right to

kill – as Foucault says –, but also the right to make live, to intensify the biological life of his

population in this word and to ensure the eternal life of his subjects in the other life. In

Hobbes sovereignty and biopolitics are tied by a deep solidarity: the juridical dimension is

rooted in the biological dimension much more than Foucault recognises.

«Pastoral power» is another name by which Foucault designates the biopolitical

functions of the State, already in The Will to Knowledge and more specifically in Security,

Territory, Population. With this concept, as Max Weber, Foucault points out the complexity

of the relationship between modernization and religion. In modern State secularisation of

purposes (from salvation of the soul to security and health of the body) has gone together

with the spread of means typical of the medieval Catholic Church. By police,

administrations and welfare the State governs its population as the good shepherd

governs the flock of the faithful: taking care of each individual one by one, bringing him up

singularly, providing to satisfy his natural needs in order to guarantee his good. The

character of biopolitics is altruistic: according to Foucault, if the sovereign may ask to his

subjects the sacrifice of their life for his own security, the motto of biopolitics is “Society

must be defended”: the State has to provide to security and welfare of his

subjects/citizens. The pastoral functions of the sovereign are exactly what shows the

presence of a biopolitical dimension in Hobbes’ theory of sovereignty, mixed with the

theological-political dimension of a political theory of the XVII century.

On this point, in Leviathan, chapter XXX is crucial. Due to the horizontal structure of

the pact (the pact is made by each individual with each other individual, and not by the

people alltogether and the sovereign), the sovereign has no duty towards his subjects.

7
They have to accept all his decisions as just laws, whatever he decides2. Nevertheless he

has some duties towards God, and only God will judge him after his death. These duties

can be easily summed up in a formula:

The OFFICE of the sovereign, (be it a monarch or an assembly,) consisteth in the end, for which he

was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people, to which he

is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the author of the law, and to

none but him. [Leviathan, XXX. 1]

From these words we may think that in Leviathan a sort of basic-biopolitics is at

work, only regarding the biological survival of the population, the preservation of the life of

the larger number of the individuals of the community. On the contrary Hobbes extend the

care of the State over its population to the development of life, to its complete fulfilment.

Straightaway he specifies:

But the safety here, is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which

every man by lawful industry, without danger, or hurt to the commonwealth, shall acquire to himself.

[Leviathan, XXX. 1]

The Mortal God has the duty to let human life free to develop and increase. For this

reason he has to limit his juridical power: laws must not be excessive, because his subject

have to be free to research their welfare, affluence and happiness. The sovereign has the

duty to make good law, and a law is good when it is not superfluous but on the contrary

necessary for the good of the people, and when it is clear, easily comprehensible by every

subject:

2
«By a good law, I mean not a just law: for no law can be unjust. The law is made by the sovereign power,
and all that is done by such power, is warranted, and owned by every one of the people, and that which
every man will have so, no man can say is unjust. It is in the laws of the commonwealth, as in the laws of
gaming: whatsoever the gamesters all agree on, is in justice to none of them» [Leviathan, XXX. 20].

8
 To the care of the sovereign, belongeth the making of good laws. But what is a good law? […] A

good law is that, which is needful, for the good of the people, and withal perspicuous. [Leviathan,

XXX.20]

Similar statements were already present in chapter XIII of De cive (Concerning the

duties of them who bear Rule). Here Hobbes claims that «all the duties of Rulers are

contained» in the sentence «The safety of the people is the supreme Law» [De cive,

XIII.2]. He also explains what he means by “safety” and by “people” in this sentence:

But by safety must be understood, not the sole preservation of life in what condition so ever, but in

order to its happiness. For to this end did men freely assemble themselves, and institute a

government, that they might, as much as their human condition would afford, live delightfully. […]

They who have acquired Dominion by arms, doe all desire that their subjects may be strong in body

and mind, that they may serve them the better; wherefore if they should not endeavour to provide

them, not only with such things whereby they may live, but also with such whereby they may grow

strong and lusty, they would act against their own scope and end. [De cive, XIII.4]

By the people in this place we understand, not one civil Person, namely the City it selfe which

governs, but the multitude of subjects which are governed. [De cive, XIII.3]

Saying that the sovereign has to operate for the happiness of the multitude of his

subjects, Hobbes means that he has to take care of the whole of the people taking care of

each single subject. In fact in Hobbes’ doctrine “multitude” is the name of the multiplicity of

individuals before they become a unique people by the social pact. The multitude cannot

be considered a unity, but is a sum of individuals one by one. And one by one, as a good

shepherd, the sovereign and his ministers have to take care of them.

9
 For example the State has to provide every subject to be productive, preventing

idleness and forcing everyone to work and to contribute to the general wealth [Leviathan

XXX.19], but when someone by accident becomes unable to maintain himself with his

work, the State has to provide assistance for him3. Above all the State has to guarantee

education and instruction of his subject. From the first part of Leviathan (Of Man), man is

described as endowed with the possibility to modify his nature, to discipline it with reason

and speech. In the first three chapters Hobbes describes sense (Leviathan I), imagination,

memory, understanding (Leviathan II), remembrance and prudence (Leviathan III) as

faculties that are in common to man and beast. And then he introduces chapter IV with

these words:

Those other faculties of which I shall speak by and by, and which seem proper to man only

[understanding, reason, curiosity, religion, passion for recognition], are acquired, and increased by

study and industry, and of most men learned by instruction, and discipline, and proceed all from the

invention of words, and speech. For besides sense, and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind

of man has no other motion, thought by the help of speech, and method, the same faculties may be

improved to such a height, as to distinguish men from all other living creatures [Leviathan II. 11].

Hobbes strictly believes in the performative power of words. By means of words the

State is created by the individuals, but by means of words even the State moulds the will

of its subjects. One of the duties of the sovereign is in fact «the instruction of the people»

which «dependeth wholly, on the right teaching of youth in the universities» [Leviathan,

XXX. 14]. For Hobbes «the right teaching» is of course the teaching of his theory: the

subjects must apprehend that they are those passionate selfish and competitive

3
«And whereas many men, by accident inevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour;
they ought not to be left to the charity of private persons; but to be provided for, (as forth as the necessities
of nature require,) by the laws of the commonwealth. For as it is uncharitableness in any man, to neglect the
impotent; so it is in the sovereign of a commonwealth, to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain
charity» [Leviathan, XXX. 18].

10
individuals who needs to submit their will to the will of the sovereign in order to gain

security and wealth. Besides, in Leviathan it is not sufficient that the people obey the

sovereign’s laws: people have to be convinced of the necessity to obey laws by the

doctrine of natural laws. To whom may object that «common people are not of capacity

enough to be made to understand them» Hobbes replies that «The common people’s

mind, unless they be tainted with dependence on the potent, or scribbled over with

opinions of their doctors, are like clean paper, fit to receive whatsoever by public authority

shall be imprinted in them» [Leviathan, XXX.6].

The subject-to-subject cycle of which Foucault speaks is then a disciplinary and

biopolitical cycle: the individuals submits their will to the sovereign, but at the same time

the sovereign forms the will of his subjects, disciplines their passions and takes care of

them in order to produce them as submissive bodies, as individuals aiming to an

happiness that is compatible with political order - that is security, health and wealth. We

may than conclude that not only the State, but also the individual is an artificial person,

and that individualistic ontology is not only the premise but also the result of modern State

power.

Nevertheless, being connected to the sovereign power to give death, the hobbesian

productive State power over life soon reveals that tanatopolitical (racist, destructive,

murderous) side that Foucault points out in totaliatarian States4.

4
«Racism does make the relationship of war – “if you want to live, the other must die” – function in a way
that is completely new and that is quite compatible with the exercise of biopower. On the one hand, racism
makes it possible to establish a relationship between my life and the death of the other that is not a military
or warlike relationship of confrontation, but a biological-type relationship: “the more inferior species die out,
the more abnormal individuals are eliminated, the fewer degenerates there will be in the species as a whole,
and the more I – as species rather than individual – can live, the stronger I will be, the more vigorous I will
be. I will be able to proliferate”. The fact that the other dies does not mean simply that I live in the sense that
his death guarantees my safety; the death of the other, the death of the bad race, of the inferior race (or the
degenerate, or the abnormal) is something that will make life in general healthier: healthier and purer»
[“Society Must Be Defended”, 17 March 1976, p. 235].

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 3. From biopolitics to tanatopolitics: In the paragraph about the prevention of

idleness, for example, the care of the sovereign for the wealth and happiness of his

population becomes a justification not only for encouraging production and commerce and

forcing each individual to work, but also for the practices of colonialism and war. In case of

demographic excess, the State has both the right and the duty to transplant the masses of

poor in other territories or countries «not sufficiently inhabited», whose population has not

to be exterminate, but forced to become economical productive5 – as “normal” subjects of

the State. And when the situation becomes unsustainable, then «desperate ills demand

desperate remedies»:

And when all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war; which

provideth for every man, by victory, or death [Leviathan, XXX.19].

Most of all Hobbes express the potentiality of the power of the State over human life

in a passage of De cive (first Latin edition 1642), generally neglected by critics and

historians of thought – which he will not take up in Leviathan (first English edition 1651).

This power is radical, namely it invests human life from its very beginning, from its

definition: the State has the power to decide which life is properly human - which life

deserves to live, to be taken care of by the State, and which life can be killed without a

homicide occurs.

Suppose a woman gives birth to a deformed figure, and the law forbids killing a human being, the

question arises whether the newborn is a human being. The question then is, what is a human

being? No one doubts that the commonwealth will decide. [De cive, XVII.12].

5
«Such as have strong bodies […] are to be forced to work; and to avoid the excuse of not finding
employment, there ought to be such laws, as may encourage all manners of arts; as navigation, agriculture,
fishing, and all manner of manufacture that requires labour. The multitude of poor, and yet strong people still
increasing, they are to be transplanted into countries not sufficiently inhabited; where nevertheless, they are
not to exterminate those they find there; but constraint them to inhabit closer together, and not range a great
deal of ground, to snatch what they find; but to court each little plot with art and labour, to give them their
sustenance in due season» [Leviathan, XXX.19].

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The case Hobbes takes here into account regards disabled persons. Hobbes asks if one

should consider as a homicide the killing of those newborns that he calls “deformed

figures”. After him, others have posed (and solved by the means of a sovereign decision)

different questions as: is it a homicide to kill an individual who belongs to a (supposed)

inferior race”? Or an individual considered abnormal, for example belonging to a sexual

minority? Nowadays this question is reformulated in those bioethical cases that are still

open in our societies: when does an embryo become a human? When does one commit

homicide if voluntarily interrupt a pregnancy? And again: are persons in coma still human,

are they still living human beings? If one pulls the plug of the machine that makes them

breath, do they commit homicide? Still today our parliaments have the responsibility to

decide on this problems, still today – so it seems – «no one doubts that the commonwealth

will decide».

In modern State, who is not considered fully human can be murdered without a

homicide being committed: Hobbes has grasped this disquieting truth before Michel

Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler. We may extend the question to other

ethical-political problems: is an enemy in war still considered human? Is a man

condemned to death still considered human? May a soldier or an executioner be accused

of homicide by their State? Even in these cases, despite Foucault and some of his

followers, the old theory of sovereignty has yet much to say about our contemporaneity.

We should pay attention before deciding to abandon it as an obsolete vestige of the past.

And we should maybe reconsider if in political theory the time «to cut off the king’s head»

has definitively come.

For sure, finding traces of biopolitics in the theory and in the practices of

sovereignty since Hobbes means to change our representation of Modern State. In 1927

Carl Schmitt could represent the State in his famous scheme “Hobbes Crystal”:

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 Superior part
open to transcendence

1 Veritas: Jesus Christus 5

2 Quis interpretabitur? 4
3 Auctoritas, non veritas, facit legem 3
4 Potestas directa, non indirecta 2
5 Oboedientia Oboedientia 1
et et
Protectio Protectio

Inferior part closed:

system of needs

In this hexagonal scheme, Hobbes’ individual ontology – his belief in an

unmodifiable human nature – is represented by the closure of the crystal’s base. The need

for life and the fear for dead compel the individuals to stipulate their obedience to the

sovereign, and so the sovereign’s will becomes the unique positive source of justice. But

the superior part of the hexagon is “open to transcendence”, since the sovreign has some

duties towards God. Law is made by authority, not by truth. Nevertheless, the sovereign is

obliged to become interpreter of the truth and to follows natural laws that are God’s will.

For example his laws has to follow the principle «The safety of the people is the supreme

Law», even if he is the only one who can judge what has to be done for the safety of the

people.

But if we recognize the presence of disciplinary power and biopolitics in the

government of the sovereign over his population, Schmitt’s scheme becomes inadequate.

If we acknowledge the decision and the productive action of sovereignty over human life

even in Hobbes’ theory, then even the base of the hexagon gets open. Disciplines and

biopowers make the population live, they moulds the form of human life according to

norms established by human sciences (medicine, psychology and psychiatry, economy),

but when a doubt occurs the sovereign pronounces the last word. To represent the power

of Modern State, which still affects us, we should then draw another scheme, the

14
biopolitical Hobbes’ crystal. And this should be no more a two-dimensional drawing, but a

three-dimensional dispositif where the basis is smashed by Foucault’s corrosive criticisms

and comes to coincide with its upper opening. In a secularised horizon, the salvation of the

political community (the eternal life in Christ) turns into the health of the biological species

(the cult of wealth). The sovereign has the duty to realize the natural purposes of his

population, but firstly he has the duty to interpret those purposes, to decide over them, to

mould the individuals and the population according to human “nature”.

15
Bibliography

Michel Foucault:

- Power/Knowledge, The Harvester Press, Brighton, 1980

- “Society must be defended”, Picador, New York, 2003

- Abnormal: Lectures at the College de France 1974-1975, Picador, New York 2003

- Discipline and Punish, Random House, New York 1977

- The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge vol. 1, Random House, New York 1978

- Psychiatric Power, Lectures at the College de France 1973-1974, Picador, New York

2008

- Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977-1978, Picador,

New York 2009

- The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-1979, Picador, New York

2010

Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, The University of Chicago press, Chicago 1996

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