Absolutism is the Future

The Rise, Fall, and Unlikely Rebirth of an Archaic Institution

If you prefer the audio of this article, click here.

As many of you have seen, last month we published our edition of Joseph de Maistre’s Du Pape, volume II of his major works series under Imperium Press. In this edition I myself have written three essays totalling about 20,000 words framing and introducing it. Shockingly, I was unable to find anyone else up to the task, so it fell to a pagan to introduce an ultramontane Catholic defending papal sovereignty.¹

I feel that the essays are both enlightening and respectful even though I am not a Catholic, which was an easy task because I admire Maistre very much. They are not written in my usual straightforward and polemical style, but in a much more academic tone. It’s my view that truly skilled writers can write in different “voices”, and these essays show a different voice of mine.

While composing the essays I worked on something in parallel, which I will now post as an exclusive on the Substack. Maistre stands as a link in a chain that reaches from the absolutist Jean Bodin to the “crown jurist of the Third Reich”, Carl Schmitt. Despite the defeat of Nazi Germany and the absolutist social ontology it embodies, somehow, against all odds, absolutism seems to be undergoing something of a revival in the 21st century.

The next two Substack articles will explain this chain of absolutist thinkers, why it represents the only truly foundational alternative to liberal democracy, and why it has suddenly revived in the form of strongman politics in the 21st century. These articles were written in the more measured, academic style which you will find in my essays in the Maistre book.

Absolutism as a Modern Political Paradigm with Archaic Roots

Absolutism is widely dismissed as an obsolete political theory, a relic from the age of monarchies. In practice, though, the core idea of absolutism still speaks powerfully to modern politics. At the centre of absolutism lies a model of sovereignty that is both unitary and unquestionable—an ultimate authority above any written law or procedural limit.

Liberal-democratic thought today often revolves around this very issue: the fear of a power that stands above the law. As articulated by the World Justice Project, the rule of law necessitates that “every person and body, whether public or private and including the state, are subject to the law,”² ensuring that no one remains above it. Absolutist theory, by contrast, insists that law cannot operate on its own—some will must decide when and how the law applies.

In short, every legal system needs a final decision-maker—a sovereign—who does not follow the rules but instead gives them their force. This argument, far from outdated, addresses a lasting problem in politics: who or what holds final authority? Even if an abstract law or principle stands above any ruler, someone must still decide how to interpret it. In the end, the power to interpret and enforce the law always rests with an agent—an authority who, by definition, stands above all other standards. Absolutism offers a sharp critique of legalistic and liberal norms by stressing the need for a final, indivisible source of power.

At the same time, absolutism looks back deliberately to a pre-modern (and even pre-Christian) view of authority. It connects with the old image of the paterfamilias—the Indo-European father of a large household—whose word carries the weight of law. Morally, this reflects a pre-axial worldview in which ultimate authority comes from outside the individual, not from private conscience. The religious revolutions of the axial age introduced a new idea: a higher moral law and the individual’s right to judge authority, placing even kings and gods under abstract standards of justice. Absolutism pushes back against this reversal—authority itself gives rise to justice, rather than serving as its subject.

By denying each individual conscience the right to rule, absolutism returns to the idea that law exists as a command issued by sovereign will. It takes authority as basic, or what we have called primordial—a starting point that those under it may not question, even in principle.³ Joseph de Maistre expressed this by presenting sovereignty as a quasi-religious mystery, a sacred power that no one should examine like any other political tool. For Maistre and other absolutists, the origin and rightfulness of sovereignty stay off-limits, beyond full rational explanation—they must be accepted as a fait accompli. Absolutism, in this way, brings together archaism and futurism: it restores ancient insights into power while mounting a challenge to the liberal, rule-bound systems of the modern world.

To see how absolutist thought took shape and why it has returned in the 21st century, we must follow its history. The following sections trace the rise of absolutist theory in early modern Europe, its development through major thinkers from Jean Bodin to Carl Schmitt, its decline after WWII, and its unexpected return in today’s age of strongman politics.

The Rise of Absolutism in Early Modern Europe

The absolutist shift in political thought took shape through the prolonged struggle between spiritual and temporal power in medieval Christendom. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church steadily advanced claims to moral and even political supremacy over kings and emperors. By the High Middle Ages, popes claimed the authority to depose secular rulers and oversee their actions.⁴ The dominant medieval framework rested on a fundamentally axial view where the monarch’s authority operated under law—specifically, under divine law as expressed by the Church.

In this axial worldview, people judged even kings by an overarching standard of justice grounded in Christian teaching and natural law. Church councils, canon law, and scholastic theorists reinforced the view of legitimate authority as limited and answerable—ultimately to God’s law, which the Church claimed to interpret. This dynamic culminated in events such as the Investiture Conflict and Emperor Henry IV’s submission at Canossa, which illustrated the Church’s claim to exercise higher authority than any secular prince.

By the late medieval period and into the Renaissance, cracks appeared in this Church-dominated structure. The Reformation broke Europe’s religious unity, weakened papal power, and plunged the continent into wars of religion. In efforts to restore public order, secular rulers saw the need to assert exclusive authority within their territories, free from papal oversight or internal religious division. Within this context, absolutism emerged in early modern Europe.

Absolutism is the return of personal rule—the rule of a single will—as a response to the disorder created by overlapping or rival authorities. Whereas medieval political theology placed kings under abstract principles and Church supervision, absolutism reversed this structure. It restored the ruler as the source of law and order, rather than its executor. This marked a deliberate return to an older, pre-axial idea of authority—recalling the unchecked power of the tribal patriarch or warrior-king⁵—now adapted to the modern nation-state.

By the 17th century, European monarchs such as the Bourbons in France began to declare themselves sovereign by divine right, accountable “to God alone”, aiming to end the division of power among estates, parliaments, and Church officials. Absolutism took shape as a reaction to both the fragmented power of feudalism and the religious violence of the Reformation. After centuries of ecclesiastical dominance, absolutism reasserted the priority of royal authority. It declared that the final court of appeal in the realm rested once again with the prince’s own judgement, not with an external law or a distant pope. In short, absolutism sought to unify sovereignty—to make power personal, indivisible, and immune to any worldly challenge.

The absolutist political order reached its peak in the 17th and 18th centuries, only to face a dramatic challenge by the close of the latter—the French Revolution rejected the idea of unaccountable monarchy. It replaced the sovereign king with the sovereign people, proclaiming rights and laws that even the government could not override.

The French Revolution can clearly be seen as a transformation of Christian theology into secular politics. The Revolution’s democratic principles—that the last shall be first, that authority flows from the masses (the “weak”) rather than from a divinely chosen strongman—echo Christian moral themes reframed in a secular context. Similarly, the liberal stress on the rule of law and limitations on power carried forward the late-medieval/axial principle that even the highest authority must answer to a yet higher law. In this way, modern liberal democracy continued the axial, Christian-influenced project of subjecting sovereign will to abstract, universal norms.

By 1800, many believed that revolutionary ideals had defeated absolutism—just as Christianity had once displaced pagan autocracy. But the absolutist paradigm did not vanish so easily. The 19th century witnessed renewed expressions of personal rule: Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor, autocracy returned in Tsarist Russia, and various dictators and caudillos rose in other parts of the world.

Just as pagan forms resurfaced during the Renaissance and Romantic periods, absolutism also re-emerged after the Revolution. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this trend culminated in the rise of autocratic strongmen throughout Europe. Kings and emperors such as Wilhelm II of Germany, followed by fascist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler, revived the idea of personal sovereignty in opposition to the liberal order. The aftermath of WWI and the fragile state of emerging democracies further accelerated this absolutist resurgence.

WWII interrupted this trajectory, as the perceived excesses of unchecked absolutism provoked widespread moral panic and political backlash. The defeat of the Third Reich discredited absolutist ideas in mainstream political thought. A new post-Nuremberg consensus elevated the principles of universal human rights, the rule of law, and international accountability—effectively restoring the axial ideal of higher law and shared authority on a global scale. For a time, many assumed that absolutism had finally passed into history. Yet, as the next essay will explore, the early 21st century has witnessed the return of strongman politics, suggesting that the absolutist impulse never truly disappeared and now reasserts itself in new forms.

Before examining this modern revival, we must first grasp the intellectual foundations of absolutist theory as developed by its chief architects. In the next section we will turn to the contributions of Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, Sir Robert Filmer, and Joseph de Maistre, each of whom advanced the doctrine of absolute sovereignty from the late 16th to the early 19th century.

From Bodin to Maistre: Forging the Absolutist Doctrine

Jean Bodin (1530–1596)

The French jurist Jean Bodin is often recognized as the first systematic theorist of absolutism in the early modern period. Writing during the turbulence of France’s Wars of Religion, Bodin aimed to establish a principle capable of securing strong and unified authority to end civil disorder. In Six Books of the Commonwealth, Bodin introduced the concept of sovereignty as the defining feature of the state. Sovereignty, he famously stated, refers to the “absolute and perpetual power” of a commonwealth.⁶ It describes the supreme authority that persists over time, vested in either a single ruler or a governing body. Crucially, Bodin argued that sovereignty, by its nature, cannot be divided—if any institution holds the power to constrain the sovereign’s decisions, then sovereignty becomes shared or nullified.⁷ In doing so, he rejected theories of mixed government and feudal checks on monarchs. For Bodin, the sovereign must hold all powers of the state without dilution; otherwise, genuine sovereignty does not exist.

Bodin’s doctrine also outlined the key marks of sovereignty, foremost among these being the power to make and revoke laws. Only the sovereign, he claimed, could legislate for the community without requiring consent from any other authority. In Bodin’s view, the prerogative of law-making includes “all the other rights and prerogatives of sovereignty,”⁸ such as declaring war and peace, appointing senior officials, levying taxes, and issuing pardons. To Bodin, then, the authority to issue binding commands—the essence of law-making—defines the sovereign.

Although the sovereign stands above positive (man-made) law, Bodin held that he remains bound by natural and divine law.⁹ A religious man, Bodin believed that even an absolute monarch must follow the law of God and the dictates of natural justice; for example, he asserted that a king ought to respect the basic liberties and property rights of his subjects. However, he also maintained that no earthly institution possesses the authority to enforce these higher laws against the sovereign. In temporal affairs, the sovereign answers to no judge.

In sum, Bodin’s vision of absolutism depicted a ruler who holds complete and enduring power to govern, subject only to divine and natural constraints and to the rational duty of preserving order. These principles—sovereign unity, supremacy, and exclusive law-making—became foundational to absolutist political thought.

Bodin’s model broke new ground, though it left certain ambiguities unresolved. He acknowledged, for instance, that a king might remain bound by fundamental laws of the realm (such as the French Salic law) or by his own formal promises, which complicated the claim to absolute sovereignty. Later absolutists would criticize such qualifications. Nevertheless, Bodin provided the conceptual vocabulary—especially the term sovereignty—through which later thinkers would develop absolutist theory. His work addressed directly the factional disorder of the French civil wars, arguing that only an unrestricted sovereign could restore peace. In an age desperate for strong monarchy to end religious conflict, Bodin’s ideas found a receptive audience.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

In the following century, Thomas Hobbes developed absolutist theory upon a new philosophical foundation. Hobbes lived through the English Civil War—a period of intense conflict that shaped his political thinking.

In Leviathan, and earlier in De Cive, Hobbes offered a stark account of life without political authority. In this imagined “state of nature,” each person holds unlimited freedom to pursue personal goals, which leads inevitably to violent conflict and insecurity. Famously, life in such a state becomes “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”¹⁰—a condition of constant war of every man against every man. Out of fear of death and a desire for a more secure life, rational individuals would agree to escape this chaos by forming a commonwealth. Hobbes thus proposed a social contract: each person covenants with others to surrender their natural right to self-rule, transferring it to a designated sovereign who will maintain peace by exercising undivided power.¹¹

Hobbes’s sovereign—whether an individual or an assembly—arises through this covenant of all with all, and effectively becomes a mortal “God” (the Leviathan), invested with the collective strength and authority of the multitude. In doing so, the multitude transforms into a unified whole, “reduced unto one will”¹² through their mutual agreement to obey a shared power. The sovereign’s authority remains absolute in the sense that it cannot be divided or limited without collapsing back into the state of nature.

Hobbes made this point clearly: sovereign power must remain undivided and ultimate.¹³ It possesses every right that individuals held in the state of nature, now transferred to the sovereign. This includes the power to resolve disputes, to legislate, to enforce domestic peace, and to defend the commonwealth. Subjects, having authorized the sovereign’s actions, hold no rightful claim to resist or rebel.¹⁴ To Hobbes, any subject who disobeys the sovereign essentially rejects the covenant that grants him protection—thereby acting unjustly toward fellow contractors. According to Hobbes’s logic, because the people have agreed that “I authorize all actions of the sovereign as if they were my own,” the sovereign cannot commit injustice against them, since no contract binds the sovereign. Conversely, subjects who revoke their obedience breach the covenant and return to the war of all against all. In short, Leviathan concludes that to preserve peace and security, citizens must submit unconditionally to an absolute and enduring authority.

Hobbes’s conception of law follows from this framework. In the absence of a common power, no law exists—only the law of nature, which simply refers to each individual’s freedom to judge for themselves. Under sovereignty, however, law amounts to the command of the sovereign.¹⁵ Hobbes famously declared, Auctoritas, non veritas, facit legem—“Authority, not truth, makes the law.” He denied the existence of any objective standard of justice outside the state by which government could be evaluated. Justice consists in obedience to the sovereign’s law; injustice consists in defying it. No “natural law of right” exists above the sovereign’s will; right and wrong follow directly from the sovereign’s pronouncements. This legal positivism reinforces Hobbes’s case for absolutism: if law simply equals the sovereign’s command, then no law can stand above the sovereign and invalidate his decisions. The sovereign remains the ultimate source of legality. Although Hobbes maintained that the sovereign should aim at the safety and welfare of the people—since that purpose underlies the original covenant—he acknowledged that no one other than the sovereign holds the power to enforce such moral aims.

Hobbes presented a secular and rational justification for absolutism, grounded in social contract theory and departing from Bodin’s partly theological basis. In doing so, however, he introduced a subtle tension: Hobbes’s sovereign draws legitimacy from the consent of the people—an idea with proto-democratic implications. Hobbes himself acknowledged that the people author the sovereign. This formulation places the foundation of sovereignty in the popular will, albeit a will that extinguishes itself by creating a permanent and irrevocable authority. Later absolutists, including Filmer, would criticize Hobbes for conceding too much to the principle of popular sovereignty. Nevertheless, Hobbes significantly advanced the theory of absolutism. He removed its mystical elements and grounded it in a clear appeal to fear and reason—arguing that a single, all-powerful ruler offers a better alternative than the chaos of civil war. In this way, Hobbes “modernized” absolutism, framing it as a rational act of self-preservation rather than a simple divine command.

Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653)

In the mid-17th century, Sir Robert Filmer put forward a more polemical and traditionalist defense of absolutism, directly opposing the liberal ideas of consent and natural rights then gaining traction. Writing during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth period, Filmer composed Patriarcha, a work that champions the divine right of kings in its most unqualified form.

Filmer located political authority in paternal power: he argued that, just as a father holds absolute authority over his family by God’s ordinance, so too do kings inherit absolute authority over their subjects, tracing their rule back to Adam, the first father of humankind. In Filmer’s account, all legitimate kings descend from Adam’s patriarchal dominion. Hence, kings rule by divine right through hereditary succession from the biblical patriarchs.¹⁶ This quasi-biblical lineage served as a rebuttal to social contract theorists such as Hobbes and Locke, who traced political legitimacy to a hypothetical agreement among equals. Filmer dismissed this view, rejecting the idea that political authority emerges from the consent of the governed. Instead, he insisted that authority comes from God’s grant to Adam and passes through bloodlines. For Filmer, government represents a direct continuation of the fifth commandment: “Honour thy father.”

In Patriarcha, Filmer showed that political authority and paternal authority amount to the same thing, differing only in scale.¹⁷ The king functions as the father of the nation, while subjects occupy the role of children. Just as a father’s rule in the household does not depend on the will of his sons, so a monarch’s rule should not rely on the will or consent of his subjects. “The father of a family governs by no other law than his own will, not by the laws and wills of his sons and servants,” Filmer wrote,¹⁸ applying this household principle to the political realm. He presented absolute patriarchy as the model for the state: the king’s will must remain supreme, and no subordinate body may constrain it.

Filmer explicitly rejected the ideas of popular sovereignty, constitutional limits, or any theory suggesting that authority comes from the people.¹⁹ He treated the notion of original freedom or equality in a state of nature as a dangerous heresy. In his view, people enter political life as they enter family life—not as free agents, but as subjects born into obedience. Consent, therefore, plays no role in Filmer’s model; obedience defines the political virtue. Government by the king’s personal discretion—what we might call royal paternalism—represents, for Filmer, the divinely sanctioned and natural political order.

Filmer’s version of absolutism adopts a more openly theocratic stance than Hobbes’s. Rather than relying on Hobbes’s rational contract theory, Filmer returns to a scriptural foundation—namely, Adam’s patrimony. He rejects the idea, present in both Bodin and Hobbes, that natural law or reason might limit sovereign power. Instead, he draws upon biblical history to argue that the king, like the patriarchs of the Old Testament, answers only to God. In Filmer’s view, any attempt to divide sovereignty or restrict the monarch—whether through parliaments, constitutional arrangements, or “mixed” government—represents a form of impious rebellion against God’s appointed order. Instead, kings hold absolute sovereignty by divine will. Any effort to condition their authority by contract, election, or representative institutions must therefore be considered both illegitimate and dangerous. Filmer focused particularly on refuting the claims of English Parliamentarians who sought to justify resistance against King Charles I.

Filmer’s theories did not gain wide acceptance in his own time; they famously drew the ire of John Locke, the first of whose Two Treatises of Government offered a direct rebuttal. Nonetheless, Filmer represents a purification of absolutism, one that pushes the logic of Bodin and Hobbes to its furthest conclusions. He removes any remaining notion of popular origin or natural limits to sovereignty. In Filmer’s political model, the state functions as a scaled-up family, with the king serving as pater princeps—father and ruler in one.

By grounding sovereignty in biblical patriarchy, Filmer also linked absolutism to a wider traditionalist worldview. In that view, society forms an organically hierarchical structure, like a family or living organism, and efforts to flatten or redefine that structure through contract or consent defy the natural order. In this way, Filmer anticipates the reactionary strand of absolutist thought that would grow after the French Revolution. Though many have critiqued the biblical arguments in Patriarcha, Filmer also offered arguments from reason, the latter of which have stood the test of time. The key message remains: no sovereignty of the people, no separation of powers, no higher law above the king—only the divine law, which speaks through the monarch.

Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821)

Joseph de Maistre, a diplomat and philosopher from Savoy, carried absolutist theory into the post-revolutionary age and became one of its most passionate advocates in the early 19th century. After witnessing the French Revolution and its aftermath, Maistre placed blame on Enlightenment rationalism and the collapse of traditional authority. In response, he developed a form of absolutism that embraced a fully theocratic and ultramontane character (i.e. one fiercely loyal to papal authority), while advancing ideas even more radical in tone than those of his predecessors. His major works—Considerations on France, Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions, Du Pape, and The St. Petersburg Dialogues—together articulate several core principles of his absolutist thought.