For Thomas Hobbes, fear of death is what makes people give up their freedom. Men have in common the capacity to be killed. In order to save themselves in a war of everyone against everyone, they give authority to the sovereign. Contemporary Italian theorists have been critical towards this scheme of forming the state on fear.
Roberto Esposito points out that horizontal relation between people is sacrificed when preference is given to the vertical relation between the sovereign and his subjects. Both sovereignty through acquisition and sovereignty by institution are based on fear: either fear of the others or fear of the sovereign. Hobbes makes a distinction between fear and terror. Fear makes us to think of ways to exit a risky situation whereas terror is completely negative and paralyzing. To describe the first fear which leads to a state, Hobbes uses the stronger term terror. To escape the state of fear, people move to the fear of state by giving power to the sovereign. For Esposito, this submission is a sacrifice: life is sacrificed in order to be preserved. This forms a spiral: sacrifice is an answer to fear, sacrifice causes fear etc.
Antonio Negri brings up the question of fear in his and Michael Hardt’s book Empire. They write that in our contemporary world “[t]he constant fear of poverty and anxiety over the future are the keys to creating a struggle among the poor for work and maintaining conflict among the imperial proletariat”. They also draw attention to the society of the spectacle and its use of fear in the way Hobbes recommended it: as a way of ensuring social order. For Hardt and Negri, this is a situation that should be overcome. On the other hand, they say that in the biopolitical society fear has lost its exclusive status, and “the power of generation, desire, and love” are at the heart of the political.
