Hobbes' and Paradox

From its title to its conclusion Hobbes’ Leviathan presents paradox at once founded in fear and in courage.  It appears the work of a man with a “truth” to tell based on the former and a tentative approach to presenting it based on the latter – more than a bit of preemptive spin.  Hobbes is prescient to an extent, and but trapped, despite efforts to escape through arguments for alternative sovereignties, in a monarchical model of governance. By all accounts – and his own in Leviathan -  he sought and relished deductive reasoning, but the writing fails there, at times almost coming across as a game with the reader.  While academic discussion appears strewn with thoughts on Hobbes’ own views, how can those accurately be discerned in relation to religion or even his preference for one type of sovereign over another?  How much of his argument is a gamble on future states of affairs?  How much is strategy to preserve, not only his person in the short term, but the integrity of what he hoped to convey and infuse into social and political discourse over the long term? How much is veiled?  As it seems unlikely Hobbes was blind to the inconsistencies in his statements and style, one can imagine a man struggling with the degree to which he might safely make statements akin to others that had ended badly for his contemporaries in scientific and political arenas.  There seems a new dance with each discussion in turn, on language, on the natural condition of man, on Hobbes’ solution in sovereignty, and on how this are compatible with Christianity. 

In the context of the times, beginning with his birth coinciding with news of the Spanish Armada and the necessity of his flight to France in anticipation of the demise of Charles I, Hobbes’ world was bound in change and challenge. His brilliance leading him from the life of a commoner to that involving rubbing shoulders with aristocracy, royalty and the greatest thinkers of the day, would also have made him privy to events in the world around him – and the dangers lurking therein.  Galileo’s execution for heresy in 1642 must certainly have rattled him. Yet Hobbes expounds on his own philosophy first articulated in De Cive, that very year, by training scrutiny on himself in his metaphorical reference to “Leviathan,” a biblical monster separated from its male counterpart, “Behemoth” by God to prevent their proliferation, as the thing for which man should strive (Job 40:15-34).  Though it may not have turned heads quite so profoundly without the shock effect produced in conjuring an image of power in something distinctly singled out for destruction by God, his case for sovereignty, using the precise “Definitions” for which he advocates in his discussion of language, could as readily have been presented using the drier strategy.

Hobbes conception of all things, including “Sense,” “Imagination,” and “Trayne of Imaginations,” and their subsequent development into language, reason, and science, emanating from the matter and motion relies on the deductive reasoning of geometry to convey its irrefutable nature.  It even conjures, to some degree, an image of neurological dynamics emerging in our own day. But, the premise of the argument does not meet his own standard for rigor.  He is builds a house of cards by creating a foundation reliant on philosophical agreement that did not exist at the time.  It subjects him to easy critique by his contemporaries.

On that note, I confess to not budgeting time sufficiently to finish what I started and so will have subject myself to criticism from my own peers and professor by pausing this blog before providing tangible evidence supporting my initial statements or concluding statements tying it all together.   I am in awe of an individual who so successfully and against all odds, altered political discourse, but am left with a thousand questions.   

References:

Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (Norton Critical Edition), New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.

Smith, Steven. “The Sovereign State: Hobbes’ Leviathan.” 2008. Lecture presented 9/22/2008 at Yale University. Accessed September 5, 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3S1uqgGfB4>