Thomas Hobbes’s infamously severe accounts of the phenomenon of laughter earned the condemnation of such varied readers as Francis Hutcheson and Friedrich Nietzsche, and he has maintained his ...reputation as an enemy of humor among contemporary scholars. A difficulty is raised by the fact that Hobbes makes ample use of humor in his writings, displaying his willingness to evoke in his readers what he appears to condemn. This article brings together Hobbes’s statements on laughter and comedic writing with examples of his own humorous rhetoric to show that Hobbes understands laughter as a species of insult, but that there are conditions under which humor can be made to serve the cause of peace. Drawing on evidence from across Hobbes’s works, and in particular from an understudied discussion of “Vespasian’s law” in the Six Lessons, this essay theorizes the conditions under which Hobbes found witty contumely to be conducive to peace. On this reading, Hobbes models the discreet use of humorous rhetoric in defense of peace, a defense that will be ongoing even after the commonwealth has been founded. Hobbes offers insight into how we can remain attuned to laughter’s inegalitarian tendencies without foregoing the equalizing potential to be found in laughing at ourselves and at those who think too highly of themselves.
How did the 'Hobbesian state of nature' and the 'discourse of anarchy' - separated by three centuries - come to be seen as virtually synonymous? Before Anarchy offers a novel account of Hobbes's ...interpersonal and international state of nature and rejects two dominant views. In one, international relations is a warlike Hobbesian anarchy, and in the other, state sovereignty eradicates the state of nature. In combining the contextualist method in the history of political thought and the historiographical method in international relations theory, Before Anarchy traces Hobbes's analogy between natural men and sovereign states and its reception by Pufendorf, Rousseau and Vattel in showing their intellectual convergence with Hobbes. Far from defending a 'realist' international theory, the leading political thinkers of early modernity were precursors of the most enlightened liberal theory of international society today. By demolishing twentieth-century anachronisms, Before Anarchy bridges the divide between political theory, international relations and intellectual history.
Cet article, issu de la traduction du chapitre « Political Philosophy and the Uses of History » (paru dans Richard Bourke et Quentin Skinner (dir.), History in the Humanities and Social Sciences , ...Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022) retrace d’abord l’émergence de l’approche « historiciste » pour étudier les textes de philosophie politique. À travers l’exemple de la philosophie de Thomas Hobbes, ce texte montre ce qui fait la spécificité de la méthode historiciste. L’article s’intéresse ensuite à deux objections fréquemment adressées à cette approche. La première lui reproche d’avoir déconnecté la philosophie politique et juridique de sa dimension normative, c’est-à-dire d’avoir cédé à une forme de « tyrannie de l’histoire ». La seconde affirme que les historicistes sont incapables de saisir ce qui, dans les phénomènes politiques, est transhistorique et universel. Après avoir étudié puis réfuté chacune de ces critiques, l’article se penche sur une objection plus récente : l’histoire de la philosophie politique serait encore une chapelle, qu’il faudrait déparoissialiser grâce à une approche plus globale. L’article se termine par une évaluation de ce qui se présente comme le « tournant global » de l’histoire de la philosophie politique.
In both Western culture and contemporary social theory, the term person is commonly used as an equivalent of human being, individual and subject. Faced with this substantialist semantics, and ...starting from the recovery of the original meaning of the Latin term persona, carried out by de baroque political Philosophie to theoretical cement the emerging european states. To do this, a genealogical tour will be carried out that will start with Thomas Hobbes analysis of the person as an actor. We will then review some of the most conspicuous representatives of the sociological tradition, in whose work the person is conceptualizated not merely as an actor, but as an social actor. To do this, we will explore the Works of Tönnies, Simmel and Goffman -in the latter case, in connection with Mead's theory of self-. Finally, base don the concepts of double contingency and communication, as constitutive problema and characteristic operation of the social systems, the article propose a socio-structural radicalization of the sociological approach to the person, in order to determine conceptually which basic needs of the social orders meets the construction of human beings as social actors, and how this construction is the key factor for the structuring of their consciousness, wich leads to the development of the self. The fundamental thesis on wich this sociological radicalization is based is the interpretation of the person as one of the basic forms of social structuring: the social addressing; that is, the understanding of human beings as social addresses that help to determine and reduce the complexity os social systems as systems of communication.
Margaret Cavendish is widely known as a materialist. However, since Cavendishian matter is always in motion, “matter” and “motion” are equally important foundational concepts for her natural ...philosophy. In Philosophical Letters (1664), she takes to task her materialist rival Thomas Hobbes by assaulting his account of accidents in general and his concept of “rest” in particular. In this article, I argue that Cavendish defends her continuous‐motion view in two ways: first, she claims that her account avoids seeing accidents as capable of generation and annihilation, which she argues is inconceivable; and second, she contends that according to Hobbes’s own view “rest” is an absurd conception since it cannot be drawn from experience. Beyond its function as a defense, I claim that Cavendish’s focused criticism of “rest” shows that she is a perceptive reader of Hobbes’s natural philosophy, insofar as her criticisms undercut the two a priori principles of Hobbesian physics. Finally, I show how her views developed in more detail in Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1663) and Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666 2001) avoid the worries she raises for Hobbesian materialism.
This paper aims to present the reconstruction of the arguments offered by Thomas Hobbes about the classic problem of the squareness of the circle in the seventeenth century, from the perspective of ...the work: De Corpore of the same author. Where research is based on the support offered by Dynamic Geometry in the 21st century in the classroom with the use of GeoGebra software. This to be able to address and overcome the problems of the history of mathematical science and philosophy. For this it was chosen, by the methodology of a design of a teaching experiment in the classroom carried out with future teachers of the bachelor's degree in mathematics of 8th semester. Among the most important results is the recognition of renowned philosophers in the development of the history of mathematics. This implied that prospective mathematics teachers had to integrate their mathematical knowledge into the construction of the quadrature of the circle, which at the time was a problem for Hobbes, but with the perspective of modeling mathematical concepts in dynamic geometry, today it is done efficiently.
Thomas Hobbes argues that the fear of violent death is the most reliable passion on which to found political society. His role in shaping the contemporary view of religion and honor in the West is ...pivotal, yet his ideas are famously riddled with contradictions. In this breakthrough study, McClure finds evidence that Hobbes' apparent inconsistencies are intentional, part of a sophisticated rhetorical strategy meant to make man more afraid of death than he naturally is. Hobbes subtly undermined two of the most powerful manifestations of man's desire for immortality: the religious belief in an afterlife and the secular desire for eternal fame through honor. McClure argues that Hobbes purposefully stirred up controversy, provoking his adversaries into attacking him and unwittingly spreading his message. This study will appeal to scholars of Hobbes, political theorists, historians of early modern political thought and anyone interested in the genesis of modern Western attitudes toward mortality.
У чланку се анализира питање основа Хобсове либералистичке тео- рије, односно питање како се једна модерна политичка онтологија испоставља као политичка хаунтологија. У том светлу, у првом делу рада ...- полазећи од Хобсове концепције политике као технике - рефлектују се појмови попут појаве, представе, позоришта и маште као почетни темељи суверенитета. Разматрајући услове мо- гућности за деспотски techne, у другом делу рада акценат је стављен на структурну релацију polis-a и oikos-a и на нерасветљени елемент oikos-a, тј. на фигуру мајке и на питање ауторизације. Особитост положаја мајке у Комонвелту, као и пре настанка државе и сфере политичког, садржана је у дијалектици њене перманентне одсутности и чињеници да одражава принцип почетка и одржања живота. У закључном делу рада упућује се на потенцијале другачијег промишљања суверенитета и политике слободе.
A growing literature is taking an institutionalist and governance perspective on how algorithms shape society based on unprecedented capacities for managing social complexity. Algorithmic governance ...altogether emerges as a novel and distinctive kind of societal steering. It appears to transcend established categories and modes of governance—and thus seems to call for new ways of thinking about how social relations can be regulated and ordered. However, as this paper argues, despite its novel way of realizing outcomes of collective steering and coordination, it can nevertheless be grasped with an old and fundamental figure in political philosophy: that of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Comparing algorithmic governance with this figure serves to highlight their similarities as socio-political arrangements, and specifically to clarify how algorithmic governance parallels the apolitical traits of the Leviathan—it eliminates the political as it requires compliance and forgoing contestation to best fulfill its role and to produce satisfying outcomes.
The Sovereign’s Beatitude Balazs, Zoltan
Political theory,
06/2022, Letnik:
50, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Though it may sound awkward to ask whether the political sovereign is happy or unhappy, the question is relevant to political theory, especially within a political theological perspective. Because ...man was created in the image of God, human happiness needs to be a reflection of divine beatitude, and as divine sovereignty is, at least analogically, related to political sovereignty, the conceptual coherence is secured. The main argument is, however, that the analogy does not hold. I shall show how St Thomas Aquinas’s short treatment of God’s beatitude may mislead us about power, fame, riches, and dignity being essential to happiness, based on an analysis of Franz Kafka’s major novel, The Castle, and a few other writings by him. I shall argue that our tradition of political thinking and behavior remains ambivalent on this issue. The political sovereign is born out of our unhappy condition, yet its power, fame, riches, and glory suggests to us that it has appropriated our happiness. But for this very reason it cannot be happy, and it therefore suggests a false analogy between the divine and the political sovereign. It is fundamentally at variance with our happiness, which incites us to abandon, reject, and eventually, kill it.
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