What would Hobbes say? The February Edition
I'm sure you want to know things such as what Hobbes would say to the SOTU or to the second coming though I'm deeply disappointed at pubs in town for refusing to show the match at all. I think folks at TUWSNBN's PhD office are now convinced I'm a nutter or, as E puts it, "a bit insane" since I spent a large part of the afternoon calling places to ask if they were showing it but they were not.Anyway, getting back to Hobbes. While we await the second part of the Zizek post which would have made many things alluded to in other posts clearer, I'm taking on E's question for Hobbes for February:
What would Hobbes say to Zizek's view that Love is Evil ?
Hobbes says:
"That which men desire they are said to love, and to hate those things for which they have aversion. So that desire and love are the same thing; save that by desire, we signify the absence of the object; by love, most commonly the presence of the same."
In 21st century-speak, love is one of the passions. Passions are expressed in specific ways in speech. But, the thing about passions is that people who may not feel them can still use speech expressing them so it's difficult to know what they are. So, we can't say Love is evil since who knows what love is?
Or, to let Hobbes speak:
"... because they [speech expressing passions] may be used arbitrarily, whether they that use them have such passions or not. The best signs of passions present are either in the countenance, motions of the body, actions, and ends, or aims, which we otherwise know the man to have"
Look at what the person is doing in addition to what they are saying (though I would like to point out Hobbes is not quite clear how "we otherwise know" things, if not through speech in addition to actions)
Hobbes goes on:
"And because in deliberation the appetites and aversions are raised by foresight of the good and evil consequences, and sequels of the action whereof we deliberate, the good or evil effect thereof dependeth on the foresight of a long chain of consequences, of which very seldom any man is able to see to the end. But for so far as a man seeth, if the good in those consequences be greater than the evil, the whole chain is that which writers call apparent or seeming good. And contrarily, when the evil exceedeth the good, the whole is apparent or seeming evil..."
I take this to mean that Hobbes would consider Love as Evil as something to be deliberated over. Zizek has to look at the "chain of consequences" and then decide what love is--good or evil.
Hobbes is talking about particulars while Zizek frames the issue in a more general way. How about "Don't generalise but contextualise!" as a new song in our musical?
posted by Priya @ 10:05 PM
2 Comments:
Sing it with me:
Oh, there ain't no such thing as a general claim
Such propositions assume that things are the same
In a fundamental way, ontologically --
That means reifying practice, you see.
Break it down, break it down, break that general claim down
Into smaller specifics we can get our hands around
Down with speculation bereft of data
When we meet such phantoms, just say "see ya lata"
---
I have never met a general social force. I have never met an abstract notion. I cannot for the life of me see the utility of asking the kind of questions that presume that "love" or "capitalism" or "modernity" or what have you are objects, rather than pieces of conceptual equipment that we use to make sense of the world. And without some serious specificity, I don't even know how to make sense of the question -- and so with Wittgenstein I'd recommend dis-solving it and moving on to something more manageable.
All that by long-winded way of saying: go Hobbes, go Hobbes.
Honestly, I don't know where to start. I really don't.
I think I'm speechless. :)
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