I almost feel like I don’t need to write a post about The Leviathan because Crawford has threaded it through Arts One from beginning to end–if there was a week in which Hobbes wasn’t mentioned…

… nope. There were no such weeks. Regardless, I’m going to write about it because it’s probably one of my favorite texts, and it’s definitely Crawford’s, so I’m sure writing knowledgeably about it on the exam will score some kind of brownie points.

Hobbes and Plato–despite their radically different philosophies on the nature of man–both use this dialectic method of argument. (e.g., that is true, so this must be true, and thus, this also is true, etc. etc.) However, I find Hobbes’ argument much more compelling. The numberphile in me is likely drawn to Hobbes’ similar love of geometry (another resemblance between him and Plato) and its application to the other thing I love, which is the study of humans. Kind of. Hobbes is a political philosopher, but it still applies.

I think the tendency is for people to misunderstand Hobbes. For all I know, I have… but there’s so many things that can be misconstrued and have been (i.e., Rousseau saying that Hobbes believes that man is naturally evil -> false). I don’t think Hobbes says anything truly outrageous, though. Making the claim that without a covenant to a sovereign, individuals are “in a condition of war of everyone against everyone” and that they have a “perpetual and restless desire of power after power” does sound kind of pessimistic… but I believe Hobbes can be interpreted in a way that isn’t so pessimistic. (At any rate, that’s how I’ve interpreted him.)

Firstly, Hobbes points out that this condition of war arises because man is equal in nature. Thus, equality of nature creates equal hope of achieving ones’ means. Already, Hobbes makes the quite liberal argument that man thinks, hopes, and opines equally, and to my university undergraduate student ears, that sounds pretty reasonable. Pretty compelling. There’s also the argument that there is value in cooperation, and even man in the state of nature, I’m sure, can recognize this.

Secondly, Hobbes defines power as the means to attain ones’ ends or desires. Christina Hendricks pointed out during her lecture of Hobbes that this could be a variety of things, and power does not necessarily have to have the ruthless, ambitious, possibly war-like connotations we have attached to it. My classmates gave money, friends, and even bearing children, as examples.

Isn’t it amazing how different readings can completely change a text? I’m pretty sure what I just suggested is not how Jean-Jacques Rousseau read Hobbes. I wonder how different A Discourse on the Origins of Inequality would have been if Rousseau had read The Leviathan this way.