Hobbes's "Leviathan": Monsters, Metaphors, and Magic

Author(s): Robert E. Stillman

Reviewed work(s):
Source: ELH, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 791-819
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30030103 .
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HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN:
MONSTERS, METAPHORS,
AND MAGIC
BY ROBERT E. STILLMAN
Hobbes's sense of his
place
in cultural
history
is
key
to
understanding
the character and the contradictions of Leviathan.
Early
and late in his
long writing
career,
he
represents
his
philosophical
life as a battle
against
monstrous texts. De cive's "Preface to the Reader" narrates a Hobbesian
myth
of the
fall,
in which a
golden age
of
power
and
authority enjoyed by
sovereigns
is
destroyed by
the
"disputations"
of
private
men.' To
illustrate his
point,
Hobbes cites the classical fable of
Ixion's
adulterous
courtship
of
Juno: "Offering
to embrace
her,
he
clasped
a
cloud;
from
whence the Centaurs
proceeded, by
nature half
men,
half
horses,
a
fierce,
a
fighting,
and
unquiet generation"
(2:xiii).
His
allegorization
of
the fable is Baconian both in its method-its derivation of
philosophical
truths from
mythology-and
in its attribution of the
origins
of
political
sedition to seditious
language
and seditious desires:
"private
men
being
called to councils of
state,
desired to
prostitute justice,
the
only
sister and
wife of the
supreme,
to their own
judgments
and
apprehensions;
but
embracing
a false and
empty
shadow instead of
it,
they
have
begotten
those
hermaphrodite opinions
of moral
philosophers, partly right
and
comely, partly
brutal and wild"
(2:xiii).2
The monstrous
opinions
of moral
philosophers
are of such
political importance
to Hobbes since
they
are,
he writes in a
typically universalizing comment,
"the causes of all
contentions and bloodsheds"
(2:xiii).
When some
years
later in the
"Epistle Dedicatory"
of the
De
corpore
Hobbes
arrogates
to himself the creation of civil
philosophy
as a
discipline,
he marks as the birth of that
discipline "my
own book De cive"
(1:ix).
Reviewing
his
career,
he describes his
philosophy
as a
struggle
against
the
"phantasms"
of Greek
thought-of Aristotelity
in
particu-
lar-and of the monstrous union of ancient
metaphysics
with Christian-
ity.
With an
image
from
Aristophanes,
Hobbes characterizes that union
as an
"Empusa,
...
having
one brazen
leg,
but the other was the
leg
of an
ass,
and was
sent,
as was
believed,
by
Hecate,
as a
sign
of some
approaching
evil fortune"
(1:x).
Hobbes
again represents
his career as a
war
against
the monstrous texts of a failed
symbolic
order. He blames the
"evil fortune"
of
England's
civil wars
upon
distortions of
language
and
ELH 62
(1995)
791-819 c 1995
by
The
Johns Hopkins University
Press 791
logic,
and offers as a
remedy-already
available in
De
cive and Levia-
than-Galileo's universal
philosophy
of natural motions
applied
to
politics.
Political
science,
determinist and
materialist,
intervenes
against
the monsters of
metaphysics.3
Hobbes is fond of
metaphors
of the
monstrous,
and his
employment
of
them,
especially
in crucial accounts of his own vocational
ambitions,
is
recurrent and
revealing.
His claim to
having spent
a career
battling
the
metaphorical
monsters of false
systems
of
knowledge complements
his
lifelong
attacks,
I will
argue, against
the monsters of
metaphor.
Viewed
from a broad historical
perspective,
Hobbes's attack stands as one
characteristic,
albeit
especially
fierce,
expression
of
hostility
to
metaphor
on the
part
of the seventeenth
century's
new
philosophers.
Monsters,
as
marvels of
nature,
have their verbal
counterparts
in
metaphors,
the
marvels of
speech.
As Paul de Man
argues,
within
metaphors,
as inside
the most violent
catachreses,
"something
monstrous lurks."4
(The
very
word catachresis means an
"abuse"
of
language.) Metaphors
can
appear
dangerous,
even
monstrous,
because
"they
are
capable
of
inventing
the
most fantastic entities
by
dint of the
positional power
inherent in
language. They
can dismember the texture of
reality
and reassemble it in
the most
capricious
of
ways, pairing
man with woman or human
being
with beast in the most unnatural
shapes."5
As a
consequence,
de Man
argues, metaphor
has been
"a
perennial problem
and,
at
times,
a
recognized
source of embarrassment for
philosophical
discourse."6
That
embarrassment becomes
especially
acute
during
the seventeenth cen-
tury
because of
metaphor's
association with
subjective imagination,
passion,
and the
monstrous,
with all that contrasts with
objective
judgment,
reason,
and the natural. As a
result,
the
opposition
between
the literal and the
figural
underlies
many
of the crucial
polarities
of the
century's
discourse: the divide between truth and
falsehood,
natural
philosophy
and
poetry, philosophical
discourse and
rhetoric,
to name
only
a
few.7
Especially
in the civil war
years,
a
hostility
to
metaphor
becomes
acute, too,
because as a monstrous rebel to
linguistic
law,
metaphor
is associated with the monstrous rebels of mob rule. To attack
metaphor
is to attack the monstrous mother of all seditious
philosophies,
and a monstrous breeder of sedition itself.8
Fierce as his
opposition appears,
it must be
recognized
from the start
that Hobbes's
explicit
attack
against metaphor
stands in contradiction to
the constitutive role of
figurative speech
in his
political
science.
(His
metaphors
are
"constitutive,"
I will
argue,
because
they
are both
recurrent within and
indispensable
to Leviathan's
conceptual design.)
My argument
derives its force from recent
revisionary analyses
in the
792 Leviathan:
Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
history
of
science,
which
suggest
that Hobbes's
practice
is far from
idiosyncratic. Metaphor
and
analogy,
in
fact,
more and more
frequently
are
being represented
as constitutive
components
of all scientific dis-
courses. Richard
Boyd's early
claims on behalf of a role for scientific
metaphor
in the
process
of
theory composition
have
steadily given
ground
to more
comprehensive arguments by James
Bono for the rule of
figurative language
in scientific discourse as a whole.9 At the foundations
of his
revisionary analysis
is the
postmodern literary understanding
that
language
has unavoidable
tropological
and rhetorical dimensions that
ensure
multiple meanings
and
interpretations. Objective
discourse is
always,
hence,
a fictive
construct,
always something
constituted out of
tropology
and
rhetoric;
or to use Robert
Markley's
well-turned
phrasing,
"Objectivity
... is a fiction that
aspires
to the status of a
metaphysic."'.
Dismantling
traditional
oppositions
of science to fiction and
objective
discourse to
poetic speech,
the new
revisionary
critics show sciences and
fictions
struggling
for
meaning
in the same
prisonhouse
of
language.
In
light
of such
analyses,
the constitutive
metaphors
of Leviathan
emerge
as
characteristic features of normal
(political)
scientific
discourse,
and
Hobbes's fierce
opposition
to
metaphor,
as
paradigmatic
of a
long
tradition of
positivist
reaction
against figurative language.
As cultural
metaphors
and
"observed"
facts of
nature,
monsters form
an
important
nexus of ideas in
seventeenth-century society
about
poli-
tics,
language,
and the new
philosophy."
I call attention to these
monsters in order to
highlight
in
my
broader
argument
a
peculiar
doubleness in Hobbes's
philosophy,
the creation of the Leviathan as a
monster text to do battle
against
the monsters of
history-as
a text whose
doubleness
consists,
that
is,
in its reliance
upon metaphor
to constitute
its crucial
arguments,
and in its warfare
against metaphor
as an abuse of
language
and
thought.
As a
preview
of this
battle,
it
might
be well to
clarify
in advance what
"victory"
over
metaphor
could mean for Hobbes.
If
revisionary
critics such as Bono and
Markley
are correct that
tropology
is an
indispensable
element of
language,
then a discursive
victory
over
metaphor
could occur
only
outside of
discourse,
outside of
language
altogether.
Ask where to find a
place beyond language,
and one could
arrive at two
possible
answers:
first,
in the dream of a
positive
science to
discover a discourse that is
objective,
neutral,
and uncontaminated
by
monstrous
desires;
or
second,
in the
design
of a
pious magic
to create a
discourse in which words have the
power
to become incarnate as
things,
as the
very
fulfillment of desire. As Hobbes's Leviathan makes
manifest,
I will
argue,
the dream of
discovering
a
positive
"science" is linked
historically
to
magical designs.
Robert E. Stillman 793
Hobbes
published
the Leviathan in 1651.
Writing
several decades
later,
Bishop
Burnet recalls as one of the
year's outstanding
events the
printing
of Hobbes's
text,
which he terms
"a
very
wicked
book,
with a
very strange
title."'2
Its
reputation
for wickedness is
easily
remem-
bered-materialism and a
supposed
atheism made it an instant scan-
dal-but the
strangeness
of the Leviathan's title needs to be understood.
Burnet is not alone in
remarking upon
the title's
strangeness.
Another of
Hobbes's
contemporaries,
a Norfolk
divine,
excoriates him as "the
Renowned Fabricator of a
monocondyte Symbol."'3
The Leviathan
seemed to
him,
as it did to
others,
not
just
horrible,
but also
singularly
mysterious (monocondyte). Naming
a new book and commonwealth
after the most infamous of biblical monsters was
apt
to
puzzle. Opening
his attack
upon
the Leviathan in
1679,
John
Whitehall draws an
explicit
analogy
between "Monsters in nature" and "Monsters in
policy,"
and
notes:
"Examples
of the first have been
frequently produced,
but the
Year 1651
(a
time when our Nation
groaned
under the Dissolution of all
Ligaments
of our ancient Government . .
.)
only produced
such an
Example
of the
latter,
I mean Mr. Hobbes's
Leviathan.""'
As a monster
text,
the Leviathan's
reputation
for wickedness earned Hobbes the label
"the Monster of
Malmesbury."'5 John
Eachard,
as one of
many
Restora-
tion
opponents,
calls him
"a
formidable Monster of
Wit."'16
Even
Clarendon,
a man of
greater
moderation,
applies
the
label,
picturing
himself in an
introductory
woodcut as Perseus
rescuing Virgin
Truth
from the sea-monster's
gaping jaws.'7
Hobbes himself makes some
revealing
comments about the Leviathan's
strange
title. Taken to task
by Bishop
Bramhold for
having "published
his
Leviathan,
Monstrum
horrendum,
informe, ingens,
cui
lumen
ademptum,"
Hobbes
replies
with
unanticipated
coolness and wit
(5:24).
Far from
denying
the
charge,
Hobbes
strangely accepts
the label monstrum as
"not
far
fetched,"
and then
proceeds
to defend his text
against
the
remainder of the
epithets
attached to it: "For
allowing
him the word
monstrum
. . .
,
he can neither
say
it is
informe;
for even
they
that
approve
not the
doctrine,
allow the method. Nor that it is
ingens;
for it is
a book of no
great
bulk. Nor cui lumen
ademptum;
for he will find
very
few readers that will not think it clearer than his scholastic
jargon"
(5:26).
In defense of the
Leviathan, then,
Hobbes
responds
that he has
simply
created a more
logical,
more
compact,
and more
perspicuous
monster
than the
Bishop
allows. Bramhall must have found this a
strange
defense,
indeed. Some
years
later in
1672,
Hobbes wrote a
poeticized autobiogra-
phy
in which he calls attention once more to the book's title:
794 Leviathan: Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
The Book at London Printed
was,
and thence
Hath visited the
Neighbouring
Nations
since;
Was Read
by many
a Great and Learned
Man,
Known
by
its dreadful
Name, LEVIATHAN."
Though
the meter
stumbles,
the words
speak plainly enough.
When at
age eighty-four,
Hobbes reflects
upon
the "dreadful
Name,
LEVIATHAN,"
he
may
in
part
be
remarking upon
the fearful
reputation
that the book
had achieved
among contemporaries.
But the main force of "dreadful
Name" is its recall of the fearful sea-monster of the Bible.
In the cultural climate of the
1650s,
with the
legions
of monster
tropes
in
polemical
literature,
no text that describes the commonwealth as a
Leviathan could fail to
provoke
and disturb. Hobbes was aware of the
dreadful connotations of the
name,
as his
autobiography
demonstrates,
and as the
exchange
with
Bishop
Bramhall
shows,
he was
quite capable
of
deliberately unsettling
his readers with associations between the
monstrous and his text. The inference that Hobbes's Leviathan assumes
its
strange
title at least in
part
to
provoke
and disturb is
inescapable.
From the
patristics
to Protestant commentators in the
English
tradition,
the Leviathan is
consistently interpreted
as the
symbol
of the devil.
Milton,
for
instance,
opens
Paradise Lost with Satan
prone upon
the lake
of Hell as a Leviathan.19
Hobbes
knew, then,
that his title would
provoke.
What is
especially
telling
is his confidence in the face of that
knowledge
in his authorial
power
to revise and delimit the
meaning
of the name
through explicit
definition in order to
regulate
those fears that he seems so
deliberately
to
provoke.
The Leviathan's title is an educational
tool,
interventionist in
kind,
as it restricts the boundaries of
signification.
An
inscription
above
the title
page's picture
of Leviathan teaches that the
"right"
biblical
context in which to read the
image
is
Job
46. While the reader
might
mistake Leviathan for
Satan,
he is
really
to be seen as the
divinely
appointed "King
of all the children of
pride."
What the reader
might
assume is
merely
monstrous
metaphor,
Hobbes
carefully explains
in the
introduction to the text is
really sovereign logic
created
by
art because of
the necessities of human nature. The
provocation
of fear is
prelude
to
educational
instruction,
and this
dynamic
is crucial and recurrent in the
text as a whole.
One of the
great paradoxes
of the
seventeenth-century
intellectual
tradition,
and
part
of the
strangeness
of
Hobbes's title,
is that a book
setting
out so
mathematically
to
destroy metaphorical language
should
present
itself as an extended
trope,
a Leviathan. At
every stage
of its
Robert E. Stillman 795
argument,
from the
description
of the commonwealth as a
body
to the
account of the Roman Church as a
kingdom
of
faeries,
Hobbes relies
heavily upon figurative language
to advance his
arguments.
The contra-
diction between Hobbes's
theory
and his
practice
offers one of the text's
primary
and
peculiar challenges.
There can be no doubt about the
existence of the contradiction. Within the tradition of the seventeenth-
century's
new
philosophies,
his condemnation of
metaphor
is
among
the
most
uncompromising.
For
Hobbes,
metaphors
and other
"senseless
and
ambiguous
words,"
are mere
ignesfatui proceeding
from the
errancy
of
impassioned imagination
(3:37).
Note the materialist's
pun:
words that
do not
adequately
cohere with
things
are "sense-less." To reason
upon
metaphors
"is
wandering amongst
innumerable
absurdities;
and their
end,
contention and
sedition,
or
contempt"
(3:37).
Verbal chaos leads to
cultural chaos.
(The
association of
metaphor
with natural
marvels,
ignes
fatui,
is
telling
and
characteristic.)
Among
the four kinds of
language
abuse,
Hobbes
gives metaphors
a
primary place, describing
them as
words used "in other sense than that
they
are ordained
for;
and
thereby
deceive others"
(3:20).
Deceit and
equivocation
are main themes in his
opposition.
Counsellors to the
sovereign
are forbidden to
employ tropes
because
they
"are useful
only
to
deceive,
or to lead him we counsel
towards other ends than his own"
(3:246).
In matters of
demonstration,
counsel,
and "all
rigorous
search of
truth,"
Hobbes admits that "some-
times the
understanding
have need to be
opened by
some
apt
similitude.
...
But for
metaphors, they
are in this case
utterly
excluded" (3:58-59).
The same
judgment appears
in his statement that "in
reckoning,
and
seeking
of
truth,
such
speeches
['the
use of
metaphors, tropes,
and other
rhetorical
figures,
instead of words
proper']
are not to be admitted"
(3:34).
At the end of an
early chapter
on
speech,
Hobbes deems
"metaphors,
and
tropes
of
speech
... less
dangerous"
forms of "ratioci-
nation" than
morally charged signifiers
such as
gravity
and
stupidity,
but
he does so
only
"because
they profess
their
inconstancy;
which the other
do not"
(3:29).
The dismissal of
metaphor
from the
rigorous
search for
truth
(and
certainly
the Leviathan is
that)
is absolute and
unqualified.
If
John
Eachard is
any
evidence,
the contradiction between Hobbes's
theory
and
practice
is one that Restoration writers showed more
awareness of than modern commentators. In a
single
sentence that
extends for nineteen
pages,
Eachard
catalogues examples
of
metaphor
from the Leviathan
mainly
for the
pleasure
of
lashing
Hobbes with his
own
whip.20 Among
Hobbes's
twentieth-century
critics in the
analytical
tradition,
the contradiction is
largely ignored.
Paul
Johnson
is
typical
of
these critics in
calling
for an
understanding
of the text
"stripped
of the
796 Leviathan:
Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
rhetoric."
Johnson argues
that Hobbes creates
metaphors only
"to
capture
the
imagination"
of the
educable,
and then
warns,
revealingly,
that "at this distance in time there is no reason for us to fail to heed his
textual
warnings
and become overheated
by
his rhetorical
images.'"21
Attend to the
logic, forget
the
metaphors. Johnson's program
for
reading
speaks
both to the
analytical philosopher's
traditional fears about
figura-
tion,
and to the
enduring power
of Hobbes's "overheated"
metaphors.
Taken
literally,
of
course,
the advice would leave us with a text sans
teeth,
sans
hair,
sans
everything.
By
contrast,
a newer
group
of Hobbes's rhetorical critics
attempts
to
account for the contradiction
by appealing
to a
portrait
of the
philoso-
pher
as humanist. David
Johnston
writes that "there is no real
irony
or
paradox
to be discovered in the
intensely
vivid and
figurative language
of
this
book" since,
he
argues,
"Leviathan was
designed
less as a scientific
treatise than as a work of rhetoric."22 There is much in Hobbes's
practice
to recommend this
approach, especially
to formalists addicted to fictions
of textual
coherence,
but such
unity
is
arbitrarily imposed upon
a work
that
repeatedly expresses contempt
for humanist
rhetoric,
fueled
by
contempt
for the
republicanism
associated with it. The contradiction
between Hobbes's
theory
and his
practice,
his
pursuit
of a
language
of
philosophical certainty
and his
employment
of rhetorical
devices,
needs
to be
explained,
not
explained away.
Victor Turner
provides
a cultural model
helpful
in
explaining
the
contradictions of Hobbes's Leviathan. In a
speculative
account of
major
crises in Western culture-its so-called threshold
periods
of historical
transformation-Turner
argues
that
signs
of societal
change appear
first
"in the work of
exceptionally
liminal
thinkers-poets, writers,
religious
prophets,
'the
unacknowledged legislators
of
mankind."'23
Shelley,
of
course,
would have been
pleased.
Turner
goes
on to claim in a
perceptive
commentary
on modes of
thought
characteristic of cultural crises that
change begins
in such
periods "prophetically
'with
metaphor
and
ends,
instrumentally,
with
algebra.''"24
Turner's
thesis,
speculative
as it
is,
seems
especially appropriate
for the transformative era of
seventeenth-century
Europe
in its
passage
from millenial fervor to
enlightenment philosophy,
and
suggests
in turn a useful first
step
to
understanding
the contradic-
tions of Hobbes's book.
As a text
designed
to
remedy
the cultural chaos of
England's
civil war
era,
this is
clearly
a liminal work
(to
use Turner's
vocabulary).
In
Hobbes's
estimation,
England's
wars
brought
a dissolution of
authority
at
every
level of
culture,
from the moral to the
religious,
from the
intellectual order to the social order. Touch one
nerve,
and the whole of
Robert E. Stillman 797
the
body politic
shakes. The shadow of the civil wars
passes regularly
over the Leviathan. Its darkness is visible in
universalizing
claims about
the "incommodities" to which the state of man is
subject,
"the
greatest"
of which "is scarce
sensible,
in
respect
of the
miseries,
and horrible
calamities,
that
accompany
a civil
war" (3:170).
Writing
under the
shadow of the civil
wars,
Hobbes
repeatedly
connects the
mid-century's
cultural discord with
linguistic
discord. As the De cive
proclaims,
"The
tongue
of man is a
trumpet
of war and sedition"
(2:67).
Its
trumpetings
are so
dangerous
and so effective because of the
richly figured language
of
rhetoric,
with its
strong appeal
to
people's ruling passions.
In A
Dialogue of
the
Common Laws,
Hobbes draws attention to the
practical
political consequences
of that
appeal
in connection with events
leading
to the civil wars. "Seditious
teachers,
and other
prating
men" made the
English people
doubt
"of
the
King's right
to
levy money
for the
maintenance of his
armies,"
and
they
did so
"on
purpose
to turn the State
and Church into
popular government,
where the most
ignorant
and
boldest talkers do
commonly
obtain the best
preferments"
(6:18).
Seditious desires inform seditious
language,
which,
in
turn,
are both
cause and effect of revolutions in the state. Hobbes's
logic
makes for a
curiously literary reading
of the cultural
landscape.
At the roots of
England's
civil
wars,
Hobbes finds not a set of economic
causes,
not a
national resistance to
absolutism,
or a
pragmatic
failure on the
part
of
Stuart
sovereigns
to
impose conformity,
but a saturation and
corruption
of the
symbolic
order
by
bad books.
Turner's notion of
liminality
is
useful, therefore,
in
highlighting
what
is
already
familiar,
a sense of
urgency
about the monstrousness of the
civil wars that informs Hobbes's text. More
important
and less familiar
are the
implications
for Leviathan of Turner's thesis that
change begins
in
periods
of
great
cultural crisis
"prophetically
with
metaphor
and
ends,
instrumentally,
with
algebra."
From the
vantage
afforded
by
this
thesis,
Hobbes's text becomes an instance of historical
telescoping.
For Hobbes
incorporates
into the frame of a
single
text,
as the
very
means
by
which
his culture can be
cured,
that
dynamic
of
large-scale
social
change by
which
prophetic metaphors give way
to instrumental
algebra-or
to be
more
precise,
in Hobbes's
case,
to the
instrumentality
of
geometrically
designed thought
and
language.
In the course of
turning geometric
reasoning against impassioned figures
of
speech,
as I will
show,
Hobbes
seeks to
purify language
of
equivocation,
and
thereby
to cleanse the
body
politic
of a
primary
source of contamination.
Hobbes refers to his
text,
significantly,
not as a
monster,
but as an
artificial man. As "a rational and most excellent work" of
art,
the
798 Leviathan:
Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
Leviathan teases
by
its resemblance to the monstrous
(what
else but a
giant
is an artificial man of
"greater
stature and
strength
than the
natural"?),
even as it insists
upon
its status as a
philosophical
discourse
(3:ix).
Against
the monsters of
metaphor,
Hobbes
opposes
the
geometri-
cally designed thought
and
language
of
Leviathan,
as a
fascinating,
even
a
unique example
of
philosophy-in-the-making. Philosophy
counters
rhetoric,
truth counters
fiction,
and
logic
counters
metaphor
in an
ongoing
effort to clear a rational domain for
Hobbes's
new
discipline. My
metaphor
is
deliberately
chosen. As
W.
V. Quine
writes in a
positivist
tradition
deeply
indebted to
Hobbes,
"The
neatly
worked inner stretches
of science are an
open space
in the
tropical jungle,
created
by clearing
tropes away."''25
In this work of
levelling,
Leviathan commits itself
thereby
to the inevitable contradictions of
attempting
to reduce the irreducible
doubleness of
metaphor,
to intervene
against
monstrous
parole by
the
regulating power
of a
rationally
conceived
langue.
(Those
contradictions
are inevitable because there is no
place
from which to intervene
against
the errancies of
language
and desire outside of
language
and
desire.)
Whatever the
contradictions,
and however
dangerous
the desires con-
nected with
them,
figures
of
speech carry
a
surprising appeal
to this first
civil
philosopher.
Leviathan battles to erase the monsters of
metaphor
and seeks to
install a new
philosophical logic
and
language
in their
place.
Our
entrance to the work illustrates the
activity
of the text as a whole.
Confronted
by
the fearsome
image
of the
metaphoric
Leviathan on the
title
page,
who
prophesies triumph
over the children of
pride,
the reader
is instructed in an account of the
"artificial
man"
by
a rationalized
depiction
of the commonwealth's constituent
parts: part by part,
Hobbes
supplies
reasoned
analogies
between the Leviathan's
body
and the
body
politic. Metaphor gives way
to similitude and similitude to the
promise
of
a
political reading
to
proceed "orderly,
and
perspicuously"
(3:12).
This
dynamic-a passage
from fear
inspired by affectively charged metaphors
to
security promised by
rational
computation-repeats
itself
throughout
the text. Out of it
originate
Hobbes's most
potent arguments
for the
establishment of an authoritarian state. In the
larger
text,
as he moves
from
metaphor
to
geometric
method,
Hobbes both harnesses our
universal fear of death into a rational awareness of the death that all must
suffer in Leviathan's
absence,
and
allays
existential fears as he creates in
the
geometrically
fashioned Leviathan a
sovereign power
whose
pres-
ence
brings peace. Sovereign security quiets
the fear of
death,
as the
omnipotent logic
of Leviathan
triumphs
over the monsters of
metaphor.
The medium of Hobbes's text is its
message.
His
writing
is committed to
Robert E. Stillman
799
perform
for us
(and
ultimately,
I will
argue,
to have us
perform)
a
transformation of
metaphor
into
logic-a
transformation,
it should be
stressed from the
start,
that aims at a
strangely magical
event,
the
incarnation of
sovereign power.26
On
many
occasions,
Hobbes effects the transformation of monstrous
metaphor
into
geometric logic by erasing figures
of
speech through
a
rational elaboration of their
significance. Paraphrase
is a
great purifier.
As Hobbes comments: "for of all
metaphors
there is some real
ground,
that
may
be
expressed
in
proper
words" (3:448).
All
metaphors,
he
argues,
are
capable
of translation into
("proper")
literal
speech,
of
being
made
non-metaphorical.
For
instance,
when Hobbes describes reason as
"nothing
but
reckoning,"
he is careful to flatten what
might
seem a
mathematical
metaphor
for intellectual
operations by defining reckoning
as the
"adding
and
subtracting,
of the
consequences
of
general
names
agreed upon
for the
marking
and
signifying
of our
thoughts"
(3:30).
For
a materialist such as
Hobbes,
there is
nothing metaphorical
about the
mathematical
operations
of the brain: his terms
comprise
a literal
account of the mind's
operations upon sensory
data. When Hobbes
refers to
error,
he makes
precise
what
etymologically might signify
a
"wandering"
from the
truth,
by specifying
the term's
application
to "an
absurdity,
or senseless
speech"
(3:32).
Speech
that makes no reference
to
sense,
to the motions of
matter,
is not so much
mistaken,
as
meaningless
(non-sense).
The same
process
can be
applied against
the
inherited
metaphors
of rival
philosophies.
When Hobbes considers the
"finis
ultimus,
utmost aim" or "summum
bonum,
greatest good"
of
classical
philosophy,
he erases old
metaphors
to
supply
a domain for new
logic: "Felicity
is a continual
progress
of the
desire,
from one
object
to
another;
the
attaining
of the
former,
being
still but the
way
to the latter"
(3:85).
Hobbes's
preference
for the well-worn
metaphors
of traditional
political
discourse
(for
the
image
of the
body politic,
for the
vocabulary
of covenants and
contracts) seems,
in this
light,
not
merely
a concession
to
convenience,
but also a deliberate selection of terms that lend
themselves
easily
to
logical
elaboration.27
The
urgency
to erase
metaphors
derives from Hobbes's historical
situation,
and is
apparent everywhere
in
Leviathan,
but it can be felt with
special intensity
in relation to a few
key
terms. One of these is
conscience. Note how his discussion
begins.
In an account of the ends of
discourse,
Hobbes
distinguishes
between SCIENCE and
OPINION,
be-
tween,
that
is,
"knowledge
of the
consequence
of words" and "truth of
somewhat
said,
though
sometimes in absurd and senseless words"
(3:53).
Always,
Leviathan is in the business of
making
definitions,
and the
800 Leviathan: Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
definitions of science and
opinion
are
prelude
to another definition of
particular importance
to Hobbes's
larger purposes,
conscious. The
passage
as a whole merits close examination:
When
two,
or more
men,
know of one and the same
fact,
they
are said
to be CONSCIOUS of it one to
another;
which is as much as to know it
together.
And because such are fittest witnesses of the facts of one
another,
or of a
third;
it
was,
and ever will be
reputed
a
very
evil
act,
for
any
man to
speak against
his conscience: or to
corrupt
or force
another so to do: insomuch that the
plea
of
conscience,
has been
always
hearkened unto
very diligently
in all times.
Afterwards,
men
made use of the same word
metaphorically,
for the
knowledge
of their
own secret
facts,
and secret
thoughts;
and therefore it is
rhetorically
said,
that the conscience is a thousand witnesses. And last of
all, men,
vehemently
in love with their own new
opinions, though
never so
absurd,
and
obstinately
bent to maintain
them,
gave
those their
opinions
also that reverenced name of
conscience,
as if
they
would
have it seem
unlawful,
to
change
or
speak against
them;
and so
pretend
to know
they
are
true,
when
they
know at
most,
but that
they
think so.
(3:53)
Hobbes's anti-rhetorical rhetoric is as
potent
as it is shrewd. Consider the
passage carefully,
and it is
apparent
how
shrewdly
Hobbes
operates
to
distinguish
two
meanings
of the
key
term at issue
here,
conscience--one
"proper"
and
legitimate
(associated
with science and the conscious
witnessing
of
facts)
and the other
"metaphorical"
and unlawful
(associ-
ated with
opinion
and the obstinate
pretense
to
unprovable
truths).
Properly
understood,
conscience
(con-science)
is to be
"reverenced"
as a
public
consciousness of real truths shared
among knowledgeable per-
sons;
metaphorically
debased,
conscience
applies
as a
private pretense
to
secret facts or
thoughts
that are mere individual
opinion.
The former
sense of the word is its
original
and true
meaning
(so
Hobbes's
etymological pun
reveals);
the latter is its debased and
historical/
tropological significance.
Hobbes's
distinction between these two forms
of conscience is more than a shrewd method to deliberate between
degrees
of
epistemological authority;
it is also a
potent
rhetorical
maneuver to banish to the realm of mere
metaphor
what his
readers,
then as
now,
would
universally
understand as the word's
ordinary
meaning: precisely
that consciousness of secret
thoughts
rendered so
suspect by
the term's
philosophical
definition.
(Who,
before
Hobbes,
had
ever considered conscience a
metaphor?)
Hobbes banishes this
"ordinary" meaning
to the realm of
metaphor
Robert E. Stilman 801
for motivations more
pressing
than the
epistemological quest
to turn
opinion
into science. Rhetorical inflation of diction
("vehemently
in
love," "obstinately
bent")
is
always
a
sign
in Hobbes of
pressing political
anxieties. A
private
conscience,
witnessing
secret
thoughts,
must be
segregated
to the realm of
opinion,
because it is on the basis of such
monstrous
"metaphors"
that
sovereignty
is
destroyed
in the state.
By
contrast,
a
public
conscience,
witnessing
shared
understandings,
is to be
hearkened unto
diligently,
since as Hobbes will demonstrate
afterwards,
"the law is the
public
conscience"
(3:311,
emphasis
added).
In a later
discussion about the dissolution of the
commonwealth,
he identifies as
one of its
primary
causes the
repugnant
doctrine that
"whatsoever
a man
does
against
his
conscience,
is
sin" (3:311).
His attack
against
the
seditious doctrines of sectarian monsters
begins,
then,
with abstract
concerns about
epistemology
and
metaphor,
but
ends,
typically
of
Hobbes,
with
specific political
recommendations. In a
chapter
on the
office of the
sovereign,
Hobbes
singles
out the
appeal
to the
authority
of
conscience as one of those
"weak
and false
principles"
that must be
eliminated
by
"the
right teaching
of
youth
in the universities"
(3:330-31).
Action
against metaphorical
conscience in the text is
complementary
to
institutional intervention
against
the
authority
of conscience in the state.
Hobbes's interventions as a biblical commentator
generate
other
variations on the attack
upon metaphor,
even as
they highlight,
once
more,
the historical
urgency
behind such attacks.
Proceeding
as
exegete
on the
assumption
that "all true
ratiocination,
is the constant
signification
of
words,"
Hobbes
subjects
the
richly figured language
of the Bible to
similar
processes
of rational elaboration used
against philosophical
texts
(3:380).
He
objects,
for
instance,
to the
metaphorical interpretation
of
the
kingdom
of God as a
sign
of
"eternal
felicity"
and
"sanctification"
(3:396).
The term is
really
to be
understood,
Hobbes
insists,
as "a
kingdom properly
so
named,"
the divine wisdom enshrined in a divine
literalness
(3:396-97).
The assault
upon metaphor
constitutes in this
instance a miniature act of containment.
By restricting
the
signification
of the
kingdom
of God to
"a
civil
kingdom,"
Hobbes erases one
primary
source of sectarian
challenge
to the
authority
of the
sovereign
state
(3:403).
The same
impulse
toward containment leads him to
insist,
by
contrast,
that the word
inspiration
"is used in the
Scripture metaphori-
cally only"
(3:394).
To banish
inspiration
to the realm of
metaphor
is to
disenable one
primary
claim to
authority among
a vast host of sectarian
enemies. In
passage
after
passage,
Hobbes
accomplishes
that banish-
ment
by supplying
literal translations of what he insists is
figurative
speech:
"where it is said that God
inspired
into man the breath of
life,
no
802 Leviathan: Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
more is
meant,
than that God
gave
unto him vital motion"
(3:394). God,
too,
is a materialist.
As
metaphors
are erased
by
a rational elaboration of their
significance,
fiction
passes
into truth and rhetoric into
philosophy.
The action of the
text
presents
us,
thereby,
in
every
definition on
every page
with an
illustration of
philosophy-in-the-making.
To make civil
philosophy,
in
turn,
is to secure the foundations of a well-made
state,
to
elevate,
for
instance,
a debased
metaphorical
conscience,
captive
to
private opinion,
into real
public
conscience,
witness to
sovereign authority.
In view of the
conceptual power
that Hobbes
supplies
to
geometrically precise
defini-
tions,
as well as the enormous
space actually given
to
making
such
definitions,
this
activity
of
transforming metaphorical
dross into
logical
gold
assumes a
large importance,
indeed. A sense of that
importance
can
be
enlarged
further to illustrate the
political power
of Hobbes's transfor-
mation of
metaphor
into
logic.
Consider,
for
example,
Leviathan's
rewriting
of the humanists' traditional claims to
eloquence.
When a
Tudor humanist such as Thomas Wilson wishes to illustrate rhetoric's
power
to draw an audience to
virtue,
he summons to
mind,
metaphori-
cally,
the
extraordinary image
of
golden
chains
extending
from the
orator's mouth that
wrap
themselves around the ears of his auditors. The
orator is an Hercules that has
"all
men lincked
together by
the
eares
in a
chaine,
to draw them and leade them even as he lusted."28 This near-
monstrous
image
drew Hobbes's
attention,
none too
surprisingly,
and it
is an
image
that he rewrites to his own
advantage:
But as
men,
for the
attaining
of
peace,
and conservation of themselves
thereby,
have made an artificial
man,
which we call a
commonwealth;
so also have
they
made artificial
chains,
called civil
laws,
which
they
themselves,
by
mutual
covenants,
have fastened at one
end,
to the
lips
of that
man,
or
assembly,
to whom
they
have
given
the
sovereign
power;
and at the other end to their own ears.
(3:198)
In
place
of the humanists'
empowerment
of the
orator,
Hobbes
empow-
ers the
sovereign;
in
place
of rhetoric as the
principal
vehicle
by
which
political
order is
achieved,
Hobbes offers civil law.
By
virtue of these
substitutions,
traditional humanist
metaphor
is transformed into new
philosophical
similitude,
in an anti-rhetorical
analogy
that,
at
once,
recalls the familiar celebrations of
eloquence
and undermines their
claims to
authority.
At stake here is the
regulatory power
of
public
discourse,
a
power
that Hobbes
displaces
from the chains of
eloquence
(imposed by
the
orator)
to the chains of
sovereign
law
(accepted by
the
people),
because the
peace
of the commonwealth
requires
it.
(It
is a
Robert E. Stillman 803
shrewd maneuver to render domination
freely
chosen.)
Golden chains of
eloquence collapse
before artificial
(artfully
and
logically
crafted)
chains
of civil law. Hobbes's allusiveness
works, then,
to
impart
an
impression
of
solidity
and
strength
to his
artificially
crafted
state-stability
and
strength
urgently required
in the aftermath of civil wars.
That allusiveness
works, too,
in its
representation
of the civil law as a
chain,
to
highlight
one of the most unusual and distinctive characteristics
of Hobbes's own
anti-metaphorical prose,
its status as a
technologically
regulated
discourse.
My description
bears
explaining.
As Hobbes works
relentlessly
to
impose
definitions
upon
terms,
Leviathan
imposes
chains
(to
borrow an
analogy) upon
the ears of its readers. Given
any ordinary
sentence from
Leviathan,
the reader is forced to
engage
in a
process
of
what can
only
be called translation. A
single example
will serve. While
considering
how to educate the
public,
Hobbes writes:
"They
also have
that
authority
to
teach,
or to enable others to teach the
people
their
duty
to the
sovereign power,
and instruct them in the
knowledge
of what is
just,
and
unjust, thereby
to render them more
apt
to live in
godliness,
and in
peace amongst
themselves,
and resist the
public enemy,
are
public
ministers"
(3:228).
My example
is a
complex,
but not
untypical
illustra-
tion of Hobbes's
ordinary practice: page
after
page yields
similar
sentences.
Every
word
highlighted
in this
example (authority, duty,
sovereign, power, knowledge,
and so
on)
has its
meaning regulated
according
to
specific
definitions
supplied previously
in the
text;
hence
the need for the reader to
proceed by
translation,
moving
from definition
to definition to reassemble the
"chain"
of Hobbes's
logical argument.
As
Leviathan's
argument
advances,
text is
constantly being
transformed into
glossary-the complete
work
designed
as a
complete
educational manual
for civil
philosophy
in the universities and
blueprint
for
political opera-
tions in the state. Leviathan is more than a work about civil
philosophy;
it is a text intended to create a
complete
(or
to use the
contemporary
term)
a universal
language
and
logic
of
political
life.
Only
the
fiat
of a
historically
real
sovereign
stands between Hobbes's text and a universal
political
discourse.
Whether
writing
about
scripture, language,
ethics,
or
economics,
Hobbes erases
metaphors
from
language
and
logic
as he constructs an
independent
domain for
political philosophy.
Out of the darkest
jungles
of
tropology,
he seeks to clear an oasis of
perspicuous representation.
When in the conclusion of Leviathan Hobbes states his
opinion
that it is
difficult,
but not
impossible
to secure a reconciliation of
"solid
reason-
ing"
and
"powerful eloquence,"
it is
against
the
history
of these erasures
that his statement must be understood
(3:701).
As Hobbes
writes,
804 Leviathan: Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
"Judgment
and
fancy may
have
place
in the same
[people],"
when those
people
are
engaged
in
"adorning
and
preferring
of
truth,"
but
only
"if
they
have it to adorn"
(3:702).
Leviathan will make
available, then,
in its
disclosure of a
true
political
science,
a model for
true
eloquence-an
eloquence
redefined
through
the text's
persistent
assault
upon metaphor
and the traditional tools of rhetoric as the
perspicuous logic
of
philo-
sophically
crafted
prose.29
The old rhetoric of humanism is erased
by
the
new
eloquence
of civil
philosophy,
the
geometrically
crafted
expression
of
clearly
defined ideas.
Hobbes's
strategic
moves
against metaphor
are as
transparent
as his
ideal of
discourse,
but often as difficult to
accomplish effectively.
Hobbes
might
wish to erase a classical
metaphor
such as
'finis
ultimis"
through
logical analysis,
but often his
analyses
succeed
only
in
replacing
old
metaphors
with new ones:
"felicity
is a continual
progress" (emphasis
added).
The monsters of
metaphor
are not
easily
banished,
and as a
consequence,
Leviathan is a far less comfortable text than
my partial
account
suggests, especially
in those moments when its claims to
mathematical
certainty appear challenged by epistemologically
loaded
contradictions.
Hobbes's most memorable
prose
carries a
weight
of
metaphorical
implication strikingly
resistant to the diminishments of rational
explica-
tion. In a
passage
that has haunted
generations
of
readers,
he describes
the human condition in the state of nature:
there is no
place
for
industry;
because the fruit thereof is uncertain:
and
consequently
no culture of the
earth;
no
navigation,
nor use of
the commodities that
may
be
imported by
sea;
no commodious
building;
no instruments of
moving,
and
removing,
such
things
as
require
much
force;
no
knowledge
of the face of the
earth;
no account
of
time;
no
arts;
no
letters;
no
society;
and which is worst of
all,
continual
fear,
and
danger
of violent
death;
and the life of
man,
solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish,
and short.
(3:113)
Hobbes's account forms a brilliant
parody
of the
golden age topos
of
classical
pastoral.
All of the
negatives
that are
charged
with
nostalgic
value in
literary renderings
of this theme from Ovid to Milton are
recharged
here with the fearsome force of realism. A
literary image
is
erased in order to make room for what is
simultaneously
a
rationally
conceived
image
of life in the state of nature and an
affectively charged
depiction
of
primitive
existence. The
passage's
affective
power
is as un-
deniable as it is deliberate. Clause
by
clause,
Hobbes
empties
civilization
of its
goods
(no
industry,
no
culture,
no
navigation), compelling
the
Robert E. Stillman 805
reader both to reassess the value of what has been lost and
(by
the sheer
force of
repetition)
to
experience
the fearfulness of that loss. Once
more,
Hobbes enhances the force of his
depiction by situating
the reader in
uncomfortably
close
proximity
to it: note his skill in
manipulating
perceptions
of time and
place.
When and where did
(or does)
this state
of nature exist? Hobbes
puzzles
about the
historicity
of his own
depiction
("the
notion of
time,
is to be considered in the nature of war"
[3:113]).
He first admits that a
"condition
of war as this ... was never
generally
so,
over all the
world";
he then turns
quickly
to
argue
not
only
that it exists
now
among
"the
savage people
in
many places
of
America,"
but also that
it is the condition of men "in a civil war"
(3:114-15).
The clear
implication
is that this
is,
in some
measure,
the condition of life in
England,
at least
during
its civil wars.
Appearing
then to back off from all
historical claims whatsoever
("though
there had never been
any
time"),
Hobbes reasserts the immediate and uncomfortable
urgency
of his
depiction by arguing
for the
presence
of a state of war "in all
times"
(3:115).
What at first
appears
a skillful
parody
of a
literary topos,
becomes,
as the
passage
unfolds,
a
description
of the reader's world
itself-and a fearsome world it is.
When Hobbes describes man's life in the state of nature as
"solitary,
poor, nasty,
brutish,
and
short,"
no amount of
explication
intervenes to
flatten his
figure
of
speech.
A traditional
literary image
is erased in order
to make room for another
image, tropological
in kind. When he
depicts
the Catholic Church as "the
ghost
of the deceased Roman
empire, sitting
crowned
upon
the
grave
thereof,"
a
figure
of
speech
is constructed not
erased
(3:697-98).
When he
portrays
the texts of "democratical
writers"
as the venom of mad
dogs,
a
trope
is made not flattened
(3:315).
Such
metaphors
elicit,
and
appear designed
to
elicit,
a
charged
emotional
response
from the reader. At the same
time,
Hobbes sometimes
employs
metaphors
because
they
are
conceptually
useful,
even
indispensable
for
him: he
turns,
for
instance,
to the
language
of covenants and of
authorization to describe the institution of the
sovereign.
Such
figures
of
speech
constitute crucial
portions
of his
conceptual design. By
such
means, then,
metaphor
often
operates
in the
text,
to use Ricoeur's
words,
as a device of
"rapprochement,"
a
philosophical
tool
whereby "things
or
ideas which were remote
appear
now as
close."30
Metaphors
of this
variety-those
whose affective force and
concep-
tual
utility
are undiminished-make Leviathan what can
only
be de-
scribed as a
peculiarly
active and
unsettling
text. What the work does is as
important
as what it
says,
as a
linguistic gesture
that carries
meaning
and
power
with it. Given Hobbes's
repeated
strictures
against
the use of
806 Leviathan: Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
metaphor, any single figure
of
speech acquires
an additional dimension
of
meaning
(additional
to its local affective or
conceptual power)
as an
instance of
unexplained
contradiction. It is this additional dimension of
meaning
in the
reader's
experience
of the text that
acquires
such
importance.
In a
political
discourse whose claims to
geometrical
cer-
tainty appear challenged,
if not
compromised, by
the
employment
of
such vehicles of contentious and seditious
equivocation
the
repeated
recourse to
metaphor
is
deeply unsettling.
The text
earnestly
disavows
traditional forms of rhetoric while
reintroducing
rhetorical
devices,
thereby advertising
what its claims to
certainty
have been
busily attempt-
ing
to conceal from the outset: its own textual
insufficiency.3'
(No
wonder
Hobbes writes in his conclusion: "There is
nothing
I distrust more than
my
elocution"
[3:711].)
What I am
arguing
is that Leviathan is so
constructed as to call out from the reader not
merely
a fear for his own
mortality,
but also to induce a state of
profound epistemological
fear,
and
that the sheer fact of Hobbes's
employment
of
metaphors
(whatever
affective or
conceptual weight
that
they
are made to
carry)
is one
important
means to the
provocation
of such fear. After instructions to
identify geometric certainty
as the sole means of
avoiding
civil
war,
the
apparent
failure of the text to
supply
the
remedy
essential for the health
of the
political body
disturbs and
provokes.
In the chaos
accompanying
England's
civil
wars,
for an intellectual with Hobbes's
convictions,
there
is no
great
distance between the
seemingly
abstract concerns of
episte-
mological
contradictions and the
historically specific experience
of
death. What is so remarkable about these
contradictions, however,
is that
Hobbes
by
the
very
act of
provoking
fear
attempts
to make the Leviathan
pass
from the order of words to the order of
things,
from monstrous
metaphor
into
logical sovereignty.
Several of Hobbes's recent critics discover in Leviathan evidence of
the
employment
of what David Gauthier calls fear
against
fear. He
writes: "The first
step
is to set
against
those
passions
which lead men to
violate their
covenants,
a
passion
which
supports
the covenants."32
Victoria Kahn's rhetorical
analysis
of Leviathan makes a similar claim.
She contends that Hobbes
consistently
uses "fear
against
itself in his
attempt
to convince the reader of the
necessity
of a
sovereign power."33
Moreover,
she
argues
that the use of fear is one
primary strategy
in a text
designed
to
employ
rhetoric
against
rhetoric,
and in which "the
appear-
ance of
logical argument
. . . is revealed to be the most
persuasive
and
canniest of Hobbes's rhetorical
postures."34
In a
related,
but
separate
tradition of
criticism,
several of Hobbes's
critics have
argued
that Leviathan seeks to
produce
rational fear. For
Robert E. Stillman 807
instance,
Leo Strauss maintains that Hobbes
opposes "vanity
the force
which makes men
blind"
against
"fear of death ... the force which makes
men
clear-sighted."35 Attributing
that
dynamic
to Hobbes's interest in
Plato and the
Stoa,
Strauss
explains
that "he came to conceive this
antithesis between
vanity
and fear as the antithesis between
passion
and
reason. He
interprets
all
passions
as modifications of
vanity,
and he
identifies reason with fear.""36 In another
context,
David
Johnston
elabo-
rates
upon
Strauss's thesis
by arguing
that "Hobbes considered fear of
death
perfectly
rational."
Furthermore,
he
notes,
"This
assumption
lies
at the foundation of his
political theory.
The desire to avoid death and
quell
this fear is what causes men to
subject
themselves to
political
authority.3""
Similar to Kahn's more subtle
argument, Johnston's
takes a
rhetorical turn in his contention that Hobbes's
growing skepticism
about
reason made
necessary
the added
employment
of
persuasive
devices to
inspire
the fear that creates covenants. Both accord to fears created
by
rhetoric a
primary
role in Hobbes's effort to close the
gap
between the
sovereign
in the text and the
sovereign
in the world: as
logic
fails,
fearsome
figures
of
speech inspire
the creation of
covenants,
Johnston
insists;
although logic
fails,
the reintroduction of rhetorical forms creates
the
appearance
of
logic
and the fearful
necessity
of the
commonwealth,
Kahn insists.
Hobbes's desire to associate fear with the rational faculties that rescue
mankind from fear finds
compelling support
in the text. Fear and reason
are
joined
in Leviathan's account of the miseries of the natural condition.
Brutalized
by
the warfare in which
"every
man is
enemy
to
every man,"
in which the restless
appetite
for
power prevents satisfying
the desire for
self-preservation,
the human
being
finds a
remedy
for his condition
"partly
in the
passions, partly
in his reason"
(3:116).
Chief
among
those
passions
"that incline men to
peace"
is the "fear of death"
(3:116).
Hobbes adds
immediately:
"And reason
suggesteth
convenient articles of
peace, upon
which men
may
be drawn to
agreement"
(3:116).
Fear is the
passion
most often named as the
principal support
for the institution of
sovereign authority:
"men
who choose their
sovereign,
do it for fear of
one
another,
and not of him whom
they
institute";
"Fear of
death,
and
wounds,
disposeth
... men to
obey
a common
power"
(3:185, 86).
Not
only
is fear
necessary
to the creation of the
sovereign,
but it is also useful
in the maintenance of his
authority.
In
holding
men to the
performance
of their
covenants,
Hobbes
writes,
"The
passion
to be reckoned
upon,
is
fear"
(3:129).
Fear is so useful in
preserving
covenants because it is
among
all
passions,
"that which inclineth men least to break the
laws"
(3:285).
808 Leviathan:
Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
By providing
a central role for this
passion
both in the construction
and in the maintenance of
sovereign authority,
Hobbes
closely
associates
fear with the reason that rescues mankind from fear.
However,
an
association does not
constitute-Strauss's
claims to the
contrary-an
identity.
Hobbes never uses the term
"rational fear,"
and he cannot do so
because fear is a
passion
inherent in human
nature,
while
"reason
is
not,
as sense and
memory,
born with us
...
but attained
by industry"
(3:35).
It is an art
acquired through
the
knowledge
of
language,
"of
all the
consequences
of names
appertaining
to the
subject
in
hand."38
Crucial
for the success of his
political project,
Hobbes maintains the distinction
between a
rational,
philosophical logic
and the motions of desire.
At
every
turn in Leviathan's
provocation
of
epistemological
fear,
the
motions of desire are crucial matters of concern. Desire motivates the
potentially
seditious
language
of
religious controversy.
As the
origin
of
the first motions of the
tongue,
desire insinuates itself into
language
and
logic,
and makes
necessary
the creation of some arbitrator for the
settling
of debates.
Desire, too,
is the cause of those
equivocations
that distin-
guish figurative language.
As the motions of bodies are in De
corpore's
physics,
so the motions of desire are in Leviathan's
psychology:
the
"one
universal cause"
(1:69).39
In view of
the
prominence
accorded to
desire,
it has sometimes been claimed
by
Hobbes's rhetorical critics that his
employment
of
metaphor compensates
for the
increasingly apparent
insufficiencies of reason. Because
logic
fails to
gain
the conviction of
absolute
certainty, especially among beings
so driven
by
desire,
the
persuasive powers
of rhetoric are
employed
to move readers to the
creation of a
sovereign authority.
Leviathan's
frequent employment
of
figures
of
speech
is cited in
support
for this
position.
Such
arguments
are
attractive means of
supplying
coherence to the
text,
but
they
fail to
explain
not
only
the contradictions between Hobbes's
theory
and
prac-
tice of
metaphor,
but also the
peculiarly important
status accorded to
desire. For Leviathan's elevation of desire as the "one universal cause" of
language
and action
proceeds
not from the failure of
logic
to
gain
the
certainty
of
conviction,
but as the
very
foundation
upon
which Hobbes
means to create
logical certainty,
and in the
pursuit
of that
end,
to
inspire
epistemological
fear. The
inspiration
of fear is the chief
consequence
of
his
geometric analysis
of the motions of
desire;
fear is better conceived as
the
offspring
of Hobbes's
logic
than his rhetoric.
The
building
blocks of
logic
are
signs,
and the
origin
of those
signs
in
desire
(in
the material circumstances of the motions of
bodies)
permits
Hobbes to construct his
analysis
of human behavior on
determining
forces of matter whose movements can be formulated into laws. This is
Robert E. Stillman 809
what makes desire a useful
ground upon
which to fix
logical certainty.
To
formulate laws for the motions of desire in
language
and the mind is to
achieve
(in
Leviathan's
terms)
true and certain
knowledge.
However,
some of the
greatest
difficulties
posed
to Hobbes's
philosophy
derive
from the fact that in
attempting
to locate the
ground
of true and certain
knowledge
in the motions of
desire,
he must in effect
give
laws to the
lawless. For the motions of desire
are,
as Leviathan
insists,
"perpetual
and
restless" (3:85).
Hobbes's
difficulty
is reflected in a
necessary
hesitation about
vocabulary
here,
between
discovering grounds
in desire
and
creating
laws for
desire,
between
finding authority
in material
motions and
constructing authority
to
regulate
those motions. To insist
that the human
being
is determined
by
the motions of his
appetites
to act
according
to certain laws of nature
(to
desire
power
and
preservation
from
death)
is to discover
authority
in the
very
source that calls into
question
his
ability
to act as the
self-defining
maker of laws. This fact
goes
a
long way
in
accounting
for the text's
provocation
of fear about the
adequacy
of
knowledge.41
Hobbes's
project
is that of all modern
"sciences":
to be at once
authentic and
authenticating. By attempting
to fix and to create the
grounds
of
logical certainty
in
desire,
Leviathan's new moral
philosophy
establishes itself in the domain of
greatest danger
to those
"sciences,"
in
the realm
traditionally
reserved for the
fictive,
the
rhetorical,
the
literary,
even as it
attempts through
the establishment of those
grounds
to erase
the
fictive,
the
rhetorical,
and the
literary.
The textual
proliferation
of
metaphor
is
comprehensible only
in terms of the inevitable contradic-
tions of such a
project.
The desire to erase
desire,
the
urgent quest
to
discover laws for what has
already
been defined as the
lawless,
itself
generates metaphors
as traces of the desire that cannot be effaced. In
order to close the
gap
between
people
as the determined
objects
of
desire and
people
as the
determining
architects of
sovereign meaning,
Hobbes
attempts
to
exploit
the
consequences
of his own
reasoning
about
desire to locate in a
special variety
of fear a
bridge
between human
nature,
always
and
already
determined,
and the
determining power
of
the
philosopher's
art. In the course of
doing
so,
he sets the
stage
for the
final erasure of
metaphor,
as one
important expression
of what Ricoeur
might
call the
"ontological
vehemence"
of his
"semantic aim,"
to advance
the "truth" of his text "from the sense to the reference."41
I
have used the term
"epistemological
fear"
to describe the
major
consequence
of Hobbes's
reckoning upon
names in Leviathan. The term
is
employed
in order to
highlight
the
special variety
of fear
provoked by
the artificial and artful
logic
of the text in its
reckoning upon
the
810 Leviathan: Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
consequences
of names. Man's natural fear of death is one
primary
motivating
force in his
behavior,
and
Hobbes's "over-heated"
metaphors
(however
contradictory)
can and do excite this fear. But the
knowledge
of the
consequences
of those names
applied
to his affective
being,
at
once,
both characterizes reason and
generates
a
special variety
of fear
useful to the construction of covenants. That
special variety
of
fear,
as the
product
of
knowledge
about the
consequences
of
names,
can
properly
be
called
epistemological.
Fear of invisible
spirits
is
religion,
and it
origi-
nates in natural human
fears,
but fear of the
consequences
of
abusing
scriptural language
is the function of
reckoning upon
names-and it is
this
reckoning
that constitutes Hobbes's
primary purpose
in the text.
So,
too,
the force of
metaphors
in
appealing
to natural desires and fears
supplies
one reason for their exclusion from scientific
discourse;
but the
contradiction between Hobbes's
theory
and
practice
of
metaphor
excites
epistemological
fear,
fear about the textual
self-sufficiency
of a work
advertising
itself as the sole
remedy
for civil war. The brutish existence of
humanity
in its natural condition is
perpetuated by
the monstrous
opinions
of
Aristotle,
sectarian
preachers,
humanists,
and the advocates
of common law-and such
opinions play upon
natural
fears;
but
episte-
mological
fears
generated by
the
logic
of Leviathan work to contain and
to eliminate such monsters.
Chief
among
all those
epistemological
fears
provoked by
Leviathan is
its
ability
to authorize the
passage
from the order of words to the order
of
things,
from the textual domain to the historical domain. The most
important
fears excited
by
Hobbes
are, therefore,
a
consequence
of the
logic
of
Leviathan,
its
reckoning upon
names;
such
rhetorically
heated
metaphors
as it contains are
complementary
to this excitement. Hobbes
associates reason and fear because
having grounded
the
logic
of his
political
science in an
analysis
of the
determining
influence of
desire,
he
must accord to
right
reason
(however
arbitrarily)
the
power
to control
and determine the
passions.
In
making
reason
operate
as the scout and
spy
for
desire,
as the art that functions
by reasoning upon
the conse-
quences
of names to
remedy
natural
fears,
Hobbes
attempts
to
bridge
the
gap
between
people
as the determined
objects
of desire and the
philosopher
as the
determining
architect of
sovereign meaning.
To
argue,
as David
Johnston
has
done,
that rhetoric
generates
the fears
necessary
to the establishment of covenants is to misunderstand the
nature and source of those fears created
by
the text. To
argue,
as Victoria
Kahn has
done,
that the
appearance
of
logical argument
itself secures
belief in the
authority
of the
text,
is to underestimate the
degree
to which
Leviathan
persistently
excites fears about its own
epistemological authority,
Robert E.
Stillman
811
to render
altogether
too comfortable a text that
persistently
disturbs and
provokes. Nothing
in the
history
of the
reception
of Hobbes's text
justifies
her claim that the
"appearance"
of
logic
is "the most
persuasive
and canniest of Hobbes's rhetorical
postures." Among
the
greatest
portion
of its
contemporary
readers,
Leviathan
appeared
neither
persua-
sive nor
canny;
instead,
its
logic appeared
monstrous,
and it did
so,
in
large
measure,
because it threatened to
expose
the
arbitrary
foundations
of all forms of
authority, including
its own. To
argue,
then,
that Hobbes's
logic
is a rhetorical
construct,
a device for
opposing
rhetoric
by
rhetoric,
is a
hermeneutically
seductive
temptation
best resisted. Such an
argu-
ment so narrows the boundaries between the
logical
and the rhetorical as
to make distinctions of
primary importance
to Hobbes unmaintainable
(logic
defined as a
reckoning upon
the
consequences
of
names),
just
as it
fails to
capture
the real character of Hobbes's effort to authorize
sovereign power.
Power is authorized in Leviathan not
by
rhetoric and
metaphor,
but
by logic
and
magic-and maintaining
such distinctions is
a matter of
real,
historical
importance.
Let me
explain.
Leviathan is the
unsettling
and
disturbing
text that we have
always
known it to be. It
provides, finally,
whatever its occasional
promises
or its
readers'
desires,
neither the comforts of an
absolutely
certain
political
science,
nor the
easy persuasions
of
eloquent
discourse. This is a work
that
deliberately provokes
its
readers,
and that
provocation
is
fully
consistent with the Leviathan's status as a textual
gesture
whose
suffi-
ciency
(its
completeness
and
authority)
can
only
be found in the creation
of
sovereign power-and
it is to the creation of that
power
that the
provocation
of
epistemological
fears drives. The
sovereign's
word
sup-
plies
the
authority upon
which all forms of
political
discourse,
including
Hobbes's,
depend
for their success. In real
chronological
terms,
there-
fore,
Leviathan can
only
be validated
retrospectively,
at that future date
on which a
sovereign
converts "this truth of
speculation,
into the
utility
of
practice"
(3:358).
By creating epistemological
fear,
the work seeks to
enlist its readers as real
participants
in this act of validation.
By
transforming
them from readers of a text to authors of a
commonwealth,
Leviathan will be
released,
in one
final,
dramatic erasure of
metaphor,
from textual construct into historical
being. Only
at the moment that the
sovereign
in the text becomes a
sovereign
in the
world,
when the
figural
becomes
literal,
does
linguistic
chaos and the
political
chaos it
spawns
in
society
come to a close. As the historical Leviathan
replaces
the
figural,
the monster text
designed
to erase the monstrous
metaphors
and
metaphysics
of a
decayed symbolic
order is validated as its
metaphors
are
erased. The historical Leviathan erases the
metaphorical. Philosophy
812 Leviathan: Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
exposes
its own
inadequacy
before the court of truth in order to
compel
the creation of the sole
authority
that can make
philosophical
truth
realizable as historical fact: the
fiat
of
sovereign power.
There is no better
example
in
seventeenth-century English
culture of what
Stanley
Fish
long ago
called the
self-consuming
artifact.
In a
chapter
on the causes of a
commonwealth,
Hobbes
supplies
his
most
specific
directions for the institution of a common
power
as defense
against
"the invasion of
foreigners,
and the
injuries
of one
another"
(3:157).
As a means of
defense,
he
proposes
that
they
"confer
all their
power
and
strength upon
one
man,
or
upon
one
assembly
of
men,
that
may
reduce all their
wills,
by plurality
of
voices,
unto one will: which is as
much as to
say,
to
appoint
one
man,
or
assembly
of
men,
to bear their
person;
and
every
one to
own,
and
acknowledge
himself to be author of
whatsoever he that so beareth their
person,
shall
act,
or cause to be
acted"
(3:157-58).
The
vocabulary
of authorization is new to Leviathan
and it
supplies
a convenient and
necessary supplement
to the
language
of
contracts from De cive.42 Political contracts are established in De cive on
a
linguistic
model
allowing
access to a true and certain
knowledge
of
things
from
knowledge
about the
meaning
of names created
by
common
consent. The
sovereign
comes into
being
not
arbitrarily,
but as a
fulfillment of the true
significance
of a name established at the founda-
tions of
language
in common consent about the true nature of the
being.
Authority
finds a
ground,
however
slippery,
within the order of
things.
In
Leviathan,
the
gap
between the order of words and the order of
things
is closed with far
greater difficulty. Only by
means of an accord
reached
among people
amidst the fearful controversies of the state of
nature can the
sovereign
be created
(authorized)
as arbitrator to mediate
their
disputes.
The
sovereign gains
his
power
without
appeal
to
authority
from the domain of
things.
He
is,
on the model of Leviathan's
radically
nominalistic
logic,
the
pure product
of a
linguistic
construction. As
Hobbes
writes,
"This is
more
than
consent,
or
concord;
it is a real
unity
of them
all,
in one and the same
person,
made
by
covenant of
every
man
with
every man"
(3:158,
emphasis
added).
For a
philosopher
who
conceives the commonwealth as a
symbolic
order,
and for whom the
"real"
is defined
by reckoning upon
the
consequences
of
names,
authori-
zation
provides
"a
real
unity
of them all." The
political
cost of authoriza-
tion is
staggeringly high. People
become authors once and once
only.
The
self-defining
architects of
sovereign power effectively consign
themselves in the
very
act of authorization to be the determined actors of
sovereign
law.
It would be
tempting
to follow Victoria Kahn here in
arguing
that
Robert E.
StiUlman
813
Hobbes
merely employs
rhetoric
against
rhetoric,
creating by
meta-
phorical
means an
image
of
sovereign certainty through
an illusion
sustained
by
his own
figurative
discourse. This is a
temptation
best
resisted, however,
because the central event of Hobbes's
text,
the
institution of the
sovereign, depends
on a form of
linguistic
action well
outside the boundaries of traditional rhetoric and
metaphor.
In authoriz-
ing
the
sovereign
to act as a
single
will that embodies the will of all
individuals in the
commonwealth,
Hobbes
depends
on no
simple
meta-
phorical
transfer of
right
from
subject
to
sovereign.
The
sovereign
acts as
a result of this institution not as
if
he were
authorized,
but as
genuinely
authorized to act. Authorization and
power
are
aligned
not as a
"rap-
prochement" (metaphorically),
but as an
identity (literally);
the creation
of the
sovereign
secures what
Hobbes
calls
"a
real
unity."
From Hobbes's
perspective,
that identification of
authority
and
power
is enabled
by
the
computations
of his own nominalistic
logic.
What the universal name is
to the
conceptions
it denotes
(an
artificial construct that defines their
unity),
so the
sovereign
is to the
political
discourse of the state
(an
artificial man who defines the
unity
of the
political body).
The authoriza-
tion of the
sovereign
has as its foundation what is for Hobbes an
authentic and
authenticating process:
the definition of a universal name
by arbitrary
accord. One more
metaphor
(authorization)
is erased in the
service of the new civil
philosophy.
What Kahn
demystifies
as
rhetoric,
Hobbes
attempts
to
justify
as science. Far more
deliberately
than has
been
recognized,
Hobbes both
anticipates
and battles rhetorical forms
with
geometric
reason.
In
challenging
Kahn,
I do not wish to
argue
on behalf of Hobbes's
scientism. He offers no solutions
finally
to the
problems
of
authority
posed by
the text. As is true of all radical
nominalists, Hobbes
leaves a
logically unbridgeable gap
between coherent orders of words
(philo-
sophical logic)
and the
corresponding things
of the
political
world
(history).43 My argument
is not
that Kahn
proceeds
too far with the
process
of
demystification;
rather,
she does not
go quite
far
enough.
What is
especially striking
about this most
aggressive product
of the
seventeenth-century's
new
philosophies
is what can
only
be called the
strangely magical
character of its
thought.
The institution of the sover-
eign happens by
the
"magic"
of
identification,
not
by
the
rapprochement
of
metaphor. Only through
the incarnation of Leviathan as artificial
man,
of the word into
flesh,
does the discourse find its
sufficiency.
This is
instrumental
magic,
salvific vision in the theater of
knowledge.
A
gap
exists between the coherent order of Hobbes's nominalistic
logic
and the
corresponding political
order envisioned for his historical world. It is the
814 Leviathan: Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
intervention of a
logic
new to the modem sciences that creates that
gap,
and that
creates,
in its simultaneous demands for some authoritative
means to close
it,
the
necessity
for solutions
ultimately magical-and
political-in kind.44
Hobbes's desire to
bridge
the
gap
between words
and world leads to
theophantic
incarnation. It is a matter of historical
importance
to
recognize
that
power
is authorized in Leviathan
by logic
and
magic,
not
by
rhetoric and
metaphor,
because the
relationship
between these terms is
reciprocal,
not
adventitious, conditioned,
as it
is,
by
the
practical
necessities of life in the civil wars.
Logical
intervention
creates a
gap only magical
incarnation can
fill,
and
magic
must fill that
gap
because
history
demands it.
These reflections on Hobbes's Leviathan
suggest, finally,
an extension
and revision of the thesis from Victor Turner with which I
began.
If
Turner is
right
that in
periods
of
major
social crises
change begins
prophetically
with
metaphor
and ends
instrumentally
with
algebra,
then
critics of culture must be alive to the
ever-present
insinuations of
figurative language, thought,
and desire into the instrumental sciences-
sciences so
eager
to
forget
their historical
origins.
University of
Tennessee,
Knoxville
NOTES
1
De cive in The
English
Works
of
Thomas
Hobbes,
ed. Sir Thomas
Molesworth,
11 vols.
(London:
John
Bohn, 1839-45),
2:xii. All further citations from Hobbes are to this edition
and will
be
cited in the text
by
volume and
page.
2 Some of
Hobbes's best
modern critics have called for a reassessment of his
large
and
complex
inheritance from
Bacon,
and I would like to add
my
voice to theirs. See Leo
Strauss,
The Political
Philosophy of
Hobbes: Its Basis and Its
Genesis,
trans. Elsa M.
Sinclair
(Oxford:
Clarendon
Press, 1936), 135;
and
Jeffrey
Barnouw,
"The
Separation
of
Reason and Faith in Bacon and
Hobbes,
and
Leibniz's
Theodicy," Journal of
the
History
of
Ideas 42
(1981):
607-28.
3
Some critical attention has
been
paid
to Leviathan and
contemporary representations
of monsters.
See,
for
example,
Kevin
Harrison,
"The Monster of
Malmesbury,"
Mankind
7,
n. 6
(1980), 14-17,
and Charles
Cantalupo, "By
Art is created that
great
LEVIATHAN,"
Mid-Hudson
Language
Studies 5
(1982): 157-59,
62. No
attention, however,
has been
given
to Hobbes's
employment
of the monster in accounts of his own vocational ambitions
or to his association of the monstrous with the
metaphorical.
4 Paul de
Man,
"The
Epistemology
of
Metaphor,"
Critical
Inquiry
5
(1978): 13,
21.
5
de Man
(note 4),
21.
6 de
Man,
13.
7
For a useful treatment of these
polarities,
see The Literal and the
Figural:
Problems
of
Language
in the
History of
Science and
Philosophy,
1630-1800,
ed. Andrew E.
Benjamin,
Geoffrey
N.
Cantor,
and
John
R. R. Christie
(Manchester:
Manchester Univ.
Press, 1987).
A revision of what used to
be
seen as
unremitting hostility
to
metaphor
on the
part
of the
new
philosophers appears
in Vickers's The
Royal Society
and
English
Prose
Style:
A
Robert E. Stillman 815
Reassessment in Brian Vickers and
Nancy
S.
Streuver,
Rhetoric and the Pursuit
of
Truth:
Language Change
in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth
Centuries
(Los
Angeles:
William
Andrews Clark Memorial
Library,
1985),
and in Richard W. Kroll's The Material Word:
Literate Culture in the Restoration and
Early Eighteenth Century
(Baltimore:
Johns
Hopkins
Univ.
Press, 1991).
In
turn,
Vickers and Kroll overstate the case for a more
sympathetic philosophical perspective
on
rhetoric,
but there can be no
question
that the
response
to
figuration
on the
part
of the new
philosophers, generally,
and
Hobbes,
in
particular,
is far more
complex
than that of
simple rejection
or
acceptance.
On
Vickers,
Kroll,
and
questions
of
figuration,
see Robert E.
Stillman,
"Assessing
the Revolution:
Ideology,
Rhetoric,
and the New
Philosophy
in
Early
Modern
England,"
The
Eighteenth
Century: Theory
and
Interpretation
35
(1994):
99-118.
8
On traditional rhetorical connections between
metaphor
and
monsters,
see Patricia A.
Parker,
"The
Metaphorical
Plot,"
in
Metaphor:
Problems and
Perspectives,
ed. David S.
Miall
(Sussex:
Harvester
Press, 1982),
137.
9
Richard
Boyd, "Metaphor
and
Theory Change:
What is a
'Metaphor'
a
Metaphor
For?,"
in
Metaphor
and
Thought,
ed. A.
Orotony (Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ.
Press,
1979), 356-408,
and
James J.
Bono, "Science, Discourse,
and Literature: The Role/Rule
of
Metaphor
in Science" in Literature and Science:
Theory
and
Practice,
ed. Stuart
Peterfreund
(Boston:
Northeastern Univ.
Press, 1990),
55-90.
See, too,
Nancy Stepan's
nicely
reasoned
essay,
"Race and Gender: The Role of
Analogy
in
Science,"
ISIS 77
(1986):
261-77.
10 Robert
Markley, "Objectivity
as
Ideology: Boyle,
Newton,
and the
Languages
of
Science,"
Genre 16
(1983):
355-72.
" For the interest of new
philosophers
in monsters as "observed" facts of
nature,
see
Katherine Park and Lorraine
J.
Daston, "Unnatural
Conceptions:
The
Study
of Monsters
in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century
France and
England,"
Past and Present 92
(1981):
20-54. More
recently,
Daston has extended her
study
of
"preternatural phenomena"
as
"the first scientific facts"
(109)
in "Marvelous and Miraculous Evidence in
Early
Modern
Europe,"
Critical
Inquiry
18
(1991):
93-124.
12
Bishop
Gilbert
Burnet,
History of
His Own
Time,
6 vols.
(Oxford:
Oxford Univ.
Press,
1833),
1:341.
13
Quotation appears
in Thomas A.
Spragens,
The Politics
of
Motion: The World
of
Thomas Hobbes
(Lexington:
Univ. Press of
Kentucky,
1973),
21.
14
John
Whitehall,
The Leviathan Found Out
(London:
A. Godbid and
J. Playford,
1679), B-B'.
'5
See Samuel I.
Mintz,
The
Hunting of
Leviathan
(Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ.
Press,
1962),
vii.
16
John
Eachard,
Some
Opinions of
Mr. Hobbs considered
(London:
J.
Macock for
Walter
Kettiby,
1673),
29.
'7 Edward,
Earl of
Clarendon,
A
Brief
View and
Survey of
the
Dangerous
and
Pernicious Errors to Church and
State,
in Mr. Hobbes'
Book,
Entitled LEVIATHAN
(London, 1676).
18
Life
of
Mr. Thomas Hobbes
of Malmesbury
(London:
for H.
C., 1680),
10.
19 Milton,
Paradise
Lost,
in
Complete
Poems and
Major
Prose,
ed. Merritt Y.
Hughes
(New
York:
Macmillan, 1957),
book
1,
line 201. Now there does
appear
to have
been,
as
John
Steadman
argues,
"a minor
exegetical
tradition" that links the Leviathan with
prince
and
king, just
as
my
own research has uncovered connections between the Leviathan and
political
absolutism in Puritan
sermons,
"Leviathan and Renaissance
Etymology," Journal
of
the
History of
Ideas 28
(1964):
576. For the Leviathan as an icon of
political
absolutism,
816
Leviathan:
Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
see Cornelius
Burges
and
Stephen
Marshall,
Two
Sermons
Preached to the Honorable
House
of
Commons Assembled in
Parliament,
Nov.
17,
1640
(London:
By
T.B. and
I.O.
for
S.
Man,
P.
Stephens,
and C.
Meredith, 1641),
42-45. But neither tradition is
sufficiently
strong
to have
prevented
the vast
majority
of Hobbes's readers from
associating
the
Leviathan's "dreadful Name" with the evil and the monstrous.
20
Eachard
(note 16),
167-86.
21 Paul J. Johnson,
"Hobbes and the Wolf
Man,"
in Thomas Hobbes: His View
of
Man,
ed.
J.
G.
van der Bend
(Amsterdam:
Rodopi,
1982),
37.
22
David Johnston,
The Rhetoric
of
Leviathan
(Princeton:
Princeton Univ.
Press, 1986),
91. For another view of Leviathan as humanist
text,
see Sheldon S.
Wolin,
Hobbes and the
Epic
Tradition
of
Political
Theory
(Los
Angeles:
William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library,
1970), 13;
for an
argument
that Leviathan offers "a new form of rhetorical
education,"
see
Gary Shapiro, "Reading
and
Writing
in the Text of Hobbes's
Leviathan,"
Journal of
the
History of Philosophy
18
(1980):
148. See too
Anthony
Kronman's
discussion of the rhetoric of
authorship
in "The
Concept
of an Author and the
Unity
of the
Commonwealth in Hobbes's
Leviathan,"
Journal of
the
History of Philosophy
18
(1980):
161-73;
William
Sacksteder, "Hobbes:
Philosophical
and Rhetorical
Artifice,"
Philosophy
and Rhetoric 17
(1984): 30-46;
James
P.
Zappen,
"Aristotelian and Ramist Rhetoric in
Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan: Pathos versus Ethos and
Logos,"
Rhetorica 1
(1983): 65-91;
William
Mathie, "Reason
and Rhetoric in
Hobbes's Leviathan,"
Interpretation:
A
Journal
of
Political
Philosophy
14
(1986): 281-98;
Charles
Cantalupo,
"Hobbes's Use of Meta-
phor,"
Restoration
12,
n. 1
(1988): 20-32; and,
for
yet
another
argument
on behalf of the
coherence of Hobbes's
theory
of
metaphor
and his
stylistic practice,
see
Jeffrey
Barnouw,
"Persuasion in Hobbes's
Leviathan,"
Hobbes Studies 1
(1988):
3-25. See too Tom Sorell's
contention that Hobbes's discussion of counsel "resolves" his
"difficulty
...
in the idea of
a science that fuses reason and
eloquence"
(343), "Hobbes's
Persuasive Civil
Science,"
Philosophical Quarterly
40
(1990):
342-51. What Hobbes writes about
metaphor
is in no
way
reconcilable with the rhetorical
principles
attributed to him
by
such critics.
Leviathan's assault
against metaphor
is
unremitting
and
uncompromised.
A more
helpful approach
to the
problem
of
metaphor
is found in
John
T. Harwood's
introduction to his edition of The Rhetorics
of
Thomas Hobbes and Bernard
Lamy
(Carbondale:
Southern Illinois Univ.
Press, 1986).
For a
good
discussion of Hobbes's
attitudes toward
rhetoric,
see Terence
Ball, "Hobbes's
Linguistic
Turn,"
Polity
17
(1985):
739-60. Also useful are Michael
Ryan's
Marxism and Deconstruction: A Critical Articula-
tion
(Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins
Univ.
Press, 1982)
and Victoria
Silver, "The
Fiction of Self
Evidence in Hobbes's
Leviathan,"
ELH 55
(1988):
351-79. While I
agree
with
Ryan
that
Hobbes's distrust of
metaphor
is crucial for
understanding
his absolutist
politics,
one
needs to be
wary
of
attributing
an absolutist
linguistics
or
epistemology
to Hobbes-
without,
that
is,
appropriate qualifications.
In
turn,
Silver is correct to insist that Hobbes's
nominalism
provides
him with a
complex understanding
about the
contingent
nature of
knowledge
and
language.
What one finds in
Hobbes,
contra
Ryan
and contra
Silver,
is a
fierce
pursuit
of some means to establish an absolutist
linguistics
and
epistemology
as the
foundation for an absolutist
state,
some means to
escape
from the
all-too-apparent
contingencies
of
present language, knowledge,
and
politics.
23
Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields,
and
Metaphors: Symbolic
Action in Human
Society
(Ithaca:
Cornell Univ.
Press, 1974),
28-29.
24 Turner
(note 23),
29. For attention to Leviathan in the historical circumstances of its
creation,
see
Quentin
Skinner,
"Conquest
and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the
Engagement Controversy,"
in The
Interregnum:
The
Quest
for
Settlement,
ed.
G.
E.
Robert E. Stillman
817
Aylmer
(London:
Archon
Books, 1972), 79-98;
and Deborah
Baumgold,
Hobbes's
Political
Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1988).
See also Skinner's
impres-
sively
detailed studies of the
specific
social contexts of Hobbes's
philosophy:
"Notes on
Sovereignty:
An Unknown
Discussion,"
Political Studies 13
(1965): 213-18;
"History
and
Ideology
in the
English
Revolution,"
The Historical
Journal
8
(1965): 151-78;
"The
Ideological
Context of Hobbes's Political
Thought,"
The Historical
Journal
9
(1966):
286-
317;
"Thomas Hobbes and His
Disciples
in France and
England," Comparative
Studies in
Society
and
History,
2
(1966): 153-67;
"Thomas Hobbes and the Nature of the
Early
Royal Society,"
The Historical
Journal
12
(1969):
217-39.
25
W. V.
Quine,
"A
Postscript
on
Metaphor,"
Critical
Inquiry
5
(1978):
162.
26 The
"performative"
terms of
my argument
derive from
Stanley
Fish,
"Literature in
the Reader: Affective
Stylistics,"
in
Self-Consuming Artifacts:
The
Experience of
Seven-
teenth-Century
Literature
(Berkeley:
Univ. of California
Press, 1972),
esp.
386-89,
and
Kenneth
Burke,
Language
as
Symbolic
Action:
Essays
in
Life,
Literature and Method
(Berkeley:
Univ. of California
Press, 1966).
27
For a useful discussion of Hobbes's recurrent
practice
of
"translating" metaphors
into
plain prose,
see Silver
(note 22),
368-71.
28 Thomas
Wilson,
Arte
of rhetorique (New
York: Garland
Press, 1982),
19.
29 On this
point,
see Barnouw
(note 22).
He writes: "As the conclusion of Hobbes's
Introduction makes
clear,
his
argument presented
a form of demonstration that was not
'scientific"'
(14).
Barnouw's
reading
of the Introduction
supplies
a
good example
of the
kinds of
misinterpretations
to which Leviathan is
subject
from critics who
ignore
Hobbes's
thoroughgoing
redefinition of the "monstrous" terms of the rhetorical tradition.
Nothing
could be further from Hobbes's intention than to
encourage
his readers to view
his text as
rhetoric,
not "science." Barnouw
might question
the
legitimacy
of the
distinction offered
here,
but the
important point
in this context is that Hobbes most
certainly
would not. See
too,
Silver
(note 22),
who
argues
that,
for
Hobbes, "the
truth of
a
given proposition depends upon
our
having experienced
it
...
not
upon any
technical
expertise
in
political theory"
(362).
"Experience"
has no such
meaning
or
privilege
in
Hobbes's
thought: only
his own
geometrically precise logic
can
adequately
illuminate the
real nature of an individual's
experience.
For a short but
cogent critique
of some of the
assumptions
of Hobbes's recent rhetorical
critics,
see Perez
Zagorin,
"Hobbes
on Our
Mind,"
Journal of
the
History of
Ideas 51
(1990):
317-35.
30
Paul
Ricoeur,
The Rule
of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary
Studies
of
the Creation
of
Meaning
in
Language,
trans. Robert
Czerny
(Toronto:
Univ. of Toronto
Press, 1975),
143-48.
31 See
John
Richetti for a similar
argument
in
Philosophical Writing:
Locke,
Berkeley,
Hume
(Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1983),
20-21.
32 David P.
Gauthier,
The
Logic of
Leviathan: The Moral and Political
Theory of
Thomas Hobbes
(Oxford:
Clarendon
Press, 1969),
83.
33Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence,
and
Skepticism
in the Renaissance
(Ithaca:
Cornell Univ.
Press, 1985),
165.
34
Kahn
(note 33),
157.
See, too,
Christoper Pye,
"The
Sovereign,
the
Theater,
and the
Kingdome
of Darknesse: Hobbes and the
Spectacle
of
Power,"
Representations
8
(1984):
85-106. He
argues
that Hobbes
represents sovereign power
as "an
irreducibly
theatrical
phenomenon,"
a dramatic
display
intended to
terrify
the citizens into submission to
authority
(86).
35
Strauss
(note 2),
132.
36
Strauss,
150.
818
Leviathan:
Monsters,
Metaphors
and
Magic
37
Johnston
(note 22),
100.
38
For a
cogent
discussion of Hobbes's
nominalism,
see Dorothea
Krook,
"Thomas
Hobbes's Doctrine of
Meaning
and
Truth," Philosophy
31,
n. 116
(1956): 3-22;
and
William
Sacksteder,
"Some
Ways
of
Doing Language Philosophy:
Nominalism, Hobbes,
and the
Linguistic
Turn,"
Review
of Metaphysics
34
(1981):
459-85. For much useful
discussion of the
skeptical consequences
of Hobbes's
nominalism,
see Michael
Oakeshott,
Hobbes on Civil Association
(Berkeley:
Univ. of California
Press, 1975), 23-26,
and for a
contrasting argument
that Hobbes's
thought depends
on a
correspondence theory
of
language,
see
Jean Hampton,
Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
Univ.
Press, 1969),
42-49.
One of the best illustrations of the
analytical power
of Hobbes's nominalist
philosophy
comes in his
strategic
demolition of Cartesian
dualism,
with its
philosophically
naive
assumptions
about the referential
capacity
of
language. Against
Hobbes's claim that
reasoning
is
"nothing
more than the
uniting
and
stringing together of
names or
designations by
the word
is,"
Descartes can
only reply,
with a realist's
leap
of
faith,
"in
reasoning
we unite not names but the
things signified by
names,"
The
Philosophical
Works
of
Descartes,
trans. Elizabeth S.
Haldane,
2 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ.
Press,
1978),
2:65-66.
39
On Hobbes's
understanding
of
desire,
see
Jean Ray,
Hobbes and
Freud,
trans.
Thomas
G.
Osler
(Toronto:
Canadian
Philosophical Monographs,
1984).
40
Bruno Latour is
right
to
observe,
it seems to
me,
that "Hobbes even rules out
turning
his own science of the State into an invocation of
transcendence,"
We Have Never Been
Modern,
trans. Catherine Porter
(New
York: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1993),
19. Latour is
less
concerned, however,
with the immediate rhetorical
designs
of Hobbes's
challenge
to
scientific
certainty,
than he is with
representing
Hobbes and
Boyle
as
engaged
in the
invention of "our modern
world,
a world in which the
representation
of
things through
the
intermediary
of the
laboratory
is forever dissociated from the
representation
of citizens
through
the
intermediary
of the social contract"
(27).
41
Ricoeur
(note 30),
299.
42
For another
discussion of
Hobbes's
concept
of authorization in a wider historical
context,
see Hanna F.
Pitkin,
The
Concept of Representation (Berkeley:
Univ. of
California
Press, 1967),
14-34.
43
See Willem R. De
Jong's argument
that
"precisely
because of Hobbes's
nominalism,"
his
philosophy
"lacks room for an
adequate
account of the truth of
contingent proposi-
tions"
("Did
Hobbes Have a Semantic
Theory
of
Truth?,"
Journal of
the
History of
Philosophy
28
[1990],
88).
44
See Michael McCanles's
analysis
of how Bacon's
linguistic
ideas "create enormous
tensions and therefore initiate
significant enterprises
devoted to
resolving
them"
("From
Derrida to Bacon and
Beyond,"
in Francis Bacon's
Legacy of
Texts,
ed. William A.
Sessions
[New
York: AMS
Press, 1990], 42).
Chief
among
those "tensions" is the
epistemological
crisis attendant
upon
Bacon's obsession with the
gap
between words and
things.
Robert E. Stillman 819