Hobbes, romance, and the contract of mimesis

Political Theory

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 4-29

  Kahn, Victoria ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 0035579256     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591701029001002     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. Mates means overpowers; preoccupateth means anticipates, as in the case of suicide. In the following pages, I cite Leviathan from the edition by Richard Tuck (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991); chapter is indicated first, followed by page number.
2. This is, of course, a simplification of an enormously complicated series of political negotiations. The annulment was desired not only by Frances but also by her powerful relatives, the Earl of Northampton and the Earl of Suffolk. See Vernon F. Snow, Essex the Rebel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), chap. 3. Snow tells us that Essex owned a copy of "Amadis de Gaul, the bible of chivalry-conscious knights and nobles" (187).
3. I owe this information to Sears McGee of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Snow discusses the royalist lampooning of Essex (343) but does not mention this incident.
4. Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth, ed. Stephen Holmes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 112.
5. As Hobbes remarked in Leviathan, glory "maketh men invade ... for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other signe of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflexion in their Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name" (13.88). Although the word Hobbes uses here is glory, the examples he gives suggest that it is identical with vainglory or self-love.
6. See, for example, Jeremy Burroughs's sermon, dedicated to Essex, "The Glorious Name of God, The Lord of Hosts, opened in two Sermons ... with a Postscript, Briefly Answering a Late Treatise by Henry Ferne, D.D." (London, 1643), 93: "Those are fittest to venture their lives in fight, who are able to see beyond life, to see what is on the other side of the shore of this mortality, even eternall life and glory."
7. In addition to Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature 1641-1660 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 3, see Ananbel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), chap. 4, and Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 95-96. For examples of the republican use of romance, see Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640-1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 246-49. Here seventeenth-century writers would have been influenced by the many reprintings of Sidney's Arcadia, which not only provided contemporaries with a gripping narrative of chivalric adventures but also kept the figure of Sidney, the exemplary Protestant poet and military hero, foremost in their minds.
8. In addition to Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature 1641-1660 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 3, see Ananbel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), chap. 4, and Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 95-96. For examples of the republican use of romance, see Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640-1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 246-49. Here seventeenth-century writers would have been influenced by the many reprintings of Sidney's Arcadia, which not only provided contemporaries with a gripping narrative of chivalric adventures but also kept the figure of Sidney, the exemplary Protestant poet and military hero, foremost in their minds.
9. In addition to Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature 1641-1660 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 3, see Ananbel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), chap. 4, and Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 95-96. For examples of the republican use of romance, see Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640-1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 246-49. Here seventeenth-century writers would have been influenced by the many reprintings of Sidney's Arcadia, which not only provided contemporaries with a gripping narrative of chivalric adventures but also kept the figure of Sidney, the exemplary Protestant poet and military hero, foremost in their minds.
10. In addition to Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature 1641-1660 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 3, see Ananbel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), chap. 4, and Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 95-96. For examples of the republican use of romance, see Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England, 1640-1660 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 246-49. Here seventeenth-century writers would have been influenced by the many reprintings of Sidney's Arcadia, which not only provided contemporaries with a gripping narrative of chivalric adventures but also kept the figure of Sidney, the exemplary Protestant poet and military hero, foremost in their minds.
11. Imitation is a complex term in this period. It serves as a translation of both Platonic and Aristotelian mimesis, but it also refers in the rhetorical tradition to an author's imitation of prior texts and the imitative response on the part of the readers.
12. See René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, [1966] 1981) and Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 143-68.
13. See René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, [1966] 1981) and Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 143-68.
14. Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing, 73.
15. This is one common reading of individuals such as Essex, whose behavior is not governed by the fear of violent death. On the centrality of the problem of vainglory in Hobbes's work, see, among others, Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Chicago: Chicago University Press, [1936] 1963) and Keith Thomas, "The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought," in Hobbes Studies, ed. K. C. Brown (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1965), 185-236.
16. This is one common reading of individuals such as Essex, whose behavior is not governed by the fear of violent death. On the centrality of the problem of vainglory in Hobbes's work, see, among others, Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Chicago: Chicago University Press, [1936] 1963) and Keith Thomas, "The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought," in Hobbes Studies, ed. K. C. Brown (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1965), 185-236.
17. See Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 18 and passim. In The Passions and the Interests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), Albert O. Hirschman elaborated Strauss's observations into a full-fledged account of the passions and interests in early modern political theory.
18. See Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 18 and passim. In The Passions and the Interests (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), Albert O. Hirschman elaborated Strauss's observations into a full-fledged account of the passions and interests in early modern political theory.
19. David P. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1969); Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
20. David P. Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1969); Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
21. The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 169, my emphasis. In the same volume, Richard Tuck cautions us that passion for Hobbes "is in part a matter of cognition: it involves beliefs about what sort of power we possess and what we can do with it" (184). Yet, because all men understand the claim of self-defense, "self-preservation was ... an extremely plausible candidate for a universal principle" (188), a plausible starting point for deducing the laws of nature. In short, men do not always fear violent death, they do not always act in rational accordance with the right of self-preservation, and they do not agree at any moment on what constitutes a threat of violent death - but they can recognize the value of acting as though they did. That is, although men are not always motivated by fear of violent death, they should be. For similar reasoning, see the essay in this volume by Alan Ryan (213, 225).
22. Or, in the case of Tuck, for the rational transcendence of skepticism (Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, 192-93).
23. I quote The Elements of Law from Human Nature and De Corpore Politico (its other title), ed. J.C.A. Gaskin (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994), 50-51.
24. Both Davenant's Preface and Hobbes's Answer appear in J. E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, 3 vols. (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1908), vol. 2.
25. Colin Burrow, Epic Romance: Homer to Milton (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1993), 241.
26. See The Elements of Law, chap. 9, for Hobbes's analysis of how love, "the great theme of poets," is often an expression of the desire to master others (56). In his Brief View and Survey of ... Leviathan (London, 1676), Clarendon criticized Hobbes for neglecting the importance of affection in generating political allegiance. Unlike Hobbes, kings have learned "that there is a great difference between the subjection that love and discretion paies, and that which results only from fear and force" (70).
27. See The Elements of Law, chap. 9, for Hobbes's analysis of how love, "the great theme of poets," is often an expression of the desire to master others (56). In his Brief View and Survey of ... Leviathan (London, 1676), Clarendon criticized Hobbes for neglecting the importance of affection in generating political allegiance. Unlike Hobbes, kings have learned "that there is a great difference between the subjection that love and discretion paies, and that which results only from fear and force" (70).
28. Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 11 and 26.
29. On Hobbes's account of relation of thought to language, see Tom Sorell, Hobbes (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1096), 37-41 and chap. 4 on Hobbes's conventionalist account of knowledge and the nonconventionalist dimension of Hobbes's thought. See also George MacDonald Ross, "Hobbes's Two Theories of Meaning," in The Figural and the Literal, ed. Andrew E. Benjamin, Geoffrey N. Cantor, and John R. R. Christie (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987), 31-57. Ross argues that in Leviathan, Hobbes presents a positivistic account of language according to which names arbitrarily designate mental images, as well as an "ordinary language theory" according to which meaning is established by common usage.
30. On Hobbes's account of relation of thought to language, see Tom Sorell, Hobbes (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1096), 37-41 and chap. 4 on Hobbes's conventionalist account of knowledge and the nonconventionalist dimension of Hobbes's thought. See also George MacDonald Ross, "Hobbes's Two Theories of Meaning," in The Figural and the Literal, ed. Andrew E. Benjamin, Geoffrey N. Cantor, and John R. R. Christie (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987), 31-57. Ross argues that in Leviathan, Hobbes presents a positivistic account of language according to which names arbitrarily designate mental images, as well as an "ordinary language theory" according to which meaning is established by common usage.
31. See The Elements, 61, where Hobbes defines "the excellency of FANCY" as "finding unexpected similitudes in things," "from [whence] proceed those grateful similes, metaphors, and other tropes." By metaphorical thinking, I mean this reasoning by analogy or similitude.
32. Thus, in the final chapter of Leviathan, Hobbes compares the papacy to "the Kingdome of Fayries": "The Faeries in what Nation soever they converse, have but one Universall King, which some Poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, Prince of Daemons. The Ecclesiastiques likewise, in whose dominion soever they be found, acknowledge but one Universall King, the Pope" (47.481).
33. In chapter 13, Hobbes describes the state of nature as "this Inference, made from the passions" (89).
34. Men believe themselves equally endowed "in the faculties of body, and mind," and "from this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our Ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies" (13.87). In a classic illustration of mediated desire, desiring the same object is not a simple function of scarcity but of the opinion of equality, and it is precisely this perception of one's likeness to another (this perception of shared desire) that gives rise to enmity. On the role of opinion in the state of nature, see Tuck, Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, 184-85, and David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 77-78.
35. Men believe themselves equally endowed "in the faculties of body, and mind," and "from this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our Ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies" (13.87). In a classic illustration of mediated desire, desiring the same object is not a simple function of scarcity but of the opinion of equality, and it is precisely this perception of one's likeness to another (this perception of shared desire) that gives rise to enmity. On the role of opinion in the state of nature, see Tuck, Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, 184-85, and David Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 77-78.
36. On Hobbes's use of the term diffidence, Gert observes (without commenting on the implications of this observation for Hobbes's argument), "It may simply be that it is because Hobbes wanted to use the passion of fear as one of the 'passions that incline men to peace' (Lev. ch. 13, EW III, 116) that he decided to use a different word when he wanted a passion that led to war" (161).
37. See Strauss on Hobbes's belief that reason is impotent, whence the necessity of focusing on the motivating power of fear, but also on Hobbes' redefinition of fear itself as rational. See also Gert, Cambridge Companion to Hobbes: "All of the premises about human nature, which Hobbes claims are true of all persons and which he uses in arguing for the necessity of an unlimited sovereign, are in fact statements about the rationally required desires, and not, as most commentators have taken them, statements about the passions" (164). As I have been arguing, they are both - which is why Hobbes can use fear to get us out of the state of nature and also why this solution is vexed.
38. In Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Skinner argues that paradiastole is one of the central problems Hobbes wishes to address in his political philosophy but is not Hobbes's solution. Rather, rhetoric in Leviathan has the function of supplementing Hobbes's rational arguments and of ridiculing Hobbes's opponents. Yet an earlier version of his argument is much closer to the point I am making here. See "Thomas Hobbes: Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality," Proceedings of the British Academy 76 (1990): 1-61. After arguing that Hobbes thought it was impossible to gain general agreement about correct evaluative descriptions, whence the necessity of an absolute sovereign, Skinner comments, "The very core of [Hobbes's] argument, both in De Cive and in Leviathan, takes the form of an appeal to authority. Although Hobbes undoubtedly provides a solution to the problem of paradiastole, he appears to do so only at the expense of sacrificing his own scientific ideal" (56).
39. In Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Skinner argues that paradiastole is one of the central problems Hobbes wishes to address in his political philosophy but is not Hobbes's solution. Rather, rhetoric in Leviathan has the function of supplementing Hobbes's rational arguments and of ridiculing Hobbes's opponents. Yet an earlier version of his argument is much closer to the point I am making here. See "Thomas Hobbes: Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality," Proceedings of the British Academy 76 (1990): 1-61. After arguing that Hobbes thought it was impossible to gain general agreement about correct evaluative descriptions, whence the necessity of an absolute sovereign, Skinner comments, "The very core of [Hobbes's] argument, both in De Cive and in Leviathan, takes the form of an appeal to authority. Although Hobbes undoubtedly provides a solution to the problem of paradiastole, he appears to do so only at the expense of sacrificing his own scientific ideal" (56).
40. Once we see Hobbes's argument about fear of violent death as part and parcel of an argument about romance and the imagination, books 3 and 4 of Leviathan appear as the logical extension of Hobbes's analysis in books 1 and 2. For the Church is, as we have seen, one of the chief promulgators of romance fictions. Because the goal of Leviathan is to set up a political authority about which one can say, "upon earth there is not his like" (Job 41:33, the epigraph to the frontispiece of Leviathan, emphasis added) - an authority that escapes the contagion of the imagination and of imitation - it becomes necessary to dismantle the temporal/spiritual distinction of powers that "makes men see double and mistake their lawful sovereign"; cited by S. A. Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes's "Leviathan" (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 226.
41. Hobbes, On the Citizen, ed. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), chap. 17, section 28, p. 232.
42. See also the chart of the several kinds of knowledge in chapter 9 of Leviathan, where Hobbes derives "the Science of JUST and UNJUST" from "Contracting," which is in turn one of the "Consequences of Speech" (61).
43. See also Leviathan: "But the most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of SPEECH, consisting of Names or Appellations, and their Connexion ... without which, there had been amongst men, neither Common-wealth, nor Society, nor Contract, nor Peace" (4.23). See also Sorell, 39, on fixed similitudes in Hobbes.
44. The locus classicus in the Renaissance is Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man. See also Sidney's Defence of Poesy, in which the poet is described as a "maker." In his treatise On the Sublime, Longinus quotes God's creative "fiat" as an example of sublime discourse. Note also how Hobbes's comparison of the establishment of the commonwealth to the divine "fiat" complicates his argument about contract, for God is not a party to a contract when he creates the world; he is instead an absolute sovereign. This may be an example (and there are others, as many critics have noted) of the way in which something such as sovereign power - including the sovereign power to define and constrain our interpretation of our passions - is a precondition of the contract of government that is itself a precondition of sovereign power.
45. The locus classicus in the Renaissance is Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man. See also Sidney's Defence of Poesy, in which the poet is described as a "maker." In his treatise On the Sublime, Longinus quotes God's creative "fiat" as an example of sublime discourse. Note also how Hobbes's comparison of the establishment of the commonwealth to the divine "fiat" complicates his argument about contract, for God is not a party to a contract when he creates the world; he is instead an absolute sovereign. This may be an example (and there are others, as many critics have noted) of the way in which something such as sovereign power - including the sovereign power to define and constrain our interpretation of our passions - is a precondition of the contract of government that is itself a precondition of sovereign power.
46. The locus classicus in the Renaissance is Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man. See also Sidney's Defence of Poesy, in which the poet is described as a "maker." In his treatise On the Sublime, Longinus quotes God's creative "fiat" as an example of sublime discourse. Note also how Hobbes's comparison of the establishment of the commonwealth to the divine "fiat" complicates his argument about contract, for God is not a party to a contract when he creates the world; he is instead an absolute sovereign. This may be an example (and there are others, as many critics have noted) of the way in which something such as sovereign power - including the sovereign power to define and constrain our interpretation of our passions - is a precondition of the contract of government that is itself a precondition of sovereign power.
47. See Leviathan: "The light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senslesse and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention, and sedition, or contempt" (5.36). As we saw in Hobbes's discussion of compound imagination, in the Renaissance, metaphor was frequently conceived of as a deviation or wandering from the literal sense and thus an example in the realm of figuration of the kind of wandering or error Renaissance commentators regularly associated with the genre of romance. On romance error, see Patricia Parker, Inescapable Romance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); on the romance plot of metaphor, see Parker, "The Metaphorical Plot," in Literary Fat Ladies (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1987), and Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1988). Cave does not limit his study of the plot of metaphor to romance, although the Odyssey and later romances figure prominently in his discussion.
48. See Leviathan: "The light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senslesse and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention, and sedition, or contempt" (5.36). As we saw in Hobbes's discussion of compound imagination, in the Renaissance, metaphor was frequently conceived of as a deviation or wandering from the literal sense and thus an example in the realm of figuration of the kind of wandering or error Renaissance commentators regularly associated with the genre of romance. On romance error, see Patricia Parker, Inescapable Romance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); on the romance plot of metaphor, see Parker, "The Metaphorical Plot," in Literary Fat Ladies (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1987), and Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1988). Cave does not limit his study of the plot of metaphor to romance, although the Odyssey and later romances figure prominently in his discussion.
49. See Leviathan: "The light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senslesse and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention, and sedition, or contempt" (5.36). As we saw in Hobbes's discussion of compound imagination, in the Renaissance, metaphor was frequently conceived of as a deviation or wandering from the literal sense and thus an example in the realm of figuration of the kind of wandering or error Renaissance commentators regularly associated with the genre of romance. On romance error, see Patricia Parker, Inescapable Romance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); on the romance plot of metaphor, see Parker, "The Metaphorical Plot," in Literary Fat Ladies (New York: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1987), and Terence Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1988). Cave does not limit his study of the plot of metaphor to romance, although the Odyssey and later romances figure prominently in his discussion.
50. See Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 198, citing Aristotle's Poetics 1410b, 1459a: "The same operation that lets us 'see the similar' also 'conveys learning and knowledge through the medium of the genus.' ... But if it is true that one learns what one does not yet know, then to make the similar visible is to produce the genus within the differences, and not elevated beyond differences, in the transcendence of the concept." See also the discussion of Ricoeur and Aristotle on the productive power of metaphor in Joel Altman, "'Preposterous Conclusions': Eros, Enargeia, and the Composition of Othello," Representations 18 (1987): 137.
51. See Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 198, citing Aristotle's Poetics 1410b, 1459a: "The same operation that lets us 'see the similar' also 'conveys learning and knowledge through the medium of the genus.' ... But if it is true that one learns what one does not yet know, then to make the similar visible is to produce the genus within the differences, and not elevated beyond differences, in the transcendence of the concept." See also the discussion of Ricoeur and Aristotle on the productive power of metaphor in Joel Altman, "'Preposterous Conclusions': Eros, Enargeia, and the Composition of Othello," Representations 18 (1987): 137.
52. [Percy Herbert], The Princess Cloria (London, 1661), "To the Reader," Av.
53. This argument could even be made on the level of syntax. In his introduction to The Rhetorics of Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Lamy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), John T. Harwood suggests that Hobbes's use of parataxis and asyndeton - for example, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" - creates the impression of a dangerous, contingent world on the level of sentence - a syntactical state of nature (28). Hobbes thus replicates on the level of syntax the paratactic plot structure of much prose romance.
54. There were precedents for this greater emphasis on contingency and political machinations in popular prose romances of the late sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries. In sixteenth-century England, Italian romance in particular symbolized the potentially dangerous connection between romance and artful deception and between the imitation of the passions and rhetorical technique, which was negatively associated with the pursuit of self-interest. This self-interest could take an erotic or political form or sometimes both. Hence the Elizabethan scholar Roger Ascham's warning against "bawdie books ... translated out of the Italian tongue." Ascham implied that the reading of romances gives rise to faithlessness in love, and he went on to observe that the rhetorical manipulation of the passions "in Circes court" is closely linked to the pursuit of self-interest and faction at the royal court. Romance, Ascham suggests, does not simply represent the old world of aristocratic relations but the new world of the Italianate rhetorician: the arriviste, the pretender, the seducer, and the fraud. See Ascham, The Scholemaster, ed. R. J. Schoek (Ontario: Dent, 1966), 67, 72. In The Political Unconscious (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), Fredric Jameson described romance as a kind of magical narrative, one that involves a simplified, polarized world of good and evil. For Jameson, Nietzsche is the philosopher who helps us see that this ethical opposition is itself ideologically motivated, a romantic veiling of more fundamental relationships of power. And tragedy for Jameson is the genre that troubles or exceeds the romance habit of moral dichotomizing, the genre that "rebuke[s] the ideological core of the romance paradigm" (115-16). In contrast to Jameson, prose romance of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often performs its own Nietzschean critique of ethical values, which is one of the reasons Ascham associated Italian prose romance with Machiavellian conniving (see The Scholemaster). Hobbes's own derivation of ethics from interests in chapter 9 of Leviathan conforms to this impulse. See the chart on p. 149 in which "Ethiques" is derived from "the passions of Men."
55. There were precedents for this greater emphasis on contingency and political machinations in popular prose romances of the late sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries. In sixteenth-century England, Italian romance in particular symbolized the potentially dangerous connection between romance and artful deception and between the imitation of the passions and rhetorical technique, which was negatively associated with the pursuit of self-interest. This self-interest could take an erotic or political form or sometimes both. Hence the Elizabethan scholar Roger Ascham's warning against "bawdie books ... translated out of the Italian tongue." Ascham implied that the reading of romances gives rise to faithlessness in love, and he went on to observe that the rhetorical manipulation of the passions "in Circes court" is closely linked to the pursuit of self-interest and faction at the royal court. Romance, Ascham suggests, does not simply represent the old world of aristocratic relations but the new world of the Italianate rhetorician: the arriviste, the pretender, the seducer, and the fraud. See Ascham, The Scholemaster, ed. R. J. Schoek (Ontario: Dent, 1966), 67, 72. In The Political Unconscious (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), Fredric Jameson described romance as a kind of magical narrative, one that involves a simplified, polarized world of good and evil. For Jameson, Nietzsche is the philosopher who helps us see that this ethical opposition is itself ideologically motivated, a romantic veiling of more fundamental relationships of power. And tragedy for Jameson is the genre that troubles or exceeds the romance habit of moral dichotomizing, the genre that "rebuke[s] the ideological core of the romance paradigm" (115-16). In contrast to Jameson, prose romance of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often performs its own Nietzschean critique of ethical values, which is one of the reasons Ascham associated Italian prose romance with Machiavellian conniving (see The Scholemaster). Hobbes's own derivation of ethics from interests in chapter 9 of Leviathan conforms to this impulse. See the chart on p. 149 in which "Ethiques" is derived from "the passions of Men."
56. There were precedents for this greater emphasis on contingency and political machinations in popular prose romances of the late sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries. In sixteenth-century England, Italian romance in particular symbolized the potentially dangerous connection between romance and artful deception and between the imitation of the passions and rhetorical technique, which was negatively associated with the pursuit of self-interest. This self-interest could take an erotic or political form or sometimes both. Hence the Elizabethan scholar Roger Ascham's warning against "bawdie books ... translated out of the Italian tongue." Ascham implied that the reading of romances gives rise to faithlessness in love, and he went on to observe that the rhetorical manipulation of the passions "in Circes court" is closely linked to the pursuit of self-interest and faction at the royal court. Romance, Ascham suggests, does not simply represent the old world of aristocratic relations but the new world of the Italianate rhetorician: the arriviste, the pretender, the seducer, and the fraud. See Ascham, The Scholemaster, ed. R. J. Schoek (Ontario: Dent, 1966), 67, 72. In The Political Unconscious (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), Fredric Jameson described romance as a kind of magical narrative, one that involves a simplified, polarized world of good and evil. For Jameson, Nietzsche is the philosopher who helps us see that this ethical opposition is itself ideologically motivated, a romantic veiling of more fundamental relationships of power. And tragedy for Jameson is the genre that troubles or exceeds the romance habit of moral dichotomizing, the genre that "rebuke[s] the ideological core of the romance paradigm" (115-16). In contrast to Jameson, prose romance of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often performs its own Nietzschean critique of ethical values, which is one of the reasons Ascham associated Italian prose romance with Machiavellian conniving (see The Scholemaster). Hobbes's own derivation of ethics from interests in chapter 9 of Leviathan conforms to this impulse. See the chart on p. 149 in which "Ethiques" is derived from "the passions of Men."
57. Hobbes himself seems at times to have felt that Leviathan was a philosophical fantasy or fiction. At the end of book 2 of Leviathan, he wrote that he was "at the point of believing this my labour, as uselesse, as the Common-wealth of Plato; for he also is of opinion that it is impossible for the disorders of State, and change of Governments by Civill Warre, ever to be taken away, till Soveraigns be Philosophers" (31.254). And Filmer seconded this view in a sarcastic vein when, in The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy, he criticized Hobbes's "platonic monarchy": "The book hath so much of fancy that it is a better piece of poetry than policy"; Robert Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Writings, ed. Johann Sommerville (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
58. Hobbes himself seems at times to have felt that Leviathan was a philosophical fantasy or fiction. At the end of book 2 of Leviathan, he wrote that he was "at the point of believing this my labour, as uselesse, as the Common-wealth of Plato; for he also is of opinion that it is impossible for the disorders of State, and change of Governments by Civill Warre, ever to be taken away, till Soveraigns be Philosophers" (31.254). And Filmer seconded this view in a sarcastic vein when, in The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy, he criticized Hobbes's "platonic monarchy": "The book hath so much of fancy that it is a better piece of poetry than policy"; Robert Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Writings, ed. Johann Sommerville (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
59. As Terence Cave has argued in his study, Recognitions, the recognition (in romance, in particular) often turns on what Aristotle in the Rhetoric called inartistic signs, on paralogism or faulty inference. It is striking in this context that Hobbes explicitly conceives of his "know thyself as a remedy for faulty inference. In The Elements, he writes: "Now, if we consider the power of those deceptions of sense ... and also how inconstantly names have been settled, and how subject they are to equivocation, and how diversified by passion ... I may in a manner conclude, [that] nosce te ipsum [is] a precept worthy the reputation it hath gotten" (39).
60. It may be for that reason that in The Elements, Hobbes echoes the contemporary language of marriage contracts. He insists that when political right is transferred, it must be not only de futuro but also de praesenti (83). De praesenti vows referred to marriage vows that were binding in the present; de futuro vows were vows of betrothal, binding the couple to marry at some future time. See Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals (London, 1686). On the gender dimension of Hobbes's argument, see also Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, and Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Strauss argues that Hobbes, like Plato, criticizes traditional equations of manliness with military valor. Holmes mentions Hobbes's appreciation of the Church's "unmanning" of subjects by inculcating Christian meekness (96). On the effeminacy of the Hobbesian subject, see also Harvey C. Mansfield, "Virilité et libéralisme," Archives de philosophie du droit 41 (1997): 25-42. On the female fear for one's reputation (for chastity), see the example of the Greek maidens discussed above in section III.
61. It may be for that reason that in The Elements, Hobbes echoes the contemporary language of marriage contracts. He insists that when political right is transferred, it must be not only de futuro but also de praesenti (83). De praesenti vows referred to marriage vows that were binding in the present; de futuro vows were vows of betrothal, binding the couple to marry at some future time. See Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals (London, 1686). On the gender dimension of Hobbes's argument, see also Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, and Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Strauss argues that Hobbes, like Plato, criticizes traditional equations of manliness with military valor. Holmes mentions Hobbes's appreciation of the Church's "unmanning" of subjects by inculcating Christian meekness (96). On the effeminacy of the Hobbesian subject, see also Harvey C. Mansfield, "Virilité et libéralisme," Archives de philosophie du droit 41 (1997): 25-42. On the female fear for one's reputation (for chastity), see the example of the Greek maidens discussed above in section III.
62. It may be for that reason that in The Elements, Hobbes echoes the contemporary language of marriage contracts. He insists that when political right is transferred, it must be not only de futuro but also de praesenti (83). De praesenti vows referred to marriage vows that were binding in the present; de futuro vows were vows of betrothal, binding the couple to marry at some future time. See Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals (London, 1686). On the gender dimension of Hobbes's argument, see also Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, and Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Strauss argues that Hobbes, like Plato, criticizes traditional equations of manliness with military valor. Holmes mentions Hobbes's appreciation of the Church's "unmanning" of subjects by inculcating Christian meekness (96). On the effeminacy of the Hobbesian subject, see also Harvey C. Mansfield, "Virilité et libéralisme," Archives de philosophie du droit 41 (1997): 25-42. On the female fear for one's reputation (for chastity), see the example of the Greek maidens discussed above in section III.
63. It may be for that reason that in The Elements, Hobbes echoes the contemporary language of marriage contracts. He insists that when political right is transferred, it must be not only de futuro but also de praesenti (83). De praesenti vows referred to marriage vows that were binding in the present; de futuro vows were vows of betrothal, binding the couple to marry at some future time. See Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals (London, 1686). On the gender dimension of Hobbes's argument, see also Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, and Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Strauss argues that Hobbes, like Plato, criticizes traditional equations of manliness with military valor. Holmes mentions Hobbes's appreciation of the Church's "unmanning" of subjects by inculcating Christian meekness (96). On the effeminacy of the Hobbesian subject, see also Harvey C. Mansfield, "Virilité et libéralisme," Archives de philosophie du droit 41 (1997): 25-42. On the female fear for one's reputation (for chastity), see the example of the Greek maidens discussed above in section III.
64. It may be for that reason that in The Elements, Hobbes echoes the contemporary language of marriage contracts. He insists that when political right is transferred, it must be not only de futuro but also de praesenti (83). De praesenti vows referred to marriage vows that were binding in the present; de futuro vows were vows of betrothal, binding the couple to marry at some future time. See Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals (London, 1686). On the gender dimension of Hobbes's argument, see also Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, and Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Strauss argues that Hobbes, like Plato, criticizes traditional equations of manliness with military valor. Holmes mentions Hobbes's appreciation of the Church's "unmanning" of subjects by inculcating Christian meekness (96). On the effeminacy of the Hobbesian subject, see also Harvey C. Mansfield, "Virilité et libéralisme," Archives de philosophie du droit 41 (1997): 25-42. On the female fear for one's reputation (for chastity), see the example of the Greek maidens discussed above in section III.
65. Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 161, n.2.