Comments on Thomas Hobbes Book (1651) The Leviathan Part 1

By Razie Mah

Modernism belongs to the Age of Ideas. According to John Deely, two figures mark the turning point from the Latin Age to the Age of Ideas. They are Rene Descartes, pointing the way to the Age of Ideas, and John Poinsot, arriving at the triadic nature of the sign relation. The time is 1650 AD.
These comments examine a book published in 1651 AD, precisely at the turning identified by John Deely. In The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes builds a model of the subject and the commonwealth based on natural civil laws.
Hobbes’ description of the subject and the commonwealth intimate the modern concepts of the citizen and the civil state. For that reason, he was called a monster. He is the prophet of the modern totalitarian state.
These comments differ from modernist commentaries, which try to identify where Hobbes went wrong, his system of thought, and so on. Instead, they show that Hobbes’ models of speech and power are relational structures. They are precisely the types of structures that John Poinsot elucidated in the waning days of the Latin Age. They are also the types of structures that Thomas Hobbes rejected in his human mechanical philosophy.
Part 1 is entitled, “On Man”.
In my comments, I use the category-based nested form to show that the subject and commonwealth match the content and situation levels of the society tier. The society tier was introduced in the foundational work: How To Define the Word “Religion”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Nov 25, 2016
• ISBN: 9781942824213

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

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Comments on Thomas Hobbes’ book (1651) The Leviathan Part 1

Razie Mah

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7816 U0’

Notes About Work

This 16,200 word commentary is a nested form re-articulation of Part 1 of Thomas Hobbes’, The Leviathan. Part 1 is entitled ‘Man’.

Written around the time of the Puritan Revolution in England, and at the dawn of the post-religious Western Enlightenment, The Leviathan is one of many signposts marking (what John Deely calls) the end of the Latin Age and the beginning of the Age of Ideas. My goal is not to analyze the text.

My goal is to associate the text to ways of thought that the Age of Ideas buried. These ways of thought stir back to life in the postmodern Age of Semiotics.

In this endeavor, I further elaborate a model of society, originally presented in How To Define the Word Religion.

Single quotes and italics are used to group words together for easier reading.

Table of Contents

Leo Strauss Points to Hobbes 0001

Chapter 1, 2 and 3 on the senses, imagination and understanding 0010

Chapter 4 on Speech 0015

Chapter 5 of Reason and Science 0022

Chapter 6 on Passions and Expressive Speech 0029

Chapter 7 on resolution of discourse 0033

Chapter 8 on intellectual virtues and their defects 0041

Chapter 9 on several subjects of knowledge 0060

Chapter 10 on power, worth, dignity, honor and worthiness 0061

Chapter 11 on manners 0081

Chapter 12 on religion 0092

Chapter 13 on the natural condition of humankind 0126

Chapter 14 on the first and second natural laws 0148

Chapter 15 on other laws of nature 0180

Chapter 16 on persons, authors and personated things 0200

Leo Strauss Points to Hobbes

0001 Why do moderns go back to Thomas Hobbes, who was not a first rate philosopher, but wrote at the cusp of the Age of Ideas? Is it like a dog returning to his vomit? Is it like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime?

Is it like Derrida’s supplement? What? ‘The supplement’ is the object that erases its own possibility. Yet, it grounds a specialized language.

Is it like Lacan’s point de caption, the location where a system ties back into itself, like a button filling in a buttonhole, thereby holding the garment together?

We cannot discuss the supplement. We cannot see the lacking that is the buttonhole.

So, when Leo Strauss’ points to Hobbes, he does so esoterically. He points to something that is foundational yet veiled.

0002 Thomas Hobbes is ‘someone we must work through’ in the process of disengaging from Modernism. The Age of Ideas opened up around 7450 U0’ (or 1650 AD). Hobbes’ contemporaries included Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon and (in shadow) John Poinsot.

Rene Descartes was the herald of the upcoming Age of Ideas. Francis Bacon aimed to re-fashion a longstanding connection between science and morals. The natural law was pure actuality. It had nothing to do with normal contexts and possibilities. That was the stuff of morals.

Normal context (being which makes possibility actual) and possibility (being that appears to be mind-dependent) and could no longer be discussed, except in terms of actuality. Actuality was the button that excluded the universe of triadic relations, including signs, mediations and normal contexts.

The realm of possibility, inclusive and full of contradictions, became like a painting of an open door on a wall.

The supplement became a ghost, barring the way through the always-open door to the realm of possibility.

How long has it whispered, You cannot walk through this wall?

Today, Postmodernism insists that I step across the threshold. The painting on the door is really a door. The button slips from the buttonhole. The supplement no longer erases its own possibility.

0003 I am a dog. I am a criminal. I return to lick the vomit. I return to the crime that I did and did not commit. I would not be here if I were not driven by an urge ignorant of its appellation. I would not be here if I were not somehow complicit.

My intent is to re-articulate one of Hobbes’ masterpieces, The Leviathan, while standing at the portal, the beginning of the end of the Age of Ideas.

Yearning for a King

0004 Two thirds of the way through The Leviathan, Hobbes states his wish.

He desired that a sovereign would read his ideas and implement them, without the assistance of a crafty advisor. The irony is that, 360 years later, Hobbes’ wish has come true in ways that he never envisioned.

Now, we yearn for a slightly less despotic civil sovereign.

The humility of the sovereign goes with the liberty of the people. Small government means free people.

0005 At first, Hobbes’ so-called artificial man comes across as a metaphor. Artifacts (automata) are (for humans) natural. Animals are natural automata. So are machines. The leviathan (commonwealth or civil state) is such an artifact (automata).

Sovereignty is the animating