Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Reflections on Leviathan

Hobbes has a lot to say on politics and rights and human nature, and I agree with much of it. Someone described his philosophy as 'absolutism', and that seems to resonate with what I get from his writing. Of course he's very pessimistic towards human nature, but considering the circumstances that he wrote his book under (civil war), I suppose that's understandable.

For all his political advice, however, I find some of his most intriguing conclusions to be theological, which I don't see often remarked upon. It seems most of his political philosophy, while certainly well-supported, isn't very applicable to government today. At least, not Western government. I have the feeling that Yemen and Syria are still very much Hobbesian, at least so far as their governments are concerned. But his views on Scripture are no less intriguing, and perhaps moreso. To be fair, I am only just over halfway done with the book, and not too many pages into his discussion on Christian commonwealths. Nor have I read anything else he wrote. But I think it is safe to say Hobbes has been distilled into a sentence or two commonly taught in high school as the cynical opposite of John Locke. It's scary to think how much else I've missed when I think of it that way.

I also thought today: old English is the toughest language for me to read. Any foreign language, it would be translated, most likely recently. English since 1850 or so is similar enough to modern English that it's almost unnoticeable. But English before that is simply Byzantine. I suppose since it's English, it's not considered necessary to translate; indeed, it's not, I can read it and understand it. But it does take about twice as long, which qualifies as annoying in my book. (No pun intended)

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