Take care not to be a Hobbist!
Mar 10, 2013 9:05:19 GMT -5
Post by Gerard on Mar 10, 2013 9:05:19 GMT -5
Mr. Runciman wrote in last week to advise us in the following terms:
'By the time Hobbes wrote Leviathan, he had come to perceive a kind of conspiracy lying behind the violent upheavals of the 1640s: a sinister alliance between the philosophical errors of the scholarly world and certain simple and deep-rooted errors of ordinary human experience. The everyday human propensity to misunderstanding was being exploited by so-called purveyors of truth, with catastrophic political results. The churches were part of the plot, as were the universities, as were the lawyers. This view is comparable with what William Cobbett called "the Thing," that all-pervasive, shadowy system of oppression that had its tentacles in everything. Perhaps the only other English philosopher who has ever come to see the failings of the country's political life as evidence of such deep-rooted intellectual mendacity was Jeremy Bentham, and even Bentham never ran the risks that Hobbes did. Hobbes's assault on the conventional alliance between religion and politics succeeded in alienating almost every one, and put his personal safety at jeopardy. By the 1660s, to be called a "Hobbist" in England was at least as dangerous as being called a "communist" in 1950s america: it could result in ostracism, or incarceration, or death."'
'By the time Hobbes wrote Leviathan, he had come to perceive a kind of conspiracy lying behind the violent upheavals of the 1640s: a sinister alliance between the philosophical errors of the scholarly world and certain simple and deep-rooted errors of ordinary human experience. The everyday human propensity to misunderstanding was being exploited by so-called purveyors of truth, with catastrophic political results. The churches were part of the plot, as were the universities, as were the lawyers. This view is comparable with what William Cobbett called "the Thing," that all-pervasive, shadowy system of oppression that had its tentacles in everything. Perhaps the only other English philosopher who has ever come to see the failings of the country's political life as evidence of such deep-rooted intellectual mendacity was Jeremy Bentham, and even Bentham never ran the risks that Hobbes did. Hobbes's assault on the conventional alliance between religion and politics succeeded in alienating almost every one, and put his personal safety at jeopardy. By the 1660s, to be called a "Hobbist" in England was at least as dangerous as being called a "communist" in 1950s america: it could result in ostracism, or incarceration, or death."'