Hobbes’s hidden monster: A new interpretation of the frontispiece of Leviathan
In recent years, much work has been done on the role of images in Hobbes. But there is an unsolved riddle with regard to the famous frontispiece of Leviathan (1651). Why is there nothing monstrous in the sovereign body depicted, despite the fact that it is named for a Biblical sea monster? In this article it is argued that there is a monster just barely hidden in the image and that the iconographical tradition helps us rediscover this creature. We argue that this monstrosity serves a theoretical and political purpose pertaining to fear and imagery within Hobbes’s overall project and in the political context of his time. Moreover, we argue that the discovery of the hitherto unknown monster should make political theory and intellectual history sensitive to the role played by physical images in Hobbes as well as in political thought at large.
Gianluca Briguglia, Il corpo vivente dello Stato. Una metafora politica
Gianluca Briguglia, specialiste de la philosophie politique du Moyen Âge, presente dans cet ouvrage riche et stimulant une histoire des principaux usages politiques de la metaphore du corps depuis Jean de Salisbury jusqu’a Hobbes, en passant par le Rex Pacificus, Marsile de Padoue et Machiavel. Il montre comment cette tradition metaphorique constitue un veritable langage politique, decisif pour la conceptualisation de l’Etat. L’idee force du livre est qu’au-dela de sa fonction representative ...
An Essay on the Nature and Significance of the Normative Nature of Economics
It is conventional in economics to distinguish between the normative and the positive. The normative has to do with goodness and badness, and with what ought and ought not to be done;1 and the positive has to do with objective description and/or explanation, with what is and with what is necessary given some normative end. The normative has to do with desirability; the positive has to do with truth (in the sense of either descriptive accuracy or serviceability of a means to a given end).2