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.
Sense and Nonsense about Sense: Hobbes and the Aristotelians on Sense Perception and Imagination
INTRODUCTION The contemporary, uninitiated reader perusing the main text of Leviathan is in for quite a surprise: this classic of political philosophy does not begin with a discussion of sovereignty, political laws, the concept of society or other issues contemporary political philosophers get excited about. Quite the contrary, Hobbes commences his work with the genesis and function of sense perception, a topic that contemporary philosophers of whatever denomination would not even dare to touch upon anymore, leaving it safely in the hands of the scientists. An even more striking trait of the first two chapters of Leviathan is that they are so fiercely polemical. Aristotelian philosophy, the so-called philosophy of the 'schools', is accused of 'insignificant speech', 'absurd doctrines' and other intellectual sins. One wonders, why this unusually impolitic start, why these polemics? This chapter is an attempt to answer these questions, especially the second one. We will reconstruct Hobbes's debate with the Aristotelians on sense perception and the political agenda that underlies it. However, before we can embark on answering these questions we have first to get at least a rough idea of the Aristotelian doctrine Hobbes so vehemently attacked. The first section of this chapter is therefore devoted to a necessarily brief and rather general overview of the Aristotelian position on sense perception and imagination.
The structure of Ibibio death prevention names
This paper examines death prevention names among the Ibibio in South-eastern Nigeria, from their structural perspectives. Ibibio death prevention names can generate and maintain some level of assurance and security that is vital for a child’s survival, given the implicit assumption that spiritual forces of some kind are at work. These names are believed to link their bearers to their past, ancestors and spirituality. This paper argues that these names represent enriching morphosyntactic properties that provide a window to the grammatical description of the Ibibio language. Their syntax is not constrained to a limited set of structures, thus they are structurally versatile and open ended, representing the various types and functions of sentences in the Ibibio language. The paper concludes with the claim that, in addition to the referential contents and metaphysical presuppositions of these names, they have other formal structural properties that distinguish them from ordinary Ibibio names.