Hobbes

Melville on Shakespeare:

Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things, which we feel to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them. Tormented into desperation, Lear the frantic King tears off the mask, and speaks the sane madness of vital truth. [...] In Shakespeare's tomb lies infinitely more than Shakespeare ever wrote. And if I magnify Shakespeare, it is not so much for what he did do, as for what he did not do, or refrained from doing. For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth,--even though it be covertly, and by snatches.

>“Thus philosophy excludes from itself theology, as I call the doctrine about the nature and attributes of the eternal, ungenerable, and incomprehensible God, and in whom no composition and no division can be established and no generation can be understood”

Because he applies essentially Bacon's scientific skepticism to all performance of miracles and prophecies declaring that they - including scripture (!) - cannot be rationally taken for truth but on authority - not of god (!) - but of man. He then goes on to justify this interpretation by a literal interpretation of all the obviously preposterous claims of the old testament that he quite clearly would deny were they presented in any other text.

Seems like an ironic hint toward that same idea expressed in the Republic:
Power belongs to those who seize it; religion is a myth necessary to the upkeep of the state.

Of course, , these fucking idiots probably take Plato at his word.

Would you just for a while try stop applying your personal values to everything that exists outside of the context of your private existence, you self-centered cunt?

>The whale was a metaphor

You do realize there's other positions between radical materialist and Biblical literalist
You're expecting others to try take a more nuanced view on a philosopher while not taking the same perspective on the Bible itself

The dumbest thing is that he doesn't even understand how culture works. He believes that le edgy fedora tipper is something that could have in any way existed in the 17th century. That's like giving the Iliad a feminist reading.

He's probably fallen the "We're all born atheists!" meme

No one said it was a metaphor nor a horrible allegory. If you stopped thinking in memes, you might learn to read

Says someone who never read Leviathan.

Atheism was as political tool for anyone above a certain threshold of power.

Asking whether Hobbes was a Christian only a little less naive than asking whether Trump is a Christian.

Christianity: The entire universe was designed for God to incarnate himself in a human body, perform a blood sacrifice of himself towards the end of the Roman Republic in a random Judean province, come back to life after three days of being dead, go up to heaven, and then demand that all subsequent humans dedicate their life to recognizing the importance of that sacrifice.

What? That's not a coherent philosophy, it's an anthro-centric myth meant to appeal to people's sentiments. It usurps the religious orders that came before it by putting a mortal man at the center of the universe while simultaneously recognizing God's authority. It was an obscure proletarian Jewish first century cult which became a state religion because it throws a huge ideological bone to the poor and downtrodden.

>Christianity was a political tool
fixed

Christ what a fucking retard. Go read Christian theology before acting like you have a clue what you're talking about. This isn't a Thanksgiving table for you to tell your Mom why you don't need to say grace

Really brings them out. Posters who have probably never heard of Hobbes. One mention of Moby Dick and
>daily reminder melville only read king james and shakespeare

>[women_laughing.jpg] >he thinks the whale is a metaphor

That doesn't answer my question.

>being this retarded

This literally reads like an /r/atheism post. Why don't you actually try reading a fucking book, moron?

If you knew how to read it would.

Absolutely beautiful

Stop these fedora tipping b8 threads ffs, ur not 12

That truth? Shakespeare was a black woman.

Hobbes’ contemporaries accused him of atheism and many scholars continue to believe it:

>While it is hard to sustain such critics’ accusations, it is not clear how far we can believe Hobbes’ protestations either. Even in an age in which identifying genuine atheists is difficult, Hobbes is an extreme case, as is testified by the sheer range of scholarly opinion on his belief. Some scholars argue that Hobbes’s defense was genuine and that he was a believer, even a sincere and orthodox believer. Others hold that he was a believer, if a highly eccentric one, with distinctly deistic tendencies. Still others claim that he was as close to an atheist as made no difference.

>like something a religious person could indeed come up with
>
>i don't think people referred to Christianity with irony and lived
>
>le edgy fedora tipper

Does Veeky Forums really not know what irony means?

This really says nothing. I mean that's the point of it. But, if you're trying to give proof you shouldn't use something that is intentionally obscure.

I don't see what irony has to do with your retardation.

You don't know how to read.

Yes, not knowing the meaning of irony would make irony difficult to locate.

People disagreeing with you doesn't mean that they don't understand you. It means they disagree with you.

Consider the following:
Sometimes people can express opinions differing to your own without misunderstanding the issue or being ironic.

As someone with no historical context who read Leviathan, I think he was Christian.

Certainly it's possible he was an atheist, but if he was an atheist why did he invest so much effort in making a Scriptural argument, especially when he had already laid out the same argument without Scriptural references?

You can also just tell that he takes the Bible more seriously than someone who's just using it to convince Christians to agree with them. Take Alinsky, who in one breath praises Lucifer for being the first revolutionary, but then claims Jesus was a true revolutionary. He doesn't care that these are necessary "revolting" against each other, and thus one of them can't be revolting at all, because his point is only to convince not to be correct. Hobbes doesn't do things like this. He legitimately seeks to derive meaning from Scripture. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if he first came to his conclusions through reading the Bible, and only then generalized it to every society.

>I don't see what irony has to do with your retardation.
is not a disagreement, it's an ad hom

obviously didn't attempt to understand it. the quote itself points at the necessity of obscurity... "Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself"

if you want to set yourself apart from the "civil discourse" of reddit, don't resort to "civil discourse!" yourself. i'll answer an actual disagreement when i see one.

Except he explicitly denies the very authority of scripture. In book one he says that religion has its origin in fear of the unknown; he then says that religion is a useful tool of political control; and he explicitly denies divine authority of scripture, stating that canon is made by sovereign right alone.

Seems equally likely is that Hobbes makes extensive use of scriptural authority for reasons of plausible deniability - refuting the obvious charge that his scientific rationalism is either atheistic or heretically deistic.

That Hobbes may have first reached these conclusions through the bible is not a good indication that he had faith in the Christian religion. Few things shake one's faith in the Christian God like close readings of the scripture. See: Elmer Gantry.

>it's an ad hom
It's merely an observation made after you somehow came to the conclusion that people disagreed with you because they did not understand the meaning of the word irony.

Two posts, connected in time, unrivalled in their plebeianism.

>Until that time, Europe had no explanation for how government came to be other than that God instituted it; no explanation for kings other than that God raised them to glory; no explanation for what glue should hold men together, loyal to the law, other than fear of divine punishment. Hobbes’ alternative does not say “There is no God,” but it says, “Government and society arose without God’s participation,” a political theory which an atheist and a theist might equally use. It gives the atheist an answer, and thereby so terrified England that she passed law after law against “atheism” specifically and personally targeting Hobbes and banning him from publishing in genre after genre, until he spent his final years producing bad translations of Homer and filling them with not-so-subtle Hobbesian political notions one can spot between the lines.

>>Until that time, Europe had no explanation for how government came to be other than that God instituted it; no explanation for kings other than that God raised them to glory; no explanation for what glue should hold men together, loyal to the law, other than fear of divine punishment

lol

I never take statements like this seriously. We have access to inquisition records and the peasants were all hilariously cynical.

There are no bigger hacks than the ones that peddle the idea of the God-fearing peasantry of the Middle Ages

Where can I find that sort of thing?

What is the story behind this?
After the schism Leviathan sounds just like the perfect apology of why the Roman Church shouldn't have any secular power in England.
Whose interests did he hurt?

The canon is made by sovereign right, which means it has authority for Hobbes. That's not even considering that according to Scripture Kings get their sovereignty from God, meaning that the authority of Scripture is from God once removed for Hobbes. Even if Hobbes believes 100% that religion is from fear in the unknown, that it is a useful tool, and that canon is made by sovereign design, this does not mean he believes it to be false. You could similarly say that government has it's origin in the fear of death, that it is useful, and that it is wrought by earthly authority. For Hobbes this does not preclude government from having divine authority, or from being real.

It may seem equally likely to you, which is fine.

Most people who engage in a close reading of Scripture don't have their faith shaken. See: The majority of theologians throughout history.

Ultimately you're trying to claim that Hobbes lied his entire life, that when he goes out of his way to use Scripture he is actually doing this for the sole purpose of plausible deniability, and that he simultaneously believes that the sovereign ought to determine how we worship God, but that he does not view the sovereigns chose in his case as valid, and is only doing all of this to give the appearance of being Christian.

It's possible. There's nothing inherently wrong with that hypothesis, except that if I didn't believe in God I wouldn't devote 1/3 of my book to talking about God when I had a perfectly valid theory to occupy myself.

Has anyone ever told you you're really stupid?

Many theologians are not actual believers but instead believe religion a comfort to the people or a useful symbol or &c.

Hobbes expresses no interest in divine authority and even more or less says that any claim to divine authority disrespects God by ascribing to him specific properties. Hobbes's description of God is fundamentally deistic. Totally removed from human affairs and utterly incomprehensible. His denunciation of Catholicism seems by its trenchancy to condemn any ecclesiastical action whatever, including protestantism. He disavows acting on conscience, claiming religion is entirely private.

That Hobbes was versed in biblical studies and that he felt compelled to talk about a Christian God doesn't seem like a good indication of anything other than he was a scholar of his age.

Atheist is probably too far, but that Hobbes does not believe in the Christian God and could not express such a belief seems pretty likely. He goes out of his was on multiple occasions to condone false testimony in order to appear to accord with public standards.

i come to Veeky Forums to watch plebs misuse words like 'unrivaled' and to call the kettle black. i wonder if the roman patricians had as much fun watching trash put on airs?

>misuse
>not misspell

>i wonder if the roman patricians had as much fun watching trash put on airs?

We do.

>Where can I find that sort of thing?

Seriously this, I had no idea such documentation existed

No, I meant “misuse.”

Consult a dictionary - both for spelling and usage. Fucking idiot.

I come to Veeky Forums to observe the pretentious cunts who are alienated from the real world prance about as if proving intelligence to an user matters. Also to occasionally have enlightening discussions.

How did he misuse it

the chad confustication
the virgin retort