I went to the symphony last night, and instead of actually listening to the Beethoven and Bartok being played, I thought about Hobbes' materialist philosophy. In my defense, I had spent several hours reading Hobbes, and thinking about how everything we do is merely a series of reactions to the physical world. So, as the older gentleman on my right dozed off, I tried to picture what sound waves look like, and how we hear them, and the amount of pleasure we derive from the experience. I considered explaining all this to the friends I was with, but then I realized that nobody actually wants to think about this stuff. Except me, maybe.
And if I actually derive pleasure from being in grad school (which is not necessarily the case) what would Hobbes say about that? I think he would say that I'm still living in the state of nature, and my passions are definitely not consistent with natural law.
Oy.
3 comments:
Lucky for you Hobbes is wrong.
Hobbes is wrong? But are you sure? Isn't it possible he's at least half right? I don't think you've been reading the Leviathan for the past few days. It can warp things.
The thing about Leviathan is that it has airtight logic that proceeds from its assumptions. For goodness sake, he starts at the sense and how they deceive. Then he calls imagination decaying sense. This creates the illusion that he can't be wrong.
Well, his logic is correct, but the assumptions are wrong. We aren't motivated solely by desire and fear. We aren't solely the pleasure seeking, pain fleeing machines that he bases his logic upon.
Maybe he's half right in that we sometimes are pleasure-pain machines, but he's definitely wrong too.
Post a Comment