Post-discussion reflections on Hobbes
I am quite vigorously wrestling with Hobbes' notion of good and evil. He appears to be arguing that man calls that toward which he is drawn good, and that from which he recoils evil (p. 32). This strikes me as a fairly revolutionary notion of good and evil in the scheme of Western (and, particularly Christian) thought.
Previously, good and evil were seen as characteristics possessed, rather than characteristics imputed by an observer. This likely has everything to do with Hobbes' notion that one can't know the universal law, but it still seems rather unconventional.
There also seem, to me, to be inconsistencies later on in the text. In writing about how big and powerful God is, and how a ruler should disobey at his own peril (lest the Sovereign rot in Hell) (p. 182), there's the implication that there's a good to enact in obedience, and an evil to enact in disobedience. Perhaps Hobbes would argue that eternity is different from the temporal, but there seems to be a disconnect here. "You should do what you know to be in order to avoid eternal damnation," he seems to say. Doesn't that imply that there is a body (of whatever size) of actions/things/qualities that are universally known to be good or evil (in the traditionally-conceived, Aristotelian sense of the concepts)?
I think there's some significance to Hobbes' implication of the linguistic relativity of good and evil. Look, for example, at the current debate throughout the world over what constitutes the evil of 'terrorism.' More specifically, some would call 9/11 a good thing, and some would call it pure evil. Hobbes is right that they can be used in a relative sense linguistically, but, as I said, I still question his whole notion of good and evil.
Previously, good and evil were seen as characteristics possessed, rather than characteristics imputed by an observer. This likely has everything to do with Hobbes' notion that one can't know the universal law, but it still seems rather unconventional.
There also seem, to me, to be inconsistencies later on in the text. In writing about how big and powerful God is, and how a ruler should disobey at his own peril (lest the Sovereign rot in Hell) (p. 182), there's the implication that there's a good to enact in obedience, and an evil to enact in disobedience. Perhaps Hobbes would argue that eternity is different from the temporal, but there seems to be a disconnect here. "You should do what you know to be in order to avoid eternal damnation," he seems to say. Doesn't that imply that there is a body (of whatever size) of actions/things/qualities that are universally known to be good or evil (in the traditionally-conceived, Aristotelian sense of the concepts)?
I think there's some significance to Hobbes' implication of the linguistic relativity of good and evil. Look, for example, at the current debate throughout the world over what constitutes the evil of 'terrorism.' More specifically, some would call 9/11 a good thing, and some would call it pure evil. Hobbes is right that they can be used in a relative sense linguistically, but, as I said, I still question his whole notion of good and evil.
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