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-But even more significantly for his relationship with Derrida, Hobbes argues that in the state of nature persons must not only try to control as many objects as possible — they must also try to control as many persons as possible. "There is no way for any man to secure himself so reasonable as anticipation, that is, by force or wiles to master the persons of all men he can, so long till he see no other power great enough to endanger him. And this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed."37 While it is often assumed that by this Hobbes means a person will try to control others with physical force alone, when one approaches Hobbesian persons as meaning creators this control takes on a more discursive, arche-violent character. First," says Hobbes, "among ~~persons in the state of nature~~ there is a contestation of honour and preferment,"38 a discursive struggle not over what physical objects each person will possess, but over who or what will be considered valuable. Persons, as rationally self-interested beings who "measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves,"39 and value themselves above all others, attempt to force that valuation on others. "The human desire for 'glory', which in today's language translates not simply as the desire for prestige, but also the desire to acquire power over others," is therefore primarily about subsuming others beneath one's own personhood, as direct objects or merely phenomenal substances. As above, the inevitability of this situation is given by the fact that the primarily egoistic nature of all experience renders the other in a "state of empirical alter-ego"41 to oneself. Those who prefer a more directly materialistic reading of Hobbes may attempt to bolster their position by pointing to his comment that "the most frequent reason why men desire to hurt each other, ariseth hence, that many men at the same time have an appetite to the same thing; which yet very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide it; whence it follows that the strongest must have it, and who is strongest must be decided by the sword."42 This quote also supports my reading of Hobbes, because quite simply the primary thing all persons want but can never have in common is the status of the ultimate creator of meaning, the primary personhood, from which all other goods flow. Everyone, by their natures as creators of meaning whose "desire of power after power . . . ceaseth only in death,"43 tries to subsume others beneath their personhood in order to control these others and glorify themselves. As Piotr Hoffman puts it, "every individual acting under the right of nature views himself as the center of the universe; his aim is, quite simply and quite closely, to become a small "god among men," to use Plato's phrase."Hobbes argues that this discursive struggle rapidly becomes physical by writing that "every man thinking well of himself, and hating to see the same in others, they must needs provoke one another by words, and other signs of contempt and hatred, which are incident to all comparison, till at last they must determine the pre-eminence by strength and force of body."45 The ultimate violence, the surest and most complete way of removing a person's ability to create meaning, is to kill that person, and the escalating contentiousness of the state of nature makes life short in the war of all against all. But this does not render the fundamental reason for this violence any less discursive, any less based on "one's sense of self-importance in comparison with others"46 or human nature as a creator of meaning. |