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Deception, politics and aesthetics: The importance of Hobbes’s concept of metaphor

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Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed renewed interest in metaphors in political theory. In this context, Hobbes’s theory of metaphor is of great importance as it helps us understand aesthetic qualities in theory and politics. This article argues that in the work of Hobbes – often portrayed as hostile to the use of metaphor, especially so by himself – there is a remarkable discrepancy between his professed enmity to metaphor and his own use of the very word ‘metaphor’. In a philosopher who censures conceptual imprecision, we find a fundamentally inconsistent and ever-changing use of this key term. This inconsistency can be accounted for if we relate it to Hobbes’s own often neglected poetics and his theory of the need for conceptual innovation. This will help solve riddles that have haunted Hobbes studies. Moreover, we must discover Hobbes’s theory of metaphor as a source of potential insights into the way in which political and theoretical languages operate with regard to aesthetic pleasure through linguistic change. Hobbes’s theory can thus make us understand the importance of something being new, that is, how theoretical languages need novelty in order to be pleasant and persuasive.

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Notes

  1. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1406b (III. iv. 1). Previous research has often used the paraphrase of Aristotle’s Rhetoric ascribed to Hobbes, the 1637 A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique, but no longer considered to be Hobbes’s work (Skinner, 2002a, p. 4 n. 27).

  2. Roman numerals indicate chapters, numbers preceding page numbers refer to paragraphs in Curley’s (1996) edition (Schmitt, 1995, p. 39ff; Münkler, 2001, p. 44).

  3. Interestingly, Strauss’s (2001) major work on Hobbes is not very ‘Straussian’ or esoteric.

  4. For example, an Uppsala dissertation (Gyllenstierna, 1654), where in the preface the presiding professor, Johannes Schefferus, urged the readers not to read the interpretations of Tacitus as secret messages about contemporary events (that is, the not yet publicly promulgated abdication of Queen Christina).

  5. In this context, we cannot deal with the view that ‘the distinction between literal and metaphorical language is itself [just?] a trope’ (Carver, 2009, p. 139).

  6. The Oxford English Dictionary lists 16 meanings, all pertaining to decision and command.

  7. But not condemned in all cases (Malcolm, 2007, p. 27).

  8. Skinner (1996, pp. 345f) quotes Hobbes’s (2005: iv, 4, p. 28) ‘metaphorically; that is, in other sense than that they are ordained for’, yet claims that Hobbes distinguishes between different kinds of metaphor. But ‘that is’ does not imply any such distinction: it is an apposition defining metaphor.

  9. Martinich (1995, pp. 204–205) says that the Latin Leviathan ‘makes it clear that “these” (hæc) ... applies only to “tropes of speech” ’. But there are no reasons why hæc would apply to metaphoris but not to aliisque orationis tropis; aliisque (and other) explicitly connects metaphors and other tropes. Hobbes (1845a, pp. iv, 31): Neque ex metaphoris, aliisque orationis tropis. Sed minus sunt hæc periculosa, quia inconstantiam suam profitentur.

  10. Collins (2005, p. 31 n. 124): ‘Hobbes pointedly equated metaphors with lies’.

  11. Thibodeau and Boroditsky (2011, p. 10). The authors only asked the interviewees about ‘the part of the report’ (p. 3) they ‘explicitly perceive’ (p. 5) to be important, so we really only know that they did not themselves say that the metaphor was important, not that the influence of metaphor was ‘covert’ (although this is likely to be true).

  12. For an interesting attempt to identify the aesthetics of political and theoretical writing – quite different from the argument pursued in the present article – cf. Panagia 2006.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank various audiences in Helsinki, Stockholm, Tokyo and Uppsala. I particularly wish to mention Ludvig Beckman, Terrell Carver, Jeffrey Collins, Sara Danius, Roberto Farneti, Gina Gustavsson, Jörgen Hermansson, Ishikawa Ryoko, Kodama Satoshi, Juhana Lemetti, Matoiba Mizuki, Ulf Mörkenstam, Jörgen Ödalen, Sven Oskarsson, Sato Seishi, Patricia Springborg, Sugita Atsushi, the late Bo Lindensjö and the anonymous reviewers, whose comments have been invaluable. The text is part of the project ‘Thomas Hobbes’s Last Secret: Mythology, Politics, and the Enigmatic Monster Leviathan’, funded by the Swedish Research Council.

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    Johan Tralau

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Tralau, J. Deception, politics and aesthetics: The importance of Hobbes’s concept of metaphor. Contemp Polit Theory 13, 112–129 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2013.18

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