Abstract

In this essay I stage an encounter between Hobbes’s Leviathan and two versions of the “The Werckmeister Harmonies”. The story contains a number of Hobbes icons, for example, an enormous stuffed whale and a “Prince,” both of which arrive with a circus that comes to a Hungarian town and precipitates fear and chaos. I argue that the story thinks both with and against Hobbes, enabled by Hobbes’s aesthetic style while at the same time challenging the historical prescience of his political philosophy. Sorting the diverse ontologies of the story’s main characters helps us better appreciate Hobbes as a writer and distance ourselves from Hobbes’s solution to political disorder.