Sunday, November 06, 2005

Nasty, Brutish and ... Electable?

Brandon cites Thomas Hobbes on the hallmarks of an infernal society:
"[T]he kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come. (Leviathan ch. 44)"
Hobbes has something more spiritual than political in mind. I do find it interesting, though, the extent to which the Kingdom of Darkness depends on "impure" and "irrational" ideas (as defined by Hobbes, mostly Catholic and neo-pagan), a problem still faced in contemporary politics: mytho-poetic origins, sentimentalism, chauvinism, absolutist dualism, etc....

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