Hobbes as Erotic Emancipator: Sreedhar and Blackburn

To make sense of Hobbes's approach to human sexuality and the realm of the erotic, scholars, then, must mine closely his intermittent remarks. This is the approach taken in two notable recent investigations by Susan Sreedhar and Simon Blackburn. Both view Hobbes as something of a sexual radical. Sreedhar argues this from an explicitly feminist point of view in her article, “Towards a Hobbesian Theory of Sexuality.” She contends that Hobbes may be seen as “rejecting the naturalness and goodness of three of the structuring pillars of heteronormativity: (1) heterosexuality, (2) monogamy and (3) lifelong partnership. Homosexuality, multiple partners, and temporary arrangements are equally as valid as heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong partnership” (266–67).Footnote ⁵ Her conclusion is that

Simon Blackburn, in his book Lust, similarly though rather more fulsomely praises Hobbes's view of sexuality. Indeed he claims that Hobbes depicts a vision of sexuality which entails “pure mutuality” or what he terms a “Hobbesian unity” in which “there are no cross-purposes, hidden agendas, mistakes or deceptions. Lust here is like making music together, a joint symphony of pleasure and response. There is a pure mutuality, or what I . . . call a Hobbesian unity” (2004: 87).Footnote ⁶ He continues:

Sreedhar and Blackburn, then, posit something distinctly modern and innovative about Hobbes's view of sexuality. For both these commentators, Hobbes's modernity seems to open more fulfilling and expansive experiences of the erotic.

Hobbes as Anti-Erotic: I. Patapan and Sikkenga

Haig Patapan and Jeffrey Sikkenga in their article, “Love and the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes's Critique of Platonic Eros,” share this notion of Hobbes as a philosopher concerned with the erotic.Footnote ⁷ However, their concern is more specifically to explore the distinction between ancient and modern political thought through the prism of Hobbes's theorization of the erotic. They may be seen to offer two distinct readings of Hobbes's attitude to the erotic. The first and more extensively explored one suggests that Hobbes is an important theorist of the erotic insofar as he narrows and domesticates its sway in human experience. Indeed, on this interpretation Hobbes may be seen to be anti-erotic or anti-Platonic. Patapan and Sikkenga do offer a second albeit more tentative reading in which they suggest that Hobbes's political vision may be viewed as suffused with eroticism to which I will turn later.

In their first interpretation, Patapan and Sikkenga attribute great significance to Hobbes's relative inattention to the issue of sexuality and the realm of erotic passion. In their view this is not an oversight but rather it signals Hobbes's reframing of the ancients’ concern with the erotic and its connection to the political realm. As they state “the tradition of classical political philosophy with which Hobbes claims to break (whether in its sixteenth- through seventeenth-century scholastic or humanist strains) regarded love and eros as vitally important for political life” (2008: 804). They argue, “What Hobbes wants is to reduce the power and scope of eros in the world, returning it to the limited, private sphere of sex, pleasure, and perhaps the family. It is better, then to call his understanding of love “antierotic”—or perhaps even more precisely, anti-Platonic” (805). They continue, “While it is too strong to say that Hobbes founds his new political science on his critique of the Platonic understanding of love, it is fair to conclude that his reinterpretation of eros is an important (though too often neglected) piece of his broad philosophical rejection of an older political science rooted in a study of love” (805).

Hobbes thus rejects Plato's claims concerning the political significance of eros, that it leads to the contemplation of the Forms, the right ordering of the soul and the consequent disposition towards justice. Hobbes, therefore, according to Patapan and Sikkenga domesticates eros, narrows its frame to the private, the family, the individual and so makes it politically insignificant in that “it is in reality a personal rather than political form of the desire for power” (820). In their view Hobbes's “turn to power is not possible without rejecting the “old” political science founded on understanding types of human beings and regimes based on what they love” (821). This view is characteristic of most modern political science that “thinks in the de-Platonized (indeed Hobbesian) language of power and its political conceptualizations such as autonomy, sovereignty, and the state” (821).

Central to Patapan's and Sikkenga's argument is an analysis of Hobbes's brief critique of the Socratic theory of love presented in Plato's dialogue, The Symposium. Hobbes's analysis, which is to be found in Human Nature, takes particular aim at the behaviour of Socrates. (Reference Hobbes and Gaskin1994: 56–57). In their view, Hobbes's sly ridicule of Socrates's pretensions to be an honourable and noble lover decisively reveals the difference in vision between ancient and modern thought. Plato's Socrates who seeks to draw his pupils to the glorious world of the Forms through the shared contemplation of beauty between beloved and lover becomes, on Hobbes's reading, an old man concealing his physical lust within obfuscatory philosophic rhetoric. For Patapan and Sikkenga this signals Hobbes's lowering the tone as well as the horizons of political excellence to which Plato/Socrates aspire. Instead, for Hobbes, “The ‘platonic’ desire to please the beloved, therefore, is really a sign of the desire to exhibit one's own power, not to give up oneself or one's power for something worthy of such sacrifice” (2008: 819). Hobbes, thus, debunks Platonic eros demonstrating that it is not a magnetic force drawing people to beauty and ultimately justice. Further, it has no positive political importance as it does not “foster an attachment to justice that defines fundamentally different human beings and regimes.” Rather, in Hobbes's diminished view, “it is in reality a personal rather than political form of the desire for power” (820). The broad vista of Platonic eros elevating individual great men to the contemplation and practical application of the universal good has contracted to encompass merely the idiosyncratic personal predilections of modern, self-seeking individuals to amuse and benefit themselves.

Hobbes as Philosopher of the Erotic: II. Patapan and Sikkenga

In the concluding remarks of their article, Patapan and Sikkenga suggest that this first interpretation may overstate the completeness of Hobbes's recasting of Plato's erotic politics and so offer a tentative second reading. They note indeed that there might be Platonic sentiments in Hobbes's work, for example, “Leviathan seems to show a scientist-sovereign with a deep—and what Plato's Socrates might call an erotic—attachment to teaching, persuading, and even inscribing people with his new ‘Doctrine’” (821). Thus, they see Hobbes's philosophic approach as possibly steeped in an erotic energy consonant with commitments more Platonic than appear at first blush. They wonder that perhaps lurking beneath Hobbes's obsessive pursuit of an entirely novel science of politics is a powerfully Platonic/erotic drive impelled by a vision of the good. They write, “We cannot help but suspect, however, that all his endeavors to transform political science are not designed only to make such scientific speculation safer; that he is also deeply moved by a beautiful new vision—the prospect of an everlastingly peaceful society in which human beings are not tormented by the fear of violent death” (821). Patapan and Sikkenga, thereby invite the reader to re-evaluate and possibly re-envision Hobbes's politics through the prism of his view of the erotic.Footnote ⁸

Hobbes as Erotic Political Philosopher

In what follows I wish to push the insights of Sreedhar, Blackburn, Patapan and Sikkenga further or rather shift the frame to engage with the question of Hobbes's approach to human sexuality and the erotic. I contend that it is Hobbes's uncompromising materialism that allows us to decipher his view of sexuality and the erotic most fruitfully.Footnote ⁹ From this vantage point, as regards Sreedhar's and Blackburn's insights, human sexuality is best understood as being of a piece with all of the rest of human experience. That is to say, for Hobbes, it is not simply human sexuality but every aspect of life that is infused with passion and erotic energy. Patapan and Sikkenga thus correctly draw attention to the broader eroticism at play in Hobbes's “beautiful new vision” but their view may be dramatically expanded when understood through the prism of Hobbes's materialism. From this perspective, the suspicion Patapan and Sikkenga raise in their second reading that Hobbes's philosophy is suffused with love and eros is accurate. For Hobbes, eroticism is not limited to sexual encounters and engagement impelled by a quest for beauty but rather one which expresses a more general and visceral interest, love and embrace of all of the range of experiences of human embodiment.

Hobbes's dispute with Plato is about the sheer breadth of the erotic as it infuses all of life. Humans are inescapably passionate, embodied creatures. All human activity is characterized by this ontological fact. Thus, Hobbes cannot separate out any individual aspect of human endeavour and particularly philosophic endeavour from the erotic. Consequently, Hobbes's depiction of the felicitous life, his “beautiful new vision” is one in which human beings are able to enjoy myriad pleasures whose bases lie in our physical selves. Sexual pleasures are to be understood, then, in this materialist frame as but one aspect of the joys of corporeal existence as Hobbes's political philosophy comprehends all of human experience as erotic. It is to an elaboration of this argument that I now turn.

Hobbes's Philosophy as an Erotic Enterprise

One discussion which nicely illuminates Hobbes's erotic conception of political philosophy is to be found in his “Author's Epistle to the Reader” that introduces his Elements of Philosophy: The First Section, Concerning Body. Here, Hobbes displays a certain affinity with Platonic philosophy as he claims the quest for wisdom lies at the root of all human motivation. What is notable for our purposes is that this pursuit is described in distinctly erotic terms. Hobbes begins his comments with a declaration of the novelty of his philosophy and its distinction from that of the ancients in that it not is based on “metaphysic codes” but rather “the natural reason of man” (1996: xiii). Hobbes advises the reader that philosophy is “the child of the world and your own mind, is within yourself; perhaps not fashioned yet, but like the world its father, as it was in the beginning, a thing confused” (xiii). He proposes that his philosophical method uncovers immanent truths concerning the nature of all things and is like that of the sculptor who uncovers the true shape of a statue that is embedded in rough stone. He thus recommends to the reader, “Do . . . as statuaries do, who, by hewing off that which is superfluous, do not make but find the image” (xiii). Philosophy, then, is a revelatory process. It is an enterprise which links both bodily and intellectual endeavours akin to the manual and creative sculpting of stone. Consequently, unlike Plato's more restrictive vision, it is potentially accessible to all persons.

Indeed, he proudly compares his philosophical method to the biblical account of creation. He writes, “The order of the creation was, light, distinction of day and night, the firmament, the luminaries, sensible creatures, man; and after the creation, the commandment.” He follows this sequence in consideration of the topics in his book, as he notes, “Therefore the order of contemplation will be, reason, definition, space, the stars, sensible quality, man; and after man is grown up, subjection to command” (xiii, emphasis in original). Hobbes then states that the pursuit of philosophy necessarily entails the pursuit of peace and its neglect has resulted in the profound injuries of civil wars. He writes, “I would very fain commend philosophy to you, that is to say, the study of wisdom; for want of which we have all suffered much damage lately” (xiv). While its greatest social purpose, then, is to aid people to discern the way to civic peace, it also allows access to knowledge of the fundamental character of the natural world. Also significant is that Hobbes sees echoes of the philosophical impulse in virtually all human enterprises from commercial and political activity to even overtly hedonistic pursuits. There is a drive for self-understanding as well as self-advertisement in all of these activities, “For even they, that study wealth, do it out of love to wisdom; for their treasures serve them but for a looking-glass, wherein to behold and contemplate their own wisdom. Nor do they, that love to be employed in public business, aim at anything but place wherein to show their wisdom” (xiv).

Philosophy is also recommended for seemingly prosaic reasons, “because the mind of man is no less impatient of empty time than nature is of empty place, to the end you be not forced for want of what to do, to be troublesome to men that have business, or take hurt by falling into idle company, but have somewhat of your own wherewith to fill up your time, I recommend unto you to study philosophy” (xiv). This advice may be seen as prompting men to pursue useful projects as idleness draws men to socially disruptive mischief.

For our purposes, Hobbes's next comment is the most striking. He declares, “neither do voluptuous men neglect philosophy, but only because they know not how great a pleasure it is to the mind of man to be ravished in the vigorous and perpetual embraces of the most beauteous world” (xiv). What is salient here is that, apart from the promise of civic peace that the pursuit of philosophy might deliver, its intellectual rewards meld with and enhance those of the physical world. The philosopher's mind is “ravished” or swept away by the beauteous world. What is so notable here is that the figure of the philosophical man that Hobbes posits is decidedly not the Platonic one of the fully rational, controlled, ascetic man (exemplified by Socrates) which has so dominated the Western philosophic tradition. For Hobbes, the philosopher is not a man who escapes all passion as reason governs his personality. Rather the philosopher is one who is subject to and fully enjoys the passions and fantastic rewards ensuing from this union of mind and body as the philosopher grasps the wonders of creation. So, the rewards of philosophy are simultaneously intellectual and sensual. Further, Hobbes depicts the experience of being ravished as being productive and creative. The philosopher is swept away and transported by love of the world. Yet he does not lose his intellectual mooring; he does not simply “receive” the world. He retains the ability to use his reason and is able productively to decode and decipher it much as the sculptor uncovers the essential meaning of what is within the stone through his labours. This is an enjoyable, intermingling of the intellectual and the physical. Hobbes, then, envisions philosophy as manifestly bound up with sensual pursuits and pleasures. Mind and body are inextricably bound together as “high” and “low” pursuits fuse with and have a share in the quest for wisdom.

In Hobbes's account, then, there is no sharp divide between “high” and “low” or “common” and “noble” pursuits as is found in Plato's system. This may be seen as a result of Hobbes's notion of innate human equality as well as his materialism. For Hobbes, there is no need to leave the body behind to achieve wisdom. Indeed, this would be an incoherent proposition given that for him it is axiomatic that “the World . . . is Corporeall, that is to say, Body; and hath the dimensions of Magnitude, namely Length, Bredth, and Depth: also every part of Body is likewise Body, and hath the like dimensions; and consequently every part of the Universe, is Body, and that which is not Body, is no part of the Universe” (2002: 463). Desire inescapably defines our humanity because, for Hobbes, we are fundamentally corporeal beings. Physical sensation, originating in the external motions of material things, is the foundation of all human experience.Footnote ¹⁰

A second general discussion of Hobbes's view of philosophy is to be found, interestingly, directly following his critique of Symposium in Human Nature. Once again we encounter Hobbes's insistence on the symbiotic relationship between the work of the body and the work of the mind. Hobbes here argues that “all knowledge beginneth from experience, therefore also new experience is the beginning of new knowledge, and the increase of experience is the beginning of the increase of knowledge” (Reference Hobbes and Gaskin1994: 57). All of our experiences, then, give us hope that we may increase our knowledge. This hope of new knowledge he refers to as admiration and when considered to be an appetite it “is called CURIOSITY, which is the appetite of knowledge” (57). Curiosity, then, is a passion common to all human beings and constitutive of human life. Curiosity, based on our physical experience of the world, distinguishes human beings from beasts. It leads us to name the things we encounter, thereby constructing language and to pursue explanation through the investigation of cause and effect. The reaction of beasts to physical experience is explained by Hobbes as follows: “For when a beast seeth anything new or strange to him, he considereth it so far only as to discern whether it be likely to serve his turn, or hurt him, and accordingly approacheth nearer it, or flieth from it” (57–58). In contrast, human beings, “who in most events remembereth in what manner they were caused and begun, looketh for the cause and beginning of everything that ariseth new unto him” (58). Beasts react to physical experience only in the immediate term. In contrast, human beings attempt to find general explanations for their experiences. They are future rather than simply present-oriented.Footnote ¹¹ The passions of admiration and curiosity, he contends, lead people to “the invention of names, but also the supposition of such causes of all things as they thought might produce them” (58). That is to say, from these passions “is derived all philosophy” (58). He writes, “as astronomy from the admiration of the course of heaven; natural philosophy from the strange effects of the elements and other bodies” (58).

So, philosophy, then, emerges from our embodied experience of the world. Yet different people have different passions. All individuals share the same type of contact with the world which leads them endlessly to engage in the proto-philosophic activity of attempting to make sense of their everyday experiences. However, some are possessed of a greater sense of curiosity than others. Presumably, it is those possessed of the greatest sense of curiosity and who have had the opportunity to acquire an education who will pursue the questions of cause and effect to the greatest possible heights in the practice of science and philosophy. However, Hobbes, (as in the passages cited from Elements of Philosophy) again indicates that the exercise of this passion, the quest to know is manifest in endless human pursuits. He writes, “From the degrees of curiosity proceed also the degrees of knowledge among men” (58). Thus, men who are focused on worldly accomplishments will have little desire to pursue curiosity to its fullest. He writes, “for to a man in the chase of riches or authority . . . it is a diversion of little pleasure to consider, whether it be the motion of the sun or the earth that maketh the day, or to enter into other contemplation of any strange accident than whether it conduce or not to the end he pursueth” (58). The passion, curiosity, then, propels human endeavour whose highest intellectual achievement is philosophy. But, once again, Hobbes is clear that this passion has its origins in human, embodied experiences. All people are capable of this quest and all have some share in it as they try to decipher cause and effect in their lives. Yet, based on personal disposition, the vagaries of fortune, opportunity and education, some follow wisdom to its fullest, others not.

In Leviathan Hobbes also emphasizes the corporeal roots of the quest for wisdom. Indeed, he directly refers to the desire to know as a species of lust. He writes,

For Hobbes, all human beings share equally in the capacity to reason. The difference is to be found in individuals’ unique temperaments and the direction of their specific passions. This determines the extent to which they develop their reason and engage in philosophic and scientific pursuits. As Hobbes states, “As for acquired Wit, (I mean acquired by method and instruction,) there is none but Reason; which is grounded on the right use of Speech; and produceth the Sciences . . . The causes of this difference of Witts, are in the Passions; and the difference of Passions, proceedeth partly from the different Constitution of the body and partly from Education” (53). However, most people will not avail themselves fully of their capacity to reason, as they are not so inclined for they have no practical need for it. As Hobbes comments:

Hobbes then argues that it is better not to develop one's capacity to reason fully if the alternative is to do so on an erroneous basis. Thus, he praises ordinary people for their use of simple, practical reason and criticizes the falsely learned. He writes, “But yet they that have no Science, are in better and nobler condition with their natural Prudence; then men, that by mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules” (36). He continues, “The Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the pace; Encrease of Science, the way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the end. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senselesse and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention, and sedition, or contempt” (36).

Consideration of these discussions by Hobbes concerning the roots and delights of philosophy, then, allows us to see how the broader frame of his materialism intersects with his account of the human. Indeed, Hobbes's definition of lust in Human Nature illuminates his focus on both the corporeal and intellectual thrill of lust and their inescapable unity. He writes:

This connection between the quest for wisdom and bodily pleasures and drives is to be expected given the nature of Hobbes's materialist philosophy given that, for Hobbes, bodily appetites and aversions originally and indifferently impel all of our feelings and actions. Our embodied humanity, then, renders us equal beings and is our most precious possession, as Hobbes claims, “Of things held in propriety, those that are dearest to a man (sic) are his own life, & limbs” (2002: 235–36). So complete is Hobbes's materialism that it pervades even his view of the afterlife and specifically the status of human sexuality in this realm:

This vision of the afterlife is in keeping with his view that “every part of the Universe, is   Body, and that which is not Body, is no part of the Universe,” and so he argues that the saved will receive the reward of immortal life. However, they will re-enter their actual physical bodies on Earth not in an immaterial heaven. One of the consequences of this view is that Hobbes contends that there will be neither sexual desire nor sexual activity in the afterlife. He reasons that if human beings engage in sex acts they inevitably procreate. Therefore, if they are sexual and procreate in the afterlife, given the condition of immortality, they would soon over-populate the planet. Thus, he jettisons sexual activity as a possibility in the hereafter (which incidentally also notably frames sexuality in functionalist, heterosexual and reproductive terms).

Hobbesian versus Platonic Erotic Philosophy

Reading these passages which illuminate the inescapable materialism of Hobbes's political philosophy, Patapan and Sikkenga's first reading that Hobbes rejects eros in favour of power, seems less convincing. While for Plato the ultimate rewards of philosophy involve a forgetting of the body, for Hobbes, they are an immersion in the body and a fusion with the mind. Perhaps, then, the difference Patapan and Sikkenga identify in Plato's and Hobbes's view of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades in Symposium lies not so much with Hobbes's emphasis on power, as they argue, as it does with Hobbes's materialism. Hobbes cannot countenance the view that the trajectory of the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades (or any other of Socrates's beloved young men) is entirely metaphysical. Yet this is not to say that Hobbes's view is unphilosophic, rather that it is philosophically materialist. As Frost neatly puts it, for Hobbes, “thinking is emphatically not an activity that occurs in a mind closed off from the body and material world . . . the thinking subject is a porous subject, one whose thoughts are derived from its ongoing engagement with others and with the world and whose thinking processes are provoked and modified by the passions and desires that arise from that engagement” (Frost, Reference Frost2008: 67). In Symposium Socrates recounts the wise teachings of the seer Diotima concerning love (Plato, Reference Gill1999, 201e-212a: 37–50). Centrally, it is a force which impels all of humanity in one guise or another to seek immortality. Yet there is a bifurcation in humanity. The mass of the population, common, ordinary lovers, express the pursuit of immortality in a drive to reproduce physically. The propagation of the human species is thus a consequence of the pull to immortality. Heterosexual men are of this kind. They are drawn to women in order to be able to produce children. However, the higher, nobler sorts of people (homosexual men in Diotima's account) strive for immortality through cerebral encounters which produce wisdom and virtue but, at the highest level, they produce the most perfect, beautiful children: (political) ideas of justice and moderation. Thus, the lovers—the beloved and lover—share an experience superior to the merely physical couplings of ordinary folk as they ascend the ladder of enlightenment together. Beauty, of course, must play its part in this erotic process. Initial love of individual beautiful boys’ bodies is, however, only the starting point of the long educational journey to the full realization of the transcendent Form of Beauty which exists beyond any physical realm. This voyage is described in one version by Diotima/Socrates as follows, the man “pregnant in mind” seeks a partner and “because he's pregnant, he's attracted to beautiful bodies rather than ugly ones; and if he's also lucky enough to find a mind that is beautiful, noble and naturally gifted, he is strongly drawn to this combination. With someone like this, he immediately finds he has the resources to talk about virtue and about what a good man should be like and should do, and tries to educate him” (209-b-c: 46–47). Such relationships will yield “a much closer partnership . . . and a stronger bond of friendship than parents have, because the children of their partnership are more beautiful and more immortal” (47). Diotima/Socrates claim great poets (Homer and Hesiod are named) and law-givers such as Lycurgus and Solon are among the number of this exceptional type of lover of wisdom (209 d-e: 47).

Hobbes concisely reiterates the account of the erotic ascent of the two lovers of wisdom as follows, “that a man full and pregnant with wisdom, or other virtue, naturally seeketh out some beautiful person, of age and capacity to conceive, in whom he may, without sensual respects, engender and produce the like . . . in which love, is not sought the honour, but issue of his knowledge; contrary to common love, to which though issue sometimes follow, yet men seek not that, but to be pleased. It should therefore be this charity, or desire to assist and advance others” (1994: 57). Hobbes emphasizes that Plato's account rests on the ostensible selflessness of the lover, who acts “without sensual respects” and whose motives are “his charity and desire to assist and advance others” throughout this erotic journey. Consequently, Hobbes does pose a penetrating question in his discussion. If Socrates's desire to teach his pupils such as Alcibiades is full of charitable and honourable motives why does he engage only with the most beautiful, young, and powerful men of Athens? Hobbes's question does seem entirely fair: “But why then should the wise seek the ignorant, or be more charitable to the beautiful than to others?” (57). Socrates's consistent choice of beautiful young men to seduce into the world of the Forms does seem rather odd. In this scenario, the one who enjoys the initial contact and contemplation of the (lower) order of physical beauty is the lover, not the beloved. But, the entire pedagogic enterprise is ostensibly designed for the benefit of the beloved. Hobbes's wry observation, then, seems fair. As he puts it, what does “maketh me suspect this platonic love for merely sensual; but with an honourable pretence for the old to haunt the company of the young and beautiful” (57). Thus, Hobbes may be seen to challenge the elitist pretensions of Plato's account. That is, Hobbes insists that Socrates is not a supremely detached philosopher. Rather, he is a man subject to the same passions as any other. Hobbes thus reveals Socrates to be a mere mortal whose motivations are as carnal and complex as that of any other person. This is not to condemn Socrates but to set him firmly in the ranks of the rest of humanity. In this sense, Hobbes democratizes Plato's account of eroticism and so democratizes his account of the philosopher. Philosophy is a practice open to all people willing to take part in its rigorous demands. Thus he takes aim at the advertisement of Socrates's virtue insofar as he fails to consummate physically his relationship with Alcibiades (which is the source of Alcibiades's amazement and complaint). Hobbes, though, detects the pride in the proclamation that Socrates is so otherworldly, so self-contained that he is able to resist the charms of Alcibiades (not to mention all manner of physical trials: cold, pain, lack of sleep, wine). Indeed, his resistance is precisely a great source of pleasure, “in which matter though Socrates be acknowledged for continent, yet continent men have the passion they contain, as much or more than they that satiate the appetite” (57). As Patapan and Sikkenga note, Hobbes is convinced that Socrates (as with every other man) cannot but seek to aggrandize his own reputation and power. For Hobbes, Socrates’ self-effacing claims mask a self-serving desire to appear powerful through his (emotional and intellectual) erotic conquest of Alcibiades. Socrates discretely displays his power, according to Hobbes, but it is power, nonetheless that he is after.

However, this quest for reputation and power is not necessarily unphilosophical as it underpins a search for wisdom. What is at stake, though, is its specific nature. For Hobbes, human beings are so inescapably embedded in the world, in the body, and Platonic high-flown rhetoric seems designed to obscure this simple fact. As noted above, Hobbes describes the drive for wisdom, culminating, at its highest point, in the practice of philosophy as shaping all human motivations. This coincides with the great theme of Symposium that eros shapes all human activity and, is at its most pure and perfect in its love and pursuit of the universal truth of the Forms. However, Hobbes and Plato diverge fundamentally in their understanding of the character of the world. For Plato and Socrates, the truth of the world is metaphysical whereas for Hobbes it is inescapably physical. Nonetheless, it is arguable that they do share the notion that erotic energies condition all of human interactions and existence. Hobbes, as much as Plato, propagates a philosophy of eros, of love. However, the difference is that for Hobbes this love can only be realized, understood and experienced in this world. Consequently, it may be the case that despite Hobbes's (in)famous contention that “there is no such Finis ultimus, (utmost ayme,)  nor Summum Bonum (greatest good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers” (2002: 70), it does seem that he is recommending philosophy as the most rewarding endeavor available to human beings (apart from its utilitarian recommendations: to keep human beings busy and so on.) Though, for Hobbes these rewards can only be enunciated in physical terms: “how great a pleasure it is to the mind of man to be ravished in the vigorous and perpetual embraces of the most beauteous world” for there is no other world available to us. Hobbes, in all his ruminations, finds wisdom, beauty and love only in this world. It is this aspect of the narrative on which Hobbes casts doubt, not the notion that there is some sort of pull towards wisdom, towards philosophy in all human beings (as noted above.) However, the intoxicating quest for union with the truths of this world does intersect in some significant ways with Socrates's account (or, more accurately, his retelling and acceptance of Diotima's tale) of the nature of eros.

Concluding Remarks

I have attempted to illustrate the extent to which Hobbes's materialist embrace of this life constitutes a deeply erotic approach to life itself and the activity through which we contemplate life, philosophy. Investigating Hobbes's approach to human sexuality precisely uncovers that, for Hobbes, human beings are, in essence, desiring creatures whose passions suffuse every activity, including philosophy. This is not to denigrate philosophy, to taint it with the preoccupations of the “merely” physical but rather to recognize the embodied nature of our existence as the tie that binds all human beings in our temporary and fragile experience of mortality. The political consequences of Hobbes's vision are momentous as they provide the basis on which he so urgently appeals to humanity to find its way to peace to protect our fragile lives. It may also connect closely to Plato's description of the eros-driven philosopher king. It may be precisely an erotic thrill that will perhaps draw one extraordinary individual to be sovereign. The initial contemplation of the text, Leviathan will offer the prospective sovereign a clear vision of wisdom in which he is immersed and “ravished in the vigorous and perpetual embraces of the most beauteous world.” Further, the practical implementation of Hobbes's teachings will lead the sovereign to generalize its wise policies which draw him away from the strong temptations of kingship such as imperial adventures, the adulation of subjects and flatterers and hedonistic escape. The sovereign will ensure that the felicitous life which provides industry, material plenty, learning, and, that most precious political commodity, peace to all his subjects will be the fruit of Hobbes's erotic political dream.