Of Wonder: Thomas Hobbes’s Political Appropriation of Thaumazein

De Mirabilibus Pecci

The three concepts of phobos, deinon, and thaumazein appear in Hobbes’s political philosophy in a way that is both clearly indebted to ancient philosophy and transformed through Hobbes’s historical condition. Hobbes’s concern in this area begins with one of his earliest confirmed texts, a poem from around 1627 titled in Latin De Mirabilibus Pecci, Carmen, or, in English, Of the Wonders of the Peak, a Poem. ⁴⁵ For approaching this work, and Hobbes’s appropriation of thaumazein in general, it is important to know that this term was commonly translated into Latin as admiratio. Although there is some differentiation, this term was then translated into English as admiration or wonder. ⁴⁶ Skinner has also discussed admiratio, but in the context of the classical theory of laughter. His account does not consider the relation between this Latin term and thaumazein in Aristotle’s Greek philosophy. Thus it does not consider the role of thaumazein in Hobbes’s account of admiration and wonder. Skinner’s genealogy brilliantly captures the joyous side of admiration, but misses the aspects of admiratio which rely upon the Greek tradition. ⁴⁷

The importance of wonder in this poem is quite obvious, since it is in the title itself, but the operative definition of wonder within it is more difficult to parse. The poem describes a trip from Chatsworth to the nearby town of Buxton and the natural wonders that the narrator encounters on the trip. Wonder first appears near the beginning of the poem: Miranti similis portam praeterfluit amnis, / hic tacitus, saxis, infra supraque, sonorus. ⁴⁸ The anonymously written translation of the cited edition of the poem, which does not exactly follow the line structure of Hobbes’s Latin verse, translates the above lines as “Here silent, as in Wonder of the place, but does from the Rocky precipices move in rapid streams below it, and above.” ⁴⁹ Here “miranti,” the dative present active participle of miror, mirare, translates roughly to ‘in wonder.’ It is modified by “hic tacitus,” which means ‘silent in this place.’ Together they give the sense of silent wonder. Although this is not a clear reference to wonder as it is described by Plato or Aristotle, it retains the quality of silent stillness. Later in the poem Hobbes expresses wonder and amazement at the great torches of the heavens, and praises the eternal arts of the heavenly Geometer. ⁵⁰ What is interesting here is that wonder is toward all of creation, at everything that exists. Wonder appears at various other points in the poem, but most of them are only to apply it to various sights on the journey, without doing much to describe the emotion. Yet the fact that wonder is directed toward natural sights, separated from human affairs, shows that at this point Hobbes’s concept of wonder was not affected by the three consequences of the historical condition that I described above. At this point, in 1627, he was using a form of wonder which was indebted to the ancients and largely unaltered. Although this text establishes that Hobbes was concerned with admiration and wonder from the beginning of his writing career, it was only in the political works that he turned wonder to his own purposes.

The Elements of Law

The Elements of Law: Natural and Politic, finished in 1640, was Hobbes’s first major work of political philosophy after his early humanism. My discussion of this book will show it as a middle point between Hobbes’s early poem and his Leviathan. Although admiration appears in Hobbes’s early poem discussed above, The Elements of Law was the first work wherein Hobbes started to spell out his system of the passions. Therefore, we should pay very close attention to the description of admiration that Hobbes gives in Part 1, Chapter 9, Section 18, of The Elements of Law, wherein he started to make minor adjustments to ancient wonder. ⁵¹

At the beginning of this section, Hobbes describes the beginning of the increase in knowledge. He writes,

forasmuch as knowledge beginneth from experience, therefore also new experience is the beginning of new knowledge, and the increase of experience the beginning of the increase of knowledge; whatsoever therefore happeneth new to a man, giveth him hope and matter of knowing somewhat that he knew not before. ⁵²

In this section, he calls admiration a passion which is the “hope and expectation of future knowledge from anything that happeneth new and strange,” which, when considered as an appetite, is called curiosity. ⁵³ This passion and appetite are what allow new experiences to proceed to new knowledge. Without them, human beings would be incapable of knowing anything new or, really, anything at all. It could be said that “wonder caught the attention; curiosity riveted it.” ⁵⁴ This passion leads one to “looketh for the cause and beginning of everything that ariseth new unto him.” ⁵⁵ The beginning of the increase of knowledge not only leads human beings to make sense of the world by the “invention of names,” but also to find the causes of those new and strange things. Then “from this beginning is derived all philosophy.” ⁵⁶ This passion distinguishes humans from beasts; for a beast, which is incapable of admiration, will not give names to or try to find the causes of “anything new or strange” but instead would only seek to discern whether that new or strange thing would serve or hurt him, and thus whether it would be best to approach or flee from it. ⁵⁷ Beasts, according to Hobbes, may only desire or fear the new and the strange.

We can see from the very beginning of Hobbes’s work on political philosophy the importance of Aristotle’s account of thaumazein. Like Aristotle, Hobbes sees admiration as the beginning of philosophy. Like Aristotle, the ground of this beginning, the initial ignorance necessary for wonder, is diminished by the means of philosophy. An example that Hobbes will use in Leviathan is that of the rainbow, which resonates with the anecdote that Plato uses regarding Iris, the messenger of the Greek gods and the personification of the rainbow. “The first Rainbow that was seen in the world, was a Miracle, because the first; and consequently strange; . . . But at this day, because they are frequent, they are not Miracles, neither to them that know their naturall causes, nor to them who know them not.” ⁵⁸ Like Aristotle, Hobbes takes this beginning as a basis for seeking what Aristotle would call the arche and he would call the causes. ⁵⁹ Yet Hobbes slightly changes the drift of this beginning. The fact that these events are new does not separate Hobbes and Aristotle. For Hobbes, this wonder begins when something new and strange happens. Aristotelian wonder, on the other hand, is an ordinary wonder which arises from difficulties close at hand. It is important that Hobbes uses the word “strange.” Although Aristotle thought that the lovers of myths, which in their tragic form were concerned with that which is strange or frightening (deinon), were in a sense also philosophers, it was because, as Nussbaum pointed out, in both philosophy and storytelling “we seek to expand the comprehensiveness of our grasp.” ⁶⁰ It was not, for Aristotle, because philosophy begins with what is strange. Here we can see thaumazein beginning to take on characteristics of deinon.

We also can start to see phobos, or fear, being integrated into this account. In part 1, chapter 7, of The Elements of Law, fear is described as a motion which “retires” from expected displeasure. ⁶¹ If, like a beast, one makes no attempt to remove one’s own original ignorance, one will likely respond to strange events with fear. This will have a compounding effect, since it is fear which makes the admiration of the new and strange impossible, as it leads one to recoil from an expected displeasure. To be sure, this is only a possible response to new or strange things, and a response that Hobbes thinks is more befitting to a beast than to a human. Yet, this will be important once we come to Leviathan.

Admiration also appears in Part 1, Chapter 9, of The Elements of Law, in the discussion of vainglory. It is here that Hobbes begins to transform the function of catharsis, and to show how it can go awry. ⁶² Vainglory occurs, according to Hobbes, “when a man imagineth himself to do the actions whereof he readeth in some romant, or to be like unto some other man whose acts he admireth.” ⁶³ Admiration here is concerned with the actions of others, but may go astray if one ascribes to oneself what was found in another. While Aristotle’s Athenians might have experienced a “clarification” of their pity and fear through their spectatorship of tragedies, and thus have been able to act properly, Hobbes’s readers of romances confuse themselves with the imitations that they read. Mimesis, it seems, goes wrong. Rather than experiencing the imitations of the arts, the vainglorious refashion themselves after those imitations. Therefore, the “signs of vain glory in the gesture, are imitation of others, counterfeiting attention to things they understand not, affectation of fashions, capitation of honour from their dreams, and other little stories of themselves.” ⁶⁴ The vainglorious hold these various imitations before themselves at all times, and thus keep all kinds of attachments, except for an attachment to the present. Instead of pity or terror, Hobbes takes admiration to be the stance that one takes toward stories that one wishes to emulate, and he finds it to be potentially disastrous. Crucially, Hobbes takes from Aristotle the way that stories can either promote or diminish certain types of emotions. Hobbes does not so much disagree with either Plato or Aristotle on whether stories are necessarily good or bad for political life, but he does take from them the concern over how stories can be dangerous.

Leviathan

It is in Leviathan that Hobbes makes use of the roots of ancient philosophy, transforms them in ways reflective of his historical condition, and redirects them toward the state. By doing so he creates a conceptual framework for the pathetic apparatus of the state and the emotional makeup of the citizenry. Although many of the parts were present in The Elements of Law, they were not yet put into place. In the beginning of chapter 46 of Leviathan, Hobbes gives his definition of philosophy, which resonates with the account that he gave in The Elements of Law of the beginning of new knowledge, but actually relies here even more upon Aristotle’s account of wonder. Hobbes defines philosophy here as

the Knowledge acquired by Reasoning, from the Manner of the Generation of any thing, to the Properties; or from the Properties, to some possible Way of Generation of the same; to the end to bee able to produce, as far as matter, and humane force permit, such Effects, as human life requireth. ⁶⁵

This definition is quite similar to that given in The Elements of Law, but with the notable exception of the addition of the knowledge of the “Manner of Generation” of a thing, and the properties that lead to that “Way of Generation.” Although Hobbes doesn’t immediately say after giving this definition of philosophy that admiration is the passion which leads to search for the causes, like he does in The Elements of Law, he doesn’t really need to do so here; admiration is already incorporated into this definition of philosophy. The only difference is that curiosity gains an expanded role.

Hobbes begins his account of admiration and curiosity far earlier in the book, in chapter 6. Curiosity and admiration are not themselves passions in this text, but types of other simple passions. Admiration is a manifestation of the passion joy defined by the fact that it arises “from the apprehension of novelty.” ⁶⁶ The description that Hobbes gives of admiration in chapter 6 is sparse, to say the least. Although he does not identify it here as the beginning of philosophy, he identifies it with that which “excites the appetite of knowing the cause,” curiosity. ⁶⁷ Thus the two remain coupled in this text. Curiosity is the appetite, or “desire, to know why, and how.” ⁶⁸ Hobbes here puts into curiosity some of the qualities which before belonged to the passion of admiration. It is this passion, now along with reason, that distinguishes human beings from animals. Despite not calling it the beginning of philosophy, admiration must still play the same role that it did in The Elements of Law, since the definition of philosophy in Leviathan is concerned with the knowledge of the generation of a thing, and the properties that lead to that generation. Yet here in Leviathan both admiration and curiosity are defined as passions. One is a form of desire, the other a form of joy.

A possible explanation for the scant description of admiration in chapter 6 of Leviathan is that, in this text, admiration has a much more theological role than before. Thus it is described in much fuller detail in the overtly religious half of Leviathan, in chapter 37, “Of Miracles, and Their Use.” Here wonder makes its appearance in Hobbes’s mature system. Hobbes says that there are two things which may make human beings wonder at an event and call it admirable: The first is that it may be “strange,” by which Hobbes means that either the event has never happened before or it only happens very rarely. The second is that “we cannot imagine it to have been done by natural means, but onely by the immediate hand of God.” ⁶⁹ In this chapter Hobbes is not very interested in the first quality, or at least not in things which only have the first quality and not the second, for at the moment when an event can be imagined to have a natural cause, “we no more wonder, nor esteem it a miracle.” ⁷⁰ The first quality of wonder is slightly familiar, as it runs from Aristotle’s example of spontaneous natural wonder, like events connected to the sun, up through Hobbes’s account of admiration in The Elements of Law. It is in the second quality of wonder that everything changes. Admiration and wonder are no longer directed toward any event that is new or strange, but only toward those events which cannot be imagined to be natural—toward miracles. Hobbes thus defined miracles as “a work of God (besides his operation by the way of Nature, ordained in the creation,) done, for the making manifest to his elect, the mission of an extraordinary Minister for their salvation.” ⁷¹

Wonder in this case is an extraordinary mode of receptivity between an authority and a subject. The strangeness of those extraordinary events which break up the ordinary from the inside no longer has an adequate basis for admiration or wonder. Now wonder and admiration belong only to those things which do not belong to the ordinary world. Hobbes uses the phrase “admirable order” when the “visible things of this world” are apprehended as caused by a supernatural force: God. ⁷² It is only from the perspective which sees the world as a totality caused by God, even if there is no understanding of God and the word is no more than an empty signifier, that the world may be perceived in admiration, or wonder. Here we can see the importance of Hobbes’s historical context, particularly the first consequence of his historical condition. Wonders were taken to be supernatural signs of God, and could be used as political propaganda by opposing forces, or as affirmation for a particular ruler or order.

Here Hobbes moves to enshrine that silent, dizzying wonder that Theaetetus felt for perplexing statements as a feeling which one may permanently feel toward an extraordinary authority, an authority which is outside of the context of the social field. If Hobbes follows this move to its conclusion, then that authority will have the same role which, Paul Stern noted, belonged to Iris, the goddess who has no other duty but to swoop down and render silent all those who would disagree with what is and is not a miracle. ⁷³ Of course, Hobbes does follow this to its conclusion and holds that the “Sovraign power” is to be the judge of “whether the Miracle we hear, or read of, were a real work.” ⁷⁴ The important foil here for Hobbes is the Roman Catholic Church, whose supposedly ecumenical domain Hobbes likened to an ephemeral “Kingdome of Fairies.” Hobbes argued that the sovereign, and not the Holy Office of the Catholic Church, should be the focus for this power, since the sovereign state would be able to wield both political and ecclesiastical power, both of which stemmed at least in part from its affective authority. ⁷⁵ Additionally, this would ward off the danger of independent ministers, specifically Presbyterian, from using wonder and awe to overwhelm citizens. ⁷⁶

The suggestion for an official body in Anglican England which would determine the veracity of wonders was not unusual for this time. For example, the Cambridge scholar of biblical antiquity, John Spencer (1630–1693) suggested a “kind of Philosophy office; wherein all such unusual occurences [would be] registered.” ⁷⁷ Of course, Hobbes’s proposal is quite distinct because of its incorporation into the core of his theory of the state. The theological form of wonder is controlled by Hobbes, and becomes a tool of the sovereign power. Although the sovereign power cannot perform miracles, since that power belongs only to the divine, it can define what may and may not be considered a miracle. The sovereign cannot create this type of wonder, but it can eliminate it. Yet this is not only a matter of “political theology” or the power of the sovereign over questions of religion, ⁷⁸ but a matter of using a conceptual framework from ancient philosophy to build a certain apparatus of the state, one which alters the emotional makeup of the citizenry. It is important to note that Hobbes grants that in private a person will always have the liberty to decide for himself or herself whether or not a strange and unusual event is a miracle or a wonder. A person will believe what they believe in private, and Hobbes sees there to be nothing that the sovereign could or should do to change this. But as a public person, one must give over to the sovereign the right to judge whether an event was a wonder or a miracle and to experience that event accordingly.

In addition to devising a structure of the state which redirects and reconfigures wonder toward supernatural miracles, Hobbes’s sovereign power redirects another, corrupted, form of wonder; what Hobbes calls awe. It is the feeling that accompanies natural ignorance when fear disallows the search for the causes. Hobbes begins his description of awe with a powerful example of philosophical inquiry, based in the ancient model, which does not have a sovereign power to decide on the supernatural causes. This inquiry follows Hobbes’s description of a person curiously looking for causes, but not stopping upon the command of a “Sovraign power,” and that Sovereign power’s theology of the one “God eternall,” but rather seeking out his or her own understanding of the causes. This occurs in chapter 11 of Leviathan, “Of the difference of Manners.” By manners, Hobbes means the qualities of humans which “concern their living together in Peace, and Unity.” ⁷⁹ In the end of this chapter, Hobbes describes a condition in which there is no natural peace and unity—a state without a common civil religion. This condition begins with “curiosity,” which Hobbes calls here a “love of knowledge of causes.” ⁸⁰ It wouldn’t be outrageous, especially after the above exposition, to take this as a reference to Aristotelian philosophy, or a love of knowledge which aims to discover the causes. It is only natural for humans to be curious. Yet what is not natural is an innate idea of God. Thus when curiosity leads from effect to cause, and follows the causal chain all the way down to the first cause, a person will not know for certain what the first cause might have been. Hobbes notes that “even the Heathen Philosopher,” likely referencing Aristotle, “confessed” the logical necessity of a “First Mover.” ⁸¹ Yet, since Aristotle was a “heathen,” his philosophy could not recognize this “First Mover” as the Christian God.

Here Hobbes states that those who do not make a scientific enquiry into the natural causes of things will be caught in the fear of the original ignorance. Rather than seeking to remove the original state of ignorance, as in Aristotelian philosophy, which is concomitant with admiration, those who do not seek out the natural causes will see their admiration decay into fear. Without accepting the conclusion of a God which is “the eternal cause of all things,” human beings will be inclined to create for themselves invisible powers in its place and by the “fear” of those invisible powers they will be hindered “from the search of the causes of other things.” ⁸² These fearful people who “make little, or no enquiry into the natural causes of things,” will experience awe toward their idols—which block off all other objects of wonder. ⁸³ In order to ward off the fear which proceeds from ignorance, those without a theologically grounded science of the causes will feign unto themselves invisible powers which they create by their own imaginations, before which they stand in awe. Wonder is forced by fear to shift into a single-minded awe. These idols need not only be religious. They may also be what Hobbes called in The Elements of Law “little stories of themselves.” ⁸⁴ These stories, which may take the forms of “Histories, or Fictions of Gallant Persons,” hold their audience captive, and direct their actions toward the enlargement of their glory at the risk of all. ⁸⁵ This self-feigned glory is the third principle cause of quarrel, and it can lead to conflict over nothing more than “trifles.” ⁸⁶ This account in Leviathan is different from that of The Elements of Law, since rather than experiencing admiration or wonder toward these little stories like the vainglorious, as they did in The Elements of Law, those who are bewitched by their stories experience awe.

Here we have a case in which proper thaumazein, which in the case of the world itself would lead to a wonder at the “admirable order” of the world as created by God, is blocked for some people by the fear which accompanies natural ignorance. Curiosity becomes frustrated by fear and changes into awe. It may also be the case that curiosity never took off, and a person immediately experienced awe. Hobbes illustrates how in this case, rather than experiencing thaumazein, these fearful people will create images and creatures to explain the cause of the world to themselves. They then stand in awe, or deinon, of these creatures of their fancy. In short, phobos replaces thaumazein with deinon. This, I believe, is the key transformation from ancient to Hobbesian wonder.

Remarkably, Hobbes responds to what he takes to be an absence of proper wonder in a way which structurally resembles Aristotle’s account of tragic catharsis; humans vainly attempt to “clarify” their initial fear through “little stories” that they tell themselves, and before which they experience awe. He finds this alternative to be an ordinary response that some humans have to the original ignorance of what might have caused the order of the things of the world. Without a visible power to keep these people in awe, these people will fabricate an invisible one for themselves, and the catharsis that it provides will be completely inadequate. These stories do nothing to eliminate the original fear, but actually increase it. At the end of chapter 11 of Leviathan it is made clear that phobos, deinon, and thaumazein will all be incorporated into Hobbes’s political philosophy. A theoretical path is made for the redirection of both thaumazein, as we saw above in the case of wonders and miracles, and deinon, which is treated here as a corrupted form of thaumazein, toward the fearsome Leviathan, leaving the citizen in a permanent state of phobos.

From here, Hobbes resuscitates awe, and channels it into his political philosophy. Some people will not have the capacity or perhaps desire to respond with the right kind of wonder to the admirable order of God as interpreted by the sovereign power, and thus will be dominated by the emotional need for the catharsis of awe. Hobbes builds upon this need, and uses it as the basis for the political education of the multitude through the over-awing Leviathan. According to Hobbes, only the state is capable of both controlling the wonder of the scientifically capable, and the awe of the incapable. ⁸⁷ The laws of nature and the various religions of the world by themselves are not enough without a “visible power to keep them [all] in awe,” for indeed the laws of nature themselves are contrary to the rest of the passions without “the terrour of some Power.” ⁸⁸ This awe, and the quarrels that it may create, necessitates the construction of a state structure to “clarify” it. Immediately preceding the famous description of life during war as “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short,” Hobbes defines the condition of war as a point when “men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe.” ⁸⁹

For the Leviathan to affect catharsis, following Aristotle’s formulation, it must be a mimesis—an imitation or representation. ⁹⁰ The Greek term mimesis is the subject of a vast body of scholarship, and has been interpreted in many different ways. The aspect that I find important here is the affective power of an imitation as it is described by Hobbes. Much like how the imitations of action, for Aristotle, achieved “by means of pity and terror (phobos) the catharsis of such emotions” in the audiences of ancient tragedy, Hobbes’s imitations achieve fear and terror in his subjects. ⁹¹ In fact, Hobbes, purposefully or not, follows Aristotle’s account of the affective power of mimesis from the very beginning of Leviathan. In his Introduction, Hobbes describes the art of man to be an imitation of nature, the art of God. Further, he describes the imitation of “that Rationall and most excellent worke of Nature, man” to result in the creation of the subject of the text, the great Leviathan. ⁹² Although the method of personification and authorship which Hobbes devises in chapter 16 is largely indebted to Latin sources, such as Cicero’s De Officiis, the Leviathan itself functions as an Aristotelian mimesis. It affects catharsis in its spectators; in this case, in the people who generated it. As Hobbes puts it later in the text, the Leviathan “hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is enabled to conforme the wills of them all.” ⁹³

The catharsis that the Leviathan affects in its subjects is effective, unlike that of the little stories of the vainglorious. The excess of fear that some subjects of the state once had is clarified by the terror of the Leviathan, a proper object of awe. Rather than be consumed by a perspective of fear of each other, citizens are pacified by an enduring terror of the Leviathan. The state is able to facilitate this alteration of perspective for those who were previously blinded by their glory, for the Leviathan is designed to be the center of a unitary body in which “he is made so as not to be afraid,” for he is the “King of all the children of pride.” ⁹⁴

For those incapable of what Hobbes takes to be the proper sense of wonder, there can be no escape from the awe owed to the terrible Leviathan, the bearer of sovereignty. Even for the capable, miracles may only be a source of wonder when the sovereign allows them to be. Thus the citizens of Hobbes’s commonwealth are bound together by reconfigurations of what once were the bases of ancient philosophy. The domination of wonder and awe are permanent, from which citizens may not escape as long as the sovereign power endures. If they were to escape, according to Hobbes, the awe which was once directed toward the Leviathan, and the wonder, no longer proper, would change into uncontrollable fear. This need for the clarification of awe, and the control of wonder, aid in the creation of the modern state and sustain it. They give the state strength and together reaffirm it as a terrible wonder.

Altogether, the source of ancient philosophy is transformed and prolonged—the original isolation, and silent state of being lost in the world—as the permanent station of the overawed modern citizen under the Leviathan. In the context of the English Civil War, as depicted in Behemoth, Hobbes argues for the redirection of all wonder and awe towards the sovereign state. Perhaps, then, it might be said that under the Leviathan any attention to politics not condoned by the sovereign—what contemporary political theory call non-sovereign politics—is in a permanent state of deferral. Non-sovereign politics might continue to exist, but a populace turned in wonder and awe only towards the sovereign simply cannot see it. Since the conditions of possibility for the perception of marvelous, wondrous events has been altered, there cannot be any except for those designed by the state itself. Political events worthy of wonder might continue to appear, but citizens may take no notice. The modern state theorized by Hobbes needs this deferral of wonder. In fact, at the moment at which political philosophy and political observers turn their attention away from the actions of the sovereign entity, and lose their awe for it, the efficacy of the modern state diminishes. Techniques and practices which continually control wonder and reaffirm awe must be repeatedly employed. This deferral is the supreme Hobbesian irony. What better tool could there be to overawe the proud than the Leviathan, itself a monster, and thus a wondrous marvel? What could be more absurd than to find this monster ordinary, and to accept it as necessary?