Abstract
This chapter argues that to respond to this question, it is necessary to make a preliminary comparison with Hobbes’s reflection, as the representative paradigm of modernity. Here fear performs, albeit with sacrificial results, a productive function: namely it is capable of promoting the preservation of life and the social and political order. The fear of death, or rather the fear of the other as causing death, for Hobbes becomes a source of reasonableness that leads individuals to build a civil and political society to guarantee security. The certainty and proximity of the danger cause a self-preserving reaction which, despite requiring man to relinquish his rights and passions, frees him from conflicts and ensures, through the construction of an exonerating and protective artifice, a safe life and social and political order.
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Notes
- 1.
See Bernhard Görlich, “Angst,” in Vom Menschen. Handbuch Historische Anthropologie, ed. Christoph Wulf (Weinheim: Beltz Verlag, 1997).
- 2.
See Gehlen, Man: His Nature and Place in the World, 24–31.
- 3.
Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990), 3ff. Originally published as Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1979). See also Görlich, “Angst”.
- 4.
See Roberto Escobar, Metamorfosi della paura (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997).
- 5.
Gehlen, Anthropologische Forschung, 50.
- 6.
Ibid., 48.
- 7.
See Gehlen, Urmensch und Spätkultur, Part I.
- 8.
Ibid., 48, 60; and Gehlen, Anthropologische Forschung, 72 and 74–75.
- 9.
See also Delumeau, La peur et l’Occident (Paris: Fayard, 1978); and Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of the Western Guilt Culture, 13th-18th Centuries (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), originally published as Le péché et la peur. La culpabilisation en Occident, XIIIe -XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1983).
- 10.
On premodern threats (natural origin of the dangers, attribution to a non-human power, their indefinite and indeterminate nature), see Beck, World Risk Society, 50 and Beck, Die Erfindung des Politischen. Zu einer Theorie reflexiver Modernisierung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1993), 40. The text is translated into English in abbreviated form in “The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization,” in Reflexive Modernization. Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, ed. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
- 11.
Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 440.
- 12.
On modernity and fear see also Remo Bodei, Geometria delle passioni (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1991).
- 13.
Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age.
- 14.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XIII: 184.
- 15.
‘The power of a man, (to take it Universally,) is his present means, to obtain some future apparent Good.’ Ibid., X: 150.
- 16.
Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1640), ed. Ferdinand Tönnies, intro. M. M. Goldsmith (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1984), I. 8, 34.
- 17.
Ibid., I. 7, 30.
- 18.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XI: 161.
- 19.
Hobbes, Elements of Law Natural and Politic, I. 8, 34.
- 20.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XI: 161.
- 21.
‘So that in the nature of man, we find three principall causes of quarrell. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory. The first, maketh men invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation.’ Ibid., XIII: 185. On the nexus between diffidence and fear, namely diffidence as an intrinsic aspect of fear: ‘They presume, I believe, that to fear is nothing else then to be affrighted: I comprehend in this word Fear, a certain foresight of future evill; neither doe I conceive flight the sole property of fear, but to distrust, suspect, take heed, provide so that they may not fear, is also incident to the fearfull.’ (Thomas Hobbes, De Cive (1642), ed. Howard Warrender (1983; repr., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), I.2, 45). ‘And from hence shall proceed a general diffidence in mankind, and mutual fear one of another.’ (Hobbes, Elements of Law Natural and Politic, I.14, 71).
- 22.
On these aspects see Dimitri D’Andrea, Prometeo e Ulisse. Natura umana e ordine politico in Thomas Hobbes (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1997), chap. 4, from whom I have drawn important indications relating to the following reflections.
- 23.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XIII: 184.
- 24.
Hobbes, Elements of Law Natural and Politic, I.14, 71.
- 25.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XIV: 189.
- 26.
Ibid., XIV: 190.
- 27.
Ibid., XIII: 188.
- 28.
Ibid., XIII: 186.
- 29.
Ibid., XIII: 188.
- 30.
See Raymond Polin, Politique e philosophie chez Thomas Hobbes (1953) (Paris: Vrin, 1977).
- 31.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XIV: 190.
- 32.
‘From this Fundamentall Law of Nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour Peace, is derived this second Law; That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things.’ (Ibid.).
- 33.
See Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959).
- 34.
Hobbes, Elements of Law Natural and Politic, I.14, 71.
- 35.
Hobbes, De Cive, I.2, 44.
- 36.
Here I propose a ‘correction’ to the famous thesis by Hirschman, according to which passions are contrasted (or counterbalanced) by interests.
- 37.
Hobbes, De Cive, III.27, 72.
- 38.
Ibid., III.32, 75.
- 39.
‘For seeing the wills of most men are governed only by fear, and where there is no power of coercion, there is no fear; the wills of most men will follow their passions of covetousness, lust, anger, and the like, to the breaking of those covenants, whereby the rest, also, who otherwise would keep them, are set at liberty, and have no law but from themselves.’ (Hobbes, Elements of Law Natural and Politic, II.1, 111).
- 40.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XII: 169.
- 41.
D’Andrea, Prometeo e Ulisse, 193–94.
- 42.
‘Inexperienced men […] do not look closely enough at the long-term consequences of things, accept what appears to be good, not seeing the evil annexed to it’. (Thomas Hobbes, Man and Citizen, ed. Bernard Gert (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press/Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978), 48. Originally published as De Homine (1658)).
- 43.
See Donald Davidson, “Paradoxes of Irrationality,” in Philosophical Essays on Freud, ed. Richard A. Wollheim and James Hopkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Davidson, “Deception and Division,” in The Multiple Self: Studies in Rationality and Social Change, ed. Jon Elster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Davidson, “Who Is Fooled?,” in Self-Deception and Paradoxes of Rationality, ed. Jean-Pierre Dupuy (Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1998) and David Pears, “The Goals and Strategies of Self-Deception,” in The Multiple Self, ed. Jon Elster.
- 44.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XVII: 223.
- 45.
On this passage see Esposito, Communitas, 23: ‘It is transformed from “reciprocal,” anarchic fear, such as that which determines the state of nature (mutuus metus), to “common,” institutional fear, what characterizes the civil state (metus potentiae communis). Fear does not disappear, however. It is reduced but doesn’t recede. Fear is never forgotten.’
- 46.
Hobbes, Leviathan, XVII: 223.
- 47.
Hence the interesting parallel, suggested by D’Andrea, between the Hobbesian individual and Homer’s Odysseus: both oriented towards ‘setting up a rationally conceived, artificial mechanism to compensate for the limitations of reason’ (D’Andrea, Prometeo e Ulisse, 198, own translation).
- 48.
The second natural law lays down ‘That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things’ (Hobbes, Leviathan, XIV: 190); “Right Is Laid Aside, Either by Simply Renouncing It; or by Transferring It to Another,” (ibid., XIV: 191).
- 49.
‘The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will’. (Hobbes, Leviathan, XVII: 227).
- 50.
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, ed. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press/the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1975), 52. Originally published as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1930).
- 51.
See Esposito, Communitas, chap. 1.
- 52.
See Part III.
- 53.
Elias Canetti, The Human Province (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978), 115–16. Originally published as Die Provinz des Menschen. Aufzeichnungen 1942–1972 (Munich: Fischer, 1973).
- 54.
See Norberto Bobbio, “La libertà dalla paura,” Psiche VIII, no. 1 (2000): 173ff.
- 55.
Esposito, Communitas, 23, while present in the Italian edition, the last two words of the quote are missing from the English translation. On this see also Carlo Galli, “Modernità della paura. Jonas e la responsabilità,” Il Mulino, no. 2 (1991): 185–93.
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Pulcini, E. (2013). Modernity and Fear. In: Care of the World. Studies in Global Justice, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4482-0_4
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