Abstract
The chapter analyses the Hobbesian conception of glory. This passion embodies the tendency for empowerment and social competition of the modern self whose motive will be defined as the “desire for recognition”. Hobbes places at the core of his analysis of the human passions the need for recognition, conceived as a never-satisfied desire, as it depends on an endless escalation in the quest for power: the glorious self asks the other self to be recognized as superior, but is unwilling to meet the equivalent request from his partners. Increasingly dependent on the confirmations of others, the individual consciousness is condemned to a condition of distressing anxiety and insecurity about its own value. A conflict of “social unsociability” arises and drags all human beings in a restless competition for honours, which produces an endemic state of mental war. My investigation is guided by the relation that links the question of glory and war. Particularly, I try to show how Hobbes exemplarily captured the “dark side” of the struggle for recognition. At the same time, my reading highlights the ambivalences of the Hobbesian argument that seem to open up glimpses towards a more positive reconsideration of the passion which will become the leitmotif of Kojève’s rehabilitation of the Hobbesian glory.
GLORY, or internal gloriation or triumph of the mind, is that passion which proceedeth from the imagination or conception of our own power, above the power of him that contendeth with us.
Thomas Hobbes
vanity, which needs others in order to be able to disdain them.
Georg Simmel
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Notes
- 1.
Quotations from Hobbes refer to: E = The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, ed. F. Tönnies, London, Simpkin & Marshall, 1889, reed. Frank Cass, 1969; De cive = Libri de cive, in Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Opera Philosophica quae latine scripsit omnia, ed. W. Molesworth, 5 vols., London, 1839–1845, vol. II (English translation The Citizen, 1651); L = Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. N. Malcolm (Oxford: Clarendon, 2012), vol. 2.
- 2.
Largely focusing on the eighteenth century anthropology, Lovejoy’s work reconstructs the history of “approbativeness” i.e., the need for approval and praise. This recurrent idea in authors like Bernard de Mandeville (self-liking), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (amour-propre, considération) and Adam Smith (desire to please, sympathy) expresses, according to Lovejoy, the distinguishing characteristic of humans, the only animals which have the capacity to feel sensitive to the esteem of others. «An animal which has an urgent desire for a thought of a thought – and of a thought not its own – and whose action is profoundly affected by this type of desire, more profoundly and more pervasively than by any other [...] – that is man», ch. 3, p. 92. Lovejoy’s phrase evokes the “desire for desire” in the Hegel-like words of Alexandre Kojève.
- 3.
I referred to Strauss in my first article that dealt with the question of recognition in Hobbes’s work Carnevali (2005).
- 4.
In Anerkennung: Eine europäische Ideengeschichte, Honneth (2018) traces the tradition of pathological recognition back to Rousseau and La Rochefoucauld, following an exclusively French connection that does not take into account the role that Hobbes played in shaping the concept of amour-propre adopted by French moralists. I summarized the history of such influence, through the passage Hobbes-Pascal-Rousseau, in Carnevali (2012). For a convincing critical appraisal of Honneth’s book, see Testa (2019).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Benveniste compares the two Homeric terms that are normally translated as glory, kléos and kûdos. He distinguishes the latter, which indicates a magical power, from the former, which corresponds to our anthropological and social concept of glory. His considerations on kûdos as “triumph” are, however, extremely inspiring for interpreting Hobbes. See also Nagy (1999). On the history of the idea of glory from Homer to Dante, see von Müller (1977).
- 8.
On Hobbes’s conception of honour, see Bagby (2009).
- 9.
- 10.
In his Elements Hobbes make a distinction between different forms of glory and in particular between true glory, vain glory, and false glory (in the Anti-White he talks instead of empty glory). This distinction is based on two criteria: whether the sense of superiority is based on real actions and talents of the glorious subject, or whether it is merely imaginary: in the latter case we have vain glory if the subject awards it to himself, false glory if others award it to him with their adulation. The second criterion relates to the relationship between glorious desire and action: only true glory spurs into action, whereas false glory leads to inactivity, satisfied with an exclusively mental pleasure. This doctrine, too, does not appear to have significantly evolved in Hobbes’s works, and as a matter of fact has no influence on the central question in his philosophic concern (Slomp 2000, 35).
- 11.
The thesis that Leo Strauss developed about Hobbes – the fact that the naturalism of Hobbesian anthropology is belied by its Christian “moral basis” is precisely attested by the prominence devoted to the problem of vanity.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
The tradition I name “dark realism”, which reduces the complexity of human experience, can be stacked up against the Aristotelian tradition. The latter emphasizes realism’s capacity to delineate an exhaustive profile of human features. Understood in this way, the task of realism is not so much to reach a hidden fundamental motive (economic interest, the will to power, the envious desire, etc.) which represents the ultimate drive of humankind. Rather, realism’s goal is to account for the plural and irreducible nature of humankind. Aristotelian realism has also found applications in literary theory (e.g. in Martha Nussbaum), and can be considered as an alternative model to Hobbes’ approach.
- 15.
This is the dominant reading in interpretations based exclusively on the logic of self-preservation and inspired by the theory of games, such as in Gauthier (1969).
- 16.
On Descartes’s glory, and on the reversal of Pascal’s Cartesian conception, see Frigo (2020).
- 17.
Consider the criticism raised by Rousseau in his Second Discourse against philosophers like Hobbes who are constantly “dwelling on desires and pride”, transferring to the state of nature ideas which were acquired in society: “so that, in speaking of the savage, they described the social man” Rousseau (1997, 142).
- 18.
To imagine a process of self-esteem independent of others, think of the immediate feeling of one’s own existence and value that Rousseau calls the amour de soi, to distinguish it from the amour-propre that descends from the Hobbesian glory (Rousseau 1997, 218 n. 15).
- 19.
“In becoming objects of laughter, they are being derided, that is, tryumphed over and scorned”. (E, 42). The triumph of laughter can even be directed to that “other” which is our past self: “The passion of Laughter is nothyng else but a suddaine Glory arising from suddaine Conception of some Eminency in our selves by Comparison with the Infirmityes of others, or with our owne formerly” (E, 42). See Skinner (2002).
- 20.
As the recurrence of the theme of mockery, ridicule, and “trifles” shows, another important source of Hobbes’s analysis of the mental war for honour is certainly to be found in the Renaissance treatises on civil conversation (Skinner 2018, chap. 8).
- 21.
“The Value, or WORTH of a man is, as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power: and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependant on the need and judgment of another. An able conductor of Souldiers, is of great Price in time of War present, or imminent; but in Peace not so. A learned and uncorrupt Judge, is much Worth in time of Peace; but not so much in War. And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price. For let a man (as most men do) rate themselves at the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it is esteemed by others” (L, 10, 134).
- 22.
As is well known, this is one of the most debated questions in Hobbes’s criticism (Foisneau 2016).
- 23.
For a different reading, revaluating Hobbes’ ethical concern in the virtue of modesty see Cooper (2010).
- 24.
- 25.
Giorgio Agamben’s concept of “the open” takes its inspiration from Heidegger and Arendt, identifying aesthetics with politics. Agamben’s theory lacks a social sphere, and it is expressed in idealistic and romantic terms (the open is realized in poetry). This and its messianic and eschatological bent make Agamben’s glory inapplicable to Hobbes’s perspective (Carnevali 2018).
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Carnevali, B. (2021). Triumphs of the Mind. Hobbes and the Ambivalences of Glory. In: Giacomoni, P., Valentini, N., Dellantonio, S. (eds) The Dark Side: Philosophical Reflections on the “Negative Emotions”. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55123-0_8
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