To validate Hobbes' metaphorical passage, I must turn to William James' equation of precursive faith. Our option to believe Hobbes' metaphor within a metaphor for the purpose of enlightenment is
1.)Live:You can bring yourself to believe it (because, taken figuratively, the likeness of automatons to humans, and humans to civil society is quite precise in structure.
2.)Forced:Because suspending choice has the same consequences of choosing to reject Hobbes' metaphors (halting the quest for enlightenment).
3.)Momentous:Because great spiritual awakening is at stake for very many.
The option to believe Hobbes' metaphor within the metaphor for the purpose of enlightening very, very many is-for me- a "genuine option." Accepting his point that a human resembles a automaton leads me to the free will issue, which I choose to pursue because it- in turn- leads to reality of an omnipotent God, a reality I was always meant to teach the world. Thus, my choice to have grasped Hobbes' Leviathan as the philosophical foundation of my quest throughout the decades -- with a certain tenacity-- is validated.
In my essay, I turned to the text's editorial summation of Hobbes' response to the free will question this being if God is omnipotent, how can humanity have free will?Sifting Hobbes's writing for his basic position, the editors assert,
Man is a creature of desires and aversions;love is desire, hate is aversion;good anything we desire, evil anything for which we feel aversion; and it is felicity at which we perpetually aim - perpetually "because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear,no more than without sense."
In Get a Grip on Philosophy, author Neil Turnbull asserts that such Hobbesian calculation- such "cynical weighing up of the pros and cons" became the pyschological foundations of the modern social sciences. Since economics was one of my undergraduate majors, I was accustomed to the cost/benefit analysis of social issues when I first read Leviathan in the spring of 1984.
In my essay, I pointed out that since nobody desires what they feel aversion for, nor feel aversion for that which they desire, humanity has free will in effect-but only in effect. I find nothing objectionable with this scientific stance, and believe that such objective analysis of human motivation is far mor pragmatic than the usual religous attempts to express the mechanics of free will.
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