Scatter[1]
Geoffrey Bennington
‘La pluie a dispersé les spectateurs qui
courent dans tous les sens.’ [The rain has scattered the spectators who go
running in all directions.] (Jacques Derrida, Glas)
1.
Everything begins
and ends in plurality or dispersion.
1.1. I prefer to call it ‘scatter’, and
immediately scatter ‘scatter’ here:
1.1.1. As
noun:
1. a.
The action or an act of scattering; wide or irregular distribution; dispersion.
Now chiefly with reference to shot.
1935
in Trans. Philol. Soc. 45 The frequency of reference to sex had
necessarily extended what I term the formal scatter of the word, and we now
have sexed, sexless, sexy, sexiness, even sexology. 1963 J. LYONS Structural
Semantics vii. 178 One point that seemed to be of relevance in the inquiry
was the defective formal ‘scatter’ of the lexeme είδέυαι.
2. A quantity loosely distributed or interspersed;
a scattering, sprinkling; also spec. in Archæol.
3. Statistics. The degree to which repeated
measurements or observations of a quantity differ; that which is measured by
the variance.
4. a. The scattering of light or other radiation.
b. spec. with reference to radio waves,
freq. denoting the use of scattering within the atmosphere to extend the range
of radio communication. Freq. attrib.
1.1.2. As verb:
1.
trans. To dissipate, squander (goods or possessions). Obs. or arch.
2. a. To separate and drive in various directions
(a body of men or animals, a collection of things); to disperse, dissipate (a
quantity of matter); to dispel (clouds, mists).
b. intr. for refl. To separate and
disperse; to go dispersedly or stragglingly. 
Also
of a hawk: To go to a distance.
d. trans.
To separate, drive apart (one or more individuals from the main body). Obs.
e. fig.
To dissipate, distract (the mind, etc.).
3. a. trans. To throw about in disorder in
various places.
b. To throw
down (a thing) negligently; to drop. Obs. rare
1.
4. a. To distribute to various positions; to
place here and there at irregular intervals. Chiefly in pa. pple.
b. intr.
in pres. pple. used with a vb. of rest (= ‘scattered’). Obs.
c. trans. Baseball. Of a pitcher:
to yield (hits) only at intervals and so restrict scoring.
5. a. To throw or send forth so that the
particles are distributed or spread about; to sow or throw (seed, money, etc.)
broadcast; to sprinkle, strew; to diffuse (fragrance).
b. transf. and fig. Also, 
to spread (reports, a prophecy).
d. Of a gun, a cartridge: To distribute (the
shot). Chiefly absol.
e. Physics. Of a surface, semi-opaque
substance: To throw back (light) brokenly in all directions. More widely, to
deflect, diffuse, or reflect (radiation, particles, or the like) in a more or
less random fashion. Also absol.
f. intr. Physics. Of radiation,
particles, etc.: to undergo scattering.
6. trans. To sprinkle or strew with
something.
1.1.3. Scatter scatters scat.
1.1.3.1.
Scat:
1.1.3.1.1.
Noun:
1. Treasure,
money; in ME. only in phr. scat and s(c)rud.
[…]
b. ‘Anything burst or broken open; the sound of a
rent; the sharp sound of a bullet’ (E.D.D.). Cf. SCAT v.3 and adv.
c. A brief spell of weather; a short turn of work.
d. A sudden or passing shower of rain.
5.
(US slang) Whisky
6. a. A style of
improvised singing in which meaningless but expressive syllables, usu.
representing the sound of a musical instrument, are used instead of words.
Freq. attrib. passing into adj. (see also b below).
b. Comb., as scat-singing
n., singing in this style; also as adj.; hence scat-singer and (as a back-formation) scat-sing v. trans. and intr.
7.
[ad. σκατ-, σκώρ Gr. dung.]
2. slang.
Heroin. Cf. SHIT n.1 1.
1.1.3.1.2.
Verb:
1. trans. To oppress
by exactions.
2.
intr. In phrase
to scat and lot (later to scat or contribute) = ‘to scot and lot’,
i.e. to contribute equally to the defraying of some charge or cost.
3.
trans. To break
in pieces, shatter.
4. a.
intr. To perform scat-singing; to sing or improvise with meaningless
syllables.
b.
trans. To sing or improvise (a song) by replacing the words by
meaningless syllables.
scatting
vbl. n.1.1.3.1.3.
Adverb:
to go scat:
to fall down; to break in pieces; to become bankrupt.
1.1.3.1.4.
Int.
Begone!
Hence used as verb (intr.). Also in phr. quicker
than scat.
1.2. [‘Begins
and ends’: no beginning, no end.]
1.2.3.
(Metaphysical logic of arkhe
and telos.)
1.3. Take it
also as a prescription: ‘scatter!’, ‘scat!’. In all senses, dans
tous les sens.
1.3.3.
A
prescription is not always quite an order (there’s a distinction to come
between command and counsel [see 6.4.6.14.16.4.6.14.1 below]).
1.3.3.1.
Scatter!
Absolutely or transitively:
1.3.3.1.1.
Scatter seed.
1.3.3.1.1.1.
The eminently teleological figure of the seed is
already in tension with the randomness of its scatter.
1.3.3.1.1.1.1.
[…]
1.3.3.1.2.
Scatter ashes.
1.3.3.1.2.1.
Demi-deuil. Half, not half. (No
end)
1.3.3.1.2.1.1. See my ‘Not Half No
End’ in Deconstruction is not what you
think (ebook, 2005), 117-23.
1.3.3.1.2.1.2.
[…]
2.
Philosophy tries to
gather, organize and unify scatter.
2.1. Philosophy as such is dedicated to
clearing and cleaning up the scat and the scatter, in general.
2.1.1. Concept is gathered and grasped scatter.
2.1.1.1.
The
philosopher against the scatterbrain.
2.1.1.1.1.
[…]
2.1.1.2.
Speculative dialectics is the most
powerful attempt to deal with scatter.
2.1.1.2.1.
Read
here the whole of Book Two Section One Chapter 2 of Hegel’s Science of Logic.
2.1.1.2.1.1.
Or,
if you must, the shorter version in the Encyclopedia
Logic: §§115ff.
2.1.1.3.
But
it founders on the deconstructive demonstration that difference can (and so
must) be thought short of, this side of, its dialectical sublation.
2.1.1.3.1.
Read
Derrida’s Positions, p. 60 and n6
2.1.1.3.1.1. I
tried to distinguish différance (…)
from Hegelian difference. At
precisely the point where Hegel,
in the Greater Logic, determines
difference as contradiction* only in order to resolve, interiorize, sublate it,
according to the syllogistic process of the speculative dialectic, into the
self-presence of an onto-theological or onto-teleological synthesis.
2.1.1.3.1.1.1.
[Derrida’s note]: Difference as
such is already implicitly contradiction…(Der Unterschied überhaupt ist schon der Widerspruch an sich.’) In no longer allowing itself to be
simply subsumed under the generality of logical
contradiction, différance, (process of differentiation) allows one
to take differentiating account of heterogeneous modes of conflictuality or, if
you like, contradictions. If I
have more often spoken of conflicts of forces than of contradiction, this is
first of all through critical suspicion of the Hegelian concept of
contradiction (Widerspruch) which,
moreover, as its name suggests, is designed to be resolved within dialectical discourse, in the immanence of a concept
capable of its own exteriority, and capable of having its outside-itself close
to itself.
2.1.1.3.1.1.1.1. (See my Interrupting Derrida (London: Routledge,
2000), pp. 12 and 45)
2.1.1.3.2.
And
see too his longer but perhaps more elusive commentary on this same question in
Glas (189b ff.), in the context of
sexual difference.
2.1.1.3.2.1. Sexual
difference is overcome when the
brother leaves, and the other (sister and wife) remains. There is no longer any sexual
difference as natural difference.
‘The sexes overcome their natural difference’. Once overcome, sexual difference will have been merely a
natural diversity. The opposition
between difference and qualitative diversity is a hinge of the Greater Logic. Diversity is a moment of difference, an indifferent difference,
an external difference, without opposition. While the two moments of difference (identity and
difference, since identity differs, as identity) relate only to themselves and
not to the other, while identity is not opposed to difference nor difference to
identity, there is diversity.
Diversity is, then, a moment of both difference and of identity, it being
understood, quite explicitly, that difference is the whole and its own moment.
Which is true too, then, of sexual difference: it is identity, identity
is difference, itself the whole and its own moment.
In
overcoming natural difference as
diversity of the sexes, one moves to difference as opposition. In Sittlichkeit,
sexual difference finally becomes a true opposition: which it was, moreover, called, destined to be.
1.1.3.1.4.1.1. Read here also
Derrida’s ‘Geschlecht: Différence
sexuelle, différence ontologique’. (See too 2.1.1.7.2.1.5.1 below)
2.1.1.4.
Scatter
remains (as scattered remains).
Scatter is (what) remains.
2.1.1.5.
Scatter is never absolute.
2.1.1.5.1.
(Scatter
is only scatter if not absolutely scattered. Always somewhat gathered against the scatter.)
2.1.1.6.
Différance is scatter (dissemination).
2.1.1.6.1.
Différance holds difference short of Hegelian
Absolute Difference.
2.1.1.6.1.1.
This
restraint, pause or even pudeur opens
the space of reading.
2.1.1.6.1.1.1. See my
‘L’invincible honte’, in B. Chaouat, ed., Lire,
écrire la honte (Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2007).
2.1.1.7.
Scatter is
Babel.
2.1.1.7.1.
And they said, Go to,
let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and
let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole
earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children
of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they
have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be
restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down,
and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another'
speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the
earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called
Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and
from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
(Genesis 11: 4-9)
2.1.1.7.2.
Translate, please.
2.1.1.7.2.1.
‘Scatter’ can ‘translate’ at least this
scatter:
2.1.1.7.2.1.1.
disperse, spread, strew;
2.1.1.7.2.1.2.
disperser, éparpiller, semer;
2.1.1.7.2.1.3.
Διασπορά;
ἐπισκεδάννῡμι; ἐπισκορπίζω; σκεδαυυύυαι;
2.1.1.7.2.1.4.
divido, disperso, dissipo, disjecto,
circumspergo;
2.1.1.7.2.1.5.
zerstreuen;
2.1.1.7.2.1.5.1.1. (Like a
fractal object, say a Julia set: zoom in here to the finest resolution you
like, and scatter is still scattering, never settling.)
2.1.1.7.2.1.6.
spargere, disperdere;
2.1.1.7.2.1.7.
esparcir, estrellar…
2.1.1.7.2.1.8.
Just beginning to spread out. A little
further:
2.1.1.7.2.1.8.1.
及物动词;
2.1.1.7.2.1.8.2.
まき散らす;
2.1.1.7.2.1.8.3.
흩뜨리다.
2.1.1.7.2.1.9.
And further still: ghomHa’
2.1.1.7.2.1.9.1.
[…]
2.1.1.7.3.
There’s ‘trace’ (scattered) in
‘scatter’. Scar. Star. Start. State.
2.1.2.
Scatter is the politics of
philosophy.
2.1.2.1.
‘Politics
is based on one fact: human plurality’ (First sentence of Hannah Arendt, Was ist Politik?) More interestingly: ‘Man is
a-political. Politics is born in the space between humans, therefore in
something fundamentally external to
humans. There is therefore no
truly political substance.
Politics is born in the intermediate space and is constituted as a
relation. This is what Hobbes
understood.’ (Quoting on the basis of the French edition: Hannah
Arendt, Qu’est-ce que la politique?, ed.
Ursula Ludz, tr. S. Courtine-Denamy.)
2.1.2.1.1.
And
so, we’re tempted to say against Arendt, politics is already not quite human.
2.1.2.1.2.
‘Space
between’, ‘intermediate space’: read Epicurus on the intermundia.
2.1.2.1.2.1.
There
is an intermundus (which is not a mundus, not globalizable or mondialisable) between every apparent
element of a scatter.
2.1.2.1.2.1.1. Including of course this scatter
here.
2.1.2.1.2.1.1.1.
[…]
2.1.2.1.2.2.
Read
together ancient materialism and modern String Theory.
2.1.2.1.2.2.1. [Follow especially the motif of rhuthmos…]
2.1.2.1.2.2.2. There are no atoms, so no
‘atomysticism’ in String Theory.
2.1.2.1.2.2.2.1.
Rather,
differential vibration or rhythm.
2.1.2.1.2.2.3. See my ‘La
démocritie à venir’, in M-L Mallet, ed., La
démocratie à venir (Paris : Galilée, 2004), 599-613.
3.
Philosophy would like to subordinate
politics to metaphysics.
3.1. And have the king be a philosopher
(and the philosopher a king).
3.1.1. All too famously: Read Plato’s Republic 473 c-d
3.1.1.1.
And
also: 499b, 540d, Laws 711d, 712a,
713e (etc.)
3.1.1.1.1.
(See
also 6.4.6.6.1.1.1.1.1 below)
3.1.1.1.2.
[…]
3.2. But Aristotle (not unusually) allows
for at least a hesitation:
3.2.1. Compare Metaphysics, 982b with Nichomachean
Ethics, 1094a and Politics 1282b.
3.2.1.1.
(And
Politics 1324-5, on the active and
contemplative life.)
3.2.1.2. See too my ‘Demo’
(1999), in M. McQuillan, ed., The
Politics of Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida and the Other of Philosophy
(London: Pluto Press, 2007), 17-42.
3.2.1.3.
Try
to show how Aristotle’s whole view of politics is less rapidly assimilable to
Plato and the model of ‘ipseity’ than Derrida (in Rogues) seems to think.
3.2.1.3.1.
See my forthcoming paper ‘For Better and Worse’ (read
to the ‘Who? Or What?—Jacques Derrida’ conference, University of Florida,
Gainesville, October 2006).
3.2.1.3.1.1.
But
show too that even where politics can appear to be primary, this is only on the
basis of a teleological argument that will always tend to redeem it as
metaphysical.
3.2.1.3.1.1.1. (This trouble around teleology is
the real (vanishing) point of all this scatter here. No end of trouble.)
3.3. Deconstruction is one quite good
name for the necessary failure of this attempt to subordinate politics to
metaphysics.
3.3.1. This does not of course mean that it
is enough to attempt in return to subordinate metaphysics to politics.
3.3.1.1.
[…]
4.
In political
philosophy, sovereignty is the concept designed to operate the unification of
scatter.
4.1. And thereby achieve the
metaphysicalization of the political, and the self-supporting sovereignization
of metaphysics.
4.2. Sovereignty would be the (philosophical) end of politics.
4.2.1. [Take on here Agamben’s rather
sovereign view of sovereignty, exception and ‘bare life’, with some help from
Derrida’s seminar on La bête et le
souverain (forthcoming).]
4.2.2. The end of politics: its
teleological realization or its putting to death.
4.2.2.1.
Read
Jacques Rancière:
4.2.2.1.1.
The art of politics is the art
that consists in suppressing the political. It is an operation of self-subtraction. Perhaps the ‘end of politics’ is then
merely its accomplishment, the always youthful accomplishment of its
old-hat-ness. And perhaps it is this duplicity of the tekhnè politikè that philosophy has never ceased theorizing, beyond
the opposition of the ‘ancients’ and the ‘moderns’. It is this ever young end that it has always brought close
to the thought of foundation. (Aux
bords du politique (Gallimard, 2004), p. 34)
4.2.2.1.2.
See too my essay ‘Foundations’, in A. Weiner and S.
Morgan Wortham, eds., Encountering
Derrida, (London: Continuum Books, 2007), 10-20
4.2.2.1.2.1. […]
4.2.3. ‘The end of politics is the end of politics’.
4.2.3.1. See for example my Frontiers: Kant, Hegel, Frege, Wittgenstein
(ebook from bennington.zsoft.co.uk, 2003), pp. 85, 96, 144. [Texts from 1990]
4.2.3.1.1.
This
complication is in fact true of teleological structures in general: the end is the end.
4.2.3.1.1.1. See Chapter 5 of my
Frontières kantiennes (Paris:
Galilée, 2000); partial translation ‘The End is Here’, Tekhnema, 6 (2001), 34-50, and ‘Almost the End’, in Interrupting Derrida, op. cit.
4.2.3.1.2.
This
is how philosophy teaches how to live, how to die, and how to kill.
4.2.3.1.2.1. See my paper ‘Jacques
Derrida…a life’ (forthcoming).
4.2.3.1.2.2.
(There’s
no end to this: because the end (of the end) is still always (the end of) the
end.)
4.2.3.1.2.2.1. […]
4.2.3.1.2.2.1.1.
(You
will have seen by now that that’s why there’s all this scatter.)
4.2.3.1.2.2.1.1.1. It could end here (or anywhere else) but there is no
end.
4.2.4. But sovereignty is constitutively failing.
4.2.4.1.
There
is no sovereign.
4.2.4.2.
No
sovereign is sovereign.
4.2.4.2.1.
[Pursue
that incredible oxymoron ‘sovereign subject’.]
4.2.4.2.1.1. See my paper
‘Superanus’, in Theory and Event 8:1
(2005), unpaginated e-journal.
4.2.4.3.
An
achieved sovereignty would be an impossibly isolated instant of pure
self-presence, and therefore death. (See Rousseau and/or Bataille [the
sovereign abject].)
4.2.4.3.1.
See my paper ‘La souveraineté défaillante’, in F.
Bernardo, ed., Derrida à Coimbra/Derrida
em Coimbra (Viseu : Palimage Editores, 2005), 131-43 (tr. as The Fall
of Sovereignty’, Epoché, 10:2 (2006),
395-406).
4.2.5. That failing opens up political
space as the space of, or for, politics, and more especially ‘democracy’.
4.2.5.1.
[…]
5.
The scat(ter) of
sovereignty leaves matter.
5.1. Scatter rhymes with (and entails)
matter (this really is a kind of ‘materialism’).
5.1.1. [Smatter.]
5.1.2. Democritean or Leucippean rather
than Epicurean materialism.
5.1.2.1.
Read
Karl Marx’s doctoral thesis on the differences between Democritus and Epicurus…
5.1.2.1.1.
Two philosophers teach exactly the
same science, in exactly the same way, but — how inconsistent! —
they stand diametrically opposed in all that concerns truth, certainty,
application of this science, and all that refers to the relationship between
thought and reality in general.
5.1.2.1.1.1.
…and prefer Democritus anyway.
5.1.2.1.1.1.1.
[‘Base’, not ‘dialectical’ materialism…]
5.1.3.
‘Matter’ in the tradition is essentially scatter.
5.1.3.1.
Or rather, scatter is why matter has no essence, is
‘essentially’ nothing.
5.1.3.1.1.
[Read here Kant, Theory
of the Heavens]
5.1.3.1.2.
[Read here Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History and Derrida’s
commentary in Glas, 29a-30a]
5.1.3.2.
Democracy is to sovereignty as matter is to spirit.
5.1.3.2.1.
(But matter is not opposed
to spirit.)
5.1.3.2.1.1.
Matter is not opposed, has no opposite.
5.1.3.2.1.1.1.
That’s scatter.
5.1.3.2.2.
[Show how this does not at all commit us to what
Badiou calls ‘democratic materialism’ (Logiques
des mondes (Paris: Seuil, 2006)), nor of course to his own version of
‘dialectical materialism’).]
5.1.3.2.2.1.
Though we might have more in common with his thinking
of a politics of the event (already in Peut-on
penser la politique (1985)).
6.
Democracy lines up
with deconstruction…
6.1. …in the failing of would-be sovereign metaphysics, and thereby lines up too with ‘literature’.
6.1.1. ‘Democracy
is the autos of deconstructive
auto-delimitation.’ (Politiques de
l’amitié, p. 129)
6.1.1.1.
[…]
6.1.1.1.1.
‘…from France there comes a power/
Into this scattered kingdom’ (King Lear, Act
III, Scene 1)
6.1.2. ‘The institution of literature in the
West, in its relatively modern form, is linked to an authorization to say
everything, and doubtless too to the coming about of the modern idea of
democracy.’ (Acts of Literature, p.
37)
6.1.3. Writing in general is always associated with democracy (La dissemination, p. 166).
6.2. Democracy is not one regime-name ‘among others’.
6.2.1. Politiques de l’amitié,
p. 12 (among many others).
6.2.2. All regime-names, including ‘democracy’, attempt to master
and organize the primal scatter of originary ‘democracy’.
6.3. Political philosophers have had some
intuition of primal proto-democratic scatter and the problems it causes for
them:
6.3.1.
Rancière again:
6.3.1.1.
Democracy is the specific
situation in where it is the absence of title that entitles the exercise of arkhè… But this situation of exception is identical with the very
condition of a specificity of politics in general… Democracy is thus in no way
a political regime… Democracy is the very institution of politics… The whole of
politics… is played out in the interpretation of democratic “anarchy” (Aux bords du politique (Gallimard, 2004), pp. 231, 248)
6.3.1.1.1.
But don’t assume as quickly as Rancière does that you
know what democracy is (and then use that ‘knowledge’ to adopt a position of
moralistic critique).
6.3.1.1.1.1.
Deconstruction is not critique.
6.3.1.1.1.1.1. See my ‘Almost the
End’ (art. cit.)
6.3.2.
But there
are plenty of traces of this through the tradition.
6.3.2.1.
Plato and Aristotle again.
6.3.2.1.1.
[…]
6.3.2.2.
In
Rousseau, for example, the sovereignty of the body politic, itself produced
from out of a primal ‘dispersion’, is
both secured and ruined by its giving itself a government, which it can do only
by passing through a moment of radical democracy.
6.3.2.3.
Or,
in Spinoza, a kind of democracy flows directly from the ‘natural’ play of power
and desire.
6.3.2.3.1.
Read
the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,
Ch. XVI:
6.3.2.3.1.1. In
this manner a society can be formed without any violation of natural right. […]
A body politic of this kind is called a Democracy. […] I believe it to be of
all forms of government the most natural.
6.3.2.3.2.
I detail these arguments from Rousseau and Spinoza
more especially in ‘Sovereign Stupidity and Auto-Immunity’, forthcoming in
Cheah and Guerlac, eds, Jacques Derrida
and the Time of the Political (Duke University Press, forthcoming).
6.3.2.3.2.1. [Take on here the Negri/Hardt
appropriation of Spinoza in Empire
and Multitude.]
6.3.2.3.2.2. And propose a deconstructive ‘retrieval’
of the concept of nature.
6.3.2.3.2.2.1. [If only to help avoid the prevalent
‘ethical’ pieties…]
6.4. Let’s look more closely at this configuration in Hobbes
himself.
6.4.1. The primacy of proto-democratic
scatter is stated less clearly in Leviathan
than in the earlier Elements of Law:
6.4.1.1.
Having spoken in general concerning
instituted policy in the former chapter, I come in this to speak of the sorts
thereof in special, how every one of them is instituted. The first in order of
time of these three sorts is democracy, and it must be so of necessity, because
an aristocracy and a monarchy, require nomination of persons agreed upon; which
agreement in a great multitude of men must consist in the consent of the major
part; and where the votes of the major part involve the votes of the rest,
there is actually a democracy.
In the
making of a democracy, there passeth no covenant, between the sovereign and any
subject. For while the democracy is a making, there is no sovereign with whom
to contract. For it cannot be imagined, that the multitude should contract with
itself, or with any one man, or number of men, parcel of itself, to make itself
sovereign; nor that a multitude, considered as one aggregate, can give itself
anything which before it had not. Seeing then that sovereignty democratical is
not conferred by the covenant of any multitude (which supposeth union and
sovereignty already made), it resteth, that the same be conferred by the
particular covenants of every several man; that is to say, every man with every
man, for and in consideration of the benefit of his own peace and defence,
covenanteth to stand to and obey, whatsoever the major part of their whole
number, or the major part of such a number of them, as shall be pleased to assemble
at a certain time and place, shall determine and command. And this is that
which giveth being to a democracy; wherein the sovereign assembly was called of
the Greeks by the name of Demus (id est, the people), from whence cometh
democracy. So that where, to the supreme and independent court, every man may
come that will and give his vote, there the sovereign is called the people. (Human Nature and De Corpore Politico,
ed. J.C.A. Gaskin (Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 118-9.)
6.4.2.
This primacy of democracy is short-lived in Hobbes:
the Elements of Law continues to
describe democracy famously and strikingly as really only ‘an aristocracy of
orators’.
6.4.2.1.
In all democracies, though the right of sovereignty be in the
assembly, which is virtually the whole body; yet the use thereof is always in
one, or a few particular men. For in such great assemblies as those must be,
whereinto every man may enter at his pleasure, there is no means any ways to
deliberate and give counsel what to do, but by long and set orations; whereby
to every man there is more or less hope given, to incline and sway the assembly
to their own ends. In a multitude of speakers therefore, where always, either
one is eminent alone, or a few being equal amongst themselves, are eminent
above the rest, that one or few must of necessity sway the whole; insomuch, that a democracy, in effect, is no
more than an aristocracy of orators, interrupted sometimes with the temporary
monarchy of one orator. (my emphasis)
6.4.3. But this
democratic moment cannot fail to continue to haunt the discussion of the other
forms (aristocracy and monarchy), just because they can only come into being
(even if they supposedly to so inevitably) through this primal, if fading,
moment of democracy.
6.4.3.1. (I want to say that this founding moment
of democracy is fabulous. Democracy is fabulous.)
6.4.4.
Whence, perhaps, Hobbes’s persistent distrust of
‘orators’, who are especially associated with democracy. This distrust is complex, because it
looks on the basis of what we have seen so far as though oratory is the undoing
of democracy, its becoming aristocratic or monarchical, and that Hobbes might
therefore have had some sympathy with it.
But in fact it looks as though just this inability of democracy to be or
remain itself (an inability essentially to do with the structures of language
Hobbes associates with oratory) is his main argument against it. Democracy disperses.
6.4.5.
So, for example, in Leviathan itself, Hobbes entertains possible objections to the
superiority of monarchy among the three forms of ‘commonwealth by institution’
(for Hobbes insists that there only the three basic forms of monarchy,
aristocracy and democracy: Aristotle’s ‘deviant’ forms for Hobbes being merely
names to use if you don’t like the form in question):
6.4.5.1.
Other kind of Common-wealth there
can be none; for either One, or More, or All, must have the Soveraign Power (which
I have shown to be indivisible) entire.
There be
other names of Government in the Histories and books of Policy; as Tyranny and Oligarch: But they are not the names of other Formes of Government,
but of the same Formes misliked. For they that are discontented under Monarchy call it Tyranny; and they that are displeased with Aristocracy call it Oligarchy:
so also, they which find themselves grieved under a Democracy call it Anarchy,
(which signifies want of Government;) and yet I think no man believes that want
of Government is any new kind of Government: nor by the same reason ought they
to believe that the Government is of one kind when they like it, and another
when they mislike it or are oppressed by the Governours. (Leviathan, Ch. XIX: see too the De
Cive, Ch. VI)
6.4.5.1.1.
For a discussion of the logic of deviancy in
Aristotle’s treatment of the different forms of regime, see my ‘Demo’ (art.
cit.)
6.4.6.
Hobbes entertains six points of comparison between the
three forms, typically starting in each case with a possible objection to
monarchy, which he then purports to refute, although the reasoning is often
tortuous and less than compelling:
6.4.6.1.
First, one might think that the danger of private
interest clashing with public would be greater in the case of monarchy;
6.4.6.1.1.
And to compare Monarchy with the
other two, we may observe: First, that whosoever beareth the Person of the
people, or is one of that Assembly that bears it, beareth also his own naturall
Person. And though he be careful in his politique Person to procure the common
interest; yet he is more, or no lesse carefull to procure the private good of
himselfe, his family, kindred and friends; and for the most part, if the
publique interest chance to crosse the private, he preferrs the private: for
the Passions of men, are commonly more potent than their Reason. From whence it
follows that where the publique and private interest are most closely united,
there is the publique most advanced. Now in Monarchy, the private interest is
the same with the publique. The riches, power, and honour of a Monarch arise
onely from the riches, strength, and reputation of his Subjects. For no King
can be rich, nor glorious, nor secure, whose Subjects are either poore, or
contemptible, or too weak through want, or dissension, to maintain a war
against their enemies: whereas in a Democracy, or Aristocracy, the publique
prosperity confers not so much to the private fortune of one that is corrupt,
or ambitious, as doth many times a perfidious advice, a treacherous action, or
a Civill warre.
6.4.6.1.1.1.
‘Civill warre’ is of course precisely what Hobbes’s
whole political theory is designed to avoid, and is in many ways simply another
name for ‘state of nature’.
6.4.6.2.
Second, a monarch has the advantage of being able to
receive secret advice from whomever
he chooses, whenever he chooses:
6.4.6.2.1.
But when a Soveraigne Assembly has
need of Counsell, none are admitted but such as have a Right thereto from the
beginning; which for the most part are of those who have been versed more in
the acquisition of Wealth than of Knowledge, and are to give their advice in
long discourses which may, and do commonly excite men to action, but not
governe them in it. For the Understanding
is by the flame of the Passions never enlightened, but dazled: Nor is there
any place, or time, wherein an Assemblie can receive Counsell with secrecie,
because of their owne Multitude.
6.4.6.2.1.1.
This motif of secrecy is a hidden (secret?) key to all
the problems we are discussing here.
6.4.6.3.
Third:
6.4.6.3.1.
Thirdly, that the Resolutions of a
Monarch are subject to no other Inconstancy, than that of Humane Nature; but in
Assemblies, besides that of Nature, there ariseth an Inconstancy from the
Number. For the absence of a few that would have the Resolution, once taken,
continue firm (which may happen by security, negligence, or private
impediments), or the diligent appearance of a few of the contrary opinion,
undoes today all that was concluded yesterday.
6.4.6.3.1.1. (But it is an analytic component of
sovereignty to undo today what was concluded yesterday: as much in Bodin as in
Schmitt. See my ‘Souverainteté
défaillante’, art. cit.)
6.4.6.4.
Fourth:
6.4.6.4.1.
Fourthly, that a Monarch cannot
disagree with himselfe, out of envy, or interest…
6.4.6.4.1.1. ‘The
ego’s position is like that of a constitutional monarch, without whose sanction
no law can be passed but who hesitates long before imposing his veto on any
measure put forward by Parliament […] we see this same ego as a poor creature
owing service to three masters and consequently menaced by three dangers […] as
a frontier-creature, the ego […] behaves like the physician during an analytic
treatement… also a submissive slave… too often yields to the temptation to
become sycophantic opportunistic and lying, like a politician who sees the
truth but wants to keep his place in popular favour.’ (Freud, The Ego and the Id, Ch V)
6.4.6.4.2.
…but an Assembly may; and that to
such a height as may produce a Civill warre.
6.4.6.5.
And now, the one we are interested in here:
6.4.6.5.1.
Fifthly, that in Monarchy there is
this inconvenience; that any Subject, by the power of one man, for the
enriching of a favourite or flatterer, may be deprived of all he possesseth;
which I confess is a great an inevitable inconvenience. But the same may as
well happen where the Soveraigne Power is in an Assembly: For their power is
the same; and they are as subject to evill Counsell, and to be seduced by Orators [my emphasis], as a Monarch by
Flatterers; and becoming one an others Flatterers, serve one another's
Covetousnesse and Ambition by turns. And whereas the Favorites of Monarchs, are
few, and they have none els to advance but their owne Kindred; the Favorites of
an assembly are many, and the Kindred much more numerous, than of any Monarch.
Besides, there is no Favourite of a Monarch, which cannot as well succour his
friends as hurt his enemies: But Orators, that is to say, Favourites of
Soveraigne Assemblies, though they have great power to hurt, have little to
save. For to accuse, requires lesse Eloquence (such is mans Nature) than to
excuse; and condemnation, than absolution more resembles Justice. (Leviathan, Ch. 19)
6.4.6.6.
Orators are playing the language-game (if we can put
it like this) of what Hobbes calls ‘Counsell’, of which he gives a subtle and
complex analysis. But the root of
the distrust of orators and their seductions is, not surprisingly perhaps, a
distrust of rhetoric, which is itself, as always, a distrust of language
itself. (Hobbes here sets a tone
that will be definitive for English language philosophy for centuries to
come.) This distrust of language
goes hand in hand in Hobbes with the distrust of authorities (especially
Aristotle and the ‘deceived, or deceiving, Schoolmen.’ (Leviathan, last words of Chapter III, just before the Chapter on
Speech)).
6.4.6.6.1.
See especially Leviathan,
Chapter XLVI, ‘Of Darknesse from vain Philosophy, and fabulous Traditions’:
6.4.6.6.1.1.
That which is now called a
University is a joining together, and an incorporation under one government, of
many public schools in one and the same town or city, in which the principal
schools were ordained for the three professions; that is to say, of the Roman
religion, of the Roman law, and of the art of medicine. And for the study of
philosophy it hath no otherwise place than as a handmaid to the Roman religion:
and since the authority of Aristotle is only current there, that study is not
properly philosophy (the nature whereof dependeth not on authors), but
Aristotelity.
6.4.6.6.1.1.1. [Untangle here the
relation of authority and sovereignty.]
6.4.6.6.1.1.1.1. Maybe in relation
to Hobbes’s own authority: see for example the end of Chapter 31 of Leviathan (end of Part 2):
6.4.6.7.
This is how the sequence goes, beginning in Chapter 4
of Leviathan, ‘Of Speech’: print is an important
invention, but not such an important
invention compared to writing. And
writing is not itself so important, as compared to speech:
6.4.6.7.1.
But the most noble and profitable invention of all other, was
that of SPEECH, consisting of Names
or Appellations, and their Connexion;
whereby men register their Thoughts; recall them when they are past; and also
declare them one to another for mutuall utility and conversation; without
which, there had been amongst men, neither Common-wealth, nor Society, nor
Contract, nor Peace, no more than amongst Lyons, Bears, and Wolves.
6.4.6.8.
The general
use of speech is to ‘transferre our Mentall Discourse, into Verbal; or the
Trayne of our Thoughts, into a Trayne of Words’. This is useful a) for personal use to help remember our own
thoughts, and b) to signify those thoughts to others. And speech also has four ‘speciall’ uses, to which there
correspond four possible abuses.
6.4.6.8.1.
The four special uses:
6.4.6.8.1.1.
First, to register, what by
cogitation, wee find to be the cause of any thing, present or past; and what we
find things present or past may produce, or effect: which in summe, is
acquiring of Arts. Secondly, to
shew to others that knowledge which we have attained; which is, to Counsell,
and teach one another. Thirdly, to
make known to others our wills, and purposes, that we may have the mutuall help
of one another. Fourthly, to
please and delight our selves, and others, by playing with our words, for
pleasure or ornament, innocently.
6.4.6.8.2.
And their ‘foure correspondent Abuses’:
6.4.6.8.2.1.
First, when men register their
thoughts wrong, by the inconstancy of the signification of their words; by
which they register for their conceptions that which they never conceived, and
so deceive themselves. Secondly, when they use words metaphorically; that is,
in other sense than that they are ordained for; and thereby deceive others.
Thirdly, when by words they declare that to be their will, which is not.
Fourthly, when they use them to grieve one another: for seeing nature hath
armed living creatures, some with teeth, some with horns, and some with hands,
to grieve an enemy, it is but an abuse of Speech to grieve him with the tongue,
unless it be one whom wee are obliged to govern; and then it is not to grieve,
but to correct and amend.
6.4.6.8.2.1.1.
‘It is but an abuse of Speech to grieve him with the
tongue’: i.e. a misuse of speech to use it to ‘grieve’ another—but also,
in spite of Hobbes’s manifest intention, an abuse of speech to use the
expression ‘grieve him with the tongue’.
6.4.6.9.
All use of language involves connecting names. Two names joined together to form an
affirmation (‘A man is a living creature’) enter into the realm of truth and
falsehood (‘For True and False are attributes of Speech, not
Things. And where Speech is not,
there is neither Truth nor Falsehood’). Truth is an issue with words, but words as such are the instruments of error and falsehood, so that
6.4.6.9.1.
Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering
of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth, had need to remember what every name he uses stands for; and
to place it accordingly; or else he will find himselfe entangled in words, as a
bird in lime-twiggs; the more he struggles, the more belimed.
6.4.6.9.1.1.
Does Hegel get this image from Hobbes? Cf. ‘Introduction’ to Phenomenology of Spirit, ‘If the
Absolute were only to be brought on the whole nearer to us by this agency,
without any change being wrought in it, like a bird caught by a limestick, it
would certainly scorn a trick of that sort, if it were not in its very nature,
and did it not wish to be, beside us from the start.’, and picked up rather
discreetly by Derrida in the Genet column of Glas (Galilée, 1975), p. 148b: ‘Le métalangage est la vie du
langage: il bat toujours de l’aile comme un oiseau pris dans une glu subtile’
[Metalanguage is the life of language: it always flaps about like a bird caught
in a subtle lime.’].
6.4.6.9.1.1.1. The fluttering of
the bird: Scatter, squatter… 4. intr. To fly or run, to struggle along,
to make one's way, among water or wet with much splashing or flapping. Const. away, out of, through, etc.
1785 BURNS Address to Deil viii, Awa
ye squatter'd, like a drake, On whistling wings. 1790 A.
WILSON Poems & Lit. Prose (1876)
II. 103 Three years thro' muirs an' bogs I've squattert. 1825
SCOTT Let. in Lockhart (1839) VII. 354, I climbed Bennarty like a wild goat,..and
squattered through your drains like a wild duck. 1853
C. BRONTË Villette xxv, A little
callow gosling squattering out of bounds without leave. 1863
KINGSLEY Water-Bab. ii, Where the
wild ducks squatter up from among the white water lilies. 1886
RUSKIN Præterita I. v. 143 He pitched
the boy..into the canal,..but I believe the lad squattered to the bank without
help.
b. To flutter, flap, or struggle among water or soft mud.
1808 JAMIESON, To Squatter, to flutter
in water, as a wild duck, &c. 1833 M. SCOTT Tom Cringle i, A six-pound shot drove
our boat into staves, and all hands were the next moment squattering in the
water. 1897 M. KINGSLEY W. Africa 259 We..were all soon squattering about on our own
account in the elephant bath.
6.4.6.9.1.1.1.1.
‘Glu’ (birdlime), also an important exhibit of the
‘gl-’ effect of Glas itself, (Hgl
himself) communicating too with the ‘glu de l’étang lait
de ma mort noyée’ that JD quotes here (and elsewhere) from a youthful
poem.
6.4.6.10.
Whence the need to begin with precise definitions and
not to trust to those ‘of former Authors’, lest, bird again:
6.4.6.10.1.
From whence it happens, that they
which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little summes into a
greater, without considering whether those little summes were rightly cast up
or not; and at last finding the errour visible, and not mistrusting their first
grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering
over their bookes; as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves
enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glasse window, for want
to wit to consider which way they came in. So that in the right Definition of Names, lyes the first use
of Speech; which is the Acquisition of Science: And in wrong, or no
Definitions, lyes the first abuse; from which proceed all false and senselesse
Tenets; which make those men that take their instruction from the authority of
books, and not from their own meditation, to be as much below the condition of
ignorant men, as men endued with true Science are above it.
6.4.6.11.
In fact, according to what Derrida would no doubt
describe as an ‘auto-immune’ structure, words simultaneously open the
possibility of wisdom and, thereby,
the possibility of foolishness.
The passage proceeds:
6.4.6.11.1.
For between true Science, and
erroneous Doctrines, Ignorance is in the middle. Naturall sense and imagination, are not subject to
absurdity. Nature it selfe cannot erre:
and as men abound in copiousnesse of language; so they become more wise, or
more mad than ordinary. Nor is it
possible without Letters for any man to become either excellently wise, or
(unless his memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of organs)
excellently foolish. For words are
wise mens counters, they do but reckon by them, but they are the mony of
fooles, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a
Thomas, or any other Doctor
whatsoever, if but a man.
6.4.6.11.1.1.
See too the Elements,
V, 13:
6.4.6.11.1.1.1. As
the invention of names hath been necessary for the drawing of men out of
ignorance, by calling to their remembrance the necessary coherence of one
conception to another; so also hath it on the other side precipitated men into
error: insomuch, that whereas by the benefit of words and ratiocination they
exceed brute beasts in knowledge; by the incommodities that accompany the same
they exceed them also in errors.
For true and false are things not incident to beasts, because they
adhere to propositions and to language; nor have they ratiocination, whereby to
multiply one untruth by another: as men have.
6.4.6.12.
Within this general structure of potential abuse, the
specific abuse by metaphor corresponds to the use that includes what Hobbes
calls ‘Counsell’. And it is here
that the root of the problem with the orators will lie. Metaphor is to be suspected everywhere,
of course (in the Elements of Law he
says that ‘all metaphors are (by profession) equivocal’ (V, 7)),
6.4.6.12.1.
Although Hobbes does allow metaphor a place, so that
in the immediately following chapter (‘Of Reason, and Science’), listing the
causes of ‘absurd’ conclusions, and counting as the sixth cause ‘the use of
Metaphors, Tropes, and other rhetoricall figures, in stead of words proper’,
Hobbes nonetheless concedes that it is ‘lawfull to say, (for example) in common
speech, the way goeth, or leadeth hither, or thither, The Proverb
sayes this or that (whereas wayes cannot go, nor Proverbs speak;)…’ And indeed Hobbes concludes his chapter
with a quite striking metaphorical spread of his own:
6.4.6.12.1.1.
To conclude, 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
senslesse and ambiguous words, are like ignes
fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable
absurdities; and their end, contention, and sedition, or contempt.
6.4.6.13.
…but it is especially to be criticized in
counsel. If democracy is really an
‘aristocracy of orators’, and if orators are fundamentally suspect in the
counsel they give, this will be in a complex way because of their use of
metaphor.
6.4.6.14.
You will remember that the second of the four special
uses of speech listed by Hobbes was ‘to shew to others that knowledge which we
have attained; which is, to Counsell, and teach one another.’ The detailed
analysis of ‘Counsell’ occupies the whole of Chapter 25 of Leviathan. This chapter begins with a proto-pragmatic analysis of
what it is very tempting to call different ‘speech-acts’. As we would expect from what we just
saw in Chapter 4, the general root of the problem is to be found in ‘the
ordinary and inconstant use of words’, and the confusion of command (which in
the following chapter will be shown to be the form of law in general) and counsel
is the best example of just this
possible abuse or confusion.
Counsel looks and sounds rather similar to command, but must be
distinguished from it: here’s the opening of that chapter:
6.4.6.15.
The essential differences between Command and Counsel
are, first, that Command seeks the speaker’s benefit, Counsel the addressee’s;
which means that one cannot be obliged to follow Counsel (which otherwise would
have become command) nor claim a right to counsel another. Further:
6.4.6.15.1.
He that giveth counsel to his
Soveraign, (whether a Monarch, or an Assembly) when he asketh it, cannot in
equity be punished for it, whether the same be conformable to the opinion of
the most, or not, so it be to the Proposition in debate. For is the sense of the Assembly can be
taken notice of, before the Debate be ended, they should neither ask, nor take
any further Counsell; For the Sense of the Assembly, is the Resolution of the
Debate, and End of all Deliberation.
And generally he that demandeth Counsell, is Author of it; and therefore
cannot punish it; and what the Soveraign cannot, no man else can. (177)
6.4.6.16.
Counsel, however, rapidly (we might be tempted to say
imperceptibly, before you know it)
becomes what Hobbes calls counsel
vehemently pressed, in the forms of exhortation and ‘dehortation’. These forms supplement counsel proper
with a dimension of desire or passion, and in so doing divert it from ‘the rigour
of true reasoning’ in the interests of producing action. This supplement shows up precisely in
the form of Oratory:
6.4.6.16.1.
And therefore they have in their
speeches, a regard to the common Passions, and opinions of men, in deducing
their reasons; and make use of Similitudes, Metaphors, Examples, and other
tooles of Oratory, to perswade their Hearers of the Utility, Honour, or Justice
of following their advise.
6.4.6.17.
This intrusion of oratory into Counsel is already its ruin, because it implies
that the interest of the addressee, which is the definition of Counsel, is
already being subordinated to the interest of the speaker (even his desire to
have his counsel followed). As
soon, then, as Counsel becomes rhetorical, i.e. ‘vehemently pressed’ (and so,
one might think, true counsel in the sense that counsel is more than mere
truth-speaking and has after all an ‘imperative’ mood (i.e. as soon as it is counsel), it is already suspect, and
indeed in giving such Counsel I am already acting ‘contrary to the duty of a
Counsellour; who (by the definition of Counsel) ought to regard, not his own
benefit, but his whom he adviseth’.
6.4.6.18.
This properly catastrophic perversion of Counsel is,
perhaps not surprisingly, more to be feared in the very situation that Hobbes
has elsewhere explicitly associated with democracy, namely where one speaker is
attempting to persuade a larger number: for he who I am attempting to exhort or
‘dehort’ may, if he is one person, interrupt me and dispute with me, but this
is not possible when the audience is a ‘multitude’. And the use of exhortation or dehortation in counsel is in
fact already a corruption of its nature as counsel, even if the counsel itself is good counsel. The ex- or de-hortatory supplement,
inevitably called for when I counsel a multitude, corrupts even the best counsel.
Strangely enough, this catastrophe or corruption, that is part of the
very structure of counsel, itself only affects counsel as such. In other
words, exhortation and dehortation, though they are forms of counsel, are acceptable when they are not used to counsel, but really (though secretly, deceptively, or
perhaps tropically) associated with the opposite of counsel, i.e. command or the power of command. If I have the authority to command, then, just because my commands may order
something unpleasant or unwelcome, I can and perhaps even should present my
command in the form of exhortatory or dehortatory counsel,
without it thereby being exposed to corruption:
6.4.6.18.1.
Thirdly, that they that Exhort and
Dehort, where they are required to give Counsell, are corrupt Counsellours and,
as it were, bribed by their own interest. For though the counsel they give be
never so good, yet he that gives it is no more a good Counsellour than he that
giveth a Just Sentence for a reward is a Just Judge. But where a man may
lawfully Command, as a Father in his Family, or a Leader in an Army, his
Exhortations and Dehortations, are not only lawfulle, but also necessary, and
laudable; But then they are no more Counsells, but Commands; which when they are
for Execution of soure labour, sometimes necessity, and always humanity,
requireth to be sweetned in the delivery by encouragement, and in the tune and
phrase of Counsell rather than in harsher language of Command.
6.4.6.18.2.
Remember that in Chapter 4, counsel was one feature of
the second ‘special use’ of language, namely ‘to shew to others that knowledge
which we have attained; which is, to Counsell, and Teach one another’. But if we now take Counsel as it is
presented in Chapter 25, then, in the context of Hobbes’s general analogy
between the ‘commonwealth’ and the ‘artificial individual’, as so famously laid
out in his Introduction, it occupies, politically speaking, a slightly
different place.
6.4.6.18.2.1.
This is in fact already clear in the Introduction
itself, as part of the initial description of the ‘Leviathan’:
6.4.6.18.2.1.1. NATURE
(the Art whereby God hath made and governes the world) is by the Art of man, as
in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial
Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in
some principall part within; why may we not say that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheeles as
doth a watch) have an artificiall life? For what is the Heart, but a Spring; and
the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joynts, but so many Wheeles,
giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that
Rationall and most excellent worke of Nature, Man. For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a
COMMON-WEALTH, or STATE, (in latine, CIVITAS), which is but an Artificiall Man;
though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection
and defence it was intended; and in which the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul,
as giving life and motion to the whole body; the Magistrates and other Officers
of Judicature and Execution, artificiall Joynts; Reward and Punishment (by which fastned to the
seate of the Soveraignty, every joynt and member is moved to performe his duty)
are the Nerves, that do the same in
the Body Naturall; the Wealth and Riches of all the particular members are
the Strength; Salus Populi (the peoples safety) its Businesse; Counsellors,
by whom all things needfull for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the Memory; Equity and Lawes, an
artificiall Reason and Will; Concord, Health; Sedition, Sicknesse; and Civil war, Death. Lastly, the Pacts
and Covenants, by which the parts of
this Body Politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that
Fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation.
6.4.6.18.3.
At the level of speech proper, as it were, Counsel was
part of second ‘special’ use: at the analogical level (though we might have
some doubts here as to the actual direction or level of the analogy), Counsel
as embodied in Counsellors lines up with memory, which is, at the ‘proper’
level, not even so much the first ‘special’ use, but the first of the two
‘commodities’ involved in speech in
general (as the transference of mental discourse in verbal), namely, ‘the
Registring the Consequences of our Thoughts…So that the first use of names, is
to serve for Markes, or Notes of remembrance.’ (IV, p. 25)
6.4.6.19.
This ‘promotion’ of the role of counsel, at the level
of the political analogy, is confirmed in Chapter 25 itself, and a specific
difference is also explicitly brought out by Hobbes. Counsellors indeed function as the analogon of memory, as the Introduction suggested: but whereas
memory at the level of the individual is primarily memory of experience (which in itself, as it were, is disinterested
or dispassionate), the analogous use of counsellors in the Body Politic
introduces a troublesome supplementary (and indeed abyssal) relay in the
structure being described:
6.4.6.19.1.
For Experience, being but Memory
of the consequences of like actions formerly observed, and Counsell but the
Speech whereby that experience is made known to another; the Vertues. And
Defects of Counsell, are the same with the Vertues, and defects Intellectuall:
And to the Person of a Common-wealth, to a naturall man, there is one
dissimilitude joined, of great importance; which is, that a natural man
receiveth his experience, from the naturall objects of sense, which work upon
him without passion, or interest of their own; whereas they that give Counsell
to the Representative person of a Common-wealth, may have, and have often their
particular ends, and passions, that render their Counsells alwayes suspected,
and many times unfaithfull. (p.
179)
6.4.6.20.
This complication of the analogy, with its corollary
that counsel is ‘always suspected’, dictates a further set of
consequences. The first of these
is simply that the counsellor’s ‘Ends and Interest’ not be incompatible with
the ‘Ends and Interest’ of the one counselled. The second consequence, which is to do with consequences and
the telling of consequences, brings us back to oratory, metaphor, and
authority:
6.4.6.20.1.
Secondly, Because the office of a
Counsellour, when an action comes into deliberation, is to make manifest the
consequences of it, in such manner, as he that is Counselled may be truly and
evidently informed; he ought to propound his advise, in such forme of speech,
as may make the truth most evidently appear; that is to say, with as firme
ratiocination, as significant and proper language, and as briefly, as the
evidence will permit. And
therefore rash, and unevident Inferences;
(such as are fetched onely from Examples, or authority of Books, and are not
arguments of what is good, or evill, but witnesses of fact, or of opinion;) obscure, confused, and ambiguous
Expressions, also all metaphoricall Speeches, tending to the stirring up of
Passion, (because such reasoning, and such expressions, are useful lonely
to deceive, or to lead him we Counsell towards other ends than his own) are repugnant to the Office of a Counsellour.
(179-80; Hobbes’s emphasis)
6.4.6.21.
And this again soon leads to the problem of
multiplicity. Here the problem
will not be that of a single counsellor trying to counsel the multitude (as in
democracy), but with the multiplicity of counsellors themselves. This complex and passably oratorical
reflection on the multiple dangers of a multiplicity of counsellors leads back
to a quite lurid reflection on the fate of democracy itself:
6.4.6.21.1.
Fifthly, Supposing the number of
Counsellors equall, a man is better Counselled by hearing them apart, then in
an Assembly; and that for many causes. First, in hearing them apart, you have
the advice of every man; but in an Assembly many of them deliver their advise
with I or No, or with their hands, or feet, not moved by their own sense, but
by the eloquence of another, or for feare of displeasing some that have spoken,
or the whole Assembly, by contradiction; or for feare of appearing duller in
apprehension, than those that have applauded the contrary opinion. Secondly, in
an Assembly of many, there cannot choose but be some interests are contrary to
that of the Publique; and these their Interests make passionate, and Passion
eloquent, and Eloquence drawes others into the same advice. For the Passions of
men, which asunder are moderate, as the heat of one brand; in Assembly are like
many brands, that enflame one another (especially when they blow one another
with Orations) to the setting of the Common-wealth on fire, under pretence of
Counselling it. Thirdly, in hearing every man apart, one may examine (when
there is need) the truth (or probability) of his reasons, and of the grounds of
the advise he gives, by frequent interruptions, and objections; which cannot be
done in an Assembly, where (in every difficult question) a man is rather
astonied, and dazled with the variety of discourse upon it, than informed of
the course he ought to take. Besides, there cannot be an Assembly of many,
called together for advice, wherein there be not some that have the ambition to
be thought eloquent, and also learned in the Politiques; and give not their
advice with care of the businesse propounded, but of the applause of their
motly orations, made of the divers colored threds, or shreds of authors;
6.4.6.21.1.1.
Poikilon or motley
is already the mark of democracy in Plato:
6.4.6.21.1.1.1.
Socrates
in The Republic:
6.4.6.21.1.1.1.1.
Possibly,
said I, this is the most beautiful of polities; as a garment of many colours [poikilon], embroidered with all kinds of
hues, so this, decked and diversified with every type of character, would appear
the most beautiful. And perhaps
many would judge it to be the most beautiful, like boys and women
when they see bright-coloured things. (557c)
6.4.6.21.1.1.1.1.1. See Derrida’s
commentaries, already in ‘La Pharmacie de Platon’ (in La dissemination, pp. 166-7), and especially in Voyous, pp. 48-9. Poikilon
appears at other crucial moments in Plato, for example in the critique of mimesis in Book X of the Republic).
6.4.6.21.1.1.1.1.2.
‘Astonied
and dazled’.
6.4.6.21.1.1.1.1.3. Poikilos is the Greek word unanimously chosen by the
Seventy to render the many-coloured nature of Joseph’s famous coat, in Genesis
37.
6.4.6.21.2.
which is an Impertinence, at
least, that takes away the time of serious Consultation, and in the secret way
of Counselling apart, is easily avoided. Fourthly, in Deliberations that ought
to be kept secret, (whereof there be many occasions in publique Businesse,) the
Counsells of many, and especially in Assemblies, are dangerous; And therefore
great assemblies are necessitated to commit such affairs to lesser numbers, and
of such persons as are most versed in them, and in whose fidelity they have
most confidence.
6.4.6.21.3.
To conclude, who is there that so
far approves the taking of Counsell from a great Assembly of Counsellours, that
wisheth for, or would accept of their pains, when there is a question of
marrying his Children, disposing of his Lands, governing his Household, or
managing his private Estate, especially if there be amongst them such as wish
not his prosperity? A man that doth his businesse by the help of many prudent
Counsellours, with every one consulting apart in his proper element, does it
best; as he that useth able Seconds at Tennis play, placed in their proper
stations. He does next best that useth his own Judgement only; as he that has
no Second at all. But he that is carried up and down to his business in a
framed Counsell, which cannot move but by the plurality of consenting opinions,
the execution whereof is commonly (out of envy, or interest) retarded by the
part dissenting, does it worst of all, and is
like one that is carried to the ball, though by good Players, yet in a
Wheele-barroughe, or other frame, heavy of itself, and retarded also by the
inconcurrent judgements, and endeavours of them that drive it; and so much the
more, as they be more that set their hands to it; and most of all, when there
is one or more amongst them, that desire to have him lose. And though it be
true, that many eys see more than one; yet it is not to be understood of many
Counsellours, but then only, when the finall Resolution is in one man.
Otherwise, because many eyes see the same thing in divers lines, and are apt to
look asquint towards their private benefit; they that desire not to misse their
mark, though they look about with two eyes, yet they never ayme but with one;
And therefore no great Popular Common-wealth was ever kept up; but either by a
forraign Enemy that united them; or by the reputation of some one eminent Man
amongst them; or by the secret Counsell of a few; or by the mutuall feare of
equall factions; and not by the open Consultations of the Assembly. And as for
very little Common-wealths, be they Popular, or Monarchicall, there is no
humane wisdome can uphold them, longer than the Jealousy lasteth of their
potent Neighbours. (181-2; my emphasis)
6.4.6.22.
[Frontiers again…
6.4.6.22.1.
See my paper ‘Inter’, in McQuillan, MacDonald, Purves and Thomson,
eds., Post-Theory: New Directions in
Criticism (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), pp. 103-19]
7.
This configuration
around democracy is exemplary of deconstruction in general.
7.1. [Begin
again with scatter.]
7.1.1.
Early ME. (12th c., Midland); of
obscure origin; formed with iterative suffix (see -ER5). This and SHATTER v.
(which appears much later) are commonly regarded as respectively northern and
southern representatives of an OE. *sc(e)aterian, which is
referred to a supposed Teut. root *skat- cogn. w. Gr.
σκεδ-αυυύυαι to scatter.
The etymological identity of the two vbs. seems, however, doubtful, although
they have some affinity of sense. It is true that in ME. scatter occurs
only in northern and midland texts, with one exception (quot. 1330, sense 3);
and that in this sole southern instance the MS. spells it with sch,
which should normally stand for (
).
But initial (sk) from OE. sc in a native word would be no less abnormal
in northern and midland than in southern English. The alleged cognates in Du.
and LG. are questionable. Two instances are cited of MDu. schaderen,
with the senses ‘to squander (money)’, ‘to shed (blood)’; but this does not
agree in form. The sense ‘to scatter’ assigned to early mod.Du. schetteren,
rests on the authority of Kilian, whose citation of the Eng. word renders his
testimony suspicious. The Du. and MLG. schateren to resound, to laugh
uproariously (MLG. once, to be shattered by an explosion) would seem to be
onomatopoeic; at least their sense cannot easily be derived from that assigned
to the alleged Teut. root. Cf. SCAT v.2 and SQUATTER v.]
7.1.2.
[…]
8.
And this makes of
it a radically ‘political’ thinking.
8.1. I want to
say: a thinking of the politics of
politics.
8.1.1.
‘Politics (of politics (of politics (…)))’
8.1.1.1.
[Scattered]
