Fear and Curiosity in Hobbes's Leviathan

• In Event: Dangerous Desires: Dreams of Otherness

Abstract

Most readers take Hobbes to argue that fear is the most essential human and political passion. But Hobbes might not be who we thought he was: there is another, seldom noticed passion that Hobbes values and that he puts alongside fear. That passion is curiosity. Hobbes hoped that curiosity might help stimulate fear in the commonwealth, and, at the same time, serve as a check on the politics of fear – taming false demonological doctrines that endanger stability in the commonwealth. For a democratic reader, however, another thing stands out: wherever there is fear, curiosity with its worldly possibilities is also awakened: curiosity supports fear, in Hobbes’ account—as when people anticipate that a punishment will follow crimes: curiosity is what allows them to see the causal chain. Or, curiosity might thwart fear, as when it leads people to inquire into the origins of sovereignty. That latter possibility worried Hobbes, so he split curiosity into two kinds, and called the dangerous curiosity – “wonder” and equated it with demonology, old wives’ gossip, and madness. The good curiosity was rational. But we don’t have to follow Hobbes’s steps. Building especially on the band of wives that Hobbes sought to tame, and on historical accounts of the dread of feminine gossip and curiosity in early modernity, I sketch the contours of post-fear Hobbesian politics.

Author

• Noga Rotem, University of Washington