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Inspired by Clarice Lispector, the authors present a range of scenes and interpretations of their daily lives during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This is a form of testimony, perhaps for a trial: has the health/safety of the people been the supreme concern of Nation States? The pandemic felt like a Hobbesian reminder of the fragility of societal order and the omnipresent potential for chaos. In many ways, it seemed as though the structures holding the social fabric together were being stress-tested, as individuals and institutions alike struggled to adapt to new demands. Considering the illustrations Thomas Hobbes had made to his On Man of 1642 and the Leviathan of 1651 re-frames this concern. Whereas On Man had three realms, that of God and the final judgement, that of an actual state of nature and that of man who follows the political science of Hobbes, Leviathan has only one secular realm of worldly artifice and power. Reviewed under the pandemic we acknowledge that Leviathan is a scene of lockdown and can now see the role of Hobbes’ earlier reading of the effects of the plague in classical Greece. The difference in the illustrations is also the disappearance of the state of nature along with the genocide of the indigenous peoples. Does this re-frame the pandemic? Is the real crime, not a failure of management during this time but an arrogance of mastery, of the rape of nature while we follow Hobbes’ stipulation to pursue happiness? Was Lispector already warning of this in her Fever Dream?

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Salus populi suprema lex esto: Scenes, Acts of Remembrance and Interpretations, Feverish Dreams and Glimpses Through Portals; Testimony That Repositions the Iconography of Thomas Hobbes in Times of COVID-19

  • 章节

  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Wayne Morrison,
  • Salah H. Khaled,
  • Tiago Lorenzini Cunha

摘要

Inspired by Clarice Lispector, the authors present a range of scenes and interpretations of their daily lives during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This is a form of testimony, perhaps for a trial: has the health/safety of the people been the supreme concern of Nation States? The pandemic felt like a Hobbesian reminder of the fragility of societal order and the omnipresent potential for chaos. In many ways, it seemed as though the structures holding the social fabric together were being stress-tested, as individuals and institutions alike struggled to adapt to new demands. Considering the illustrations Thomas Hobbes had made to his On Man of 1642 and the Leviathan of 1651 re-frames this concern. Whereas On Man had three realms, that of God and the final judgement, that of an actual state of nature and that of man who follows the political science of Hobbes, Leviathan has only one secular realm of worldly artifice and power. Reviewed under the pandemic we acknowledge that Leviathan is a scene of lockdown and can now see the role of Hobbes’ earlier reading of the effects of the plague in classical Greece. The difference in the illustrations is also the disappearance of the state of nature along with the genocide of the indigenous peoples. Does this re-frame the pandemic? Is the real crime, not a failure of management during this time but an arrogance of mastery, of the rape of nature while we follow Hobbes’ stipulation to pursue happiness? Was Lispector already warning of this in her Fever Dream?