Four Horsemen of Aries

The seventeenth century Englishman was the first to distill the themes of egoism, violence and authority central to modern political philosophy, and to explain that the world is rightfully ruled by despots. Called 'menacingly terse', Hobbes is the model of the intellectual bully. As John Farrell puts it: "Hobbes is one of the style -setters of paranoid modernity . . . His ironic empiricism and satirically reductive materialism were to become central instruments in the arsenal of the modern, perennially available for deployment against idealistic opponents whenever they might emerge."

The paranoia referred to above is not to be overlooked. Aries is the first sign; the infant of the zodiac, and in the clutches of the primitive fight-or-flight reaction. It is a truism that the habit of violence is essentially defensive, that bullying hides insecurity. In Aries the process of secure identity formation is only just begun. Aries?? is haunted by unmediated contact with pre-natal nothingness which makes fear a constant presence, and troubles its relations with the —irrational', the —feminine??, the 'Other'. Hobbes' mother went into premature labor in alarm of the approaching Spanish Armada. At the age of 84 he wrote in a verse autobiography that — . . . my Mother Dear / Did bring forth Twins at once, both Me, and Fear.?? Aries frequently identify themselves with their perinatal traumas. The atheist Samuel Beckett recalled from within the womb attempts to abort him with a wire hanger. No sign has a more piercing sense of the abyss. The notoriously abrasive geneticist James Watson admitted, "I panic at voids."


Link: http://www.philosophical-investigations.org/The_Four_Horsemen_of_Aries<BR>
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Posted by SirHorns
The seventeenth century Englishman was the first to distill the themes of egoism, violence and authority central to modern political philosophy, and to explain that the world is rightfully ruled by despots. Called 'menacingly terse', Hobbes is the model of the intellectual bully. As John Farrell puts it: "Hobbes is one of the style -setters of paranoid modernity . . . His ironic empiricism and satirically reductive materialism were to become central instruments in the arsenal of the modern, perennially available for deployment against idealistic opponents whenever they might emerge."



Link: http://www.philosophical-investigations.org/The_Four_Horsemen_of_Aries<BR>
Discuss.

shades of Richard Dawkins....I did not know Dennett was an Aries, or Grayling. Makes perfect sense....You can't go much further than Dennett in his reductionism as he sees consciousness and free will as illusions. Aries David Chalmers is hardly a reductive materialist though. Very open-minded, thorough, and careful thinker when it comes to philosophy of consciousness.