Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700 (Herder & Herder Books) by Scott W. Hahn & Benjamin Wiker

Author:Scott W. Hahn & Benjamin Wiker [Hahn, Scott W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crossroad Publishing Company
Published: 2017-03-01T03:00:00+00:00

Reason as Will to Power

Hobbes then set about reducing reason to a mere instrument of the passions, so that the goal of reason is not contemplation, but, “regulated by some desire,” to calculate the means of attaining it.53 For Hobbes, we are all born equal as creatures of sense and desire. Reason is brought into being by passion—“the Thoughts, are to the Desires, as Scouts, and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired. . . .”54 Therefore, the causes of the “difference of Witts [i.e., the ability to reason], are in the Passions,” and the “Passions that most of all cause the differences of Wit, are principally, the more or lesse Desire of Power, of Riches, of Knowledge, and of Honour. All which may be reduced to the first, that is Desire of Power.”55 In continuity with Marsilius’s and Machiavelli’s lowering of the goal of politics by the removal of contemplation, Hobbes’s redefinition of reason ensures that reason is merely an instrument of animal passion, and in continuity with Machiavelli, that the defining passion is the desire for power. Thus, to anticipate Nietzsche’s later formulation, all reason is disguised will to power.

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