Made with Words by Philip Pettit

Author:Philip Pettit [Pettit, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 9780691129297
Published: 2011-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

33524_ch01.1-175.pdf WBG Soft Proof 5/25/07 9:07:09 AM Pg 90

90 • Chapter

Six

What things do we and other animals desire in common? Hobbes mentions natural appetites like “hunger, thirst, lust, and anger” (L 3.5) in addressing this question. These basic appetites, common to human and beast, are all sensual or corporeal in the sense of promising sensual or corporeal pleasures—or the avoidance of corresponding pains. They are those desires that “affect the corporeal organ of sense, and that I call sensual; the greatest whereof is that, by which we are invited to give continuance to our species; and the next, by which a man is invited to meat, for the preservation of his individual person” (EL 7.9). Such passions of the body are contrasted by Hobbes with a set of passions that, as we shall see, are present only in human beings, and present there by grace of what language makes possible. “The other sort of delight is not particular to any part of the body, and is called the delight of the mind, and is that which we call joy” (EL 7.9). But before coming to those human-specific desires, it will be useful to dwell a little on the passions shared between humans and other animals.

There are two features of these sensual appetites that are worth noting in particular. The first is that they are focused on the present rather than the future. The associated pleasures or pains will come about in the presence of the object of attraction or aversion, or perhaps in the immediate anticipation of its presence, not on the basis of any longer-term predictions as to what is likely to happen.3 “Of pleasures or delights, some arise from the sense of an object present; and those may be called pleasures of sense” (L 6.12). Such pleasures and attractions contrast with the passions of which human beings alone are capable. These “arise from the expectation, that proceeds from foresight of the end, or consequence of things; whether those things in the sense please or displease.

And these are pleasures of the mind” (L 6.12).

The second feature of the sensual appetites that human beings share with other animals is that not only are they present centered, they are also nonpositional. A positional desire is a desire to be in a certain position in comparison to others, whether others in general or others in some reference class: to be first, near the top, or at the average level, for example, or to have a property like distinction or fame that presupposes a position in relation to others (Brennan and Pettit 2004, chapter 1). The striking thing about all the sensual appetites is that they are insensitive to relative position or standing. The desire for food or sex may drive animals or human beings into conflict with one another, but that will only be because their desires happen to focus on the same object; the conflict will be contingent, not inevitable. In general, “living creatures irrational” can manage to live in perfect peace and “good order”

–1___

among themselves (EL 19.

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