Hobbes Against the Fool – Creation Versus Tohu and Bohu
Hobbes Against the Fool – Creation Versus Tohu and Bohu

Summary/Abstract: In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes voices concern over the squandering of the prospects of human prosperity. This paper argues that the remedy he proposes is the political replication of scripture’s idea of creation; the acknowledgment of an originator, a first cause of indisputable order. Hobbes’s nemesis, the Fool, is an agent of scripture’s antithetical tohu and bohu (the disarray that preceded creation), who misguidedly believes he can work disarray to his advantage. For Hobbes this is folly, because the volatility of disarray is beyond human mastery. Nevertheless, steadfastness and prosperity remain at hand, by replicating the order of a ‘higher power’ that is fortunately echoed in all creation. This paper is made in the image of Hobbes’s ‘replication methodology’, that in turn is modelled after scripture’s original depiction of the act of creation “in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). The paper identifies the biblical Nabal as the ‘original Fool’, and reflects on how the original resonates in Hobbes’s iteration.

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