Hobbes's Modern Prometheus: A Political Philosophy for an Uncertain Future
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract.This paper takes the Prometheus story in chapter 12 of Leviathan as the point of entry for an examination of the importance that Hobbes assigns to the problem of an uncertain future in his political philosophy. Hobbes's thinking on human nature represents a dramatic departure from the ancients not only because his mechanistic psychology reverses the ancient conception of the relation between reason and passion but also because his understanding of the temporal situation of human beings privileges the future to an unprecedented degree. It is against the backdrop of a universe in which the problem of an uncertain future has reached intolerable proportions that Hobbes develops his portrait of human nature; it is against the backdrop of this universe that he develops his account of Leviathan as the only earthly power capable of stabilizing the horizon of expectation. Résumé.Cet article utilise l'histoire de Prométhée au chapitre 12 du Léviathan comme introduction à l'examen de l'importance qu'accorde Hobbes au problème de l'incertitude de l'avenir dans sa philosophie politique. La pensée de Hobbes sur la nature humaine constitue une dérogation spectaculaire par rapport aux Anciens non seulement parce que sa psychologie mécaniste s'oppose diamétralement à l'ancienne conception de la relation entre raison et passion, mais également parce que sa compréhension de la situation temporelle des êtres humains privilégie l'avenir et ce, à un degré sans précédent. C'est sur la toile de fond d'un univers dans lequel le problème de l'incertitude de l'avenir a atteint des proportions intolérables que Hobbes construit son portrait de la nature humaine comme un tourbillon de passions incontrôlées; c'est sur la toile de fond de cet univers qu'il élabore son récit du Léviathan, seule force terrestre capable de stabiliser les attentes de l'avenir.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.024 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".