Epstein Secrets

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008); and Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman, eds., Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). Ralph Waldo Emerson made the classic American argument for the positive reciprocity between the human and the natural. This idea of mutua

ll) and life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"( I). While this colorful description is often quoted, less attention is paid to Hobbes' premise that such misery can be avoided if humans codify and enforce the rules of a civil society. Not everyone agrees with Hobbes' views, but hi

butchering: I’ve finessed the always-unstranslatable Zhuangzi. See for reference Burton Watson, Burton, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968) 14 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018246 different and totally, lethally correct: An interlocking set of murderous gears that could be set loose by his ar

in awe, they are in that condition which is called war,” he wrote. “Such a war as is of every man against every man.”°’ A precondition of peace, for Hobbes, was that some country or force or tribe decisively grips a region, an empire, even the globe. “A common power to keep them all in awe,” fulfilled a

tory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008); and Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman, eds., Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). Ralph Waldo Emerson made the classic American argument for the positive reciprocity between the human and the natural. This idea of mutuality

nst all) and life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”(1). While this colorful description is often quoted, less attention is paid to Hobbes’ premise that such misery can be avoided if humans codify and enforce the rules of a civil society. Not everyone agrees with Hobbes’ views, but histo