Abstract
In letter 170 we learn that Hobbes had requested du Verdus to send him the full text of a poem of his about the love of two young lesbians. Their ‘beautiful breasts clasping each other’, their ‘greedy devouring kisses’, the ‘delight… in the sucking of lips of their two mouths joined together both kissing and kissed’, their embracing each other’s ‘beautiful neck’ suggests to me that this is no Platonic love.1 Although it is likely that Hobbes made his request more out of courtesy than of love of poetry, nevertheless his interest in the subject-matter shows a healthy open-mindedness.
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Notes
Preston King, The Ideology of Order, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), especially Ch. 15 on ‘Mother and Infant’.
Carole Pateman, ‘God Hath Ordained to Man a Helper: Hobbes, Patriarchy and Conjugal Right’, in Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman (eds), Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory, (London, Polity Press, 1991), pp. 53–73, 54.
See also Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (London, Polity Press, 1988).
Martin A. Bertman, Hobbes: The Natural and the Artifacted Good, (Bern: Peter Lang, 1981), Ch. 3, especially pp. 48 ff.
Bernard Williams, ‘The Idea of Equality’, in Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman (eds), Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962), 110–131.
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© 2000 Gabriella Slomp
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Slomp, G. (2000). Glory and the Excellent Sex. In: Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333984437_9
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