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Movement and Desire. From Machiavelli and Hobbes to Merleau-Ponty and Patočka

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2014

Abstract

In her chapter, Caterina Di Fazio suggests that despite other contrasts between the two thinkers, both Machiavelli and Hobbes have the same conception of the human being: the subject is a movement that overcomes itself and is directed outwards. In other words, the subject is desire.

In his Note sur Machiavel, Merleau-Ponty shares a similar understanding: man is "un certain manque de". Likewise, Jan Patočka claims that life is the movement that leads us toward the world and coincides with our desire to make it appear.

This desire, according to Patočka, remains a longing.