A Second View of "The Antiplatonick"

I’m not sure that Cleveland’s “The Antiplatonick” is quite uncontestable by Hobbes… I thought, while reading the poem, of the hunt for love – that is the power struggle between lovers which is illustrated within the poem. The imagery of hunting within “Cupid’s Dart / as a King hunting dubs a Hart” (221) and the double use of the word “quarry” is very reminiscent of the importance of power and dominance present within Leviathan. While the “Magnetick girl” could be seen in a romantic light, embracing the entirety of the man of iron, it can also be viewed as an individual with less power attempting to gain the protection of one with more power.

Also, with Love (or desire) afforded warlike qualities, as seen in stanza five, and with the use of all those phallic images, the Hobbesian mode is once again evoked. While “love is portrayed as the remedy to these restrictive, hierarchical roles”, the “dame of stone” imagery and the “Nunne of the Platonick Quarry” succumbing to the temptation of love represents the way in which love (which seems closer to wanton lust and desire) needs to be contained by the state or the church in order to avoid a collapse into the savagery which exists without the state.

That is to say that this alternative portrayal of love within “The Antiplatonick” depicts love in more of an animalistic or base light – a quality which needs to be contained by the commonwealth. Or else, all that free will and unrestricted love will mean everyone can have unrestricted love… and it could be your love another person wants! And then you’ll have Hobbes’ “Of Man” all over again. So, while Cleveland’s “The Antiplatonick” is certainly more “within the boundaries of what we-can-see”, what one sees within this poem is not the type of love which “can overcome the confines of the state and the church” but rather a portrayal of love which, in its corruptive, tempting and wanton state advocates for the order of the commonwealth.

Oh, Bam.

So, here's me putting the fists up for the Hobbes corner of this arena... After all, it would seem that Elliot likes to fight dirty… I mean an eye gauge and crickets? What's next? Probably something becoming of sissy, love-sick metaphysicals…perhaps some good old fashioned slaps and hair pulling?

Anyways, I would just have to say in response to that eye gauge that I found it all a terribly weak argument… to simply say that Hobbes was seeing man and the commonwealth “with imperfect measures” and then not even offering a tangible solution is just like disputing the fact that “humans are savages, life is brutish and short, and power and the material rule all” by arguing that “humans are not savages, life is not brutish and short, and power and the material do not rule all” – which of course is ludicrous and, as an argument, quite invalid.

All that has been argued in the favour of the metaphysicals is that there is possibly something more out there that Hobbes may have missed in his explanation of Man and the commonwealth. However, with nothing to support this postulation, other than the mere possibility of evidence, it is less than convincing.
Please, do explain why you “do not have the means with which to measure the metaphysical evidence against Hobbes. At least not currently”…. Is it because we have not the senses to perceive of or explain them? Or perhaps, as you have yet to reveal such empirical evidence, there is none? Regardless of the answer, concerning the realm of the empirical, which relies on observation, experience and the senses, I think that you will find it difficult to explain something which is as yet unobservable by the senses, as “a man can have no thought, representing anything, not subject to sense” (Hobbes, 19).