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"Job's other otherness" [2019] ELECD 1377; in Broekman, M. Jan (ed), "Rethinking Law and Language" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 66

Book Title: Rethinking Law and Language

Editor(s): Broekman, M. Jan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: INTERMEZZO 2

Section Title: Job’s other otherness

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

INTERMEZZO 2



Job's other otherness


Indeed, Hobbes' etching and his text speak a new language. Both deeply
influenced the centuries after his book and its etching; both expanded
fundamental values of social life and a correlative unfolding of Occiden-
tal languages. It has seldom been understood that the issue of language,
in particular a focus on the word of the other, was essential in Hobbes'
thought formation on the Leviathan. He and his friend Bosse studied the
Book of Job, the chosen "other" in extensive, sometimes dramatic, often
existential conversations with "The Other," and who more than once
referred to the Leviathan, the large creature of the deep sea with an
unknown exact identity.
Reading the text on Job, especially its Chapter 41, must have attracted
Hobbes' attention to the structure of linguistic utterances, which are
mentioned here. He and Bosse read the words with which this Chapter
opens: "Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook. Or snare his tongue
with a line, which you lower?"
Contacting and even mastering the excessive Power named Leviathan,
with which Job is confronted as an existential possibility, occurs in the
form of a dialogue, and not as a command--a challenge unheard of and
only written in vertical lines, rising out of turbulent waves of the deep
sea. Moreover, there is the form of an enduring question--a question
suggesting that an answer is possible and will be honored, but when and
how? It means there is an open possibility of ...