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STUDENTS BOOK

II A CLASSICO LICEO GINNASIO STATALE A.

CANOVA TREVISO

POLITICAL ANIMALS.

LEVIATHAN AND BEHEMOTH: TWO IMAGES OF POLITICS

UNIT 1

The Right of Nature and the Laws of Nature considered

different by Thomas Hobbes

UNIT 2

The Right of Nature and the Laws of Nature considered the

same by John Locke

Gigliola Rossini

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MOTIVATION PHASE: BRAINSTORMIG ACTIVITIES FOR UNIT 1 and UNIT 2

LESSON 1 (2 hours)

Activity 1

TEXT 1. Quotations about Humankind

1. I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am. ~Joseph Baretti, quoted by James Boswell, 1766, commonly misattributed to Samuel Johnson* (Thank you,

Frank Lynch of SamuelJohnson.com)

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Work in pairs, read the following quotations, select at least three of them, discuss their meaning, organize the presentation (15 minutes)

Make a presentation to the class using the following prompts:

1. Decide what each quotation means

2. Decide whether you agree with it or not and why

3. Decide what description of man is given in your quotations

4. Use one or more adjectives to define each selected quotation.

(max 5 minutes for each group)

http://www.samueljohnson.com/apocryph.html#19

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2. The human species is made up of seven billion subspecies each consisting of one specimen. ~Robert Brault, http://www.robertbrault.com/ esemplare

3. Man is harder than rock and more fragile than an egg. ~Yugoslav Proverb

4. That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

5. Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. ~Albert Camus

6. A human being: an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing. ~Christopher Morley, Human Being piombatura

7. The true man walks the earth as the stars walk the heavens, grandly obedient to those laws which are implanted in his nature. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911

8. The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours. ~Bertrand Russell

9. Man is rated the highest animal, at least among all animals who returned the questionnaire. ~Robert Brault, http://www.robertbrault.com/

10. Ocean: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills. ~Ambrose Bierce branchie

11. Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose. ~Turkish Proverb

12. In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with humans it is the other way around: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar. ~Anton Chekhov

13. Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs. ~Aldous Huxley

14. We are perverse creatures and never satisfied. ~Nan Fairbrother

http://www.robertbrault.com/http://www.robertbrault.com/

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15. Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings. ~Author Unknown

16. Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day. ~Stephen Jay Gould, "Our Allotted Lifetimes," The Panda's Thumb, 1980

17. Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat. ~Mark Twain

18. There are too many people, and too few human beings. ~Robert Zend

19. It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump. ~David Ormsby Gore scimmia/primate

20. Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love. ~George Bernard Shaw costante

21. The disastrous history of our species indicates the futility of all attempts at a diagnosis which do not take into account the possibility that homo sapiens is a victim of one of evolution's countless mistakes. ~Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up

22. Men! The only animal in the world to fear. ~D.H. Lawrence

23. The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race. ~Don Marquis

24. Man embraces in his makeup all the natural orders; he's a squid, a mollusk, a sucker and a buzzard; sometimes he's a cerebrate. ~Martin H. Fischer poiana

25. Men are cruel, but Man is kind. ~Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, 1916

26. Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind. ~David Ehrenfeld, The Arrogance of Humanism, 1978

27. Human nature, if healthy, demands excitement; and if it does not obtain its thrilling excitement in the right way, it will seek it in the

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wrong. God never makes bloodless stoics; He makes no passionless saints. ~Oswald Chambers

28. Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

29. Monkeys are superior to men in this: When a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey. ~Malcolm de Chazal

30. It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing. ~Mariane Moore, "A Grave," Collected Poems, 1951

31. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner. ~Mark Twain, "Reflections on Being the Delight of God."

32. Adam ate the apple, and our teeth still ache. ~Hungarian Proverb

33. Why was man created on the last day? So that he can be told, when pride possesses him: God created the gnat before thee. ~The Talmud

34. Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired. ~Mark Twain

35. I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated His ability. ~Oscar Wilde

36. God pulled an all-nighter on the sixth day. ~Author Unknown tirare tuta la notte

37. Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings. ~Evan Esar

38. Man - a being in search of meaning. ~Plato

39. The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded. ~Gustave Flaubert

40. Nothing feebler does earth nurture than man, nutrire Of all things breathing and moving. ~Homer, Odyssey

41. Everyone is as God made him, and often a good deal worse. ~Miguel de Cervantes

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42. Man is a strange animal, he doesn't like to read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it. ~Adlai Stevenson

43. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man. ~Albert Einstein

44. God doesn't measure His bounty, but oh how we do! ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 generosit

45. The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. ~Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes, 1911 malvagit

46. The human race is governed by its imagination. ~Napoleon

47. Man uses his intelligence less in the care of his own species than he does in his care of anything else he owns or governs. ~Abraham Meyerson

48. Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face. ~Sydney Smith aggrapparsi

49. The small percentage of dogs that bite people is monumental proof that the dog is the most benign, forgiving creature on earth. ~W.R. Koehler, The Koehler Method of Dog Training

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Activity 2

Work in pairs, observe the following images of two different monsters, the Leviathan and the Behemoth, describe their features, stress what makes

them similar or different, organise the presentation

(15 minutes)

Make a presentation to the class using the following prompts:

1. What is the Leviathan like?

2. What is the Behemoth like?

3. What meanings could be attributed to each monster?

4. Would you define these meanings as political?

(about 5 minutes per pair)

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Image 1: Frontispiece of the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes (1651)

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Image 2: The Destruction of the Leviathan (Bible)

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Image 3: LEVIATHAN

Image 4: The Strength of the Leviathan

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Image 5: Behemoth

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Image 6:

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Images 7-8 : The Behemoth Metal Group

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Useful words for the description of the images

stormy sea: mare in tempesta

symbols of power: simboli del potere

huge jaws: enormi fauci

strong armor: possente corazza

dragon: drago

mane: criniera

long tail provided with spines: lunga coda

fornita di aculei

claws: artigli

powerful fangs: potenti zanne

to make a tongue: fare le linguacce

high forehead: fronte spaziosa

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scepter : scettro

tiara: tiara

concistory: concistoro

symbols of the forces of heaven and hell:

simboli delle forze celesti e infernali

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Activity 3 - Assignment

TEXT 2.

Leviathan according to the Bible

A transliterated Hebrew word (livyathan), meaning "twisted," "coiled." In Job 3:8.

It denotes the dragon which, according to Eastern tradition, is an enemy of light; in 41:1 the crocodile is meant; in Psalms 104:26 it "denotes any large animal that moves by writhing or wriggling the body, the whale,