"The Greatest of humane Powers, is that which is compounded fof the Powers of most men, united by consent, in one person, Naturall, or Civill, that has the use of all their Powers depending on his will; such as is the Power of a Common-wealth: Or depending on the wills of each particular; such as i the Power of a Faciton, or of divers factions leagued. Therefore to have servants is Power; To have friends, is Power: for they are strengths united."
"The palaver of the potted.
Then in the same place they started talking about dessert. Then flagons got going, hams trotting, goblets flying, glasses clinking . . . You wine stewards, creators of new forms, from not drinking make me drinking" and "Great God made the planets [planettes] and we make the plates clean [platz netz]."
Therefore to have wine stewards is Power; to have stewed friends is Power.
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The rub with Hobbesian Humane Power is that the same holds true with inhumane.
Emerson (from "Politics"):
"The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, as persons are organs of moral or supernatural force. Under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done."
As Foucault famously shows, time and again, power is a medium, a relationship. The institutionalization (did I make up a word?) of power, for him, oppresses the human. A certain strain in the birth of our American Colossus, of course, counters (checks, if you prefer) this use of force. Gargantua, Hobbes and Emerson, in some ways, express this impulse.
Foucault: "If, on the contrary, power is strong this is because, as we are beginning to realise, it produces effects at the level of desire--and also at the level of knowledge."
Hobbes: "For the nature of Power, is in this point, like to Fame, increasing as it proceeds; or like the motion of heavy bodies, which they further they go make still the more hast."
I am supposed to be grading, so no quotes here. Just paraphrasing from a fading long term memory.
Saying that power produces effects at the level of desire is another way of saying it is used because of desire. It manifests will to power. It is a tool. The difficulty is in not using it to make knowledge that oppressively limits. It should be used to make drinking where there is no drinking. I do not consider waterboarding to be drinking.
Yes, indeed Captian Langston. "The palaver of the potted" is not to be forced. Possibly more to be gained by a freely-taken tequilla rather than drowning in a tub of it.
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