As I was typing out a passage from Hobbes, I was pleasantly surprised to see a smiley face appear on my computer screen. The reason for this was the line "slaves may kill or carry away captive their Master justly". I could understand why my computer approved of this line. Intrigued, I decided to type in another line from the same book, only to be disappointed to find no emoticon displayed on the screen. The line "Life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short’" clearly did not meet my computer’s criteria for an emoticon-worthy statement.
Upon exploring the matter further, I realized that my computer had not added any commentary to Hobbes’s work but had simply updated his archaic punctuation to modern idiom. Back when Hobbes penned his works in the 1650s, punctuation rules were less stringent. It was common to type a word differently multiple times within the same sentence, and the placement of colons and brackets was widely varied. If "Vindiciae contra tyrannos" taught us anything, it’s that Hobbes was often linked with the tyrants.
It’s a shame that emoticons are not frequently utilized in philosophical works. For example, we can see that Descartes had a sense of humor as evident in his line, "of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that… he never desires more of it than he already has". This line deserved multiple smiley faces.
Even Karl Marx could’ve benefited from using emoticons in his work. Specifically, the line about capitalism being unjust is never explicitly mentioned in his writings, leaving it up to interpretation. Some individuals argue that Marx was a master of irony and that it’s dangerous to take his lines literally. It would have been easier to understand his intentions had he included little winky faces.
Although emoticons are perfect for email communication, where the tone of messages is often misunderstood, they are not for everyone. For some, such as myself, receiving an email with a smiley face is bothersome and not desired. Instead of emoticons, I recommend composing emails in a simple manner, much like a telegram. It gets to the point without unnecessary embellishments or complicated language that could lead to misinterpretation.
Comments are closed.