Mount Allison student studies what it means to be a “better man”
2012-09-11 09:41:40
What is a “better man?” Is he a businessman or boxer? A soldier or terrorist? A politician or Occupy protester? Rob LeBlanc, a Mount Allison political science honours student minoring in women’s and gender studies, spent last year thinking about this question and examining it through the work of 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
While it may seem irrelevant to examine what a great thinker in the past said on the subject of masculinity, LeBlanc argues that what makes a better man is an ongoing conversation. In fact, pop culture examines this question in such popular television shows as Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
“I don’t think this is unique to men. Feminism has engaged women in a long conversation about what it means to be a woman and to be feminine. But men have yet to engage in their own conversation in the same way and on the same questions,” says LeBlanc. “Thankfully, feminism has left us with great tools and methods for getting started, and we have started.”
The project was developed in a year-long independent study course supervised by Dr. Loralea Michaelis, associate professor in the department of politics and international relations. Michaelis’ own research has been concerned with the centrality of the problem of an uncertain future to Hobbes’ understanding of human nature and political authority.
“It’s a valuable opportunity to work closely with senior faculty on what amounts to graduate-level material. I’m working with Leviathan, but not in a traditional way,” LeBlanc says. “It’s a project that doesn’t ignore the obvious: that Hobbes was a man writing about men. I’m arguing that in addition to being an argument for forming a society under one authority, Leviathan can be interpreted as Hobbes’ call for men to become better men — to become gentle men.”
LeBlanc points out that Leviathan is literally framed by this gentleman with Hobbes’ dedication of the work to poet and politician Sidney Godolphin.
“Godolphin is the ideal Hobbesian man and the masculinity Hobbes constructs in Leviathan is a way out of a ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short life,’ and not a prescription for how to navigate it,” LeBlanc says.
LeBlanc argues that the gentle man Hobbes argues for in the pages of Leviathan has been largely ignored.
“Some approaches to the study of politics, economics, and international relations suggest that the Hobbesian man is always in danger of slipping into in a wild and violent state of nature, that all men are wolf-men and not gentlemen. But when we read Hobbes with a gendered lens the text becomes far more complex than that,” he says.
Although LeBlanc believes Hobbes still has something to contribute, he also thinks the philosopher’s view of what makes a better man could use an update.
“I would say that today a better man is a man who rejects the limitations of traditional gender roles in favour of a more full life,” he says. “Guys are often told that they should get in touch with their ‘feminine side,’ as though rejecting hyper-masculinity somehow makes us less of a man. It doesn’t. A better man knows this, and also knows that the old rigid constructions of masculinity have a negative, and sometimes dangerous, effect on himself and those around him. And, like Hobbes, I think a better man makes an effort to raise awareness so he can show more guys how they can be better men.”