Hobbes and his Monsters: on the possibility of a Zoopolis

Aristotle in Politics will indicate that whoever does not live in society is either a beast or a god. Then, he will define the politics of bestiality as "the most wicked, the most cruel, the most lustful, and most gluttonous being imaginable." Aristotle himself, in his treatise on Physics, will point out that spontaneous genesis, like that of an automaton, is against nature, typical of monsters. Thomas Hobbes will curiously represent the state, one that is capable of taking the human out of the bestial life of the "state of nature", as an automaton. Its existence would be unnatural, it would break with the natural characteristics of men, just like Aristotle's idea of automaton generation. However, this unnatural entity, embodied in the image of a mythological monster and transformed into a mortal god, manages to overcome the human bestiality. The Aristotelian political nature of the zoon politikón is replaced in Hobbes's narrative by the asocial state of nature, which in turn is overcome through three figures contrary to the zoon politikón: a mortal god (according to Aristotle, gods do not inhabit the city), a monster in the form of a beast (which, like a god, is asocial) and a genesis that is explained in the exact same way that Aristotle understood the unnatural: an automaton. The question that should be asked is whether the images and references to animals and monsters in Hobbes are analyzed, as well as the probable context of origin of the monstrous references: If would be possible to think of a zoopolis from a reconfiguration of the idea of the Hobbesian state automaton in which bestiality is distinguished from animality and is reserved only for the human-beast and the mythological-beast. That zoopolis would have to overcome the politics of bestiality described by Aristotle and reflected in the Hobbesian image of the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, which now will bring peace not only between humans, but between humans and animals, through the elimination of bestiality. The former would be explained by the effect that the destruction of animals and nature have on human existence itself, requiring an automaton that includes animality for its self-preservation.