On Rupture: An Intervention into Epistemological Disruptions of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hume

An epistemology of rupture is evasive. In contrast to an established system or structure, ruptures are fleeting and interruptive. This is why the intervals manifested by rupture are so important. Machiavelli's situationist disruption, Hobbes's destructionist break, Hume's empiricist interruption—we know we are in the presence of rupture when the continuous order of things is disturbed in a moment, when the very emergence of a value appears in a new and nonsensical way—a way whose possibilities cannot be garnered from the epistemology that is being interrupted. Through an engagement with situationism, destructionism, and empiricism, this essay probes the ways in which breaks from the accepted epistemology come into being. In the process, the essay also situates rupture generally in the study of epistemology, in an attempt to emphasize the ways in which breaking out, breaking through, and breaking forth are central forces underpinning the Continental tradition.