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Article ID: CBB968334456

The Body Politic from Medieval Lombardy to the Dutch Republic: An Introduction (2020)

Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Volume: 25
Issue: 1
Pages: 1-7

URI: https://brill.com/view/journals/esm/25/1/article-p1_1.xml

DOI: 10.1163/15733823-00251P01

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"The content of this special issue is based on three of the presentations delivered at the international conference “The Body Politic and Social Harmony: From the Middle Ages to the Present.” The event was held on 28 and 29 May 2018 at the Meeting and Conference Center Soeterbeeck in Ravenstein, The Netherlands, under the auspices of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and corresponded with my appointment as KNAW Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen during spring 2017 and spring 2018. The body politic metaphor, widely invoked in envisioning various modes of the existence and operation of a harmonious society, has been an enduring feature in the evolution of political thought, both in the “West” and elsewhere. The conference drew upon the cumulative expertise of scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds. It explored iterations of the body politic metaphor and its normative value for conceptions of social and political harmony from the Middle Ages to the present in the European, Islamic, Jewish, Indian, Russian, and East Asian traditions of political theorizing. The aim of the event was to explain why the corporeal model exerted such a strong and lasting impact. It also gave the attendees the opportunity to contribute to discussions about avenues for future collaborative work. Despite the predominance of the vision of the state as an artifact or a machine, vestiges of the notion of the state as a microcosm or replica of a natural body have resurfaced in light of recent debates about biopolitics. Western societies are confronted with the need to tackle problems that have arisen alongside ethnic and religious diversity. The designation “sick man of Europe” has been vested with a variety of connotations and employed to describe the political or economic ills affecting various European countries, ranging from Greece and Italy to Germany, Finland, and the United Kingdom. Corporeal metaphors persist and will most likely continue to do so as long as corporeality and the way humans relate to their own bodies affect the way they look at human society, nature, and the world. The emphasis on the etiological aspects of the entire debate on corporeal analogies foregrounds the differences between a mechanistic notion of the state and the belief that there is a continuum between political life and the natural world."

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Includes Series Articles

Article Marin Terpstra (2020) From the King’s Two Bodies to the People’s Two Bodies: Spinoza on the Body Politic. Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 46-71). unapi

Article Alessandro Mulieri (2020) The Political Thinker as a Civil Physician: Some Thoughts on Marsilius of Padua and Machiavelli beyond Leo Strauss’ al-Fârâbî. Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 22-45). unapi

Article Andrea Gamberini (2020) The Body Politic Metaphor in Communal and Post-Communal Italy – Some Remarks on the Case of Lombardy. Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 8-21). unapi

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