How can citizens construct the political authority under which they will live? I argue that Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) answers this question concerning the constitutive power of political and normative agency by employing four dimensions of mimesis from the Greek and Roman traditions. And I argue that mimesis accounts for the know-how, or power/knowledge, the general ‘man’ draws upon in constructing the commonwealth. Hobbes revalues poetic mimesis through his stylistic decisions, including the invitation to the reader to read ‘himself’ in (...) the portrait of the general man depicted in the text. Hobbes aims for Leviathan to change the ethical dispositions of its readers, turning them from bad to good men as they witness the general man undergoing this ethical transformation in the transition from the state of nature to the civil state. He emphasizes the anthropological dimension of mimesis to explain political disorder since he argues that men assess the honor others attribute them by observing signs and gestures in others’ behavior. Hobbes employs the linguistic dimension of mimesis to describe how men acting as agents can build a normative consensus out of the state of nature. This article positions mimesis as a key term for understanding the intersection between aesthetics and politics before the term ‘aesthetics’ came into parlance. (shrink)

The argument of this paper is that texts in the history of political thought are rather more loquacious on the question of women than has often been supposed. The argument is developed using examples from Plato's Republic, notably the sections on injustice and tyranny. The paper concludes by suggesting the general implications of its approach for the concerns and style of political theory, particularly as to the importance of understanding symbolic and mythic elements in works of political thought.

The present article inquires into the uses of Medea’s tragedy as a representation of political sedition in the XVII century, especially in Hobbes’ works who introduces the myth with few variations three times in his work. We are interested in the semantic shifts in the use of a tragedy that, for multiple reasons –to which we will later return– works as an epochal catalyzer of the political and moral dangers with which regicide is symbolically burdened. This constant role, identifiable in (...) the versions of Euripides, Seneca, and Corneille, combines differently -through history- the pairing of seduction and sedition that we try to reconstruct as a convergent element of the tragic vision of politics that runs through Hobbes work. Finally, we explore how classic tragedy is used by Bramhall in his debate with Hobbes, highlighting the connection between tragic and heretical readings of the philosopher. (shrink)

Democracy and the state are two political notions that have come under considerable duress in late modernity. This paper considers a prominent critic of both, Sheldon Wolin. The paper examines three elements that figure in Wolin's analyses of democracy and the modern state in a central way: community, memory, and the culture of history. A theorisation of these elements can illuminate what is at stake in the articulation of political conceptions that yield communal forms through the constitution of political space. (...) Wolin's analyses of democracy, the state, and modern power can be of help, first, in elucidating the political valences of the three elements themselves; second, in specifying relationships of mutuality among them; and third, in theorising what is at issue in the transposition of these elements from the domestic sphere to the international. The paper speaks mainly to the first and second concerns. A path is explored for thinking what is at stake in the third, namely, locating in and then transposing from the domestic sphere a ‘we’ which does not enjoy a precise ontology, but which is nonetheless capable of giving collaborative efforts in world-political spheres another political ground. (shrink)

Sheldon S. Wolin’s ‘fugitive democracy’ is arguably his most provocative contribution to political theory. Breaking with the understanding of democracy as a constitutional form whose origins he locates in the work of Aristotle, Wolin claims democracy is better understood not as a constitution, but as a ‘rebellious moment,’ making democracy dependent on cultural rather than institutional characteristics. This formulation poses a problem for democracy as a political phenomenon, as political power today tends to be concentrated within institutions. Without institutional expression, (...) democracy is alienated from political power and hence a contradiction in terms. I reconstruct an understanding of Wolin’s fugitive democracy that can avoid such problems, while also being adequate to the current political juncture. I argue that Aristotle’s conception of the practice of justice, read through the lens of Wolin’s ‘fugitive democracy,’ becomes ‘fugitive justice,’ the cultivation of a democratic ethos that might support and sustain fortuitous democratic moments, connecting democratic culture to political institutions. In this way, Aristotle’s work is split: not simply the founder of constitutionalism, through ‘fugitive justice’ Aristotle becomes a resource for radical democrats, and a complement to Wolin’s concept of democracy. (shrink)