On the Greek Origins of Biopolitics: A Reinterpretation of the History of Biopower

Routledge (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This book explores the origins of western biopolitics in ancient Greek political thought. Ojakangas's argues that the conception of politics as the regulation of the quantity and quality of population in the name of the security and happiness of the state and its inhabitants is as old as the western political thought itself: the politico-philosophical categories of classical thought, particularly those of Plato and Aristotle, were already biopolitical categories. In their books on politics, Plato and Aristotle do not only deal with all the central topics of biopolitics from the political point of view, but for them these topics are the very keystone of politics and the art of government. Yet although the Western understanding of politics was already biopolitical in classical Greece, the book does not argue that the history of biopolitics would constitute a continuum from antiquity to the twentieth century. Instead Ojakangas argues that the birth of Christianity entailed a crisis of the classical biopolitical rationality, as the majority of classical biopolitical themes concerning the government of men and populations faded away or were outright rejected. It was not until the renaissance of the classical culture and literature - including the translation of Plato's and Aristotles political works into Latin - that biopolitics became topical again in the West. The book will be of great interest to scholars and students in the field of social and political studies, social and political theory, moral and political philosophy, IR theory, intellectual history, classical studies.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The World is One Great Hospital.David-Olivier Gougelet - 2010 - Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 18 (1):43-66.
TWO / At the Origins of Biopolitics.Antonio Negri - 2015 - In Vernon W. Cisney & Nicolae Morar (eds.), Biopower: Foucault and Beyond. University of Chicago Press. pp. 48-64.
Introduction to Biopolitics and Ancient Thought.Jussi Backman & Antonio Cimino - 2022 - In Jussi Backman & Antonio Cimino (eds.), Biopolitics and Ancient Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 1-11.
Biopolitics and Ancient Thought.Jussi Backman & Antonio Cimino (eds.) - 2022 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Make Live and Let Die.Thomas Roach - 2021 - In Erin A. Dolgoy, Kimberly Hurd Hale & Bruce Peabody (eds.), Political Theory on Death and Dying : Key Thinkers.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-04-21

Downloads
5 (#1,344,154)

6 months
4 (#319,344)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references