Power, society, body: the anthropomorphous paradigm in political thought of medieval West Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (12-1) ◽  
pp. 125-138
Author(s):  
Alexander Gladkov
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
West European

The article based on the research of medieval West European political thought’s texts and mainly on the basic treatise “Policraticus” of John of Salisbury and works by other authors in XII century is devoted to analysis of concepts concerning power and society in light of “body politic” metaphor. The most representative and influential sources (and first of them is “Policraticus”) transmitting the idea of “body politic” in Latin intellectual culture are researched, the metaphor usage logic and ways of its usage in polemical tradition are identified. The “body hierarchy” considered in the article focuses in medieval authors opinion not only on mystical but real social and political arrangement, it underwent definite transformations connected with power and its welder’s figure reception through ages.

Sovereignty

Rebel Barons ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Sunderland
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Just War ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
The Common

This chapter argues that political thinkers across Europe in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries were negotiating the paradoxes of sovereignty when they elaborated distinctions between kingship and tyranny. New concepts of the just war, necessity, and treason conspired to allow sovereigns to crush opposition or abrogate full powers, suspending the laws. Any king, then, was a tyrant in waiting—hence the fears of political thinkers such as John of Salisbury, Aquinas, and Marsilius of Padua, who attempted to rein in sovereigns by articulating ideals such as the body politic and the common good, which argued for royal responsibilities towards society as a whole. Politics was drifting away from morality, but these writers attempted to recouple them.

Fellow-regional Associations in the Ch'ing Dynasty: Organizations in Flux for Mobile People. A Preliminary Survey

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Eve Armentrout
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Preliminary Survey ◽  
Examination System ◽  
Spatial Mobility ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
Regional Associations

As had been the case throughout much of Chinese history, government during the Ch'ing dynasty (1644–1911) was largely in the hands of a civil bureaucracy staffed by the Confucian literati. Prevailing political thought held that moral suasion and commonly held ideals were in a large way responsible for keeping both the society and the body politic running smoothly. For this and other reasons, the court assigned a rather small number of bureaucrats to manage a truly vast population. In addition, it was commonly assumed by rulers and the ruled that China's was and should be primarily an agrarian society of self-sufficient peasants. The only orthodox avenue of social, even spatial, mobility was the Confucian examination system which led successful candidates into the bureaucracy. This view denigrated the importance of commerce, of technological advancement, of learning outside the Confucian classics; and it acted as a brake on social, political, and economic development.

The pressure of coherence and the diachronic reconfigurations of metaphorical discourse

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takashi Shogimen
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
The Body ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
John Of Salisbury ◽  
Medical Context ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
History Of

The metaphor of the body politic is diverse in the history of European political discourse yet it remains unclear why such diachronic variations occurred. Drawing on Zoltán Kövecses’s idea of “the pressure of coherence,” the present paper argues that diachronic reconfigurations of metaphorical discourses occur due to differential contextual experiences; more specifically, metaphorical discourses on the body politic, which consist of mapping between the domain of the POLITICAL COMMUNITY and that of natural BODY, are reconfigured diachronically in accordance with not only the ideological but also the medical context. In order to demonstrate this, the paper examines the texts of three key medieval political thinkers — John of Salisbury, Marsilius of Padua and Nicholas of Cusa — and the medical knowledge that was influential in their respective era. Thus this paper constitutes a contribution to the historical cognitive linguistic study of metaphorical discourse.

John of Salisbury and the medieval Roman renaissance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene O'Daly
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Third Way ◽  
John Of Salisbury

John of Salisbury (c. 1120–80) is a key figure of the twelfth-century renaissance. A student at the cosmopolitan schools of medieval Paris, an associate of Thomas Becket and an acute commentator on society and rulership, his works and letters give unique insights into the political culture of this period. This volume reassesses the influence of classical sources on John’s political writings, investigating how he accessed and used the ideas of his ancient predecessors. By looking at his quotations from and allusions to classical works, O’Daly shows that John not only borrowed the vocabulary of his classical forbears, but explicitly aligned himself with their philosophical positions. She illustrates John’s profound debt to Roman Stoicism, derived from the writings of Seneca and Cicero, and shows how he made Stoic theories on duties, virtuous rulership and moderation relevant to the medieval context. She also examines how John’s classical learning was filtered through patristic sources, arguing that this led to a unique synthesis between his political and theological views. The book places famous elements of John’s political theory - such as his model of the body-politic, his views on tyranny - in the context of the intellectual foment of the classical revival and the dramatic social changes afoot in Europe in the twelfth century. In so doing, it offers students and researchers of this period a novel investigation of how Stoicism comprises a ‘third way’ for medieval political philosophy, interacting with – and at times dominating – neo-Platonism and proto-Aristotelianism.

scholarly journals The Body Politic Metaphor in Communal and Post-Communal Italy – Some Remarks on the Case of Lombardy

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-21
Author(s):  
Andrea Gamberini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The One

Abstract This paper uses the body politic metaphor to explore the dialectic of power between different political players in communal and post-communal Lombardy. On the one hand, notions of corporeal links, drawing upon an ancient and venerable tradition, were key strands of public debate on state formation in the Late Middle Ages. On the other hand, there were distinctively communal and post-communal discourses based upon the body politic metaphor. My purpose is to investigate all of these aspects through analysis of the so-called “pragmatic writings” (such as letters, decrees, notarial deeds), sources usually overlooked by historians of political thought. As is shown in this paper, the novelty of this approach makes it possible to appreciate corporeal metaphors as performative tools and instruments of political action.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document