IMC 2015: Sessions

The metaphor of the 'body politic' is one of the most frequently evoked concepts in the history of political thought. The concretisation of this metaphor, however, is rarely discussed. This is even more surprising given the fact that in the last three decades, research on the history of the body and of corporeality provides the methodological and theoretical tools for this inquiry. In the proposed section we want to connect the two historical traditions and analyse the construction of the body and the physical in its constitution, essence and function for the political-philosophical culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The three papers in our panel aim to readjust the relationships of separate research traditions and integrate approaches from the history of political ideas with the social and cultural history of the body in order to show the intertwined nature of the physical and the political or the body and the state. The papers will locate the body in politics by examining the bodies of fatimide caliphs, the relationship of government crises, corporal punishment and notions of the best rule as well as the materiality of the body metaphor in late medieval and Renaissance political philosophy.