BODY POLITIC(S) will research the historical foundations of the nexus between bodies and state, and the importance of material considerations for abstract political thinking from the birth of the modern state to the birth of modernity (1500-1800), in a global perspective.
BODY POLITIC(S) addresses a gap in research: Historians of political ideas, motivated by an interest in how abstract notions of the modern state came into being, have not yet found a convincing way of writing about the political implications of human bodies and the material foundations of life for the history of modern politics – despite the body and the material being a fertile and growing research field in other historical subdisciplines.
We propose that the idea of the “body politic” (the corpus politicum in early modern Europe) was structurally (not only metaphorically) central for political theorising and for ideas of state building. By tracking continuities, ruptures and change, and the entanglement of the local with the global through three case studies, we will investigate how early modern people made sense of the relationship of individuals’ needs, concerns, and bodies to the state. The goal is to better understand the history and foundations of public health (salus communis) broadly taken, the material foundations of political life, and the idea of the modern state.
