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The Analogy of the Body Politic in European and East Asian Political Thought
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Treating the Body Politic: the Medical Analogy of Political Rule in Late Medieval
Europe and Tokugawa Japan
Takashi Shogimen
Department of History
University Of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealand
takashi.## email not listed ##
Prepared for presentation to the annual meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Chicago, September 2004
Introduction
The use of analogies between the political community and the human body is
widespread in Western political discourse. It is well known that in the introduction ofLeviathan, Thomas Hobbes referred to ‘Commonwealth or State’ as ‘an artificial man’;he compared sovereignty with an artificial soul, magistrates with artificial joints,rewards and punishments with the nerves, and so forth.
1
Similarly, in The Social
Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau discussed the ‘death’ of the body politic. Rousseauconsidered that the principle of political life resided in the sovereign authority. Hecompared the legislative power with the heart of the State, and the executive power withits brain. For ‘the brain may become paralyzed and the individual still live. A man canremain imbecile and live; but as soon as the heart stopped to function, the animal isdead’.
2
The appeal to bodily imageries has ancient origins in the history of European
political discourse, but the so-called organic analogy of the body politic was firstelaborated extensively by the twelfth-century humanist John of Salisbury. In hisencyclopedic treatise Policraticus John of Salisbury devoted its Books 5 and 6 to acomparative analysis of the structure and function of the bodies natural and politic. Johnclaims that his bodily analogies are modeled on Plutarch’s work, The Instruction ofTrajan, which was in fact John’s own invention. John first distinguishes the soul fromthe body. The soul corresponds, according to John, to those who administer the practiceof religion. ‘Indeed, those who direct the practice of religion ought to be esteemed andvenerated like the soul in the body. … just as the soul has rulership of the whole body sothose who are called prefects of religion direct the whole body.’
3
The soul’s relationship
to the body, according to John, is that the soul stimulates and rules the head. And the
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| | Authors: Shogimen, Takashi. |
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Treating the Body Politic: the Medical Analogy of Political Rule in Late Medieval
Europe and Tokugawa Japan
Takashi Shogimen
Department of History
University Of Otago
Dunedin, New Zealand
takashi.## email not listed ##
Prepared for presentation to the annual meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Chicago, September 2004
Introduction
The use of analogies between the political community and the human body is
widespread in Western political discourse. It is well known that in the introduction of
Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes referred to ‘Commonwealth or State’ as ‘an artificial man’;
he compared sovereignty with an artificial soul, magistrates with artificial joints,
rewards and punishments with the nerves, and so forth.
1
Similarly, in The Social
Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau discussed the ‘death’ of the body politic. Rousseau
considered that the principle of political life resided in the sovereign authority. He
compared the legislative power with the heart of the State, and the executive power with
its brain. For ‘the brain may become paralyzed and the individual still live. A man can
remain imbecile and live; but as soon as the heart stopped to function, the animal is
dead’.
2
The appeal to bodily imageries has ancient origins in the history of European
political discourse, but the so-called organic analogy of the body politic was first
elaborated extensively by the twelfth-century humanist John of Salisbury. In his
encyclopedic treatise Policraticus John of Salisbury devoted its Books 5 and 6 to a
comparative analysis of the structure and function of the bodies natural and politic. John
claims that his bodily analogies are modeled on Plutarch’s work, The Instruction of
Trajan, which was in fact John’s own invention. John first distinguishes the soul from
the body. The soul corresponds, according to John, to those who administer the practice
of religion. ‘Indeed, those who direct the practice of religion ought to be esteemed and
venerated like the soul in the body. … just as the soul has rulership of the whole body so
those who are called prefects of religion direct the whole body.’
3
The soul’s relationship
to the body, according to John, is that the soul stimulates and rules the head. And the
1
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