Papers by Alessandro Mulieri
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Jun 13, 2024
History of Political Thought, 2019
The aim of this article is to investigate the problem of the religious legislator in Marsilus of ... more The aim of this article is to investigate the problem of the religious legislator in Marsilus of Padua's political thought. Focusing on examples that are drawn from both Christian and non-Christian religions (Muhammad, the philosophers, the Council), it is shown that Marsilius' perspective on the religious legislator reflects an instrumental interpretation of the social and political functions of religion as a public cult. Marsilius' presentation of the religious legislators overturns Augustine's theory of the two mystical cities and draws on ideas of "civil religion" that are similar to those of John of Jandun and have their roots in Greek and Jewish-Islamic thought.
Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2018
In his 1923 work, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, Carl Schmitt claims that representation i... more In his 1923 work, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, Carl Schmitt claims that representation is a complexio oppositorum (a unity of opposites) and incarnates a hierarchical form of political authority, which is alternative to liberalism. This article shows that Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of the political theology of representation is based on a misreading. Schmitt selectively overlooks some meanings of the theology of repraesentatio to build his decisionistic political agenda. An investigation of the original conceptual meanings of representation in Tertullian, the first Christian author who theorized representation and established many of its subsequent theological meanings, shows a different picture. At its inception, representation already included mechanisms of plurality and participation, which anticipated, and perhaps motivated, the absorption of the representation vocabulary within democratic discourse and practice. Political theology is a valuable field of inquiry to p...
Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory, 2016
European Journal of Political Theory, 2022
Even if political theorists rarely read him, Italian political thinker, Marsilius of Padua, prese... more Even if political theorists rarely read him, Italian political thinker, Marsilius of Padua, presents one of the most radical theories of the multitude prior to Machiavelli and Spinoza. This article reconstructs Marsilius of Padua's political theory of the multitude in his Defender of Peace and pays special attention to two main sources from which Marsilius frames his theory: Aristotle and Ibn Rushd. Compared to Aristotle, Marsilius advances a more epistemic view of the multitude as a lawmaker. Marsilius’ ideas on the multitude also depend on Ibn Rushd's theory of collective knowledge and, to a certain extent, on his position on natural law.
History of European Ideas
Interpretation-a Journal of Political Philosophy, 2020
The concept of representation plays an important role in Marsilius of Padua's major work, the... more The concept of representation plays an important role in Marsilius of Padua's major work, the Defensor Pacis. Yet, with a few notable exceptions,Marsilius' concept of representation has received relatively little attention among recent scholars. The main purpose of this article is to fill this gap and scrutinizeMarsilius' concept of representation as an autonomous theoretical and political problem in the Defensor Pacis. The paper first surveys the different meanings of repraesentatio that appear in Marsilius' 1324 work. It then identifies an understanding of political representation -- repraesentatio identitatis -- that unites most cases in which Marsilius explicitly deploys a political language of representation, whether in the context of secular or church governance. Marsilius' usage of the concept of repraesentatio identitatis is particularly innovative as it turns a notion coming from corporate theory in civil and canon law into a specifically philosophical-p...
The Constructivist Turn in Political Representation
This chapter draws on Hasso Hoffmann’s analysis of the “semantics” of political representation to... more This chapter draws on Hasso Hoffmann’s analysis of the “semantics” of political representation to compare two alternative interpretations of the constructivist turn, a moderate and a radical interpretation. The moderate interpretation, exemplified by Nadia Urbinati’s theory of democratic representation, describes representation as partly a constitutive process, a form of Darstellung, that presupposes a certain idea of political reality, which comes from a form of Stellvertretung. On the contrary, Frank Ankersmit’s notion of political representation defends a more radical version of constructivist representation which maintains that there is no political reality at all prior to the process of political representation. What are the implications of these two views for democratic representation? The chapter assess how the ‘moderate’ view of constructivist representation enriches the narrative of democratic legitimacy but sounds a note of caution on the implications of the ‘radical’ view...
Intellectual History Review
ABSTRACT This paper assesses the complex debt of Machiavelli’s moral and political thought to Ari... more ABSTRACT This paper assesses the complex debt of Machiavelli’s moral and political thought to Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, especially in its Scholastic variant. My claim is that Machiavelli’s attitude vis-à-vis Aristotle is twofold because it reflects two different aspects of Aristotle’s moral and political theory that are closely intertwined and that were selectively developed by subsequent Aristotelian Scholastic commentators: a teleological and a realist aspect. On one hand, Machiavelli provides a model that dramatically breaks with Aristotle on, for example, the question of the origin of human society and the moral prudence of rulers. On the other hand, Machiavelli’s engagement with Aristotle amounts to something more complex than a simple rejection. The Florentine appears to read Aristotle rather selectively, and emphasizes the realist dimension of certain Aristotelian ideas that suit his own original overturning of classical moral and political ideas. I use two paradigmatic themes in which the Aristotelian teleological-realist divide is most evident, i.e. the account of the origin of human society and the case of prudence, in order to prove the dual relationship of Machiavelli’s thought with Aristotelianism.
Early Science and Medicine
While scholars have widely acknowledged a reliance on medical language in the political theories ... more While scholars have widely acknowledged a reliance on medical language in the political theories of Marsilius of Padua and Niccolò Machiavelli, they have rarely investigated the epistemological status of this appropriation. Questioning Leo Strauss’ claim that Jewish-Arabic Platonic ideas on the philosopher-king could have been a possible model for Marsilius and Machiavelli, this paper aims to show that the use of medical language by Marsilius of Padua and Machiavelli entails a form of political knowledge that is decidedly at odds with any kind of Platonic philosophical politics. This article makes the claim that, in their political theories, Marsilius and Machiavelli break with two key assumptions of Platonism: first, that philosophy as “absolute self-knowledge” is needed to rule; and, second, that philosophers must be lawgivers or legislators.
British Journal for the History of Philosophy
ABSTRACT This article shows that a forgotten source of Marsilius’ scientia of law-making in the D... more ABSTRACT This article shows that a forgotten source of Marsilius’ scientia of law-making in the Defensor Pacis is the Lucidator, the main astrological work of Peter of Abano. A compared analysis of these two works demonstrates that the theories of experientia and scientia that Marsilius considers necessary to make laws in the first dictio of the Defensor Pacis entirely draw on Peter of Abano’s views on the epistemological status of ‘the science of the stars’. It is shown that the purpose of Marsilius’ reinstatement of Peter of Abano’s theory of scientia is to build a science of law-making that does not need natural law and is based on experience and certain demonstrations.
Summary This article presents a comparative analysis of the concepts of totalitarian democracy an... more Summary This article presents a comparative analysis of the concepts of totalitarian democracy and positive liberty in the work of Jacob Leib Talmon and Isaiah Berlin. Its main purpose is to show that a combined analysis of Talmon and Berlin's biographical ...
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Papers by Alessandro Mulieri