THE LOST SOUL OF THE BODY POLITIC A Dissertation by JESSE ALLEN CHUPP Submitted to ...

193 Pages·2012·1.23 MB·English

by  Sarah J. Chupp

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THE LOST SOUL OF THE BODY POLITIC

A Dissertation

by

JESSE ALLEN CHUPP

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of
Texas A&M University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

May 2012

Major Subject: Political Science
THE LOST SOUL OF THE BODY POLITIC

A Dissertation

by

JESSE ALLEN CHUPP

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of
Texas A&M University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved by:

Chair of Committee, Cary J. Nederman
Committee Members, Robert Harmel
Judith Baer
Leah DeVun
Head of Department, James Rogers

May 2012

Major Subject: Political Science
ii i
ABSTRACT

The Lost Soul of the Body Politic. (May 2012)

Jesse Allen Chupp, B.S., Indiana Wesleyan University;

M.A., Ball State University

Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Cary J. Nederman

The modern nation-state is the product of a gradual process in which the religiously
concerned medieval political and ecclesiastical synthesis became more secular and
centralized. Mirroring this external institutional development, the theoretical conception
of the state changed from one of a natural organic unity of diverse corporate members,
often described metaphorically as a Body Politic, to a consent-based compact among
atomized individuals. This change can be traced in the Body Politic metaphor of four
authors: John of Salisbury, Christine de Pizan, Johannes Althusius, and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. In this project, I argue that the Body Politic metaphor, particularly the
inclusion or exclusion of a soul of the Body Politic, is uniquely appropriate for capturing
the complexity of political life in general across differing levels of aggregation and for
elucidating the political and religious commitments of the authors who employ it, as they
critique their own contemporary political and religious institutions and describe their
ideal societies. In the conclusion, I suggest that the loss of a strongly organic conception
of the state has denied modern society and political theory a well established means for
recognizing and integrating corporate entities and for explaining the existence of the
modern nation-state in any kind of transcendental moral context, thus the lost soul of the
Body Politic.
iv

This work is dedicated to my Family,

whose love, patience, and sacrifices

made it possible.
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my committee chair, Cary Nederman, for the manifold ways in
which he provided this project with inspiration and guidance, and my committee
members, past and present, Ed Portis, Robert Harmel, Judith Baer, and Leah DeVun, for
their patience and thoughtful suggestions. Thanks also to the Department of Political
Science office staff, especially Carl Richard, Carrie Kilpatrick, Lou Ellen Herr, and
Dianne Adams, whose many helps were invaluable to this project and other situations
over the years.

Thanks also go to my many colleagues and friends among the cohort of graduate
students in the Department of Political Science at Texas A&M University and in other
departments as well. Their professional and personal contributions to my graduate
experience and this work are too numerous to list individually. However, special thanks
are due to Phillip Gray for his mentoring me as a novice political theorist and to Robert
Puckett, David Rossbach, Nathan Ilderton, and Tyler Johnson for putting up with the
good and the bad from me for so many years.

Thanks to my parents, Greg and Ruth Chupp, for their love, help, and direction, and to
my in-laws, Jim and Geri Elsberry, for their many considerate gestures of support.
Many thanks are due as to all my siblings, my wife’s siblings, and their families,
especially Robert and Jennifer Puckett, for their help and support during the time that
vi
this work was completed.

Finally, thanks to my wife, Sarah, for her love and patience with me and this project, and
to our children, James, Jack, and Caroline, for making my life so full of love and
meaning.
vi i
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT......................................................................................................... iii

DEDICATION..................................................................................................... iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................... v

TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………….. vii

1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................ 1

2. THE BODY POLITIC OF JOHN OF SALISBURY......................................... 30

3. THE BODY POLITIC OF CHRISTINE DE PIZAN........................................ 61

4. THE BODY POLITIC OF JOHANNES ALTHUSIUS..................................... 102

5. THE BODY POLITIC OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU.............................. 138

6. CONCLUSION................................................................................................... 170

REFERENCES........................................................................................................ 177

VITA........................................................................................................................ 186
1
1. INTRODUCTION

The modern nation-state, the current dominant expression of the Body Politic, is the heir
to the following development regarding the theory and motivation of political and
religious institutions: the ancient Greeks and Romans ordered society towards political
justice and virtue, and political religion and its officers were concerned primarily with
inculcating civil allegiance; this social arrangement occurred first in the Body Politic of
cities and then, later, in empires. Christian civilization, especially in Western Europe,
retained some of the political institutions of the classical period but added an
otherworldly teleology of the soul as the ultimate concern of human life and created a
synthetic religious-political construct commonly called the Two Swords in which priests
exercised a much more prominent position than they did in the classical institutional
order. In this period, the Body Politic was thought to repose in local political
sovereignties but also, even if only mystically, in the entire Christian community under
the spiritual administration of the Chief Christian Pastor, the Pope. The Reformation
nation-states, the precursors of the modern structure of the Body Politic, retained the
Christian religious motivations of the medieval theory but collapsed the religious-
political authority into the hands of national sovereigns, thus returning religious officials
to a position of political subservience. These political sovereigns, after an initial phase
of religious vigor and conflict, became so manifestly disinterested in the otherworldly

____________
This dissertation follows the style of the American Political Science Review.
2
element of Christian religion that the political theory of the modern nation-state came to
repose its philosophical legitimacy upon the consent of the governed as political citizens
only, instead of as Christians in political agreement, and sometimes conflict, while in
pilgrimage to the next life. The secular modern nation-state, the modern Body Politic
that abrogates any explicit positive religious commitments or concern for the destiny of
souls, is the product of this historical and theoretical development. Thus, two of the
main components of the original project of Western Civilization, concern for the soul
and the public acknowledgment and promotion of human goods that transcend politics,
have been lost to the life of the modern Body Politic.

The entirety of this political, cultural, and religious story is impossible to describe in the
course of a dissertation, but the germ of this development can be seen in the medieval
Catholic Christian political theories of the Body Politic of John of Salisbury and
Christine de Pizan, the Reformed Protestant Christian political theory of Johannes
Althusius, and the early modern secular political theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Specifically, I will argue: that John's medieval Body Politic metaphor represented the
organic, and sometimes ambiguous, relationship of the political and religious realms that
took seriously the Christian understanding of the soul’s origin and destiny; that
Christine's removal of the soul, the clergy in John's designation, from the Body Politic
metaphor and her French nationalism subtly weakened the medieval political and
religious synthesis, even though her work displays a large degree of Catholic devotional
piety and even an endorsement, though tepid, of the sacramental necessity of priests;
3
that the Reformed Christian political theory of Althusius, which can be understood as an
analogue to the Body Politic metaphor, though stripped of its unifying principle, is
Christian in name but not by necessity since its focus is ultimately secular as implied by
his subjection of the ministers of religion to the civil power, his complete abrogation, as
a Calvinist Protestant, of the hagiographic elements in John and Christine, and his severe
diminishing of the sacramental life; and that Rousseau’s General Will theory, another
conceptual device related to the Body Politic, is an attempt to recover the moral
consensus that the organic medieval synthesis fostered minus any specific religious
commitment other than a nod to the ability of religion to foster civic loyalty in the
classical sense. Concern for the salvation of souls, so explicit in John's theory, is absent
from Rousseau's. Before moving to the thinkers just mentioned, I will discuss the Body
Politic metaphor generally, first by describing the political ambiguity that necessitates
such conceptual devices and then by an examination of the actual use of the Body Politic
metaphor by other scholars. In so doing, I will offer a brief historical interpretation of
the classical and early medieval political circumstances in which these ideas and
institutions were fleshed out. Following this introduction, which provides the conceptual
and historical background for my first author, John of Salisbury, I will turn my attention
to the textual development that I propose to trace in the four authors just mentioned.
Finally, I will conclude with an appraisal of the future prospects of the modern nation-
state, as a Body Politic with a lost, or at least problematic soul, in light of the foregoing
analysis.