The Natural Origin of Political Form: The Circle of Constitutions

Abstract

The Discourses on Livy carries out a massive critique of the claim that political life can be reduced to the practice of giving a political form, a legal and legitimate order, to the existence in common of individuals. Machiavelli calls into question the classical belief that the instance of form rules over political life, that the form is the foundation or arche (beginning and principle) of politics. His goal consists in the thoroughgoing critique of a foundationalist conception of political life.’ Present throughout classical political thought, the belief that political form lies at the foundation of politics is radicalized by Polybius, who claims that “in all political situations we must understand that the principal factor which makes for success or failure is the form of a state’s constitution (politeia): it is from this beginning (arche), as if from a fountain-head, that all designs and plans of action not only originate but reach their fulfilment.”2 The political form (constitution) is said to lie at the beginning of all political action, and also rules over the meaning of this action by guiding it to its end or fulfilment. It is no doubt due to Polybius’s belief that the appropiately moderate, or mixed, political form could master not only the internal contingencies of political life, but above all the external vagaries of historical becoming that his work acquires a tremendous importance both in the history of modern constitutionalism and in the the history of modem historiography.3 KeywordsNatural OriginPolitical LifeNatural CyclePolitical FormHistorical ConstructionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.