Abstract
Inspired by the late medieval doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies, the dual understanding of “the people,” both as a multitude and as a corporate whole, enjoys a long pedigree in the history of political thought. This chapter connects different apprehensions of the people with different attitudes toward compromise. The first part traces back to the medieval times the connection between compromise and the dual understanding of the people—as a corporation hierarchically ordered, on the one hand, and as an untrustworthy multitude, on the other one. Yet starting with early modernity, this second understanding of the people as a multitude of equal individuals enjoyed a drastic reconsideration. As the second part of the chapter shows, thanks to the Puritan bi-dimensional covenant, in the New World the idea of equal individuals consenting to form a new political body was far from being a mere philosophical idea. It became a living reality. At the same time, once this body was formed as a corporation the details of setting up a specific form of government and its daily running was trusted in the hands of an elected aristocracy of merit. As a result, the American founding was shaped by a dual apprehension of the people and an ambivalent attitude toward compromise. In the concluding remarks, I argue that these historical lessons, properly understood, remain relevant for many contemporary challenges, not just in the USA, but all across the world.
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Notes
- 1.
See the examples offered in Kantorowicz (1997 [1957]: 209–10).
- 2.
One could argue that the “people’s two bodies” label is inaccurate, since as a multitude the people have not one distinct body, like they do in the corporate understanding. However, the expression “the body of the people” is currently used mostly in reference to a multitude of voices, which makes the distinction implied by the label even more useful. One should also remember the frontispiece of the 1651 edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan, by Abraham Bosse, “with creative inputs” from Thomas Hobbes, in which the body of the sovereign is made up by tiny little persons.
- 3.
Although the formula of “the people’s two bodies” has been previously used, the interpretation offered here differs drastically from the ones proposed by Wolin (1981) and by Santner (2011). On the one hand, Wolin identifies in the American tradition a politically active, democratic body, and an essentially passive, economic, and antidemocratic one. On the other hand, Santner focuses on the modern transference of sovereignty from the King’s Two Bodies to the people’s two bodies, mainly from a psychoanalytical perspective centered on the idea of “corporeality.” Morgan (1989), whose chapter four is entitled “The People’s Two Bodies” comes closer, distinguishing between people as subjects and people as rulers, and between the power to govern and the power to determine the form of government. See also Fumurescu (2018) and Fumurescu (forthcoming).
- 4.
See, for example, King (2012: 100).
- 5.
Ibid., 130–150.
- 6.
Donald S. Lutz (1980), Popular Consent and Popular Control: Whig Political Theory in the Early State Constitutions (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press).
- 7.
When it comes to interpreting the founding through “republican” versus “liberal” lenses, the literature is by now too voluminous to review. Suffice is to say, with the risk of simplifying, that among the promoters of the republican readers one finds scholars such as Barnard Baylin, Gordon Wood, and J.G.A. Pocock, while on the liberal camp, names such as Joyce Appleby, Isaac Kramnick, Thomas Pangle, Michael Zuckert, or Mark Hulliung. Most of them and some of their disciples will be mentioned and quoted throughout this book.
- 8.
It would be undoubtedly interesting to analyze how Rousseau’s distinction between the General Will and the will of all (as simple majority of individual wills) relates with the paradigm of the people’s two bodies. It would constitute, however, an entire project in itself.
- 9.
This understanding was common in both Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire. See Kaldellis (2015) for a similar argument and a wealth of examples.
- 10.
For more details and examples, see Fumurescu (2013), Chapter Three.
- 11.
It is no accident if “identity” and “identical” share a common etymology—id-ens.
- 12.
For the famous tri-partition, see Elazar (1972).
- 13.
See, for example, Robertson (2015).
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Fumurescu, A. (2020). Compromise and the People’s Two Bodies. In: Baume, S., Novak, S. (eds) Compromises in Democracy. Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40802-2_2
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