Political Topic: the Concepts of Division and Unity, Identity and Representation as the Double Formal Structure of Political Space

Abstract

The main proposal of this paper is to present the concept of the political topic as a theoretical device necessary to explain the more general and formal properties which constitute the framework of political relationships. The first section recalls other theoretical domains in which the concept of topic has been employed with objectives analogous to those pursued in the paper. The use of this concept by Aristotle, Kant and Freud is briefly considered. The second section deals with the concepts of division and unity, introduced as the first axis of political topic, and remarks that Aristotle and Aquinas long ago argued that the unity of human societies is necessarily limited since they are constitutively composed of multiple individuals. Moreover, they underlined such unity is necessarily sui generis and limited, because if the polis were absolutely unified its societal character would vanish. But human societies are also unified and their unity delimits the political space in which social differences supervene. The closing part of the section claims that the peculiar unity of human societies must be recognized as being necessarily reflexive. The third section presents the concepts of identity and representation. It starts by critically analyzing the young Marx’ thesis according to which democracy is the truth of monarchy but monarchy is not the truth of democracy. The text continues, surveying Carl Schmitt’s treatment of these concepts in order to demonstrate the sense in which they must be viewed: as the poles of the second axis of the political topic. The fourth and last section of the paper emphasizes the critical, heuristic and meta-political gains provided by the concept of political topic.