L’homo politicus et les sauvages du dehors et du dedans. Trajectoires de la cité-État dans la pensée antique

This text, taking the form of a short synthesis, deals with the “wildness” or “savagery” (negative or positive) which characterises, according to the ancient theoricians of the City-State, the (non-) human beings living outside the space or the time of the city, Primitives and Barbarians; and with the reversal which uses the idea of wildness in the very heart of the City-state in order to condemn its real functioning. The chapter examines: - the crisis of the City-State model in democratic Athens at the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 4th under the influence of the “naturalistic” current in sophistic thought: in Comedy (Aristophanes), in History (Thucydides), in Philosophy (the lion-man of Callicles and the dog-men of the Cynics); - the strong theorization, in the 4th century, of the “juste milieu” and “moderation” in politics, (Isocrates, Xenophon and Aristotle) which definitively ensured the triumph of the City-State model for eight centuries; - the reversal brought about by Rome’s violent predation and by the experience of exclusion put into practice by the imperial city, which resulted in the world city becoming a model of absolute injustice.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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