Othering the Renaissance. Conceptualizing Foreigners, Slaves and Infidels in in Early Modern Political Thought (ca. 1520-1610)

Project Information

OTHREN

Grant agreement ID: 101062962

DOI

10.3030/101062962

Project terminated on 31 January 2025

EC signature date 11 May 2022

Start date 1 June 2022

End date 31 May 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 265 099,20

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - OTHREN (Othering the Renaissance. Conceptualizing Foreigners, Slaves and Infidels in in Early Modern Political Thought (ca. 1520-1610))

Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This research proposal focuses on how 16th century Renaissance Aristotelian philosophers in Italy and Spain theorized otherness and dealt with outcasts in their political works. The very idea of political community in early modern political philosophy is based on the view that, as stated by Aristotle in his Politics, some categories of people - women, foreigners, infidels, slaves, children – must be excluded from citizenship because they are considered ontologically different and, therefore, politically unequal. This makes some people outcasts of the political community and raises important questions: on which grounds are outcasts excluded from citizenship? What is their relationship to citizens? Which type of inequality does the exclusion of outcasts entail? Are there different forms of inequality at stake in the exclusion of others? OTHREN provides the first comprehensive study of how 16th century Aristotelian thinkers theorized three figures of outcasts (foreigners, slaves and infidels) in their political thoughts and how this helped shape their ideas on such different minorities as Jews, Muslims and Amerindians. The proposal focuses especially on political works that were influenced by political Aristotelianism both in the humanist and scholastic traditions. These works are assessed against the backgrounds of Roman political philosophy (especially Cicero and Seneca), Roman law sources and the teachings of Christian anthropology that shaped early modern political thought.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

I have participated to several international research conferences on topics related to my project. Please find below some of the papers presented at these conferences:

1. ‘Machiavelli and Aristotle on the Wisdom of the Crowd’, invited speaker, workshop ‘Nicolás Maquiavelo y el populismo en tensión’, Universidad de Buenos Aires, September 1-2, 2022 (online).

2. Marsile de Padoue, Jean de Jandun et l’aristotélisme politique averroïste’, invited speaker, conference ‘la philosophie de Jean de Jandun’, Université Paris 1/IUF, November 17-18, 2022.

3. ‘Gendering Political Prudence. Christine de Pisan and Lucrezia Marinella on Naturalism, Voluntarism and Exclusion’, invited speaker, online workshop ‘The Concept of the Will in late Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy’, University of Gothenburg, March 23-24, 2023.

4. ‘Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun. Reopening the Question of Aristotelian Political Averroism’, University of Leeds, Jul1 1-5, 2024

In addition to the work provided in the outgoing phase, during the return phase of my GMC, I have made three more presentations at conferences/seminars. They are:
5. ‘Penser la plebe au Moyen Âge et au début de la modernité’, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, CEVIPOF, Conference “Penser le plébéianisme”, 19 September, 2024.
6. ‘Penser l’altérité à l’époque prémoderne. L'exclusion comme méthode de gouvernement dans la “science politique” européenne médiévale et de la première modernité’, Seminar Histoire des idées politiques : nouveaux objets, nouvelles approaches, 2024-2025, Campus Condorcet, 23 January 2025.

I also gave a research expert seminar to present my GMC project to the whole faculty of the School of Arts & Sciences at UPenn on October 20, 2022.
I have co-organized two expert workshops and two international conferences. The first was in Berlin and was entitled ‘Rewriting the History of Political Thought from the Margins’, it took place on June 8-9, 2023, at Humboldt Universität in Berlin. The conference involved 8 keynote speakers and 12 conference presenters that have been selected based on an international call for papers. I am co-organizing this event along with Jenny Pelletier (University of Gothenburg), Liesbeth Schoonheim (Humboldt Universität Berlin) and Ieva Motuzaite (Humboldt Universität Berlin). During my secondment period at Penn, I have organized two expert workshops, one on 1 December 2023 entitled ‘Conceptualizing Otherness with Aristotle in Early Modern Europe and America’ was co-organized with Eva Del Soldato (my supervisor at Penn) and featured several speakers (Marguerite Deslauriers, David Tavarez, Antonio Feros, Andrew Laird). A second workshop was entitled ‘Machiavelli the Aristotelian? Reflecting on the Greek Sources of Machiavelli’s Political Thought’ and took place on 11 April, featuring William Connell, Gabriele Pedullà and Eva Del Soldato. On 24-26 June I have organized an international conference entitled ‘Marsilius of Padua’s Legacy. The Defender of Peace after 700 years’. The conference gathered scholars from all over the world talking about the 700th anniversary of Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor Pacis (among others, Cary Nederman, Vasileios Syros, Bettina Koch etc.). Finally, during my return phase in Venice, on September 19, 2024, I organized a conference in collaboration with CEVIPOF at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), entitled 'Penser le plébéianisme'.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The number of authors who have been covered by the project in the initial state of the art has been expanded, including also such authors as Marsilius of Padua, Donato Giannotti and Niccolò Machiavelli. More generally, while completing the project it has become clearer and clearer that studying otherness and political Aristotelianism means broadening the corpus of authors that I had initially included within the project.

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