1. The Four Humors and the U.S. Constitution.
- Author
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Laehn, Thomas R.
- Subjects
- *
CONSTITUTIONS ,UNITED States politics & government - Abstract
Although I. Bernard Cohen has shown that the American founders were not appropriating the terms of Newtonian physics when using words such as "balance" and "equilibrium" to describe the institutional relationships delineated in the Constitution, it remains unclear why these terms recur throughout their writings. Following Cohen, it is the argument of this paper that the founders drew these and similar expressions from the organismic analogy of the state as a "corpus politicum" or a "body politic." In particular, I argue that James Madison's Federalist 10 relies upon an eighteenth-century medical metaphor that has been overlooked due to the transformation in the science of medicine that occurred between Federalist 10's initial publication and its rediscovery by Charles Beard in 1913. While Madison's invocation of the ancient analogy of the state as a body politic has occasionally been noted, what has thus far gone unnoticed is Madison's use of this analogy as a foundation for a more historically bounded biomedical metaphor integral to his argument. Relying upon an analogous relationship between health and justice traceable to the writings of Plato, Madison contends in Federalist 10 that the democratic analogue to sound bodily health - conceived by Hippocrates as the "krasis," or the proportionate mixture, of the humors - is obtainable only in an extended republic. Just as the krasis of the humors within the corpus humanum is the definition of health, the self-equilibrating balance of factions within the corpus politicum of an extended republic becomes the definition of political justice. Madison's use of the analogy of the state as a corpus politicum, implicit in his efforts to offer his readers a "remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government," is thus highly purposive, providing rhetorical support for his theoretical argument and a carefully chosen rhetorical frame for the ongoing debate over the proposed Constitution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008