La structure metapolitique de l’occident

Philosophy cannot avoid the metaphysical question concerning the essential character o politics. After reviewing the answers to this question provided by Carl Schmitt, Dolf Sternberger and Nicole Lauraux, the essay analyzes the notion of ‘metapolitics’. Coined at the end of the seventeenth century by the German historian August von Schlöze, for Manfred Riedel it means the undetected presence of metaphysical presuppositions in political thought. This presence reveals itself in the work of authors from all ages, from Aristotle’s Politics, to Hobbes’ Leviathan, to Hegel’s Philosophy of History. The concept of ‘metapolitics’ could refer to the foundation of political theories – as it does Riedel in “Metaphysics and Metapolitics” – but also something different concerning the relationship between body and spirit.