Polykoiranie IV (Bodin, La Boétie)

Abstract

The line from Homer appears saliently in two famous 1570 texts, by Jean Bodin and Etienne de la Boétie respectively. It is shown how Bodin’s supposedly modern conception of sovereignty inherits aporias Scatter 2 has been following since Aristotle, and how the paradoxical prerogative to both make and break the law makes it impossible rigorously to discern monarchy from tyranny. La Boétie’s commentary on the line from Homer, and his general attempt to argue “against one,” is shown to lead to a complex and aporetical account on the edge of political space, in which the concepts of nature and of the One increasingly escape La Boétie’s conceptual grasp.