Theoria

Classically, the political is thought in the forms of regimes referring to the number who rule: simply, the one, the few or the many. That is, respectively, royal power, aristocratic power and popular power. None have argued that in each type of regime that the other two are not present in some way (the reduction to one form of legitimate regime is thoroughly modern). Thus, in monarchies, for instance, one finds the king, the nobility and the people. However, looking at the history of political thought, at least as we understand it today, only two of those groups have been positively represented: we are all familiar with defenses of the one and attacks upon the many (monarchical or tyrannical – or even totalitarian governments in their variety) or, alternatively, with defenses of the many and attacks upon the one (democracy, liberal through radical and anarchism). There is not, in our histories of political thought, at least, a concept of aristocratic political theory, even though there most certainly is – most obviously in the century from about 1680 to 1780 in France.

Of course, we are often told, “Why, yes, Plato, he was an aristocrat – but he had other ideas as well.” Thus, the undesirable elements in Plato – for instance, eugenic programmes in Republic – are written off as aristocratic nonsense. Or, again, we know that Montesquieu was a baron, but that is second only to his proto-liberalism; afterall, the American Founding Fathers, those impeachable democrats, would never find inspiration in an aristocrat. Let’s not forget Condorcet, a marquis who died during the Revolution under suspicious circumstances, who just happened to overcome his social origins and embrace liberalism. And, again, despite being an aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville is said to have written the best book on America or democracy. We read aristocrats in spite of who they are. (The only exception, and it is quite notable, is Nietzsche. But, it is hard to tell if his aristocratism was but an early symptom of his later madness.)

What is the source of our revulsion for aristocrats and their political theory? (One notes, of course, that movies about aristocrats please our sensibilities: The Lord of the Rings, Troy, and Pirates quickly come to mind.) Why does our history of political thought make the reduction to the choice between the one and the many? What happened to those bitter French aristocrats, fighting both the king and bourgeoisie, such as Boulainvilliers, Buat-Nancay, and Mably? (Montesquieu, despite The Spirit of the Laws being an intervention into French aristocratic political theory, is ripped from this context.)

Does anyone else, aside from Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault (both Nietzscheans of a sort, as it were), take an interest in these aristocrats? A central chapter from The Origins of Totalitarianism is on the discovery of race by these very aristocrats; an earlier version of the chapter, bearing the same name, “Race Before Racism,” was published in 1944. Foucault locates the discovery of race as a foundational moment in the history of “anti-juridicalism” and the subsequent invention of biopolitics.

Is there, or was there, such a thing as aristocratic political theory – or, is it impossible, because, as all quickly note, aristocrats are very forgetful; simultaneously the source of their power and their weakness.