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

This research proposal studies how 16th century Renaissance Aristotelian authors 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 some 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 thought (especially Cicero and Seneca), Roman law and the teachings of Christian anthropology that shaped early modern political thought.