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- Dictionarybody politic/ˌbɒdɪ ˈpɒlɪtɪk/
noun
- 1. the people of a nation, state, or society considered collectively as an organized group of citizens: "individual dissent was considered necessary to the health of the body politic"
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The body politic is a polity —such as a city, realm, or state —considered metaphorically as a physical body. Historically, the sovereign is typically portrayed as the body's head, and the analogy may also be extended to other anatomical parts, as in political readings of Aesop 's fable of "The Belly and the Members".
1. : a group of persons politically organized under a single governmental authority. 2. archaic : corporation sense 2. 3. : a people considered as a collective unit. Examples of body politic in a Sentence.
- Overview
- Ancient origins
- Christianization
- Decline and rejection
body politic, in Western political thought, an ancient metaphor by which a state, society, or church and its institutions are conceived of as a biological (usually human) body. As it is usually applied, the metaphor implies hierarchical leadership and a division of labour, and it carries a strong autocratic or monarchial connotation.
The first recorded instance of the body politic metaphor appears in the Rigveda (c. 1500 bce), the oldest of the sacred books of Hinduism. There the South Asian caste system is explained by comparing the priesthood to the mouth, soldiers to the arms, shepherds to the thighs, and peasants to the feet of humankind.
A well-known ancient example of a bodily metaphor appears in “The Belly and the Members,” a fable attributed to the legendary Greek fabulist Aesop. In the fable, the other members of the body revolt against the belly, which they think is doing none of the work while getting all of the food. The hands, mouth, teeth, and legs initiate a strike, but after a few days they realize that they are weak and ailing. They thus learn that cooperation between all members of the body, including the invisible belly, is vital for the body’s health. The story’s not-so-subtle moral is that society, like a body, functions better when all do their assigned tasks and work together. The social metaphor translated easily into the political world.
In the 4th century bce, Plato articulated and refined the political usage of the metaphor in his Republic and Laws. His metaphoric conception of the state emphasized fitness and well-being over illness, the latter condition occurring when the different parts of the state fail to perform the functions proper to them.
The Greeks’ fondness for the organic welfare of their state continued in the voice of their poets. Aristophanes, especially in Wasps (422 bce), claimed that poets needed to cure the diseases of the state. Shortly after, Demosthenes’ orations encouraging the Athenians to fight against Philip of Macedon—particularly, his “Third Philippic”—compared Philip to the attack of a fever or an illness.
The Greeks influenced Rome, and in the 1st century bce Livy was as familiar with the analogy as was his predecessor Cicero. Livy’s History of Rome cited Aesop’s fable of the other body parts revolting against the belly in his recounting of the secession of the plebeians (commoners). During the early Roman Republic, according to Livy, the plebeians seceded from the city of Rome, isolating themselves on the Sacred Mount or the Aventine. Menenius Agrippa was sent to end the crisis, and he used his version of the fable to convince the plebeians to return to the state. In Livy’s words, the Roman Senate (the belly) agreed that it received food from the plebeians (the body), but it did not go to waste. The Senate digested it and sent it back through the blood and veins of the republic. Hence, cooperation between all gave vitality to the republican body. The fable lived on in Plutarch, in the poetry of Marie de France, and in William Shakespeare’s Coriolianus.
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With the Christianization of the Roman Empire from the early 4th century ce, the metaphor of the body politic was transformed, though its meaning changed little and continued to imply subordination. In the 1st century ce St. Paul used the metaphor amply, molding Christ and the church into a single body and further depicting the church as the bride of Christ in I Corinthians 12:12–27, which clearly demonstrates the influence of ancient authors:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.…If the foot were to say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body.…The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”…That there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.…Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Colossians 1:18 adds that Christ “is the head of the body, the church.” And Ephesians 5:23–30 continues the metaphor:
For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church…because we are members of his body.
Early theologians continued the use of bodily metaphors. Their notion of the body politic was a mystical Christian body united in the sharing of Christ, the Eucharist or transubstantiation (the substantial change of the bread and the wine of the mass into the body and blood of Christ). The metaphor took on a theocratic connotation, implying divine leadership. For example, Chapter 12 of Book IV of St. Augustine’s City of God is titled, “Concerning the Opinion of Those Who Have Thought That God is the Soul of the World, and the World is the Body of God.”
In the Middle Ages the model used in the clerical world spread to secular politics. At first the church presented itself as a mystical body politic whose original head was the pope; kings and princes were its members. But eventually lay authorities vied for leadership, and theorists argued for a divinely inspired monarchy (head) until, to a large extent, the 18th-century revolutions dismembered the medieval Christian body.
John Milton’s Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England (1641) refashioned “The Belly and the Members” fable into “The Fable of the Wen and the Members.” The wen (or boil)—a metaphor for a Catholic bishop—having grown close in size to a head argued for his prime position over the rest of the members of the body. A philosopher, brought to a meeting of the members, exposes him for what he is—a foul excrescence.
Shakespeare also instilled doubt in the metaphor’s validity, questioning in Coriolanus the organic cooperation between members of the body and comparing plebeians to the monstrous Hydra of Greek mythology and to diseases like the measles or scabs. Pushing the usage of the metaphor to its extreme, Milton and Shakespeare pointed to the truism that a body, like society, does not always function well.
In the mid-17th century, Thomas Hobbes effectively killed the body politic metaphor by insisting on the artificiality of the state. In Leviathan (1651) he discussed the natural selfishness of humankind and the consequent need to impose upon individuals an external authority to prevent perpetual violence. Created to preserve peace, the Leviathan (the state) was an artifical social institution, not a biological or natural one.
After the 17th century the usage of the body politic metaphor declined even further. After the Industrial Revolution, when issues of social contract gained prominence, social institutions were conceived of as machines rather than as natural organisms.
- Joëlle Rollo-Koster
the people of a country, area, society, or group considered together as a single organized system, especially when this is being compared in some way to a human body: Politicians should tell the truth because lies corrupt the body politic. Throughout history, people have mutually agreed to form a community and set up a body politic. Fewer examples.
body politic. Quick Reference. 1. An ideological struggle between individuals, groups, and social institutions over control of the human body. 2. Institutionalized social practices and policies through which the human body is regulated. 3.
Body politic definition: a people regarded as a political body under an organized government.. See examples of BODY POLITIC used in a sentence.
Body politics refers to the practices and policies through which powers of society regulate the human body, as well as the struggle over the degree of individual and social control of the body. Learn about the history, issues, and movements of body politics, such as feminism, racism, and abortion.
