The following is a brief summary of the ancient Greek theory and practice of biopolitics, racialism, and nationalism. These themes, which are so taboo in the West today, were integral to the Hellenic way of life at the founding of our Western civilization and of our unique tradition of civic self-government. I will also refer […]
Long before Darwin, our European ancestors often had a sense of the objective reality of heredity and of the moral duty of reproduction. A powerful example of this is provided by William Shakespeare’s so-called procreation sonnets (numbered 1–17), which ceaselessly exhort a mysterious, male young friend to marry and raise children. Shakespeare argues that, for […]
Go to Part 1. Roman Conservative & Imperial Responses The Roman authorities, whether republican or imperial, did not passively accept these developments. Engels observes that “[f]rom the second century B.C., a large number of conservative politicians opposed with a marked traditionalism the Hellenization of the Roman elite and the Orientalization of the population” (142). This […]
David Engels, Le Déclin: La crise de l’Union européenne et la chute de la République romaine—quelques analogies historiques Paris: Éditions du Toucan, 2016, 3rd ed. David Engels is a professor of classics at the French-speaking Free University of Brussels (ULB). While most academics and their works languish in relative obscurity, the 38-year-old Engels has already […]
Go to Part 1. Go to Part 2. The Virtuous Circle of Spartan Power: Discipline Through Lordship The defining fact of Spartan life was the hard-won conquest of neighboring Messenia in the eighth century and the enslavement of its population as Helots. This victory had launched the virtuous circle of Spartan power. The subjugated Helots […]
Go to Part 1. There is a sense in which all life for Spartan citizens was communal and hierarchical. Even once one had completed the agoge, Spartiates would eat together in common mess halls, again creating common feeling. The ages were mixed, so that the older could teach the young, and citizens were expected to […]
If in Athens we have ethnopolitical aspects, insofar as the democracy was tempered by Hellenic virtue, in Sparta we have a State wholly dedicated to systematic organization of the society according to a biopolitical ideal. Sparta’s mixed system of government and fiercely communitarian and hierarchical customs were supposed to have been created by the semi-legendary […]
