The Structure of the Ideal Society in “the Book of the Body Politic” of Christine de Pizan (1406—1407)

Abstract

The article examines the social model of the ideal state found in the treatise of Christine de Pizan “The Book of the Body Politic” (1406—1407). In the times when the political philosophy of modernity didn’t have its own political language, the French writer of the 15th century offers readers a model of a just state, which is ruled by an educated and pious monarch, surrounded by wise advisers. This treatise is structured around the concept of the body politic and it combines different literary traditions, instructing chivalry, discussing different forms of government and describing social groups of the third estate. Christine de Pizan’s social model for the first time grants the third estate some political subjectivity, allows to act as a full participant in political processes: in the third estate the author sees supporting royalist forces. The image of an ideal society outlined in the “Book of the Body Politic” is one of the first speculative political and philosophical models of the state proposed by humanist intellectuals of the 15th — 16th centuries.