Communitas communitatum. Critical Notes on the History of an Aristotelian and Pluralist Formula

Abstract

Political society is a “society of societies”. So goes a recurrent formula with which different traditions of political reflection are often characterized. This formula is, indeed, often used to describe projects such as that of Aristotle in ancient Greece or that of Altusius in early modernity. The formula was, however, coined at the beginning of the twentieth century. The present article explores its breakthrough in the context of the English pluralist school, and the sense in which the formula born there can be convergent with some characteristic notes of Aristotelian thought.