The Sublime Dignity of the Dictator: Republicanism and the Return of Dictatorship in Political Modernity

Abstract

The chapter traces and reconstructs the intersecting trajectories of the concept of dictatorship and the modern republican doctrine of politics. Since Niccolò Machiavelli’s rediscovery in the sixteenth century, the Roman concept of dictatorship has come to occupy a central place in the modern political vocabulary, contributing substantially to the making of political modernity. Within this context, the chapter advances three propositions. The first focuses on the historical and conceptual coevolution of republicanism and dictatorship in modern political thought. There is a clear correlation between dictatorship and modern republicanism in a way that makes them coeval and cooriginal. Secondly, the question of dictatorship allows for a critical consideration of modern republicanism as such. As most republican thinkers were kin to acknowledge the reactivation of monarchical powers in the dictatorial state of emergency, a critical question arises on whether the republican model of government is predicated on the temporary necessity for monarchy at least in the exceptional circumstances of an existential threat. Finally, this monarchical presence exposes the underlying true logic of republican politics that regards preservation, security, and survival as the animating principles of the political so that this long tradition of thought is relocated where it truly belongs, namely, within the orbit of the absolutist state, the “reason of state” doctrine, and the stato-centric imaginary of political modernity.