The Radical Genius of Alvaro Enrigue

"Unlike political scientists and social critics, who can diagnose the illnesses of a specific body politic without speculating on the best possible form of social organization, political philosophers are in the business of evaluating present society against an ideal conception of justice. The interesting corollary of this banal distinction is that the latter camp of thinkers cannot merely rely on the factual record for these comparisons, for the simple reason that every society that has actually existed has been unjust."

"As a result, Western political philosophy has been, to a surprising degree, a close relative of genre fiction: Plato's Republic is secretly a masterclass in sci-fi world-building, Machiavelli's The Prince is a fantasy role-playing game in which the reader is invited to imagine that they're the sovereign of an imaginary city-state in Renaissance Italy, and the protagonist of much of Enlightenment political thought is not a nonfictional person but the main character in an elaborate work of historical fiction-the famous and infamous Noble Savage."

"But what if a work of fiction attempted to do the work of political philosophy? Instead of ceding the speculative work of political imagination to the theorists, literary writers have often turned the tables and taken up the contentions of philosophers. Even if we exclude the literary productions of thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau on the grounds that Candide and Julie are not so much novels as treatises in disguise, creating a list of serious novels that contain political thought is easy enough."

"From canonical texts that explore the social nature of the individual by imaging a man in perfect isolation, such as Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, to modernist behemoths that meditate on the aesthetic origins of totalitarianism, such as Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, or the more recent middlebrow fables that speculate on future dystopias to warn about present polit"

Political philosophers evaluate present society against ideal conceptions of justice, unlike political scientists who diagnose specific social conditions from facts. Because every historically existing society has been unjust, political philosophy cannot depend solely on factual records and must instead use imagination. Western political philosophy therefore resembles genre fiction, with works like Plato’s Republic functioning like world-building, Machiavelli’s The Prince inviting role-play as a sovereign, and Enlightenment political thought using historical fiction figures such as the Noble Savage. Fiction can also take on philosophical tasks directly by embedding political content in novels, ranging from isolation narratives like Robinson Crusoe to modernist works that reflect on totalitarianism and dystopian fables that warn about present politics.

Read at The Nation