Space and Political Universalism in Early Modern Physics and Philosophy

Pablo Bustinduy is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan, Italy, where he is researching the political economy of contemporary wage policy in Europe. Previously, he completed a PhD thesis at The New School, which obtained the Alfred Schutz Memorial Award in Philosophy and Sociology 2021. He is the author of ‘A Populist Foreign Policy? The Impact of the Trump Presidency on the Transatlantic Relation’, International Studies, 59 (2022), 28–42, and has edited, translated and contributed chapters to over a dozen books in Spanish. He has taught courses in Political Theory and International Politics at The City College of New York, Columbia University and New York University, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University. From 2014 to 2019, he was involved in European and Spanish politics, holding public offices at the European and Spanish parliaments. This is his first authored book.

• Introduction: Political Cosmologies The return of spaceTo be in placeBroken spheresThe logic of spaceThe empty space of modern politicsSpatial crisis PART 1. Principles of space in classical physics and cosmologyChapter 1. Unbounded. The limits of place1.1 The limitless as principle1.2 Place is the first of things1.3 Is there something beyond the heavens?1.4 The last of the spheres: Aristotle’s cosmology of place Chapter 2. Void. Nothingness as a cosmological principle2.1 Against the void. Infinity and limitation2.2 Thing is no more than nothing: the early atomists2.3 Void and infinite: empty space in Epicurus and Lucretius2.4 A sphere surrounded by nothing: Stoic cosmologies Chapter 3. Incorporeality. Dimension distinct from body3.1 The cosmological origin of incorporeal space: John Philoponus3.2 The problem of motion in immaterial space3.3 Being, space and the materiality of things. The legacy of Plato’s Timaeus3.4 Order and dimension: the determination of space in Neoplatonism Chapter 4. Immensity. Space as a theological problem4.1 The spatial paradox of ubiquity4.2 To speak from afar. Augustine’s theology of space4.3 Imaginary space and divine immensity4.4 The world as an infinite sphere PART 2. The metaphysical assertion of space in early modern natural philosophy Chapter 5. Infinity. The universe as one5.1 Actual infinities. The identity of metaphysics and cosmology5.2 The loss of cosmic centers5.3 Kepler’s nightmare: the breaking of spheres5.4 From inertia to gravitation. One law for all Chapter 6. Emptiness. Space as void and equal to itself6.1 Space as a real and independent entity6.2 Space as emptiness: the return of void space6.3 Not fully void: subtle matter and the problem of ether6.4 The spatial contradiction of early modern science Chapter 7. Abstraction. Rational mechanics7.1 Mathematics as the logic of nature7.2 The geometrization of space7.3 Relative space and the problem of motion7.4 The abstraction of space in Newtonian mechanics Chapter 8. Absoluteness. The logic of space8.1 Space as absolute: on metaphysical necessity in the Principia8.2 Two infinities. Theology of space in More and Newton8.3 The theological reduction of absolute space8.4 Emancipation of absolute space: abstract universalism PART 3. The physico-political logic of modern space Chapter 9. Freedom in an infinite universe 9.1 The logic of place: order, position and limit 9.2 Beautiful wholes. Place in Christian metaphysics 9.3 Infinite space and the metaphysics of openness 9.4 Disproportion of man: Pascal’s problem Chapter 10. Metaphysics of equality 10.1 Political places: a topology of the polis 10.2 To follow nature. Politics as the order of things 10.3 Broken chains. The political emptying of nature 10.4 The empty space of modern politics Chapter 11. Political universals 11.1 Closure of the void. Space in the state of nature 11.2 The logic of projection. Space and universality 11.3 Colonial geometries 11.4 Political mechanicism. The physics of power Chapter 12. The autonomy of politics12.1 Space and political theology12.2 Absolute and relative: an ontology of limits12.3 Modern spheres. Space as a political transcendental12.4 Critique of the political void CONCLUSION. Democracy and the critique of space The forgetfulness of spacePolitical nowheresThe spatial contradictions of modern universalismA space with no outsideOn what is emptyThe striated polisDemocracy at the limit BIBLIOGRAPHY AND WORKS CITED

Full of original insights and crisp aphoristic formulations, Pablo Bustinduy’s book examines the emergence of the concept of infinite, empty, and absolute space. This highly innovative study connects modern political power in its tensions, contradictions, and ambiguities to a new understanding of spatiality.