Origin stories in the tradition of political thought: Plato, Hobbes and contemporary feminist theory reconsidered

Political origin stories are myths constructed to unveil the beginnings of politics and power. They comprise a recurring motif in the history of political thought, and yet they have escaped systematic analysis by political theorists. This dissertation documents and analyzes this motif through its examination of three specific origin stories: Plato's Timaeus, Thomas Hobbes's social contract, and early radical feminist stories about the origins of patriarchal social relations. The question at the forefront of this investigation is, why origin stories? In each of the stories examined, the origins imperative is closely linked to the political dynamics of the historical period in question. Theorists are drawn to the motif of origins as a means to abstract themselves from the complexity of politics, and through the origin stories they posit, legitimize or provide the foundation for their preconceived political solution.; It is against the backdrop of presocratic natural philosophy and of Athenian democratic politics that Plato formulates his cosmogony in which he correlates the natural order of the universe to his preferred, predemocratic political configuration. This dissertation argues that Plato, in relying on patrogenic reproductive and birth metaphors, exhibits a phallocentric ontology and politics. Three primary reasons are identified for Hobbes's participation in the origins discourse: to respond to the competing origins discourse prevalent during the English Civil War, to build a rational, scientific foundation for his political theory, and to increase the rhetorical purchase of this theory. Carole Pateman, in The Sexual Contract, draws attention to the inconsistencies of Hobbes's theory with respect to gender relations, but she does not account for the fact that his state of nature has the (unintended) effect of opening spaces for a different conception of gender relations than his contemporaries, even religious women activists, would have entertained. Pateman's project, which is a response to liberal and Left political activists who elide gender in their analyses, is actually a later version of the radical feminist quest for the origins of patriarchy. Radical feminists repopularized the myth of an ancient matriarchy to legitimate the separation of the Women's Liberation Movement from the civil rights and New Left movements.; This dissertation reveals that political origin stories tend to begin where history and evidence leave off, and that they often do more to hinder than to aid the search for political solutions. Moreover, origins represent a theoretical aporia in that we are attracted to them, but they remain elusive to us. The persistence of origin stories suggests their ongoing political utility and attests to a fundamental human desire to render beginnings politically meaningful. In deconstructing and analyzing political origin stories, we gain a clearer knowledge of societal self-understandings, and we demystify and denaturalize some of the most provocative sustaining myths of Western society.