Eero Arum
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science (Political Theory & Philosophy) at UC Berkeley, with a Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. I work on the history of political, moral, and legal philosophy. My research examines the foundations of political authority, the conceptual history of popular sovereignty, and the theory of executive power across late medieval, Renaissance, early modern, and modern political thought. I hold secondary interests in political theology, political Hebraism, and anti-Judaism. My dissertation, Elective Tyranny: Popular Sovereignty and Political Form, provides a novel account of the conceptual history of popular sovereignty and Caesarism from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
I have published widely on authors such as Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, and Thomas Hobbes in American Political Science Review, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, The Review of Politics, and The Cambridge History of Democracy, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
Before beginning my graduate studies, I received my B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Chicago (2018), then taught English as a second language through Fulbright Austria's USTA Program (2018–2020). I recently held a one-year predoctoral fellowship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (2024–2025), which supported archival research on Carl Schmitt’s reception of Bodin. I am currently based in New York City, where I am enrolled at Columbia University through the Ivy Plus Exchange Program.
Supervisors: Kinch Hoekstra
I have published widely on authors such as Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, and Thomas Hobbes in American Political Science Review, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, The Review of Politics, and The Cambridge History of Democracy, Vol. 2: The Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
Before beginning my graduate studies, I received my B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from the University of Chicago (2018), then taught English as a second language through Fulbright Austria's USTA Program (2018–2020). I recently held a one-year predoctoral fellowship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (2024–2025), which supported archival research on Carl Schmitt’s reception of Bodin. I am currently based in New York City, where I am enrolled at Columbia University through the Ivy Plus Exchange Program.
Supervisors: Kinch Hoekstra
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and perhaps even sufficient condition for counteracting political corruption, few
scholars have engaged in a sustained textual analysis of Discourses III.1, the
chapter in which he outlines the meaning of this enigmatic concept. Reassessing
Machiavelli’s exempla in this chapter will reveal that return to first principles
consists in the revival of the ethos of innovation and public-spiritedness that
accompanies every successful political founding. This process of renewal entails
reviving the psychological forces that initially guide human beings to establish
new political orders, including fear of violent death and longing for glory.
Existing interpretations of D III.1 have tended to emphasize renewal through
fear-invoking punishment, neglecting Machiavelli’s examples of renewal through
exemplary acts of civic virtue. A careful analysis of instruments and agents of
return to first principles will illustrate how both spectacular punishment and
virtuous acts of self-sacrifice converge to counteract corruption and foster
political innovation.