ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a brief history of political theory's relationship to category of the city, beginning with the Ancient Greeks and ending with the contemporary moment. The lessons political theorists can take away from this brief gloss of the Ancients is that size matters when it comes to conceptualizing formal political communities, but contra the physiological witticism, bigger is not necessarily better. The good life, to extent it is based on teleological conception of what it means to be human, requires an urban setting as primary container of politics. It is with this peculiar normative position regarding political life that the tradition of Western political theory begins. In terms of critical political theory, the various Marxist traditions emphasized the importance of capturing the state in order to overthrow the capitalist system. In an interesting way, then, a comprehensive defence of Rousseau's political theory may be feasible when his work is read through an urban lens, as opposed to statecentric one.
