Cosmic Political Theory

• Author: Uriel Abulof,Shirley Le Penne
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221127644
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221127644

Political Theory

2023, Vol. 51(1) 6 –17

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917221127644

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Article

Cosmic Political Theory

Uriel Abulof1 and Shirley Le Penne2

Abstract

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The

ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective

but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will

political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What

claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-

five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in

their future contexts? How will the consistent concerns of political theorists

evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from

now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough

equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is

one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries.

Keywords

cosmic political theory, astropolitics, exopolitics, extraterrestrial intelligence

(ETI), political existentialism, dark forest theory, campfire theory, politics of

fear, freedom and bad faith, narcissism

Modern political thought arrived on the heels of two revolutionary realiza-

tions: We are not at the center of the universe (Copernicus), which was not

created for us (Darwin). How might political theory respond to a third revo-

lutionary realization, that we are not alone, that other creatures, sentient and

1Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel

2Department of Government, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Uriel Abulof, Political Science, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 6997801, Israel.

Emails: uriel@tau.ac.il; abulof@cornell.edu

1127644PTXXXX10.1177/00905917221127644Political TheoryAbulof and Le Penne

research-article2022