Making polis on the margins of the city: the philosophy of the Epicurean Garden as inspiration for new ruralities

Abstract

The question that I want to propose is inspired by the «Hellenistic turn» protagonist by Epicurus. However, it is about the strictly current problem: How to create a city outside of the city? Through this question, I aim to draw a metaphorical diagnosis of the present time. The tension is clear; on the one hand, the conviction that the city is unsustainable, which the rural world offers as a nice alternative; on the other hand, the awareness of the possibility´s condition of politics from the republican point of view: all politics need the polis ¾by definition. However, maybe the polis is not the city, and when the city cancels the possibility, the emptiness of the city produces it. So, the text tries to recover the Epicurean symbol of building community when there is none, when we do not want it to exist, or when the city simply cannot be.