Bernard Stiegler’s contributions to political philosophy in the presence of technology are honored and complemented by imagining an encounter with the thought of Leo Strauss. The concept of sovereignty is taken as pivotal. Notions of sovereignty find expression not only in nation state politics but also in engineering and technology. Pierre Manent calls attention to further roots in Christian theology. The complexities and challenges of this interweaving point suggest the need for a “Tractatus Politico-Technologicus.”.

To become sovereign, one must be seen as sovereign. In other words, a sovereign must appear-philosophically, politically, and aesthetically-on the stage of power, both to themselves and to others, in order to assume authority. In this sense, sovereignty is a theatrical phenomenon from the very beginning. This book explores the relationship between theater and sovereignty in modern political theory, philosophy, and performance. Arthur Bradley considers the theatricality of power-its forms, dramas, and iconography-and examines sovereignty's modes of (...) appearance: thrones, insignia, regalia, ritual, ceremony, spectacle, marvels, fictions, and phantasmagoria. He weaves together political theory and literature, reading figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schmitt, Benjamin, Derrida, and Agamben alongside writers including Shakespeare, Cervantes, Schiller, Melville, Valéry, Kafka, Ionesco, and Genet. Formally inventive and deeply interdisciplinary, Staging Sovereignty offers a surprising and original narrative of political modernity from early modern political theology to the age of neoliberal capitalism. (shrink)

Does sovereignty have a future in the 21st century? Through a sustained engagement with the work of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and against the background of contemporary political phenomena, Arne De Boever explores what positive political possibilities the notion of sovereignty might still hold. Using the philosophy of Catherine Malabou, he argues that these possibilities reside in an aesthetic reconceptualisation of sovereignty as a plastic power that is able to give, receive and explode the forms (...) of our political future. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between metaphysical problems and political theorizing in G.W.F. Hegel’s thought. It argues that his Logic responded to the philosophical problem of the universal in ways which came to deeply influence his thinking about an ideal equilibrium between state and citizen in the Philosophy of Right and elaborate on how it acts as a conceptual touchstone for the legitimacy of rule in his vision of political life. This approach seeks to overcome a trend in Hegel (...) studies that has often denied or neglected the deep connection between his respective philosophical and political contributions. (shrink)

Concentrates on the positive task of uncovering some biblical foundations for science and the philosophy of science.

This paper aims to make better sense of Hegel’s Philosophy of Objective Spirit and defend it against the charge of political conservatism and optimism. I will argue for the left Hegelian position in the theological-philosophical respect, thereby leaving the left-right divide in the social-political respect largely open. I will explain that Hegel’s commitment to the inherent rationality of the state and the course of human history as the progress of freedom does not imply blind optimism, since his thesis is (...) not to be taken as a factual description. Hegel’s point is rather a conceptual one: to comprehend the human world means to comprehend it as a holistically rational entity and process, which is the essential nature of comprehending in the context of the humanities. I will further clarify Hegel’s point by introducing relevant ideas from contemporary philosophy of mind and language, comparing it in particular with Davidson’s principle of charity. (shrink)

Addressing the three dominant contemporary attitudes towards sovereignty - Sovereignty Renewed; Sovereignty Rethought; Sovereignty Rejected - After Sovereignty ...

Was the emperor as sovereign allowed to seize the property of his subjects? Was this handled differently in late medieval Roman law and in the practice and theory of zabt in Mughal India? How is political sovereignty relating to the church's powers and to trade? How about maritime sovereignty after Grotius? How was the East India Company as a 'corporation' interacting with an Indian Nawab? How was the Shogunate and the emperor negotiating 'sovereignty' in early modern Japan? (...) The volume addresses such questions through thoroughly researched historical case studies, covering the disciplines of History, Political Sciences, and Law. Contributors include: Kenneth Pennington, Fabrice Micallef, Philippe Denis, Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, Joshua Freed, David Dyzenhaus, Michael P. Breen, Daniel Lee, Andrew Fitzmaurice and Kajo Kubala, Nicholas Abbott, Tiraana Bains, Cornel Zwierlein, Mark Ravina. (shrink)

The Power of Sovereignty attempts to understand the ideas and thoughts of Sayyid Qutb whose corpus of work and, in particular, his theory of hakimiyyah (sovereignty) is viewed as a threat to nationalistic government and peace worldwide. This book provides a detailed perspective of Sayyid Qutb's writings."--Jacket.

This paper attempts to clarify the conceptual foundations of sovereignty in Hegel’s Philosophy of Law in order to provide an answer to this question and thus be able to evaluate the scope of contemporary sovereignty and the adequacy of its claims. As will be seen, Hegel constructs his own position in critical dialogue with Hobbes’ and Kant’s approaches, with more or less explicit references. The development of this article is divided into three parts. In the first, the (...) Hegelian conception of sovereignty is presented in the framework of his organicist understanding of the state, taking into account both its internal and external aspects. The second, analyses Hegel’s theoretical foundations of war and his position in international relations. Finally, the scope of sovereignty today is discussed in the light of Hegelian thought. (shrink)

This paper analyses the intertwinement of legal philosophy and political theory in the British intellectual framework between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with specific regard to Harold Laski's works. I will try to illustrate the transition from 19th-century utilitarianism to H. L. A. Hart and Isaiah Berlin as evolving through important debates which include Laski's contribution. I will argue that a discussion of “juridical” obligation, i.e., the conditions of legal validity, may lie implicitly in these concerns that (...) Laski and other early 20th-century British authors had about “political” obligation—viz., about the nature of the state and its claim to obedience. By approaching Laski's theories and their genealogy through a legal-philosophical perspective, I will contend that this debate about political obligation anticipates to a considerable extent some of the most renowned conceptions of obligation in 20th-century British legal theory. (shrink)

In British constitutional law, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty maintains that Parliament has unlimited legislative authority. Critics have recently challenged this doctrine, on historical and philosophical grounds. This book describes its historical origins and development.

The process of globalization undoubtedly contributes to the change and reduction of the scope of state sovereign powers. We consider these transformations to be among the most important ones. However, the reduction of sovereignty is sometimes a destructive process, which leads to the disintegration of states and numerous human tragedies. Overall, in the globalization processes the speed of the destruction of old relations often exceeds the speed of the formation of the new ones. Thus, philosophy faces a challenge (...) of comprehending the changes brought about by globalization in general and the tendency to reduction of sovereignty in particular. It is worth taking into account that the latter is a bilateral process. On the one hand, some factors that fairly undermine the states’ sovereignty are strengthening; on the other hand, most states voluntarily limit the scope of their sovereignty including their rights to determine taxation rates, monetary emission, to use capital punishment etc. We argue that the factor of voluntary reduction of the scope of sovereignty appears to be of utmost importance though its basic trends vary greatly in different parts of world. (shrink)

A picture of sovereignty holds the study of politics captive. Captives of Sovereignty looks at the historical origins of this picture of politics, critiques its philosophical assumptions and offers a way to move contemporary critiques of sovereignty beyond their current impasse. The first part of the book is diagnostic. Why, despite their best efforts to critique sovereignty, do political scientists who are dissatisfied with the concept continue to reproduce the logic of sovereignty in their thinking? (...) Havercroft draws on the writings of Hobbes and Spinoza to argue that theories of sovereignty are produced and reproduced in response to skepticism. The second part of the book draws on contemporary critiques of skeptical arguments by Wittgenstein and Cavell to argue that their alternative way of responding to skepticism avoids the need to invoke a sovereign as the final arbiter of all political disputes. (shrink)

Using the Western tradition of metaphysical and political thought as a backdrop, Critique of Sovereignty (a work in 4 volumes) re-examines the concept of sovereignty in order to better understand why our ethical values and technical capacities often seem so divorced from our lived realities. On the one hand, ostensibly self-enclosed entities like the nation-state and the person are rhetorically bolstered as sites of technical agency and/or moral responsibility. On the other hand, these same entities appear fragile -- (...) if not purely fictional -- in relation to ever ongoing tidal processes such as the migration, diffusion, and conglomeration of bodies, capital, ideas, etc. While some of our institutions might work some of the time, they always seem to work differently than we like to think they do. Accordingly, the forging of more humane institutions might very well entail if not require ways of thinking that strive to undo the self-imagined binds, exceptions, and sureties of thought for the sake of embracing a continuity with all that withers, decays, and falls away. Book I, "Contemporary Theories of Sovereignty," compares the varied interpretations of sovereignty given by a range of 20th-century political theorists (Maritain, Foucault, Derrida, Schmitt, Agamben, Hardt, and Negri) with Jean Bodin's initial outline of the concept, rendered at the outset of modern political thought in the 16th century. The analytic framework of sovereignty encountered in these comparative readings provides an initial point of departure for unfolding a method of critique appropriate to the concept of sovereignty. Sovereignty is an ideal starting point for a critique of the deadlocks between thought and reality for a simple reason: it doesn't actually exist. When it serves as a guide to action, sovereignty may be regarded as a particularly captivating fantasy. The closer it appears, the further it recedes, and, too often, the more vigorously it is pursued. (shrink)

The Sovereignty of Reason is a survey of the rule of faith controversy in seventeenth-century England. It examines the arguments by which reason eventually became the sovereign standard of truth in religion and politics, and how it triumphed over its rivals: Scripture, inspiration, and apostolic tradition. Frederick Beiser argues that the main threat to the authority of reason in seventeenth-century England came not only from dissident groups but chiefly from the Protestant theology of the Church of England. The triumph (...) of reason was the result of a new theology rather than the development of natural philosophy, which upheld the orthodox Protestant dualism between the heavenly and earthly. Rationalism arose from a break with the traditional Protestant answers to problems of salvation, ecclesiastical polity, and the true faith. Although the early English rationalists were not able to defend all their claims on behalf of reason, they developed a moral and pragmatic defense of reason that is still of interest today. Beiser's book is a detailed examination of some neglected figures of early modern philosophy, who were crucial in the development of modern rationalism. There are chapters devoted to Richard Hooker, the Great Tew Circle, the Cambridge Platonists, the early ethical rationalists, and the free-thinkers John Toland and Anthony Collins. (shrink)

This article explores the tensions between cosmopolitanism and sovereignty as a means to conceptualize the ethics of European foreign policy. It starts by discussing the claim that, in order for the EU to play a meaningful role as an international actor, a definition of the common ethical values orienting its political conduct is required. The question of a European federation of states and its ethical conceptualization emerges clearly in some of the philosophical writings of the 17th and 18th centuries. (...) I seek to provide an outline of the main arguments presented by authors such as Saint Pierre, Rousseau and Kant regarding the implications of the emerging difference between cosmopolitanism and the law of nations in the ethics of international relations. The article focuses on the normative significance of the concept of sovereignty as it emerges in modern political philosophy and highlights its tensions with the ideas of moral and political cosmopolitanism. This exploration serves a double function: theoretical and practical. From the theoretical perspective it leads to a better understanding of the tensions involved in conceptualizing a common ethical orientation for the states of Europe. From the practical standpoint it sheds light on some persistent difficulties the European Union faces in trying to move beyond an intergovernmental political arrangement in the field of foreign policy. (shrink)

The concept of sovereignty is one of the central concepts of modern political philosophy. However, faced with processes of economic globalization as well as legal and political universalism, contemporary political theory struggles to account for the exercise of state power in terms of the traditional understanding of sovereignty. This survey article reviews the most influential conceptualizations of sovereignty in contemporary continental political philosophy. These include Schmitt’s defense of sovereignty and Agamben’s rejection of sovereign politics (...) as well as a number of theoretical attempts to account for the complexities of sovereignty and its adaptation to new political circumstances. (shrink)

With growing vigor, political philosophers have started questioning the Westphalian system of states as the main actors in the international arena and, within it, the doctrine of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources. In this article I add to these questionings by showing that, when it comes to migratory natural resources, i.e., migratory species, a plausible theory of territorial rights should advocate a regime of shared sovereignty among states. This means that one single entity should represent their interests and (...) maybe also those of third parties, managing and making decisions over the resource as a whole. Although such a regime might be the tacit goal of existing international conventions regarding wildlife, it remains untheorized in political philosophy and largely under-theorized in international law. By presenting the critical situation of the monarch butterfly in North America, I point to the inadequacy of the compartmentalized current regime, which generates injustice in migration; namely, the phenomenon whereby range states of a given species may neglect or over-exploit it while in their territory, to the detriment of others. I suggest that more flexible and imaginative governance arrangements are needed to deal in a better way with these and similar natural resources. (shrink)

What is sovereignty? Often taken for granted or seen as the ideology of European states vying for supremacy and conquest, the concept of sovereignty remains underexamined both in the history of its practices and in its aesthetic and intellectual underpinnings. Using global intellectual history as a bridge between approaches, periods, and areas, The Scaffolding of Sovereignty deploys a comparative and theoretically rich conception of sovereignty to reconsider the different schemes on which it has been based or (...) renewed, the public stages on which it is erected or destroyed, and the images and ideas on which it rests. The essays in The Scaffolding of Sovereignty reveal that sovereignty has always been supported, complemented, and enforced by a complex aesthetic and intellectual scaffolding. This collection takes a multidisciplinary approach to investigating the concept on a global scale, ranging from an account of a Manchu emperor building a mosque to a discussion of the continuing power of Lenin’s corpse, from an analysis of the death of kings in classical Greek tragedy to an exploration of the imagery of “the people” in the Age of Revolutions. Across seventeen chapters that closely study specific historical regimes and conflicts, the book’s contributors examine intersections of authority, power, theatricality, science and medicine, jurisdiction, rulership, human rights, scholarship, religious and popular ideas, and international legal thought that support or undermine different instances of sovereign power and its representations. (shrink)

This volume provides the first in-depth collection of essays aimed at critically examining the work of political philosopher Giorgio Agamben.

"Sovereignty or submission: Restoring national identity in the spirit of liberty," a symposium organized by The New Criterion and the Center for American Greatness, took place on October 16, 2019, in Washington, D.C. Participants were Michael Anton, David Azerrad, Chris Buskirk, Tucker Carlson, Angelo M. Codevilla, John Fonte, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Victor Davis Hanson, Roger Kimball, Daniel McCarthy, Balázs Orbán, John O'Sullivan, James Piereson, and Kiron Skinner. Discussion revolved around earlier versions of the essays presented in this book.

Overview of the concept of the sovereign individual -- Personal sovereignty as a natural psychological state in human development -- Human development theories -- Philosophical basis of the right to individual sovereignty -- The philosophy of Jose Ingenieros in Argentina, 1913 -- Recognizing that society, church, government, and corporations are mostly fraudulent, coercive, and corrupt -- Our avoidant-defensive posture : a moral or practical decision? -- The desire to live life as we wish : the need to (...) be genuine -- Summary of my theory on individual sovereignty. (shrink)

‘The political’ is much talked about today, but its invocation in international political theory is all but entirely dismissed. Yet, moral-ethical articulations do impact theorizing about international life, albeit in a most peculiar and often concealed fashion. In this paper I investigate the modernity of sovereignty in political and international theory and explain why invocations of the moral-ethical are so forcefully liquidated from international relations theory. I examine the constitutive effects of the sovereignty imperative and explain how modern (...) notions of ethics, politics and community are delimited by the need to effect what can be made to count as the pre-political ground of will-formation. A peculiar modernist strategy delimits the imagination of the politically possible in international life. I argue that critique must attend and not dispense with a fundamental paradoxicality (which is transfigured as modernity’s very metaphysical embodiment) that structures a distinctively modern manner of reflecting on ethics and community. The paradoxicality is sovereignty. It is accommodated by a liberal politics that works to conceal a restive anxiety of the modern ‘condition’. This anxiety is in turn productive of a politics with which we must grapple as we elaborate governance in global life. (shrink)

This book asks whether sovereignty can guarantee international equality by exploring the discourses of sovereignty and their reliance on the notions of civilisation and savagery in two historical colonial encounters: the French explorations of Canada in the 16th century and the domestic troubles linked to the Wars of Religion. Presenting the concept of 'civilised sovereignty', Mathieu reveals the interplay between the domestic and external claims to sovereignty, and offers a dynamic analysis of the theory and practice (...) of the concept. Based on extensive archival research, this book provides an in-depth intellectual picture of the theory and practice of sovereignty in early modern France by focusing on the discourses deployed by French political theorists. Mathieu applies performativity in order to denaturalise these discourses of statehood and reveals how the domestic and international constructions of sovereignty feed into one another and equally rely on appeals to civilisation and savagery. Overall, the book questions the 'myth of sovereignty as equality' and reflects on the persistence of this association despite the overwhelming empirical evidence that it institutes international hierarchies and inequalities. (shrink)

Through fourteen original essays, the book seeks to understand the viability of the notion of sovereignty in a globalized world, thus taking into account the inclusion of a language of rights, limitation and legitimacy. It examines sovereignty using a normative approach.

This article seeks to contribute to the thinking of forms of corporateness, sociality and authority in the context of, but also beyond, neoliberalism, the neoliberal state and neoliberal accounts of the corporation. It considers neoliberalism in relation to the theological genealogies of modernity, politics and economy, and the way in which neoliberalism itself functions as a secular religion—one which intensifies liberal individualism and involves a blind faith in the market redefining all social interactions in terms of contract. I turn to (...) the theological genealogies of sovereignty and economy, and of the corporation, as a way of grounding a radical consideration of collectivity and sociality. For, while the rise of neoliberalism is associated with the growth of multi-national or trans-national corporations, the privatisation of state assets and the corporatisation of public institutions, each of these involve not a diminishing of the state or the project of state sovereignty but rather its reformulation, reaffirmation and intensification. The corporation, despite being redefined as the interaction of fundamentally self-willing and contracting individuals operating in the market, is still fundamentally intertwined with state sovereignty. Attempts to address or respond to corporate power need to go beyond calls for greater regulation of corporations, increased corporate social responsibility or even the desire to eliminate corporate personhood. Rather, what is required is a greater emphasis on the notion of corporateness that undergirds the theological genealogy of the corporation—for if neoliberalism functions as a religion then part of the solution may be a theological one. (shrink)

Kantian legalism is now the dominant scholarly interpretation of Kant and an important approach to legal and political philosophy in its own right. One notable feature is its construal of the relationship between law and politics decisively in law’s favour: Law subordinates politics. Political judgment is constrained by and only permissibly exercised through law. This paper opposes this subordination through a close analysis of an ambiguity in Kant’s conception of sovereignty. Understanding this ambiguity requires seeing that, for Kant, (...) law cannot subordinate the sovereign’s political judgment because it is a condition which makes a legal system possible. Kant was not an exacting legalist, but a practical reasoner struggling with the pressures politics imposes on finite beings. Through discussion of a leading contemporary approach, and close engagement with its historical source, the paper raises new considerations about the relevance of political judgment in the relationship of law and politics. (shrink)

Most people assume that the natural resources of a country belong to its people. Theorists of cosmopolitan resource justice have recently questioned this assumption, arguing that extensive rights of peoples over natural resources cannot be justified. In response, defences of peoples’ resource rights, grounded in the value of self-determination, have been tepid. This paper argues against both positions. It advances the distinct thesis that popular resource sovereignty is justified as the resource rights allocation that maximizes well-being. This consequentialist account (...) provides superior normative foundations for peoples’ resource rights. (shrink)

Politics and ethics are closely linked in many ways. One such link is the central but still contentious notion of the person. Take the case of today’s European Union. Most basically, member states disagree on what and who persons are. This EU paradox may be resolved when political debates about sovereignty’s limits expand to include ethical discussions of the nature of persons. The aim of this paper is to point in the direction of an account of the person that (...) will support proper understandings of those ethical, and not just political, values that the Preamble of any eventual European Union constitution will need to entrench tomorrow. (shrink)

This article examines three textual moments that might plausibly have found their way into Derrida’s late Beast and Sovereign seminars, but that Derrida appears to avoid or overlook. Aristotle’s discussion in the Politics of the “One Best Man” scenario is placed in the context of his earlier characterizations of the naturally apolitical man as akin either to a beast or to a god; Bataille’s late descriptions of sovereignty as a kind of self-perverting hyperbolic structure are juxtaposed with some of (...) Derrida’s own formulations about sovereign autoimmunity; Heidegger’s discussion, in a seminar nominally about Hölderlin, of a striking formula from Sophocles is shown to capture something of the “outlaw” status of the sovereign as Derrida describes it. (shrink)

While theorists of cultural pluralism have generally supported tribal sovereignty to protect threatened Native cultures, they fail to address adequately cultural conflicts between Native and non-Native communities, especially when tribal sovereignty facilitates illiberal or undemocratic practices. In response, I draw on Jürgen Habermas' conceptions of dis-course and the public sphere to develop a universalist approach to cultural pluralism, called the 'intercultural public sphere', which analyzes how cultures can engage in mutual learning and mutual criticism under fair conditions. This (...) framework accommodates cultural diversity within formally universalistic parameters while avoiding four common criticisms of universalist approaches to cultural pluralism. But this framework differs from that of Habermas in two ways. First, it includes 'subaltern' publics, open only to members of cultural subgroups, in order to counter relations of 'cultural power'. Second, it admits 'strong' publics, democratic institutions with decision-making powers. Finally, I show how the subaltern, strong institutions of tribal sovereignty contribute to the fair discursive conditions required for mutual learning and mutual critique in an intercultural public sphere. Key Words: Habermas • Kymlicka • Native peoples • sovereignty • tribal. (shrink)

Local food initiatives are steadily becoming a part of contemporary cities around the world and can take on many forms. While some of these initiatives are concerned with providing consumers with farm-fresh produce, a growing portion are concerned with increasing the food sovereignty of marginalized urban communities. This chapter provides an analysis of urban contexts with the aim of identifying conceptual barriers that may act as roadblocks to achieving food sovereignty in cities. Specifically, this paper argues that taken (...) for granted commitments created during the birth of the modern city could act as conceptual barriers for the implementation of food sovereignty programs and that urban food activists and programs that challenge these barriers are helping to achieve the goal of restoring food sovereignty to local communities, no matter their reasons for doing so. At the very least, understanding the complexities of these barriers and how they operate helps to strengthen ties between urban food projects, provides these initiatives with ways to undermine common arguments used to support restrictive ordinances and policies, and illustrates the transformative potential of food sovereignty movements. (shrink)

A critical analysis of the philosophy of sovereignty from Hobbes through Derrida, arguing that we need to re-invent sovereignty as a motive for democratic political action while remaining alert to its dangers, specifically its relationship to violence.

I will outline four justifications of regional ecological obligations calling for different political authorities to collaborate for ecological reasons: through voluntary agreement between political entities united by an ecological region; by a shared regional history or cultural relations to an ecological region; with reference to ‘place-based’ duties with an ecological basis; or by obligations to an extended set of individual right-holders. None are conclusive reasons but show that there are normative grounds for regional collaboration of separate political authorities. The article (...) contributes to discussion on, despite its practical relevance, a much neglected concept in political philosophy. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between popular sovereignty, populism, and deliberative democracy. My main thesis is that populisms resurrect the polemical dimension of popular sovereignty by turning “the people” against the “powerbloc” or the “elite”, and that it is crucial thatthis terrain not be ceded to authoritarian distortions of this basic contestatory grammar. Furthermore, I contend that populist forms of politics are compatible with a procedural and deliberative conception of democracy. Ifirst engage with the assumption that populism and (...) a procedural model of democracy are incompatible, demonstrating that this assumption relies on a conservative bias which tiesthe exercising of communicative power to a “duty of civility”. I then engage with radical-democratic reconstructions of the procedural notion of popular sovereignty which emphasize the unleashing and diversification of peoplehood in communication circuits and the mutual permeability of constitutional politics, parliamentary legislation, and the public sphere. Thirdly, I conclude that populisms are an essential part of communicative power in modern democracies and part of its dialectical structure. (shrink)

I have defended the view that God’s complete sovereignty over the universe, which requires that he be creatively responsible for our decisions, is compatible with libertarian free will. William Rowe interprets me as holding that this is entirely owing to God’s being timelessly eternal, and argues that God’s decisions as creator would still be determining in a way that destroys freedom. His argument overlooks an important part of my view-an account of creation according to which God’s will as creator (...) does not stand as an independent determining condition of our own. I try here to clarify that account, and to show that Rowe’s criticisms leave it untouched. (shrink)

Cultural heritage, which serves as a substratum of national identity, forms the right of the state to its own sovereignty. The substantiated proof of the possibility of independence from other cultures and nations has relatively recently entered the conceptual field of the philosophy of culture. In January 2023, significant changes made to the Foundations of the state Cultural Policy took into account the concept of cultural sovereignty and, to the necessary extent, justified its high importance for the (...) development of the state and society. The fundamental role of culture in the creation and development of the state has been repeatedly recognized as one of the priorities. It should be noted that even later this priority was not a Russian regulatory novel. The purpose of the study is to consider a range of concepts and legal novels reflecting the sphere of cultural heritage. The long-term work of an extensive circle of philosophers and culturologists has been crowned with the recognition of the value of culture in the system of state regulation of various spheres of human activity. As a result of the research, the conclusion is made about the relevance and timeliness of the implementation of the most important philosophical concepts in strategic planning documents and the high potential practical significance of the actualization of cultural heritage in order to achieve the results of the state cultural policy. In conclusion, it is noted that heritage as a cultural phenomenon has direct access to its semantic and value core. The preservation of cultural identity through the consistent building of cultural sovereignty is one of the most important priorities of modern state policy. (shrink)

In their book entitled “Democracy and the American Party System” Austin Ranney and (Willmoore Kendall have brought a charge again the pluralists that they denied the desirability of creating sovereign state and as such, according to them, they were opponents of democracy as well as of the very idea of government. The aim of this paper is to refute their charge and thereby to establish the view that the pluralists are in fact strong supporters of democracy in the real sense (...) of the term and of popular sovereignty. What did most of them was that they made an attempt to bring to light the fact that democracy, as it is being practiced almost everywhere in the world, ultimately leads to denial of popular sovereignty, the basic element of self-government. Self-government can best be realized where the people is the real sovereign neither the state nor the numerical majority. And the government formed by the representatives elected in a traditional party-based election does not therefore, mean self-government. It can at best be called the government of the majority. Majority rule does not anyway mean democracy. It may be called ‘numbersocracy’ after the proper terminology of Ranney and Kendall. Democracy, de facto, is nothing other than majority rule that is best termed by John Calhoun, the ex-vice-president of the U.S.A, as the ‘rule by numerical majority’. ‘Numerical’ majority”, says he, “is not the people”. I strongly adhere to the pluralists’ view and therefore, conclude with an insistent assertion that numerical majority rule in disguise of democracy has in fact ruled out popular sovereignty. (shrink)

Though the notion of the free, or self-governed community, originated in ancient Greece, the Greek polis seems to pose a problem for the modern post-Hobbesian concept of sovereignty. For the latter presupposes that of the State, that is an agency which monopolizes the use of violence, as an instrument by which sovereignty is constituted. Yet, the polis was not a State but rather what the anthropologists call a stateless community. The latter is characterized by the absence of ‘government’, (...) that is of an agency which has separated itself from the rest of social life and which monopolizes the use of violence. In stateless societies the ability to use force is more or less evenly distributed among armed or potentially armed members of the community. Being stateless, then, in what sense can we say that the polis was sovereign? On the practical level the Greek polis had a very limited ability to control and direct legislation. The decentralised nature of Greek society and the absence of coercive apparatuses meant that the laws had to be identical with the customs of the community or else that decisions had to be shared by a wide consensus, which imposed a severe limitation on the ability of the poleis to change their laws or initiate changes in the community. On the theoretical level, the absence of a State was complementary to the absence of the notion of sovereign, whether it is a person or an institution or a body which was above the law and a source of the law. Thus Greek ‘republicanism’ was different from the modern one in as much as it did not have the notion of ‘the people’ as a constituting element and Greek ‘rule of law’ lacked the modern notion of a positive open legislation. (shrink)

The idea of food sovereignty has its roots primarily in the response of small producers in developing countries to decreasing levels of control over land, production practices, and food access. While the concerns of urban Chicagoans struggling with low food access may seem far from these issues, the authors believe that the ideas associated with food sovereignty will lead to the construction of solutions to what is often called the “food desert” issue that serve and empower communities in (...) ways that less democratic solutions do not. In Chicago and elsewhere, residents and activists often see and experience racial and economic inequalities through the variety of stores and other food access sites available in their community. The connections between food access, respect, and activism are first considered through a set of statements of Chicagoans living in food access poor areas. We will then discuss these connections through the work and philosophy of activists in Chicago centered in food sovereignty and food justice. Particular focus will be placed on Growing Power, an urban food production, distribution, and learning organization working primarily in Milwaukee and Chicago, and Healthy South Chicago, a community coalition focused on health issues in a working class area of the city. (shrink)

Contemporary scholars writing on sovereignty can be roughly divided between those who believe that we should get rid of the concept (because it is inherently confusing, or essentially contested) and those who grant many of the criticisms of the first group, but add that we nevertheless cannot do without the concept, since much of our thinking about politics in general, and the state in particular, seems to be structured by this notion. I hope to demonstrate that much of the (...) confusion surrounding the notion is due precisely to fact that sovereignty is an inherently religious concept. (shrink)

Domestic sovereignty and international sovereignty have both been eroded in recent years, but the former to a much greater extent than the latter. An oppressed people's right to fight for liberal democratic reforms in their own country is treated as axiomatic, as the international responses to the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya illustrate. But there is a reluctance to accept that foreign intervention is always justified in the same circumstances. Ned Dobos assesses the moral cogency of this (...) double standard and asks whether intervention can be consistently and coherently opposed given our attitudes towards other kinds of political violence. His thought-provoking book will interest a wide range of readers in political philosophy and international relations. (shrink)

The question of political sovereignty must at all times be of acute academic interest, since it is practically impossible to say anything about the state without implying something about sovereignty, or vice versa. Political theory has very generally found this conception central to its inquiry; but in recent years the notion has been thrown into sharp relief by political events . In Fascism and Nazism the doctrine of state sovereignty is “made flesh” in startlingly substantial forms. These (...) modern incarnations of Leviathan , and their threat to much which has come to be deeply valued, give unprecedented importance to an age-long discussion. Political theory is not to-day, if it has ever seemed, a simply academic issue, or an “arm-chair” branch of philosophy. Not all of those who carry through revolutions, who build barricades and defend them with their lives, have a clear philosophical theory of the state; but powerful beliefs and motives they certainly have; and it daily becomes more manifest that unless the world is content to allow its political future to be determined more and more by obscure visceral impulses or crude economic motives a more intense effort to achieve and to apply true beliefs in the political field is imperative. (shrink)

The author analyzes the evolution of the concept of sovereignty from feudal times through early modernity to the present day. She examines the problematic relationship between the ideas of sovereignty, democracy, and pluralism, and discusses the decline and possible disappearance of sovereignty in the context of globalization.

This essay considers the question of sovereignty in relation to oil. First, in the conventional geo-strategic sense: control over oil resources is the sovereign right of a nation. But here national sovereignties conflict with each other, and sovereignty, supposedly absolute (it is by definition the unconditioned) turns out to be malleable, always qualified. Another, second sense involves sovereignty as the general will; here I propose that oil, and energy resources, have their own will, which enters into conflict (...) with what is normally the general will of the people. Finally, a third sovereignty involves the radically unconditioned, in which energy is expended unconditionally, with no goal in sight or possible; this is the sovereignty of the sacred, or of erotism, and is the most basic aspect of energic ‘use.’. (shrink)