In this important new book, Daniel Loick argues that in order to become sensible to the violence imbedded in our political routines, philosophy must question the current forms of political community – the ways in which it organizes and executes its decisions, in which it creates and interprets its laws – much more radically than before. It must become a critical theory of sovereignty and in doing so eliminate coercion from the law. The book opens with a historical reconstruction of the concept of sovereignty in Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant. Loick applies Adorno and Horkheimer’s notion of a ‘dialectic of Enlightenment’ to the political sphere, demonstrating that whenever humanity deemed itself progressing from chaos and despotism, it at the same time prolonged exactly the violent forms of interaction it wanted to rid itself from. He goes on to assemble critical theories of sovereignty, using Walter Benjamin’s distinction between ‘law-positing’ and ‘law-preserving’ violence as a terminological source, engaging with Marx, Arendt, Foucault, Agamben and Derrida, and adding several other dimensions of violence in order to draw a more complete picture. Finally, Loick proposes the idea of non-coercive law as a consequence of a critical theory of sovereignty. The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publisher & Booksellers Association)
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This book offers a broad reconstruction of the modern notion of sovereignty, a comprehensive critique of state-inflicted violence, and a concept of non-coercive law for our contemporary world society.
Preface, Axel Honneth Introduction I. Traditional Theories of Sovereignty II. Critical Theories of Sovereignty III. Critical Theory Without Sovereignty Abbreviations Further Literature Index
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An essential reading on sovereignty, Daniel Loick’s book is a real feast in political theory. Moving effortlessly through a wide array of thinkers from Jean Bodin to Walter Benjamin and beyond, Loick reconstructs modern theories of state sovereignty with remarkable systematicity and erudition, only to problematize and decenter this dominant tradition with the best tools of contemporary critical theory. With an acute sense of irony, he deciphers the contradictions that characterize the great thinkers of sovereignty and offers a patient demystification of the modern state. Loick reminds us that law without coercion and life without sovereignty are not only possible but also eminently desirable.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781786600387
Publisert
2018-11-08
Utgiver
Vendor
Rowman & Littlefield International
Vekt
599 gr
Høyde
238 mm
Bredde
157 mm
Dybde
27 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
278

Forfatter
Preface by
Oversetter

Biographical note

Daniel Loick is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany. He is the author and editor of several books published in German.