A Genealogy of Sovereignty [Paperback]

Jens Bartelson provides a critical analysis and conceptual history of sovereignty, dealing with philosophical and political texts during three periods.Spanning philosophical and political texts from the Renaissance and the Classical Age, as well as the present, this critical analysis and conceptual history argues that sovereignty should be regarded as a concept contingent upon, rather than fundamental to, political science and its history.Spanning philosophical and political texts from the Renaissance and the Classical Age, as well as the present, this critical analysis and conceptual history argues that sovereignty should be regarded as a concept contingent upon, rather than fundamental to, political science and its history.The concept of sovereignty is central to international relations theory and theories of the state and provides the foundation of the conventional separation of modern politics into domestic and international spheres. In this book Jens Bartelson provides a critical analysis and conceptual history of sovereignty, dealing with philosophical and political texts during three periods: the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and Modernity. He argues that sovereignty should be regarded as a concept contingent upon, rather than fundamental to, political science and its history.Preface; 1. Introduction: sovereignty and fire; 2. The problem: deconstructing sovereignty; 3. Beyond subject and structure: towards a genealogy of sovereignty; 4. Inventing outsides: proto-sovereignty, exempla and the general theory of the state in the Renaissance; 5. How policy became foreign: sovereignty, mathesis and interest in the Classical Age; 6. Reorganizing reality: sovereignty, Modernity and the international; 7. Conclusion: the end of sovereignty?