[The
above video is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside
thrown in for good measure as they strike me as relevant. I
welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this
video.]
The idea of sovereignty, like almost any other politically or culturally meaningful term, was not born in a vacuum, remaining unchanged through the centuries. In many ways, Elshtain’s “Sovereignty” is a history of this complicated idea from its deeply religious and theological associations in Augustine and Aquinas to what she refers to as a “monist,” psychologized sovereignty of the self that holds the most sway in our fractured modernity. As the title of the book indicates, Elshtain discusses sovereignty at what she perceives to be the three critical junctures of its development, with the sovereignty of the self being a product, or so she seems to think, of Enlightenment’s secular humanism.
In the first part of the book, Elshtain sees an important shift from Thomistic conceptions of sovereignty, which emphasize God’s love and rationality and especially the ability of the human being to use her intellect to deduce these things about God, toward the nominalism of William of Ockham. She associates Ockham’s nominalism with a prevailing trend toward voluntarism, which shifts the focus away from God’s love and rationality toward the omnipotent, volitional will. While theology was the locus classicus of this paradigmatic shift, it eventually spills over into the political realm wherein there is a consolidation of power into a single body (either the Pope or the prince), as opposed to the idea of the Gelasian Two Swords doctrine (as articulated by Pope Gelasius in a 494 letter titled “Deo sunt” to Emperor Anastasius I). Elshtain’s intellectual genealogy is right to see in this historical moment both the origins of the all-powerful secular prince and those of the archetypical medieval Pope, one of whose missions was to purposively blur the lines between the political and spiritual realms.
The second part of the book gives several adumbrations of thinkers Elshtain associates with the view that the rightful place of sovereignty is in the state, including Hobbes, Hegel, Schmitt, and Machiavelli. Elshtain explains how these thinkers, along with Martin Luther whose fear of civil disorder and unruliness lead him to give increasing numbers of powers to the king, built the theoretical absolutism which James I and Louis XIV used as justification for their reigns. While the author limns the origins of shifts in the idea of sovereignty, she never locates a “cause” or a rationale; she points to Hegel and shows (convincingly) that he places ultimate sovereignty in the state, and later says that movements such as radical feminism have even further atomized sovereignty, locating it at the site of the individual’s body. But as a reader, I would have appreciated an investigation of the shifts themselves – of how one conception, over time, turned into the other.
While the first two-thirds of the book honed in tightly on the examination of carefully made arguments about ideas, the last part completely falls into politically conservative homiletic. Instead of following arguments, this part of the book blames everything from radical feminism to eugenics to cloning as being part of the irresponsible shift of sovereignty to the level of the human body. Elshtain sees these as breach of deeply Christian humanism which she seems to espouse in her admiration of Augustine and Aquinas. While one can easily agree or disagree with her opinion, it was ultimately the lack of a well-presented defense of God-centered sovereignty that made me think less of the book. Throughout the book, she also seemed to downplay or ignore the atrocities of our ventures in God-centered sovereignty (like the burning of heretics), doing the same for all of the progress made during post-Enlightenment modernity (like representative democracy and women’s suffrage).
For those interested in more on the topic: Elshtain openly admits to not having a deep background in theology in the introduction to the book. Anyone looking for a correction in this should look to Quentin Skinner’s much more theologically grounded and scholarly two-volume “The Foundations of Modern Political Thought,” especially the second volume which focuses on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century political theory.
In the first part of the book, Elshtain sees an important shift from Thomistic conceptions of sovereignty, which emphasize God’s love and rationality and especially the ability of the human being to use her intellect to deduce these things about God, toward the nominalism of William of Ockham. She associates Ockham’s nominalism with a prevailing trend toward voluntarism, which shifts the focus away from God’s love and rationality toward the omnipotent, volitional will. While theology was the locus classicus of this paradigmatic shift, it eventually spills over into the political realm wherein there is a consolidation of power into a single body (either the Pope or the prince), as opposed to the idea of the Gelasian Two Swords doctrine (as articulated by Pope Gelasius in a 494 letter titled “Deo sunt” to Emperor Anastasius I). Elshtain’s intellectual genealogy is right to see in this historical moment both the origins of the all-powerful secular prince and those of the archetypical medieval Pope, one of whose missions was to purposively blur the lines between the political and spiritual realms.
The second part of the book gives several adumbrations of thinkers Elshtain associates with the view that the rightful place of sovereignty is in the state, including Hobbes, Hegel, Schmitt, and Machiavelli. Elshtain explains how these thinkers, along with Martin Luther whose fear of civil disorder and unruliness lead him to give increasing numbers of powers to the king, built the theoretical absolutism which James I and Louis XIV used as justification for their reigns. While the author limns the origins of shifts in the idea of sovereignty, she never locates a “cause” or a rationale; she points to Hegel and shows (convincingly) that he places ultimate sovereignty in the state, and later says that movements such as radical feminism have even further atomized sovereignty, locating it at the site of the individual’s body. But as a reader, I would have appreciated an investigation of the shifts themselves – of how one conception, over time, turned into the other.
While the first two-thirds of the book honed in tightly on the examination of carefully made arguments about ideas, the last part completely falls into politically conservative homiletic. Instead of following arguments, this part of the book blames everything from radical feminism to eugenics to cloning as being part of the irresponsible shift of sovereignty to the level of the human body. Elshtain sees these as breach of deeply Christian humanism which she seems to espouse in her admiration of Augustine and Aquinas. While one can easily agree or disagree with her opinion, it was ultimately the lack of a well-presented defense of God-centered sovereignty that made me think less of the book. Throughout the book, she also seemed to downplay or ignore the atrocities of our ventures in God-centered sovereignty (like the burning of heretics), doing the same for all of the progress made during post-Enlightenment modernity (like representative democracy and women’s suffrage).
For those interested in more on the topic: Elshtain openly admits to not having a deep background in theology in the introduction to the book. Anyone looking for a correction in this should look to Quentin Skinner’s much more theologically grounded and scholarly two-volume “The Foundations of Modern Political Thought,” especially the second volume which focuses on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century political theory.
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