Rule as sovereignty

the universal and homogeneous state

Francis Slade

pp. 159-180

in: John Drummond, James G. Hart (eds), The truthful and the good, Berlin, Springer, 1996

Abstract

Alexandre Kojève introduced the term universal and homogeneous state.⁴ I appropriate Kojève's term, but understand it somewhat differently. The appropriation acknowledges the felicity of the term as a name for the political phenomenon characteristic of modernity, a form of political mobilization which, progressively, is to be found everywhere and is the same everywhere it is found. This political phenomenon is rooted in the concept of sovereignty, the creation of modern political philosophy. By universal and homogeneous state I mean rule emptied of any specifically human identity, therefore, among other things, indifferent to natural and concrete forms of human community as well as to virtue and vice, the extremes of the spectrum within which human life takes place.

Cited authors

Kojève Alexandre