Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good

by Bertrand de Jouvenel

Overview

Who decides? Who is the Sovereign? What is a good act? In quest of answers to these vitally important questions, Bertrand de Jouvenel examines successively the nature and history of authority, the political good, the sovereign, and liberty. His concern is with “the prospects for individual liberty in democratic societies in which sovereignty purportedly resides in the whole people of the body politic.” His objective is a definition and understanding of “the canons of conduct for the public authority of a dynamic society.”

Daniel J. Mahoney is Associate Professor of Politics at Assumption College.

David DesRosiers is Executive Vice President at the Manhattan Institute.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780865971738
Publisher:	Liberty Fund, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/30/1998
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	979,574
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

FOREWORD xv

PREFACE xxiii

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE xxvii

INTRODUCTION 1
The Who and the What, 3. The primordial character of the problem of who decides, 5. Has the question of what is a good act of government become otiose under democracy? 8. Suppose the problem of the What is insoluble, 10 The dangers of an avowedly normative approach, 12.

PART I. AUTHORITY

1.THE ESSENCE OF POLITICS 17

2. AUTHORITY 31
The model of the voluntary association, 31. The model of domination imposed from without, 34. Definition of authority, 35. Virtues of authority, 36. Origin of sovereigns, 38. The various kinds of associations, 40. The surety, 41. Authority and metaphor, 43. The lightning conductor, 46. Authority and the social tie, 47.

3. THE OFFICE OF LEADERSHIP AND THE OFFICE OF ADJUSTMENT 48
The bridge of Arcola and the oak of Vincennes, 48. The fixity of the frame, 49. The crown, 52. Rex and Augur, 54. The lesson of Bathsheba, 58. The stabiliser, 61. A principle of classification? 65.

4. THE GROUP 67
The hearth, 69. The milieu of existence, 71. The team of action, 74. The man of the project, 77. The master builder, 78. The psychological angle, 80. Militiae and domi, 81.

5. OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN AUTHORITIES 84
Natural, institutional, and constraining authority, 85. Various forms of the imperative, 87. The link with authority, 89. The link with authority is not a legal tie, 91. Are men inconstant as regards authorities? 92. The weakness of the sovereign, 93. "The peers," 94. Those going up and those going down, 95. The great sergeant-major, 98. The sovereign and legal persons, 100.

PART II. THE POLITICAL GOOD

6. OF BENEVOLENCE IN THE SOVEREIGN WILL 103
The absolutism of the sovereign will, 105. That the change of incumbent does not affect the problem of benevolence in the governing will, 108. As to the qualities required in the governing will, 109. The sovereign will generalised, 112. The pair of sovereigns, 115. The moral hold, 121. The will for good and the intelligence, 123. The sovereign and his model, 124.

7. THE PROBLEM OF THE COMMON GOOD 125
First question: is the common good self-evident? 126. Second question: is the common good entirely subjective? 128. Third question: is the common good comprised in the good of individuals? 130. Fourth question: does the common good consist in the social tie itself? 134. Fifth question: is life in society the institutionalisation of trust? 137. Sixth question: can the political authority promote social friendship? 139. Uncertainty is the great principle of disassociation, 142. The problem of obligations in a mobile society, 144.

8.OF SOCIAL FRIENDSHIP 147
Immobility as a principle, 147. The prison of the corollaries, 151. The common good and the collective social interest, 153. Varieties of social friendship, 155. The inevitable diversity of men, 158. The nostalgia for the small community, 160. Closed society and open social network, 163.

9. JUSTICE 167
Of what or of whom is justice the attribute? 168. First conception of justice: respect for rights, 169. Prestige of the preservative notion, 171. Second conception of justice: the perfect order, 173. Should justice be identified with other qualities of social arrangements? 175. Justice as mere conformity to the rule laid down, 177. The feeling for the just, 179. The notion of relevance, 184. The problems of justice, 185. That resources are fruits and what follows from it, 190. The share-out of the fruits within the team, 192. That it is impossible to establish a just social order, 197. In what does the rule of justice consist? 198.

PART III. THE SOVEREIGN

10. ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA OF THE SOVEREIGN WILL 201
That absolute sovereignty is a modern idea, 202. The monopolisation of sovereignty, 203. The ladder of commands, 204. The plenitude of power, 206. The role of parliament in the concentration of authority, 208. Monopolisation is achieved, 212. Various types of superiority distinguished by L'Oyseau, 214. Alliance of bourgeois ownership with the royal power, 216. Description of sovereignty, 216. Nationalism and Majestas, 217. Limits of sovereign power, 219.

11. THE SOVEREIGN AS LEGISLATOR 222
The concrete advance of power, 222. The advance of the royal prerogative, 224. Absolute sovereignty, 225. Sovereignty as attribute, 227. The sovereign and the law, 230. Justice and will, 231. Why did will come to the front? 233. Sovereignty in itself, 234.

12. THE THEORY OF THE REGULATED WILL AND "FORTUNATE POWERLESSNESS" 238
The Ancien Régime rejected the despotic ideas in vogue today, 239. When is the command legitimate? 240. The practical problem, 242. Needed precautions, 243. The fortunate powerlessness of kings, 244. The regulated will, 247. Vicar of God—and a minor, 249. The absolute and the arbitrary, 251. The two doctrines of resistance to royal arbitrariness, 253. The "feed-back,' 256.

PART IV. LIBERTY

13. THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF DESCARTES 261
Man in general, 263. That every "idea of man' is necessarily ambiguous, 264. The Cartesian dichotomy, 269. "The political consequences of Descartes,' 273. Conceiving and understanding, 274. Self-evidence in political theories, 275. The problem of the orchard, 276. Democracy of the understanding, 277.

14. THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF HOBBES 279
The state of society, 280. The nature of man, 281. The institution of the commonwealth, 284. Fear and wisdom, 285. The Diktat, 287. Civil religion, 288. The liberalism of Hobbes, 289. Hobbes, father of political economy, 290. Politics and hedonism, 291. Necessity of political stability in the Hobbesian system, 293. Hobbesian man and the citizen, 295. The lesson of Hobbes, 296.

15. LIBERTY 299
"The chains," 299. I. Liberty as power: the classical definition, 301. Liberty as a truncated circle, 303. Liberty as means, 306. Means as social grants, 309. How liberty loses any common meaning, 311. II. Liberty as dignity: "No Man Is an Iland," 314. On obligations, 316. The free man as volunteer, 318. Libertarian harmony, 319. Of arbitrariness in laws, 321. The internal tension within the individual, 323. Liberty as participation and as isolation, 325. Babylon and Icaria, 328.

16. LIBERTY OF OPINION AND NATURAL LIGHT 334
What is called liberty of opinion is a free clash of opinions, 335. The historical origins, 336. Opinions and behaviours, 339. The postulate of convergence, 340. The postulate of divergence, 344. The principle of dispersion, 348. That moral relativism cannot lead to toleration, 349. Panorama, 351. Generating lines of various social philosophies, 355.

CONCLUSION 357
Political authorities not the sole subject of Political Science, 358. The Rule of Law: what it means, 360. The initiative: where it lies, 361. The opportunity to generate a group, 362. Rex: the stabiliser, 363. State action: a companion to individual initiative, 364. The unfreedom of government, 365. The character of Political Science, 367.

INDEX 369