Sovereignty God, State, and Self

by Elshtain, Jean Bethke

• ISBN13: 9780465028566
• ISBN10: 046502856X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-03
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

Throughout the history of human intellectual endeavor, sovereignty has cut across the diverse realms of theology, political thought, and psychology. From earliest Christian worship to the revolutionary ideas of Thomas Jefferson and Karl Marx, the debates about sovereignty-complete independence and self-government-have dominated our history. In this seminal work of political history and political theory, leading scholar and public intellectual Jean Bethke Elshtain examines the origins and meanings of ;sovereignty ; as it relates to all the ways we attempt to explain our world: God, state, and self. Examining the early modern ideas of God which formed the basis for the modern sovereign state, Elshtain carries her research from theology and philosophy into psychology, showing that political theories of state sovereignty fuel contemporary understandings of sovereignty of the self. As the basis of sovereign power shifts from God, to the state, to the self, Elshtain uncovers startling realities often hidden from view. Her thesis consists in nothing less than a thorough-going rethinking of our intellectual history through its keystone concept. The culmination of over thirty years of critically applauded work in feminism, international relations, political thought, and religion, Sovereigntyopens new ground for our understanding of our own culture, its past, present, and future.

Author Biography

Jean Bethke Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago. The author of over four hundred essays and the books Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy and Just War Against Terror, she lives in Nashville and Chicago.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Sovereign God: From Logos to Will	p. 1
Sovereign God: Bound or Unbound	p. 29
Will, Power, and Earthly Dominion	p. 57
The Sovereign State Unchained	p. 77
The Binding and Loosing of Sovereign States	p. 91
Binding, Loosing, and Revolution	p. 119
Unbinding Revolution, Binding Constitution	p. 137
The Creation of the Sovereign Self	p. 159
Self-Sovereignty: Moralism, Nihilism, and Existential Isolation	p. 181
The Sovereign Self: Dreams of Radical Transcendence	p. 203
The Less-Than-Sovereign Self and the Human Future	p. 227
Afterword	p. 247
Acknowledgments	p. 249
Notes	p. 251
Index	p. 321
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