Sovereignty : An Inquiry into the Political Good

by De Jouvenel, Bertrand

• ISBN13: 9780865971738
• ISBN10: 0865971730
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-03-01
• Publisher: Liberty Fund

Summary

"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"

Table of Contents

Foreword	xv
Preface	xxiii
Translator's Note	xxvii
Introduction	1	(2)
The Who and the What	3	(2)
The primordial character of the problem of who decides	5	(3)
Has the question of what is a good act of government become otiose under democracy?	8	(2)
Suppose the problem of the What is insoluble	10	(2)
The dangers of an avowedly normative approach	12	(5)
PART I. AUTHORITY
The Essence of Politics	17	(14)
Authority	31	(17)
The model of the voluntary association	31	(3)
The model of domination imposed from without	34	(1)
Definition of authority	35	(1)
Virtues of authority	36	(2)
Origin of sovereigns	38	(2)
The various kinds of associations	40	(1)
The surety	41	(2)
Authority and metaphor	43	(3)
The lightning conductor	46	(1)
Authority and the social tie	47	(1)
The Office of Leadership and the Office of Adjustment	48	(19)
The bridge of Arcola and the oak of Vincennes	48	(1)
The fixity of the frame	49	(3)
The crown	52	(2)
Rex and Augur	54	(4)
The lesson of Bathsheba	58	(3)
The stabiliser	61	(4)
A principle of classification?	65	(2)
The Group	67	(17)
The hearth	69	(2)
The milieu of existence	71	(3)
The team of action	74	(3)
The man of the project	77	(1)
The master builder	78	(2)
The psychological angle	80	(1)
Militiae and domi	81	(3)
Of the Relations Between Authorities	84	(19)
Natural, institutional, and constraining authority	85	(2)
Various forms of the imperative	87	(2)
The link with authority	89	(2)
The link with authority is not a legal tie	91	(1)
Are men inconstant as regards authorities?	92	(1)
The weakness of the sovereign	93	(1)
``The peers,''	94	(1)
Those going up and those going down	95	(3)
The great sergeant-major	98	(2)
The sovereign and legal persons	100	(3)
PART II. THE POLITICAL GOOD
Of Benevolence in the Sovereign Will	103	(22)
The absolutism of the sovereign will	105	(3)
That the change of incumbent does not affect the problem of benevolence in the governing will	108	(1)
As to the qualities required in the governing will	109	(3)
The sovereign will generaised	112	(3)
The pair of sovereigns	115	(6)
The moral hold	121	(2)
The will for good and the intelligence	123	(1)
The sovereign and his model	124	(1)
The Problem of the Common Good	125	(22)
First question: is the common good self-evident?	126	(2)
Second question: is the common good entirely subjective?	128	(2)
Third question: is the common good comprised in the good of individuals?	130	(4)
Fourth question: does the common good consist in the social tie itself?	134	(3)
Fifth question: is life in society the institutionalisation of trust?	137	(2)
Sixth question: can the political authority promote social friendship?	139	(3)
Uncertainty is the great principle of disassociation	142	(2)
The problem of obligations in a mobile society	144	(3)
Of Social Friendship	147	(20)
Immobility as a principle	147	(4)
The prison of the corollaries	151	(2)
The common good and the collective social interest	153	(2)
Varieties of social friendship	155	(3)
The inevitable diversity of men	158	(2)
The nostalgia for the small community	160	(3)
Closed society and open social network	163	(4)
Justice	167	(34)
Of what or of whom is justice the attribute?	168	(1)
First conception of justice: respect for rights	169	(2)
Prestige of the preservative notion	171	(2)
Second conception of justice: the perfect order	173	(2)
Should justice be identified with other qualities of social arrangements?	175	(2)
Justice as mere conformity to the rule laid down	177	(2)
The feeling for the just	179	(5)
The notion of relevance	184	(1)
The problems of justice	185	(5)
That resources are fruits and what follows from it	190	(2)
The share-out of the fruits within the team	192	(5)
That it is impossible to establish a just social order	197	(1)
In what does the rule of justice consist?	198	(3)
PART III. THE SOVEREIGN
On the Development of the Idea of the Sovereign Will	201	(21)
That absolute sovereignty is a modern idea	202	(1)
The monopolisation of sovereignty	203	(1)
The ladder of commands	204	(2)
The plenitude of power	206	(2)
The role of parliament in the concentration of authority	208	(4)
Monopolisation is achieved	212	(2)
Various types of superiority distinguished by L'Oyseau	214	(2)
Alliance of bourgeois ownership with the royal power	216	(1)
Description of sovereignty	216	(1)
Nationalism and Majestas	217	(2)
Limits of sovereign power	219	(3)
The Sovereign as Legislator	222	(16)
The concrete advance of power	222	(2)
The advance of the royal prerogative	224	(1)
Absolute sovereignty	225	(2)
Sovereignty as attribute	227	(3)
The sovereign and the law	230	(1)
Justice and will	231	(2)
Why did will come to the front?	233	(1)
Sovereignty in itself	234	(4)
The Theory of the Regulated will and ``Fortunate Powerlessness''	238	(23)
The Ancien Regime rejected the despotic ideas in vogue today	239	(1)
When is the command legitimate?	240	(2)
The practical problem	242	(1)
Needed precautions	243	(1)
The fortunate powerlessness of kings	244	(3)
The regulated will	247	(2)
Vicar of God---and a minor	249	(2)
The absolute and the arbitrary	251	(2)
The two doctrines of resistance to royal arbitrariness	253	(3)
The ``feed-back,''	256	(5)
PART IV. LIBERTY
The Political Consequences of Descartes	261	(18)
Man in general	263	(1)
That every ``idea of man'' is necessarily ambiguous	264	(5)
The Cartesian dichotomy	269	(4)
``The political consequences of Descartes''	273	(1)
Conceiving and understanding	274	(1)
Self-evidence in political theories	275	(1)
The problem of the orchard	276	(1)
Democracy of the understanding	277	(2)
The Political Consequences of Hobbes	279	(20)
The state of society	280	(1)
The nature of man	281	(3)
The institution of the commonwealth	284	(1)
Fear and wisdom	285	(2)
The Diktat	287	(1)
Civil religion	288	(1)
The liberalism of Hobbes	289	(1)
Hobbes, father of political economy	290	(1)
Politics and hedonism	291	(2)
Necessity of political stability in the Hobbesian system	293	(2)
Hobbesian man and the citizen	295	(1)
The lesson of Hobbes	296	(3)
Liberty	299	(35)
``The chains,''	299	(2)
Liberty as power: the classical definition	301	(2)
Liberty as a truncated circle	303	(3)
Liberty as means	306	(3)
Means as social grants	309	(2)
How liberty loses any common meaning	311	(3)
Liberty as dignity: ``No Man Is an Iland,''	314	(2)
On obligations	316	(2)
The free man as volunteer	318	(1)
Libertarian harmony	319	(2)
Of arbitrariness in laws	321	(2)
The internal tension within the individual	323	(2)
Liberty as participation and as isolation	325	(3)
Babylon and Icaria	328	(6)
Liberty of Opinion and Natural Light	334	(23)
What is called liberty of opinion is a free clash of opinions	335	(1)
The historical origins	336	(3)
Opinions and behaviours	339	(1)
The postulate of convergence	340	(4)
The postulate of divergence	344	(4)
The principle of dispersion	348	(1)
That moral relativism cannot lead to toleration	349	(2)
Panorama	351	(4)
Generating lines of various social philosophies	355	(2)
CONCLUSION	357	(12)
Political authorities not the sole subject of Political Science	358	(2)
The Rule of Law: what it means	360	(1)
The initiative: where it lies	361	(1)
The opportunity to generate a group	362	(1)
Rex: the stabiliser	363	(1)
State action: a companion to individual initiative	364	(1)
The unfreedom of government	365	(2)
The character of Political Science	367	(2)
Index	369