On Elshtain’s Sovereignty: God, State, and Self
Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Sovereignty: God, State, and Self articulates a brilliant interdisciplinary approach to the notion of sovereignty throughout its shifts in meaning and application to arrive at our modern understanding. This complex thought-project sheds light on how conceptions of sovereignty are woven into social formations to manifest themselves in political modernity and conceptualization of the self, sometimes in less articulated ways. Elshtain draws out these articulations and links them philosophically to influential scholars such as St. Augustine, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Machiavelli, Calvin, Rousseau, Schmitt and more. This work provides an elegant response to questions relating to the historical influences that shape today’s political institutions and seeks to reconnect the modern, secularized political arena to roots in theology.
Elshtain begins her exploration with a task to consider God’s sovereignty “as the nature of divine power and authority”, thus the philosophical origin of all power relations and the foundation wherein the negotiation of respective authority takes place after the Fall removed humanity from direct dominion of God’s intervention. It is from God that we see a broad, absolute concept of power. The first section follows an episodic history of philosophy through the emergence of an authority that is subject “divine reason” for the aim of common good. Elshtain explores the parallels notions of the natural law separate from the juridical law to patterns a trajectory moulding what would become the eventual, authoritative sovereign state. The sovereign state emerges as an unbound, monistic authority to be challenged by binding or loosing limits to power which make up counter positions. One example explores ramifications of John Locke’s “potentia ordinata - natural law tradition” as an effective strategy to bind sovereign powers and subjugate monarchical powers under an absolute law that supersedes “divine right”. When placed within historical context, resistance positions offer negotiated spaces wherein to observe the embedded nature of the existent structure of understood sovereignty at given times and some of the problems that have been tied to these structures.
In the subsequent sections, Elshtain posits a furthering of this discussion as a “streamlined version of her thesis” positing that “as sovereign state is to sovereign God, so sovereign selves are to sovereign states.” Thus moving beyond the discussion of the structural authority of the state towards an emerging historical conceptualization of self-sovereignty and autonomous will. Elshtain’s discussion considers embodiment, Cartensian rationalism, the work of Immanuel Kant, and Charles Taylor’s excarnation, Simone De Beauvoir, and Nietzche’s unconstrained, unbound self. Elshtain’s sovereign-self (in all forms - strong and weak) encounters problematization as well which she demonstrates in argumentation based in modern controversial topics relating to the subordination of particular wills; specifically those of the unborn, disabled, or otherwise disempowered. Herein Elshtain ties pitfalls of the concept of self to the biological projects of the historical Nazi regime as a consequential outcome of self-soveignty outside of moral authority. Bonhoeffer’s ethics provide support for alternatives to the problems elucidated in this section suggesting a “‘relative freedom’ not an absolute freedom, in natural life”. This philosophy may, indeed, lay the groundwork for a third path; with sovereignty conceptualized as a responsibility with limits, without fully autonomous liberation from society but an intrinsic social-situatedness that rejects polarized political dichotomies. The author’s goal suggests a return to a truly Augustinian commonwealth constituted of, “a multitude of rational beings united by a common agreement on the objects of their love.”
The strengths of Elshtain’s interdisciplinary nature truly shine in this broad intellectual history of sovereignty and bridge the widening chasm between secular political philosophy and its theological roots. This allows the reader to appropriately link the historically-situated knowledges of modern concepts of sovereignty, the state, and the self to their origin. In this regard, Elshtain has succeeded miraculously. Though Elshtain takes critique of Nietzche in the text, his work inspired similar attempts to trace shifts in conceptual meaning through poststructuralism, specifically through the works of Foucault. One obvious distinction lies in the causal mechanism. Foucault found that discourse was formative and linked materializations of institutions and the concepts that give them authority to underlying power-knowledge regimes. In doing so, Foucault acknowledged a multidirectional societal fabric wherein shifts in meaning can be attached to histories and forces that reinforce the things that operate as “givens” in the world. When a power-motivated causal mechanism is applied to the understanding of sovereignty it allows for new questions to arise that challenge the somewhat monolithic perspectives of Elshtain. In this regard, philosophy, for all of its value, simply cannot be put forth at the sole process shaping conceptual sovereignty. Certainly, there are discourses wherein normative values have shifted based on economic forces (to provide one example). Economic considerations are notably absent in the discussions of the text that examine “radical” feminism, abortion, or even the French revolution. Beheading the king may have philosophically served a purpose of “destroying the embodied link to the deity” in analysis, however, it was not the singular motivation, aim, or outcome of this act. While Elshtain's considerations are compelling, there is a pluralistic space that must be more thoroughly considered before concepts can be used to substantiate any extremist line from self-sovereignty and secular humanism that leads directly to abortion and Nazis.
Elshtain suggests a return to a political philosophy that in many ways is dependent on theology while critiquing the fracturing of modernity she traces to historical shifts, each fracture being linked to a new representation or interpretation. Strangely, we find a defense of American exceptionalism in this text that eludes the pitfalls of other institutional formations and “imbalanced versions of sovereignty in old Europe”. Perhaps it is somewhat perplexing then to find individualism, capitalism, wealth inequality, pluralism, and modernity so entrenched in this particular approved culture that ensures a right to abortions and executes criminals in ways that are not tolerated in places like Germany. The American experiment does not seem to warrant a position outside of Elshtain’s criticisms.
Certainly, Elshtain’s assertion that a relational, Thomist philosophy would provide a more stable conceptualization of what is sovereign and shape the modern political state as well as the responsible self. Sovereignty: God, State, and Self excels at this goal and sets Jean Bethke Elshtain apart from modern political theorists by drawing in her vast knowledge of Augustinian theology. Her prior scholarly oeuvre relating to feminism enlighten her passages dealing with this topic and give credibility to the example therein that is not fully expounded upon in this particular work. The theme of sovereignty is of contemporary importance as society navigates through a postmodern world defining itself in new ways while continually responding to the challenges and biases of history. This text reveals the divisions that must be bridged between our past before we can aspire to move beyond them. Though not utilized in the text, Elshtain’s genealogical exploration itself reveals the entanglements of these concepts in a way that may allow us to transcend dualistic notions of sovereignty and self will all together, moving out of a structural discourse and toward a conceptualization that transcends historical entanglement.
Elshtain, J. B. (2008). Sovereignty: God, State, and Self. New York: Basic Books.
