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1、6 German Law Journal No. 1 (1 January 2005) - Derrida and Foucault On Sovereigntyhttp:/ version | pdf-VersionA. A Certain SovereigntyIn his final publication Derrida argues for a rather wide notion of the concept of sovereignty. Sovereigns are not only public officers and dignitaries, or those who i
2、nvest them with sovereign power we all are sovereigns, without exception, insofar the sovereign function is nothing but the rationale of all metaphysics, anchored in a certain capability, in the ability to do something, in a power or potency that transfers and realizes itself, that shows itself in p
3、ossession, property, the power or authority of the master, be it the master of the house or in the city or state, despot, be it the master over himself, and thus master over his passions which have to be mastered just like the many-headed mass in the political arena. Derrida thinks the sovereign wit
4、h Aristotle: the prima causa, the unmoved mover. It has been often remarked that philosophy here openly reveals itself as political theology. Derrida thus refers to the famous lines of the Iliad1, where Ulysses warns of the sovereignty of the many: it is not well that there should be many masters; o
5、ne man must be supreme one king to whom the son of scheming Saturn has given the scepter of sovereignty over you all.2This means that all metaphysics is grounded on a political imperative that prohibits the sovereignty of the many in favor of the one cause, the one being, the arche (both cause and s
6、overeignty), the one principle and princeps, of the One in the first place. The cause and the principle are representations of the function of the King in the discourse of metaphysics. Derrida, however, does not only describe the metaphysical overstepping of the boundaries of a political category; a
7、s a metaphysical category, sovereignty encroaches on life, insofar it nominates a power, potency or capability that is found in every I can the pse of the ipse (ipsissimus)3. This power does not only refer to individuals, insofar they are politically active, i.e. as public active agencies or as sove
8、reign pouvoir constituant, but also refers to all which individuals can actually do, without being forced from the outside. A soon as they are not only subjected to a causality, but on their part turn into a spontaneous cause of subsequent actions, they exhibit a certain sovereignty. Thus understood
9、, sovereignty is mere liberty, that is, the authority or power, to do as one pleases: to decide, to choose, to determine oneself, to decide on oneself, to be master, and in particular master of oneself (autos, ipse). No liberty without selfhood, and no selfhood without liberty, vice versa. And thus
10、a certain sovereignty.4 Nothing and nobody can escape a sovereignty thus understood, not even deconstruction, the unending challenge of which, as Derrida once again makes unmistakably clear, was to disassociate itself time and again from a sovereignty with which in the last resort it was to inevitab
11、ly coincide. Even there, where it seems to be impossible, deconstruction has to distinguish between on the one hand, the compulsion or self-implementation of sovereignty (which is also and no less the one of selfhood itself, of the same, the self that one is , the selfhood, which comprises as etymol
12、ogy would affirm the androcentric power position of the landlord, the sovereign power of master, father, or husband ) and on the other hand the posit of unconditionality, which one can find in the critical and (please permit me the word) deconstructive claim for reason alike. Insofar deconstruction
13、claims to be an unconditional rationalism, it is thus being haunted by what Derrida has called the sovereignty drive. 5B. Sovereignty and DemocracyI would like to pose an objection here. The rather limited political value of Derridas theory of sovereignty for me seems to lie in its hasty generalizat
14、ion. There is in Derrida no real history of sovereignty, but merely an initial onto-theological determination which cannot be modified or thwarted by a historical event, since historical differences can play themselves out only in the framework opened up by the initial metaphysical determination. De
15、rrida defines sovereignty as metaphysical and is thus able to carry out its critique as another variant of the deconstruction of the metaphysical heritage. All the historical analyses which Derrida also commences, can thus only confirm what was certain from the very beginning. However, thus they tur
16、n out to be mere illustrations of a particular definition, which on its part is not accessible to a historical relativization. All that can happen to sovereignty in the narrower political sense is, according to such a metaphysical analysis, to be transferred and, in the case of democracy, to possibly return to its origin after the expiration of a time li
