Philosophy as juris-fiction

This article proposes that the "philosophy of right" deserves deconstruction at the juncture of philosophy and the politics of the state. It maintains the thesis that Jean‐Luc Nancy is correct to regard the "philosophy of right" as an unfounded, situationist exercise of "juris‐fictioning", the activity of juridically reading cases as if they were accidents as such that befall the law. It argues that philosophy's inability to provide rationale that justify its own juris‐fictioning renders it vulnerable to influence by political requirements and even confers a vestige of legitimacy on them. This influence reinforces the "theologicopolitics" that support the state and is in turn informed by the values of the "juridico‐commerical" model of contemporary "market democracy". Therefore, on the one hand, philosophy is open to influence by non‐philosophical criteria that endow its notion of rationality with unfounded presuppositions; on the other hand, however, the politics of the state is given an artificial legitimacy through philosophy's inability to provide foundations for juridical rationality. Notes See specifically Nancy Citation1997, pp. 104–108 for a survey of the notion of citizenship as a value of the State that translates the concept of the singular being into that of a common individual. For more detailed presentation of this notion of a social body consisting of atomic individuals, see Nancy Citation1993, p. 75 and Citation1997, p. 104. For a survey of these aspects of Nancy's thought, see B. C. Hutchens' Jean‐Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy, especially chapters 4, 6 and 8. "Ecotechnics" is a term that figures prominently in Nancy's work. In Nancy (Citation2000, pp. 22, 73–74), it is understood to be the circulation of capital and its equivalences that obscures the circulation of sense through the sharings that compose community. More specifically, it is the engendering of technological means that serve as their own ends insofar as they are thus circulated. For a superbly argued criticism of Nancy's reading of the categorical imperative, see James Gilbert‐Walsh's "Broken Imperatives: The Ethical Dimension of Nancy's Thought" in Philosophy and Social Criticism vol. 26(2), pp. 29–50. I have written a response to this entitled "Justice and the Suspension of History in the 'Archi‐Ethics' of Jean‐Luc Nancy" (forthcoming). For a survey of Nancy's view of the incommensurability of self‐measurement and its prerequisite status for a determination of justice, see Nancy Citation1993, pp. 69–72. The general notion is that there is no standard of measure of justice on the grounds that each singular being is incommensurate with its own measure of being. On the contrary, justice is precisely the measure that this incommensurability elicits, that is to say, justice is the address to the incommensurability of each singular being with its own self‐perception, and that is, by extension, precisely what the plurality of singular beings share. For Hegel, the fundamental characteristic of the state as a political entity is the substantial unity, i.e. the ideality, of its moments, a unity in which the "particular powers and their activities are dissolved and yet retained (in the sense of being properly determined by the Idea of the whole". That is to say, such particular activities and agencies of the state are essential moments proper to it alone, as "universal and objective properties". Hegel insists that "sovereignty depends on the fact that the particular functions and powers of the state are not self‐subsistent or firmly grounded either on their own account or in the particular will of the individual functionaries, but have their roots ultimately in the unity of the state as their single self (Hegel Citation1951, pp. 179–180). Hence, the state consists of formal and unitary relations amongst functionaries whose roles and protocols are properly definitive of the state. Yet sovereignty as the "universal thought of this ideality" requires a "subjectivity sure of itself, as the will's abstract and to that extent ungrounded self‐determination in which finality of decision is rooted". Although sovereignty consists of this unitary and ideal focus of ultimate decision, it demands a focus in a single individual, a monarch, not in individuality in general (Hegel Citation1951, p. 181). Devoid of personality, the monarch is precisely this individuated being whose personal characteristics are not definitive of the universality of its rule inasmuch it is merely an abstract individual "raised to a certain dignity" by virtue of representing such sovereignty (Hegel Citation1951, p. 184). The clemency of the sovereign is vital to an understanding of how the monarch stands above and is able to suspend the typical operations of the state. Sovereignty, then, does not merely consist of the sovereign's total accountability for the functions of the state, but in the fact that it is always already endowed with the ability potentially to suspend such functions. "The sovereign is entrusted with the salvation of the state at the sacrifice of these particular authorities whose powers are valid at other times, and it is then that that ideality comes into its proper actuality" (Hegel Citation1951, p. 181)

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• Hegel's Philosophy of Right

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Sir Thomas Malcolm Knox et al.•Philosophy of Right•1952

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