Captives of sovereignty / Jonathan Havercroft.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part I; 1 A picture holds us captive; Introduction; The normative critique of sovereignty; Arendt; Foucault; Agamben; Hardt and Negri; The limitations of the normative critique of sovereignty; The architectonic critique of sovereignty; The world state; Neo-feudalism; State-centric; The persistence of sovereignty; Conclusion; 2 Sovereignty, judgment, and epistemic skepticism; Skepticism; Epistemological skepticism in Hobbes and Spinoza; Spinoza; Hobbes; Skepticism and sovereignty; 3 Sovereignty, language, and ethical skepticism

Hobbes and the struggle against paradiastoleSpinoza; Conclusion; 4 Sovereignty, religious skepticism, and the theological-political problem; Hobbes on sovereignty and ecclesiastical authority; Debates over worship; Meaning of scripture; Miracles; Ecclesiastical power; Spinoza, skepticism, superstition, and sovereignty; Conclusion; Part II; Introduction to Part II; 5 Political authority and skepticism; Introduction; How skepticism constitutes sovereignty; The authority of the "human group as such"; Conclusion; 6 Authority, criteria, and the new social contract; Certainty without sovereignty

The limits of popular sovereigntyPopular sovereignty as procedure; Conclusion; 7 The claim of global community; Skepticism and the security dilemma; Skepticism and the other minds problem; International ethics; Conclusion; Conclusion: authority without supremacy, community with contestation; Another world is present; Community with contestation; Authority without supremacy; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index;

A picture of sovereignty holds the study of politics captive. Captives of Sovereignty looks at the historical origins of this picture of politics, critiques its philosophical assumptions and offers a way to move contemporary critiques of sovereignty beyond their current impasse. The first part of the book is diagnostic. Why, despite their best efforts to critique sovereignty, do political scientists who are dissatisfied with the concept continue to reproduce the logic of sovereignty in their thinking? Havercroft draws on the writings of Hobbes and Spinoza to argue that theories of sovereignty are produced and reproduced in response to skepticism. The second part of the book draws on contemporary critiques of skeptical arguments by Wittgenstein and Cavell to argue that their alternative way of responding to skepticism avoids the need to invoke a sovereign as the final arbiter of all political disputes.