Nature, Sovereignty, Government (Spinoza, Rousseau)

In Hobbes’s wake, Spinoza is shown to demonstrate an affinity between democracy and the immediately pre-political state of nature and is credited with an insight into the essentially failing structure of sovereignty in general. After a brief analysis of Kant, the importance of the transitional moment from nature to politics is pursued in Rousseau, who explicitly brings out the implication of language in this transition. Rousseau’s own notion of sovereignty as inherently collective is explored, and it is shown that that sovereignty must rely on at least two originary supplements in order to have a chance of being in fact sovereign. The first supplement, the legislator, has been discussed at length elsewhere: this chapter focuses on the second, namely government, and it is again stressed that the formation of any government in Rousseau’s account again involves a moment of proto-democracy. It is shown how in Rousseau this government, without which the sovereign would not be sovereign, inevitably ends up usurping the sovereignty it supposedly allows for and supports.