Państwo jako Kunstwerk
A State as Kunstwerk

The Concept of Sovereignty and Other Components of the Modern State Order. A Hermeneutic Analysis of the Product of (Western) European Rationalism in Politics (Part 1)

Summary/Abstract: This article presents the modern state as a specific, rational, political structure, characteristic of its era. Rationality here means that this structure has an ideological dimension and meets the essential social functions. It also implies that this structure, i.e., a state, is a human invention, a result of their conscious and purposeful activity and as such it constitutes a set of specific, logically interrelated components. The basic component is sovereign power. This is a new kind of power, because it is constitutive for a state; the power creates the state and is not, contrary to what it was in the past, determined by the system. This power, moreover, is not simply an existing entity; it is a sort of energy that is fulfilled in the order it creates and in which it only becomes fully what it is: an instance of sovereignty. The basic dimension of power is ruling. The ruling entity, its political action, the spatial nature of the created order, its boundaries and all realms of statehood are components of one logically structured whole, which is emerging in modern history. It is applied and multiplied as a model of political rationality, thus converting the recent Respublica Christiana into a Europe of nation-states.

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