Philosophy

Earthly Plenitudes Gulli, Bruno

Published by Temple University Press

Gulli, Bruno. Earthly Plenitudes. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/.

For additional information about this book

Access provided by Kingsborough Community College (12 Jul 2018 05:24 GMT)

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/9586

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels’s famous description of the communal society to come is built on the absence of sovereignty— an absence that is the presence of a new essential diff erence. Th ey say: In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antago- nisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all. (1994: 176)

Th e free development of each individual, the free development of all, their dialogical and dialectical relationship, can only be understood outside of the logic of domination, the logic of sovereignty, underlying all history (with some possible exceptions), and certainly (and specifi cally) the history of capi- talist societies. Here the sovereignty of capital over labor becomes the omni- present form of violence and domination, but it also engenders a po liti cal struggle, the class struggle at every point of everyday life. Th e free develop- ment of each is not an end in itself, as it would be in a theory of individual- ism, nor is it simply a means used in the construction of an abstract concept of society— a means whereby the individual would ultimately be crushed. At the same time, the free development of all is not a generality and an abstrac- tion. Th ese “all” to freely develop do so on the basis of the free development of “each,” not the other way around— also because, as Aristotle says, “ ‘all’ is ambiguous” (1998: 1261b19– 20), and its reality and disambiguation lie in the “each.” Moreover, the other way around would entail the structure of a

C h a p t e r O n e

Singularity or the Dignity of Individuation

w Th e singularity of a thing is no impediment to the abstraction of a common concept.

—John Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings

4 C H A P T E R 1

closed society, a “totalitarianism,” which is completely foreign to Marxian thought, although often ascribed to it because of the century of failed at- tempts at revolutionizing human society. Th e relationship between “each” and “all” is not the relationship between individuality and generality, but rather that between singularity and universality.1 It is then important to understand the philosophical nature of this “each,” that is, not simply what it is to be an individual, but rather the ontology of individuation, the consti- tution of the singular, which, because of its deep structure of commonality, universality, and plurality, makes an association possible. To guide our anal- ysis will not be the concept of the exception, which must rather be refused by a po liti cal ontology of individuation intending to be a critique of all forms of sovereignty. To guide our analysis will be, instead, the thisness of everyday life, the constant and various individuation of the most common, its con- stant movement, its plurality, its diff erence and identity— identity with itself and with the most common, diff erence from the most common and from any other; identity with any other and profound diff erence from itself. Th e most important aspect is the absence of any hierarchical structure of domination, the notion of sovereignty. I call this singularity, or the dignity of individuation.

On the one hand, one could take singularity, as it relates to the concept of “person,” in the characteristically medieval sense of the word, shared by both Th omas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus (despite their diff erence as to the role of the will), as the ability to master one’s own acts.2 Th is would replace the concept of sovereignty, perhaps displacing it into that of subjectivity, as it happens in Bataille (see Chapter 3).3 However, the concept of “person,” or “individual,” can serve only as an introduction to the real and more funda- mental meaning of the dignity of individuation, for the dignity of the indi- vidual, its singularity, as Jean- Luc Nancy (2000) shows, is the translation into “one” (“me” or “you,” etc.) of more original and originary singularities (in this sense, see the remark on Jean- Luc Nancy, below). And even the abil- ity to master one’s own acts is what comes to “one” from what is not one, but any this, many thises. But the notion runs into diffi culties when it faces the reality of dis- ability (I return to this in Chapter 5). Th us, to replace sover- eignty will not be subjectivity, the sovereign individual, but something other than this.

On the other hand, singularity as the dignity of individuation can be understood as the translation into po liti cal ontology of the metaphysical principle of individuation.4 With its long history from Greek philosophy (for instance, Aristotle’s tode ti, “this”) to Duns Scotus’s haecceitas, “thisness,” to Leibniz’s individual substance and simple individual substance or monad and beyond, the principle of individuation is still one of the richest and most

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 5

problematic concepts not only of metaphysics, but also, particularly today, of ethics, of psychology, and even of po liti cal ontology. Th is is shown, for instance, by Giorgo Agamben’s use of it, in the form of any this, or to use Agamben’s own expression, what ever, in Th e Coming Community (pp. 17– 20). Th e translation I am proposing intends to add to it a stronger ethical and po liti cal connotation and to make it particularly useful in the context of a critique of the concept of sovereignty from the viewpoint of a radical ontol- ogy of labor. Th is is, fundamentally, the notion of a labor liberated from all forms of domination. It names the certitude of its ontological, social, and historical importance, the notion that each and all of its instantiations, of its expenditures, contribute to the free development of a genuinely and com- monly wealthier world— an idea of justice, if there is one— of po liti cal and social justice. Th is is what in Labor of Fire (2005) I called the solitude of labor, that is, the return of labor to itself, to its immediacy. But what must be said now is that speaking of labor entails no reductio ad unum. It is, to use the meta phor with which Deleuze (1994: 35) illustrates Duns Scotus’s concept of univocity, a clamor raised in our case not by a single voice, but by many voices, the many labors, the many activities, the singularities of all doing(s). “Solitude,” which I use in Labor of Fire, means autonomy from the form and content of capital, but it does not name the condition of being one, alone, in de pen dent.5

Remark: Nancy on Being- With

In Being Singular Plural, Jean- Luc Nancy says that the human being “is nothing other than the idea of a ‘value in itself ’ or a ‘dignity’ ” (p. 74). Arguing for the concept of being- with as constitutive of Being, Nancy points out the necessary simultaneity of the singular and the plural in the human condition. He says:

If “humanity” must be worth of something, or if Being in general must “be worth of something” under the heading “humanity,” this can only be by “being valuable” singularly and, simultaneously, in “being valuable” by and for and with the plural that such singularity im- plies, just as it implies the fact of “value” in itself. (Ibid.)

Singularity is here understood not as individuality, but as “the punctual- ity of a ‘with’ ” (p. 85). It is the eff ect of the spacing, the dis- position, a “be- tween” (pp. 19, 27), which seems to constitute the only ontological ground (if an ontology is still needed), for Being as such is dismissed (pp. 76– 77).

6 C H A P T E R 1

Th e individual itself is “an intersection of singularities” (p. 85). Th us, “dig- nity” is not to be found, fi rst and foremost, in the individual, but in the distance, the distinction, the ipseity, or the punctuality of any this. It is that “Self ” that Nancy sees as more originary than, as well as the condition of, “me” and “you,” and “we” and “they.” It must be understood as the “as” of Being (for Being is always being- as), equal to “what ex- ists as such” (p. 95). Th ere is here an essential rethinking of the categories of individual, person, and subject. Nancy stays away from both subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and thus he arrives at something that constitutes the condition of both: the “plurality of origins.” However, speaking of origins for Nancy does not en- tail any notion of “anteriority”: “co- originarity is the most general structure of all con- sistency, all con- stitution, and all con- sciousness” (p. 40). I think that this is essential to what I try to conceptualize with the expression of dignity of individuation. Th is dignity is not in “one,” for the simple fact that “one” is not one; “one” becomes one, and it is in this becoming, the individu- ating pro cess, that the dignity resides. Th is means that dignity is not a fea- ture to be recognized at the point of arrival, at the end of a pro cess, and as the result of that pro cess (this may be the case only with the dubious dignity of dignitaries), but rather at the points of departure. It is not after the con- stitution that dignity appears, but in the constituting moments. Nancy says this very well when, speaking of the “plurality of origins,” he says that “each being belongs to the (authentic) origin, each is originary . . . and each is original” (p. 83). Th e only problem I have with Nancy’s discussion, and I say more about this below, is his repudiation of commonality and universality.

Justice and the Dignity of Individuation

I am aware that in speaking here of justice I gloss over many important ques- tions.6 Nancy, for instance, sees a possible focus on justice as a type of resig- nation to “a weak, instrumental, and slavishly humanist thinking” (p. 133). Th is is certainly the case when justice is understood as a strictly juridical concept, that is, when it is reduced to a system of laws and to the necessity of obeying the law. However, when justice is understood as an ethical and politico- ontological concept, when, for instance, it “decides what is just” (Aristotle1998: 1253a38), not what the law determines of it, then the situa- tion is diff erent. In this case, justice is a common and univocal concept, as Leibniz shows (see below). Even beyond the ethical and po liti cal defi nitions of it, even “beyond justice,” to use Agnes Heller’s expression and book title, one fi nds justice— for what is goodness, the good life, if not justice itself? In

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 7

her teleological account, Heller says that the good life is “the goal of justice” and is, consequently, “beyond justice” (p. 326; Heller’s emphasis). Here the instrumental nature of justice is evident. I do not wish to deny the moment of instrumentality necessarily (but only to a degree) attached to justice, but I would argue that, in the case of justice, the means equals the end. Th is is to say that true justice, both ontologically and ethically speaking, is the same as the good life.

Th e focus of this chapter is on the dignity of individuation. But one of the functions of this concept is precisely to recast the concept of justice, to reap- propriate it in ways that might be more useful today. Th e conceptual reality addressed by the dignity of individuation is not new. “Dignity” is a central concept in practical philosophy (notably, Kant) and in po liti cal praxis (for instance, with the Zapatista movement), in the North and the South of the world. And “individuation” is one of the essential concepts of ontology. What I am proposing is not the crude combination of two concepts into one. Rather, what I am wording as “dignity of individuation” is the common fact of exis- tence, the fact of singularity, the time and space of each occurrence. It is common (and plural, in Nancy’s sense) because it knows no exception, no extraordinary event. Th e concept of dignity, that of value, cannot be applied only to humanity (because of the obvious danger that this would entail— e.g., that if a group of people is construed as “less than human,” typically, “the enemy,” then dignity is not applicable). It might be that, as Sartre says, “man has a greater dignity than a stone or a table” (1985: 16). However, value and dignity must be generalized, applied, for instance, to Brother Fire and Sister Earth, as Francis of Assisi sang. It is this “posthumanist” thinking that the concept of dignity of individuation tries to formulate, with evident implications for questions of ecol ogy, which are among the most pressing questions that ontology, ethics, and politics face. Th us justice is not simply an instrument whereby a world in which all things are regarded as having intrinsic dignity and value, that is, a better world, can be brought about. Justice is that world’s very confi guration. In fact, how can social justice be merely instrumental? A means to what end? Th e good life? But how can the good life be diff erent from one in which social justice “reigns”? Certainly, to say this substantively, one has to avoid the easy and dangerous answers of liberalism, which is what Nancy also wants to avoid. Th is means that one has to avoid reducing everything to the individual, its autonomy and liberty. As the editors of a very recent volume on critical disability theory say, “Lib- eralism tends to put great emphasis on the individual, assuming that the self is both sovereign and a foundational unit for analysis” (Pothier and Devlin

8 C H A P T E R 1

2006: 16). In reality, they add, the question as to who is the self, the question of its authenticity, remains very much open.7 We can recall Nancy’s sugges- tion of the “plurality of origins,” and we can also call attention to a certain similarity between Nancy and Heidegger in this respect. In Heidegger, “the selfhood of humanity” (2000: 153) is understood, poetically (p. 154), in terms of the twofold manifestation of deinón (the uncanny, the singular and fright- ening) as the overwhelming power (dikē) that gives order and structure and as violence- doing (technē). Dikē is the Greek word usually translated as “justice,” but for Heidegger it should be translated as “fi ttingness,” that is, ar- rangement and enjoining structure (p. 171). Heidegger says: “Being as dikē is the key to beings in their structure” (p. 177). Th e twofold meaning of deinón as dikē and technē is at work in the very defi nition of the selfhood of human- ity. According to Heidegger:

Th e selfhood of humanity means this: it has to transform the Being that opens itself up to it into history, and thus bring itself to a stand (p. 153).

Th e Being that opens itself up is the overwhelming (dikē), which must be transformed into history by means of technē. However, in contrast to Nancy, he continues:

Selfhood does not mean that humanity is primarily an “I” and an individual. Humanity is not this any more than it is a We and a community. (Ibid.)

Th e idea is then to welcome Heidegger’s suggestion only in part, that is, in- stead of discarding “justice” altogether, it might be fruitful to understand it as what is “fi tting” and “proper” (Ereignis; another important concept of Heidegger’s). Th us understood, the concept of justice also acquires ontologi- cal substance. It is no longer simply a juridical category, nor is it ethical in the sense in which ethics regulates and determines behavior, the sense of the ought; rather, it is ethical in the sense of the plurality of possibilities inscribed in the could modality: it is ethical and ontological at the same time. Simi- larly, speaking of the way in which the proper only returns (i.e., a returning “with”), an idea that I discuss below, Nancy refers to an ontology that “must be both an ethos and a praxis, identically” (2000: 65).

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 9

Commonality and Universality

In po liti cal ontology, the concept of justice can be attained by means of a logic of neither/nor, a negative method that intends to unveil the ontological ground, the ontological structure of the concept. Th e point is not to retreat to a realm of eternal truths— despite my relying on Leibniz at this point— but rather to reach into the plane of universality and commonality. However, the relation of the common and universal to the individual and singular should not be understood as an unbridgeable metaphysical gap between the un- changing forms and the merely empirical, but rather as an “incessant emer- gence” and a constant passing over of the ones into the others (Agamben 1993).8 Indeed, even when the singular is explicitly understood— as it should be— as the singularly plural (see the remark on Nancy, above), the question of its relation to the universal and common remains important. If the plane of the universal and common is forgone, justice remains an empirical con- cept, enmeshed in the ambiguity of the empirically given. As an empirical concept, justice (right) is often simply equated with the law, and its ground is obscured. Unveiling its ontological structure, or rather its ontological movement, is fundamental in the attempt to establish a clear link between labor and sovereignty, showing the uselessness of the latter concept and pre- senting the former, once freed from the yoke of sovereignty, in its universal- ity and commonality as the concept of justice itself, embodying the dignity of individuation, the solidity and plurality of the singular. Th e link between the universal and common to individuation, and thus to the par tic u lar and empirical, makes it possible for us to understand the idea of justice as the eff ect of human doing, of labor, the many labors. In fact, the notion of jus- tice as a system superimposed on the many labors, the subjects of history, is one of the most problematic aspects of po liti cal and ethical theory. What must be recognized is that true justice fl ows with and from labor’s praxis— a doing freed from the regards of external law, following its own laws, and be- ing in touch with the ontological ground, the source of its power. In this sense, the aberrant mode of practices such as the anti- strike laws (the Taylor law in the state of New York, for instance), the law that makes it illegal for sectors of the workforce to say no to the violence and exploitation of capital, becomes apparent. When looked at from this point of view— namely, the view that there is no justice but that which fl ows from labor, for labor is the power constituting the social world— then the question can no longer be one of whose interests are hurt more in a strike against blind and exploitative pro- ductivity, as was the case with the debates around the MTA strike in New York City in December 2005. In substance, it is no longer a legal dispute; it

1 0 C H A P T E R 1

cannot be left to legal arbitration, for the law shows itself to be lacking in universality. It is, instead, a matter of po liti cal ontology, that is, the theory and practice of the production of common life, the good life. Po liti cal ontol- ogy, particularly the theory of labor’s subtraction from all forms of sover- eignty, gives full legitimacy and justifi cation to an action such as an “illegal” strike, for it fi nds in labor’s dignity of individuation (that is, in being what it is, in the immediacy with itself ) the only possible justice.

Universal Justice

Traditionally, the idea of justice associated with labor is distributive justice, the principle of equity, to give to each her due. Th e theory of natural right, Leibniz says, distinguishes among commutative, distributive, and universal justice. It is in distributive justice that

the po liti cal laws of a state belong, which assure the happiness of its subjects and make it possible that those who had a merely moral claim acquire a legal claim; that is, that they become able to demand what it is equitable for others to perform. (Leibniz 1972: 172)

However, this works only in the context of a theory of the state; otherwise, distributive justice presents its problems. Marx’s later slogan “from each ac- cording to his ability, to each according to his needs” qualifi es the principle of distributive justice in ways that have yet to be considered, let alone imple- mented.9 It seems to me that the kind of justice embodied in the doing of labor is not only distributive justice, but also and primarily universal justice, not in the sense of living honestly or piously (as Leibniz also says), but in the more fundamental sense of allowing labor to return to itself, to its immedi- acy and dignity, and thereby build a new world devoid of the separateness always inscribed in the logic of exploitation, domination, and sovereignty— a kingdom of ends without price (see the remark on Kant, below).

Th e Antinomy of Sovereignty

Leibniz’s language is Christian and, notwithstanding his preference for Plato, Aristotelian. Obviously, it has nothing explicit to do with Marxian theory; yet, his discourse, based on the critique of traditional sovereignty and on the common concept of justice, is very useful to a renewal of radical po liti cal theory. When Leibniz goes back to speaking of commutative justice (strict right) and of distributive justice (equity or charity), he says:

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 1 1

Simple or strict right is born of the principle of the conservation of peace; equity or charity strives for something higher—[namely] that while each benefi ts others as much as he can, he may increase his own happiness in that of the other. And, to say in a word, strict right avoids misery, while the higher right tends toward happiness, but only such as is possible in this life. (p. 173)

Obviously, as a believer, Leibniz does not stop here; he goes beyond into the realm of theology. What is important for us is that, even from the point of view of a philosophy of transcendence, he illuminates the realm of imma- nence, the earthly plenitudes, with a discourse that is certainly profoundly moral but has, at the same time, a distinctive po liti cal resonance: no sover- eignty in the realm of immanence; this is, of course, not Leibniz’s explicit teaching, but undeniably it is the direction toward which his teaching points. As it becomes clear when he deals with questions of international law, sover- eignty loses its absolute status and becomes a relative concept. But this is a clear challenge to the concept of sovereignty as such, for, as Alan James notes in traditionally Bodinian and Hobbesian fashion, sovereignty is an “abso- lute . . . condition” (1986: 25). Th us Leibniz’s early critique of sovereignty really points to the necessity of its elimination— and indeed, in the past fi fty years, sovereignty as the power of a state to make its own decision has decid- edly weakened. As Philippe Sands writes, “Notions of sovereignty have changed with growing interdependence. To claim that states are as sovereign today as they were fi fty years ago is to ignore reality” (2005: xvii). Th is is the result of the growing importance of international law, as well as, according to Sands, of the pro cess of globalization made possible by it. Indeed, as Sands says, “international law underpins globalization” (p. 16), and there “would be no globalization without international law” (p. 15). Th e doctrine of sover- eignty, in its “internal” and “external” aspects, is then in crisis.10 However, this does not mean that we live under a regime of international law and uni- versal justice. In fact, the opposite is the case, and we often fi nd ourselves in a “lawless world” (Sands 2005). Th is is due particularly to the double stan- dard, the exceptionalism, which the United States, as the only imperial superpower, has adopted vis-à- vis international law, supporting it when it favors and enhances U.S. economic and strategic interests and ignoring it when it might limit and harm them. Th us, more than to a regime regulated by international laws, the shrinking of state sovereignty is giving rise to an imperial sovereignty under U.S. hegemony (see Hardt and Negri 2000). In- ternational law often becomes instrumental to imperial (and imperialist) policies, at the ser vice of the globalizing hegemonic forces: the United States

1 2 C H A P T E R 1

above all, but also the former imperialist nation- states, today the empire’s “vassals,” as Ignacio Ramonet (2002) has dubbed them. Although interna- tional law should in theory reduce the sovereignty of all states, control their power, in reality the situation is very uneven. Sovereignty becomes a “game” between the absolute form defi ning the old established and most powerful states and the quasi- states, the ex- colonial states, which, according to Robert H. Jackson (1990), enjoy a negative sovereignty in that they are formally in- dependent— an in de pen dence guaranteed and supported by the postcolonial international order— but lack the empirical, institutional, and thus positive sovereignty enjoyed by the former. For Jackson, the quasi- states are the cre- ation of the new balance of power in international relations that comes with the pro cess of decolonization. Th is amounts to what he calls “sovereignty plus” (p. 40), which guarantees the very existence of “otherwise weak and vulnerable Th ird World governments” (ibid.), at the expense, however, of other peoples’ claims for in de pen dence and self- determination, including some peoples nominally represented by those very governments. According to Jackson:

Numerous peoples which were not colonies could not claim this new right of self- determination and have accordingly been barred from entering the international community. (p. 41)

Jackson actually says that self- determination “has become a conservative right of quasi- states” (p. 42). Th ose nations without states that are the object of Montserrat Guibernau’s study (1999)— nations that would qualify as sover- eign entities according to Bodin’s classic theory of what makes a république, that is, a commonwealth (Bodin 1993)— are deprived of self- determination and autonomy, of sovereignty. For Guibernau, the question of the nations without states can be solved by the adequate implementation of the principle of subsidiarity, that is, the po liti cal and juridical principle based upon the decentralization of power (pp. 184– 186).11 In his optimistic vision, the nega- tive condition of some nations deprived of sovereignty and statehood could become a positive and universalized feature of the new global po liti cal actors:

In my view, the recognition of nations without states as global po liti- cal actors does not necessarily involve them becoming in de pen dent. My argument is that while some nations without states may secede [he gives the example of Quebec] most of them are likely to achieve greater po liti cal autonomy within the po liti cal institutions which are currently

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 1 3

being developed. For instance, there are strong chances that further Eu ro pe an integration will favour a greater presence of nations with- out states such as Catalonia, Scotland, the Basque Country or Flan- ders in the international po liti cal arena. (pp. 27– 28)

Th is remark on a contemporary question of international relations shows the importance and fruitfulness of Leibniz’s early critique. When coupled with the universalizing doctrine of individual substances, sovereignty, a “legal condition” (cf. James 1986: 25), shows the limits and dangers inherent in the concept of the law as command, the constitution of unitary po liti cal entities at the expense of other realities and experiences, which are silenced and neu- tralized by being included and excluded at the same time. Yet the doctrine of individual substance posits in singularity and the dignity of individuation the mea sure for a genuine theory of justice, one that (to use a diff erent language) gives human rights and dignity priority over sovereign rights and that is able to challenge, and perhaps reverse, the status quo in international law whereby, as Jackson says, the “cosmopolitan society of humankind is legally— not to mention politically— inferior to the international society of sovereign states” (1990: 46). In his discussion, Jackson also employs the contradiction be- tween human rights and sovereign rights (or at least the limited scope of the doctrine of sovereignty and self- determination) inherent in the 1960 Decla- ration on the Granting of In de pen dence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (UN Resolution 1514). For, if on the one hand it proclaimed that “all peo- ples have the right to self- determination,” on the other it condemned “any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country” (pp. 77– 78). “Consequently,” Jackson remarks,

ethnonational self- determination is now illegitimate and the pros- pect of in de pen dence for the numerous ethnonationalities of the Th ird World [and of the world in general, we might add] are bleak. (p. 78)

And again:

Decolonization clearly was an extension of self- determination and sovereign rights to numerous governments which previously had not been in de pen dent. But it was not always an extension of human rights to the populations under their jurisdiction. (p. 159)

1 4 C H A P T E R 1

Th e antinomy of sovereignty is here clearly shown: by legitimizing some forms of power, it makes other forms (perhaps, this time, forms of life) ille- gitimate. In Leibniz, as we shall see, the distinction is between right and law.12 But it must be said now that the concept of dignity of individuation is more far- reaching and less ambiguous than that of right.

Universal Love

In “Codex Iuris Gentium,” Leibniz says that justice is virtue, and virtue should be taken, I believe, in the etymological sense of power. He says that justice as virtue “regulates that aff ection which the Greeks call . . . [philan- thropy]” (1972: 171), that is, love of humanity, universal love. He defi nes it as “the charity of the wise man, that is, charity which follows the dictates of wisdom” (ibid.). Leibniz is here speaking of important concepts in the tradi- tion of philosophy: wisdom, happiness— concepts that he rereads in the light of the Christian tradition, but that remain important even for secular ways of thinking. So let us see what he means by charity, and how it relates to happiness, that is, to the good life. He says that charity is “a universal benevolence, and benevolence [is] the habit of loving or willing the good” (ibid.). From the language of Christianity we are back, conceptually, to Aris- totle and post- Aristotelian philosophy. On the one hand, we have universal love; on the other, the idea that the good life is the result of our choices, of habit. But how do love and happiness relate to each other? According to Leibniz :

Love . . . signifi es rejoicing in the happiness of another, or, what is the same thing, converting the happiness of another into one’s own. (Ibid.)

In the short piece called “Felicity,” Leibniz says: “To love is to fi nd plea sure in the perfection of another” (p. 83). But what is this perfection? From his metaphysics of individual substances, we know that there are many kinds of perfections, that everything is perfect in its kind, that there is no exception, no extraordinary event, no miracle.13 Everything is perfect in its individua- tion. Perfection is the dignity of individuation. Obviously, this goodness or perfection implies the capacity to recognize the perfection of another, to be in the place of the other: “Th e place of others is the true point of perspective in politics, as well as in morality” (p. 81). In fact, what is justice, the univer- sal law, if not a sense of the dignity of the other? It is here that the concept of the singularly plural, the plural origins of the singular, shows its full force

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 1 5

and importance. However, it must also be admitted that the place of the other is the capacity to recognize the universal, to be the universal.14 Indeed, these concepts cannot be mutually exclusive; we simply cannot choose to repudiate the universal on the basis of singularity and its plural constitution— not of course the plural as a collection of empirical phenomena, but as the original indeterminacy of what could be. In truth, the plural is precisely what mediates between the singular and the universal.15 A way out of the problem would of course be off ered by Sartre’s concept of the “singular uni- versal.” In his study of Flaubert, Sartre says that to understand what a human being is, one should consider, not the category of the individual, but that of the singular universal, that is, the totalizing and universalizing pro cess whereby one becomes what one is (1981: ix). For Sartre, one is universalized by one’s time, which is in turn universalized in the production of one’s sin- gularity. Th e problem of losing the essential and originary moment of plural- ity thematized by Nancy seems neutralized by the fact that the universal is not a point of departure, but rather the eff ect of the totalization and univer- salization pro cess. Perhaps the only problem is that, in Sartre, who writes in this respect in the tradition of Kierkegaard, the singular universal necessarily sets itself apart from the whole, reconstituting the whole in its singularity. Th us, it might be good to make the universalizing moment explicit and stronger and stay at the level of the pro cess, rather than close it with a fi n- ished product having the air of absoluteness. In this sense, I would propose Robert McRuer’s im mensely fruitful concept of “temporary or contingent universalization,” which would replace what he calls “a banal, humanistic universalization” (2006: 157). I refer again to McRuer’s work on disability and queerness more extensively in Chapter 5, but this concept can be ex- tracted at this point and used in a perhaps wider sense than McRuer himself might intend. With this concept in mind, charity based on wisdom is not, then, a patronizing, “humanistic” way to deal with the other. It is instead an active conversion of “the happiness of another into one’s own,” that is, the wisdom, the capacity to see the universal in the par tic u lar, and to under- stand that the self— as Randy Martin has also recently observed—“is made out of something other than itself ” (2002a: 98). Moreover, anticipating Kant, Leibniz holds this universal love to be disinterested, for “the happiness of those whose happiness pleases us turns into our own happiness, since things which please us are desired for their own sake” (1972: 171). Wisdom, then, the highest moment in philosophy as well as in life, “is nothing but the science of happiness itself ” (ibid.). But the reference to Kant, who is in this respect very close to Leibniz, should also make us understand that the univer- sality implied in the notion of the place of the other rules out the empirical

1 6 C H A P T E R 1

gesture of switching places with the other, which is ultimately an impossible thing to do and can be done only at the level of feelings and the imagination. Instead, the task is here transcendental, and it has to do with the pronounced parallax that Kojin Karatani explains and elaborates upon in his superb reading of Kant (a part of his book on Kant and Marx). This transcen- dental task or position is the view emerging from a logic of neither/nor and neutrality— a view that is, for instance, neither subjective nor objective.16 Accordingly, “the place of the other” opens the realm of universality because it is not the empirical, but the transcendental other, that is at stake here. In Karatani’s words,

this other is not one who can be identifi ed with the self in any sense of intersubjectivity or common sense. . . . Nor is this other a one who introduces relativism into our thinking, but rather the one who makes us face the problem of universality. (2003: 52– 53)

Yet, by not being empirical, the other, the place of the other, is not removed from experience, as if it lay in a transcendent realm:

Th e transcendental other— as distinct from the transcendent other, the sacred other (God)— is a quintessentially secular other who is everywhere and everytime in front of us. (p. 70)

Th e relation between the transcendental and the empirical is also explained by Slavoj Žižek’s notion of universality, in par tic u lar with respect to Hegel’s “concrete universality”:

Universality is not the neutral container of a par tic u lar formation, their common mea sure, the passive (back)ground on which the par- ticulars fi ght their battles, but this battle itself, the struggle leading from one par tic u lar formation to another. (2006: 30)

Žižek also says:

Concrete universality is not merely the universal core that animates a series of its par tic u lar forms of appearance; it persists in the very irre- ducible tension, noncoincidence, between these diff erent levels. (p. 31)

However, it must be noted that neutrality and commonality are not canceled by universality, both because, at the most general level, the latter is determined

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 1 7

by the former two concepts and because, more specifi cally, “neutral” also refers to the parallactic neither/nor and “common” to the very tension whereby the par tic u lar reaches into the universal. Th is is also acknowledged by Žižek when, speaking of Spinoza, he describes the passage from the “One qua the neutral medium/container of its modes” to “the One’s inherent gap” as “the very passage from Substance to Subject” (p. 42).17

Right and Law: Th ree Illustrations

In “Caesarinus Fürstenerius” (his main work on sovereignty), Leibniz attacks Hobbes’s concept of sovereignty. He says: “In explaining the concept of sov- ereignty, I confess that I must enter into . . . a fi eld which is thorny and little- cultivated” (1972: 113). Th e truth is that the concept of sovereignty, starting with Bodin and Hobbes, always referred to a supreme, absolute, and unitary power.18 For Leibniz, and this is where he says that in dealing with this subject one “lacks the aid of great writers” (p. 114), this allegedly su- preme and unitary power is in actual reality divided. For him, there remains a universal power, such as the Holy Roman Empire, which has majestas, a medieval concept that Bodin still equates with sovereignty, rather than sov- ereignty itself. But for Leibniz, sovereignty itself can only be understood as a relative term. As Patrick Riley says in the introduction to the Cambridge selection of Leibniz’s po liti cal writings, later incorporated in his mono- graphic study (Riley 1996), Leibniz “removed the character of absolute su- premacy from the concept of sovereignty, making it only a comparative rather than a superlative standard” (Riley 1972: 27). Of course, once this is done, it is no longer of the traditional concept of sovereignty that one is speaking. Riley points out that Leibniz’s concept of sovereignty was “de- scriptive and non- legal” (ibid.). For Riley, Leibniz’s “reasons for wanting to undermine the idea of sovereignty” were not only “practical,” but also “purely philosophical” (ibid.). One of these philosophical reasons was his aversion to “the Hobbesian doctrine of law as command” (p. 28). For Leibniz, in fact, “Right cannot be unjust, it is a contradiction; but law can be” (Leibniz 1972: 50).19 Th e point, of course, is to understand what the distinction between law and right really implies. I have already said how justice (or right) follows from labor, and I believe that it is only in this sense that the force of law loses meaning. In Leibniz, as Riley points out, what we have is a “radical distinc- tion between positive and natural law,” the latter referred to by Leibniz as “universal jurisprudence” (Riley 1972: 28). Today we cannot simply say that beyond positive law there is natural law, for the critique of essentialism in the realm of ethics complicates a distinction that might be too neatly made, and

1 8 C H A P T E R 1

rightly so; or, to put it another way, this would be doing metaphysics in the most traditional sense. Hence the universality of a hypothetical natural law, a higher law that stands behind the system of positive law, a right that is al- ways just behind the law, which can be just or unjust, becomes highly prob- lematic. Yet, we cannot renounce the idea that there is a mea sure of justice not necessarily encountered by the law, the positive law, for this is what his- tory and everyday life show. Th e suggestion is that justice is the dignity of individuation, that is, the capacity to recognize the dignity of the other— a claim already made above. Th us, to make a concrete historical example, John Brown’s actions would not make sense without what is for him an appeal to a higher, divine, law, and what we might reinterpret as the justice unfolding from labor, from human doing in touch with universality and plurality, not determined by the particularity of one group’s interests. Th us, John Brown, after his capture and before his execution, typically says:

I think I feel happy as Paul did when he lay in prison. He knew if they killed him, it would greatly advance the cause of Christ; that was the reason he rejoiced so. On that same ground “I do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” Let them hang me; I forgive them, and may God forgive them, for they know not what they do. I have no regret for the transaction for which I am condemned. I went against the laws of men, it is true, but “whether it be right to obey God or men, judge ye.” (Du Bois 1987: 278)

Of course, John Brown could not have fought against slavery, “the sum of all villanies” (p. 74), by following the positive law. Notwithstanding his reli- gious rhetoric, it was action— and violent action at that— it was labor that gave him the mea sure of right and wrong. For, and this must be stressed here, what is meant by labor is not strictly the working activity, such as in the factory, but all doing constituting, producing the social. Th is universal labor is what we see at work in the John Brown example. Another illustra- tion of how the confrontation between labor and sovereignty (the law) gives rise to an adequate idea of justice is the classical fi gure of Antigone, who challenges Creon’s prohibition and gives proper burial to her brother Poly- neices. When Creon says to Antigone: “And yet you dared to violate these laws?” Antigone answers:

What laws? I never heard it was Zeus Who made the announcement. And it wasn‘t justice, either. Th e gods below

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 1 9

Didn‘t lay down this law for human use. And I never thought your announcements Could give you— a mere human being— Power to trample the gods’ unfailing, Unwritten laws. (Sophocles 2001: lines 450– 457)

Th ese “unwritten laws” are established by the doing of labor, by praxis, not- withstanding here again the religious language. To her sister Ismene, who fi rst deserted her but later wants to share responsibility for her action, Anti- gone says: “I have witnesses: the gods below saw who did the work” (line 542). Th e work was done in accordance with the requirements of justice; it is just work, capable of upsetting the whole establishment of society, of destroying and reconstituting society. It was done at the margins of the po liti cal, for Antigone says: “I have no place with human beings, / Living or dead. No city is home to me” (lines 851– 852). Th ere is no sovereign power in it. It is rather the potency of the immediacy of labor, its subjectivity, the immediacy of doing and praxis, in touch with the ontological ground, which here ap- pears as “the gods below.” Th ere is no sovereignty in the act that subverts the law, but the act itself, the work done, subverts the law and eliminates all ele- ments of sovereignty by virtue of its intimacy with the common concept of justice: “It wasn‘t Zeus who made the announcement, and it wasn‘t justice, either.” But before continuing with a discussion of Leibniz’s common con- cept of justice, it might be good to give another example of the problematics linking sovereignty, labor, and justice. Th is time I use a movie, La promesse (1996), by Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne, casting the exceptionally good Jérémie Rénier (as Igor, the son), Olivier Gourmet (as Roger, the father), and Assita Ouedraogo (as Assita, Amidu’s wife). When Amidu (Rasmane Oue- draogo), an undocumented immigrant from Burkina Faso, who works for Roger in Liège (Belgium), falls from a scaff old during a labor inspector’s visit and soon dies for lack of medical care, the almost perfect, idyllic relationship between Roger and Igor is ruined. Igor, who promises Amidu to take care of his wife, Assita, and their small son, recently arrived in Belgium from Burkina Faso, is forced to break with Roger, who wants to hide the fatal accident at all costs. Roger’s whole business relies on the exploitation of undocumented im- migrants, whom he provides with the bare necessities of life when they get to Belgium. Reporting the accident to the authority would entail the end of his business and serious criminal charges against him. Yet, to keep his promise to Amidu, Igor does not give in to Roger’s threats and implorations; he sides absolutely with Assita, helps her and her son in all possible ways.

2 0 C H A P T E R 1

Igor’s break with Roger is not easy. Th ey are not only father and son, but also boss and apprentice, as well as friends (before Amidu’s accident and death, Igor is learning from his father, whom he calls Roger, not only the skills of carpentry but also those necessary to manage the enterprise and be a boss). However, when I say that Roger and Igor are also friends, I need to explain, for even friendship can be tainted by dynamics of domination, and then cease being sincere or true friendship. Some scenes in the movie make this evident. For instance, when Roger fi nds out that Igor is helping Assita by asking one of his associates to give her money, he beats him up. Th is is, after Amidu’s death, the main turning point in the relationship between father and son. Although Roger soon tries to restore the old relationship, it will not last long. Right after beating him up and announcing “no more cheating between us,” Roger tries to cheer Igor up, by cuddling and tickling him (and Igor un- convincingly reacts and laughs), by fi nishing the tattoo he is drawing on his son’s arm. Th en Roger asks Igor if he has ever been with a woman, if he would like to try, adding that he should. In the next scenes, Roger and his girlfriend and Igor and a date are in a pub. In a movie without soundtrack, Roger and Igor sing on the mike, and then the four of them sing and laugh at the table. Th is scene has the nostalgia of fi reworks, which will not last; it is a tribute to what might have been. In fact, the situation soon deteriorates. Back to their routine and everyday life, Igor and Roger will not be able to relate to one an- other as they used to. When Igor lights a cigarette for Roger, which he nor- mally does before lighting his own, Roger refuses it, implying that a modality of their relationship is over. And when Igor asks Roger, who tricks Assita into believing that Amidu is waiting for her in Germany, what he will do when she fi nds out the truth, he answers, “Th at’s my problem.”

It is at this point— when he realizes that in taking Assita to Germany, Roger intends to sell her as a whore— that Igor rebels against his father. Th e fi rst, spontaneous movement of rebellion, or noncompliance, was when, at the time of Amidu’s death, Igor refused to empty the wheelbarrow fi lled with cement on Amidu’s body, which Roger was burying. But that was an act of re sis tance due more to the incapacity to act— he was petrifi ed— than to any- thing else. When he now jumps into Roger’s car and drives away with Assita and her child, the rebellion becomes a conscious one. At this point, what is important for Igor is not only to take care of Assita and the baby but also to tell Assita the truth. However, he cannot bring himself to do that until the moment when, at the end of the movie, Assita is about to take the train to Italy, where she has a relative. At this point, Igor tells her that Amidu is dead and buried in cement, that he wanted to take him to the hospital after the accident, but that, “to avoid problems,” he “obeyed” his father.

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 2 1

What moves Igor is neither John Brown’s God nor Antigone’s gods be- low. Yet, it is the same concept of justice, secularized this time, which hits and shatters the same sovereign power— and here, too, its vehicle is labor, in the wide sense of praxis, doing.

Th roughout the movie we see the many labors Igor engages in, which oscillate between the legal and the illegal, the ethical and the unethical: he is an apprentice mechanic but also (if the occasion arises) a thief, someone who turns in illegal migrant workers to the police but also Assita’s friend and self- appointed carer. But the real oscillation is between accepting sovereign power (whether it comes from his master mechanic or from Roger) and liv- ing the freedom and dignity of his individuation (which he experiences when he builds a go- kart with his friends in his free time or when he re- nounces everything for the sake of the promise he made to the dying Amidu).

When we consider these three examples, we see that Leibniz’s compara- tive concept of sovereignty makes a lot of sense, for sovereignty is every- where, perhaps permutated from state power, or perhaps eminently attrib- uted to it. Th us, the sovereignty of the United States vis-à- vis the slaves, the fugitive slaves, and the abolitionists, is not, in its substance, diff erent from the more ambiguous (because at one and the same time offi cial and per- sonal) sovereignty of Creon, nor is it diff erent from that which Roger has over Igor. Th is sovereignty, which is everywhere, has the only purpose of crushing labor, not simply the employed labor force, but all labor, all doing that does not accept a Hobbesian command, a superimposed order, an exter- nal law bent to ruthless domination (although for the purpose of mutual as- sistance). But we have seen that it is labor itself, in its return to itself (a return that is apparent in all of the three examples I gave), which subverts the law, destroys sovereignty, and renews justice. Th is justice is nothing but the dignity of individuation, which is a task of the return to illuminate. John Brown, Antigone, and Igor accomplish the return. In the solitude and the immediacy of their being, yet in deep involvement with the other, they re- gain the dignity of individuation, which has no tolerance for any form of sovereignty. But they do so by becoming, in their singularity, universal sub- jects, that is, contingent universalizations.

In the section on co- appearance, Nancy says that “one should not say the ‘with’; one should only say ‘with’ ” (p. 62). Th is “with” is not “the essence of a common Being” (pp. 64– 65) that must be reappropriated, “but rather a with of reappropriation (where the proper does not return, or returns only with)” (p. 65). Th e space and time of “with,” this co- ontology, the event of reap- propriation, can be seen as universal and common not in the sense of pointing to an essence lying beyond, for all remains within the plane of immanence,

2 2 C H A P T E R 1

as Nancy’s discussion shows. Yet, contrary to Nancy, one can still speak of universality and commonality insofar as this is the structure of the “with of reappropriation,” of the “proper returning only with.” Th e three illustrations given above exemplify this structure. In fact, plurality constitutes the media- tion between the singular and the universal. It is not John Brown, Antigone, or Igor as a mere individual that grounds the event of justice and gives trans- lucence to the dignity of individuation. It is rather the “with” of slavery and the re sis tance to it. It is the “with” of Creon’s positive law and the being- with of Antigone and Polyneices, of life and death, for, before dying, Antigone, who had no home, says: “I’m coming home forever, to be held in / With my own people, most of them dead now” (Sophocles 2001: lines 892– 893). To Polyneices, she says, “Look: this is my reward / For taking care of you” (lines 903– 904). And referring to the law she has followed, she says, “Th ere is no ground to grow a brother for me now” (line 912). And again, the dignity of individuation is in the “with” of migrant labor abuse in Belgium and Igor’s struggle against identifying with a “we” of authority and command, docility and obedience, based solely on a logic of inclusion and exclusion: Assita, Amidu, are “the other,” with whom one must not identify, in whose place one must not enter. And this is illustrated, in the movie, by Roger’s prohibi- tion to Igor to visit Assita in her room. But the course of action chosen in all these cases is universal in character, perhaps in the Kantian sense, that is, answering solely to the moral law. But in Kant, too, if the law is universal, objective, and necessary, following it is a subjective endeavor, contingent, and tending toward the universal— and it is in this tension that the pro- nounced parallax studied by Karatani is revealed. In fact, from the point of view of each of the individuals in question, it is a way of reaching into the universal, a contingent universalization of their singularity. Yet, it is so be- cause it is not done in isolation, and it could not be done in isolation. It is done out of what is really and already “one’s own” (to refer to Antigone again) returning as “with”: speaking of Creon, Antigone had said, “He has no right to keep me from my own” (line 48). Th us a new community emerges, beyond the law: the community that repudiates slavery, the king’s unjust law, the boss, the father, and the system of exploitation of migrant labor. It is the community that repudiates sovereignty.

Rejecting Sovereignty

Obviously, Leibniz does not give us a theory of revolution or even of re sis- tance to any form of sovereignty, his main po liti cal interest being the “reuni-

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 2 3

fi cation of ‘Christendom’ ” (Riley 1972: 1), modeled after the “universal monarchy” under God (Leibniz 1972: 105). In one of his po liti cal letters, he said:

As for the question, whether subjects can resist the sovereign power, and in what cases, I am strongly of the opinion of Grotius, and I believe that as a rule re sis tance is forbidden to them. For ordinarily the evil of rebellion is greater than that which one claims to remedy. (p. 187)

Leibniz does not at all challenge the idea of God as “sovereign wisdom” and “sovereign power”— an idea that serves as a metaphysical and moral principle:

As for me, I put forward the great principle of metaphysics as well as of morality, that the world is governed by the most perfect intelli- gence which is possible, which means that one must consider it as a universal monarchy whose head is all- powerful and sovereignly wise, and whose subjects are all minds [esprits], that is, substances capable of relations or society with God. (p. 105)

Nor does he challenge the notion that a prince has supreme power within a given territory. Th us, his po liti cal theory is certainly not demo cratic and, despite his emphasis on universal justice, it is rather conservative.20 Yet, his critique of the traditional concept of sovereignty— particularly of Hobbes’s notion of the indivisibility of sovereign power— opens important spaces for the elaboration of a radical theory capable of displacing sovereignty alto- gether. Indeed, as Hinsley says in his classic history of the concept of sover- eignty, after Hobbes, who “exalted” it (Hinsley 1966:144), sovereignty was generally accepted. According to Hinsley:

Among later thinkers of any stature perhaps Leibniz alone . . . at- tacked sovereignty as being merely an academic formulation, on the ground that all human authority is necessarily relative and condi- tioned. (Ibid.)

Hinsley explains that, generally speaking, even those who opposed Hobbes did not reject sovereignty as such, but spoke of the people as sovereign, not ad- vancing in this from the positions of Althusius and Milton (p. 146). Moreover,

2 4 C H A P T E R 1

Leibniz’s metaphysics of individual substance, as the only indivisible, be- comes fruitful when applied to the essentially revolutionary concept of dig- nity. Of course, in the course of a revolutionary struggle, there are moments when resorting to the concept of sovereignty is very important, as is the case today with the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela (cf. Lebowitz 2006; Harnecker 2005). Th us, in 1993 Hugo Chávez said: “Th e sovereign people must transform itself into the object and the subject of power” (quoted in Lebowitz 2006: 116). And in the long interview with Chávez by Marta Harnecker, there is a whole section on the question of building a sovereign nation, with par tic u lar regard to Venezuela’s international policy. But the theme of sovereignty recurs throughout the book. However, this does not cancel the truth that, ultimately, it is the dissolution of sovereignty as such and the upholding of a philosophy of dignity, the constitution of a society based on justice and dignity that gives meaning to revolutionary struggles. In relation to the Venezuelan Revolution in par tic u lar, there is a clear ex- ample of the pro cess toward the elimination of power as command in the story told by Chavez to Harnecker of the president of a Community Devel- opment Council who, to his question as to whether she was in charge, an- swered that no one was in charge there because they had a horizontal or ga- ni za tion with no managers but only a coordinator (Harnecker 2005: 171). And at the end of his book on the new socialism, Lebowitz remarks that “the goal is the full development of human potential” (pp. 116– 117). After a balanced and critical assessment of the Revolution’s achievements, short- comings, and dangers, Lebowitz looks at it as a re- embodiment of the Marxism of Che Guevara, of his idea of the new human being, and he says that, of course, the Bolivarian Revolution is not Venezuelan in character. Instead, on the basis of his reading of the new constitution, he calls atten- tion to the fact that the Revolution’s task is the struggle for human develop- ment and radical needs, “the understanding that people are transformed as they struggle for justice and dignity” (p. 118). Th e emphasis on dignity is, of course, also a feature of the philosophy of the Zapatista revolt, in which, because of the Zapatista opposition to the idea of taking power, sovereignty does not fi gure at all. As John Holloway says, with a reference to Subco- mandante Marcos:

Th e fi ght for dignity cannot be restricted to national frontiers: “dig- nity,” in the wonderful expression used by Marcos in the invitation to the Intercontinental Gathering held in the Lacandon Jungle in July 1996, “is that homeland without nationality, that rainbow that is also a bridge, that murmur of the heart no matter what blood lives

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 2 5

in it, that rebel irreverence that mocks frontiers, customs offi cials and wars.” (1998: 168)

In Change the World without Taking Power, Holloway equates dignity with “anti- power” (2000:159), and that means, of course, anti- sovereignty.

Th e Common Concept of Justice

To return to Leibniz, one of the most important aspects of his thought is the emphasis on universality, and this is true whether he deals with logic and language or ethics and justice. For Leibniz, the concept of justice “must be common to God and to man” (1972: 48). Th is is what he says in the “Medi- tation on the Common Concept of Justice”— which makes one think, as Patrick Riley also notes (1996: 205), of John Duns Scotus’s doctrine of uni- vocity, that is, the neutrality of being with respect to any qualifying determi- nations. Analogously, in Leibniz’s concept of justice, we fi nd the neither/nor of the law, its neutrality, but also its commonality and universality. At the outset of his essay, Leibniz implicitly refers to Plato’s famous formulation of the problem of justice in the Euthyphro: “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?” (Plato 2002: 10a). Leibniz’s own essay starts by saying:

It is agreed that what ever God wills is good and just. But there re- mains the question whether it is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just: in other words whether justice and goodness are arbitrary or whether they belong to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things, as do numbers and proportions. (1972: 45)

Of course, Leibniz’s answer, just like Socrates’ and Plato’s, is that there is uni- versality and necessity in goodness and justice. Metaphysically, and theologi- cally, the question is also answered in Th e Monadology, where Leibniz distin- guishes between God’s will and understanding, as well as between contingency and necessity, and in Discourse on Metaphysics. In Th e Monadology, he says that

we should not imagine, as some do, that since the eternal truths de- pend on God, they are arbitrary and depend on his will, as Descartes appears to have held. . . . Th is is true of contingent truths. . . . But necessary truths depend solely on his understanding . (Leibniz 1989b: 218– 219)

2 6 C H A P T E R 1

In Discourse on Metaphysics, we read:

Th us, in saying that things are not good by virtue of any rule of goodness but solely by virtue of the will of God, it seems to me that we unknowingly destroy all of God’s love and all of his glory. For why praise him for what he has done if he would be equally praise- worthy in doing the exact contrary? Where will his justice and wis- dom reside if there remains only a certain despotic power, if will holds the place of reason, and if, according to the defi nition of tyrants, justice consists in what ever pleases the most powerful? (1989a: 36)

Here we are again at the center of the problem of sovereignty. With the pri- macy of God’s understanding over his will, Leibniz is again confronting Hobbes, particularly his decisionism, namely the idea of the law as arbitrary command. According to Ernst Bloch, “Hobbes secularizes the doctrine of the primacy of the will of God over the reason of God” (1987: 47), and he continues by saying that this was the doctrine that “Duns Scotus had estab- lished in the preabsolutist period” (ibid.). Bloch explains that for Scotus,

the good is not good because God willed and commanded it, be- cause God could just as well have ordained murder, thievery, and adultery in the commandments and then not murdering, not steal- ing, and not committing adultery would be sins. (Ibid.)

Bloch continues: “In short, the good would not have been able to be a preor- dained idea in accordance with God’s unlimited power of issuing decrees” (ibid.). Th is is a diffi cult point, to which I return when I deal with sover- eignty as decisionism in Carl Schmitt. Fundamentally, Duns Scotus’s theory, reported by Bloch, says that the good is good in itself. Th us he agrees with Plato before him and with Leibniz after him. Even in his philosophy of the primacy of the will, it is not possible to hold that what is just could also be unjust. In this sense, despite Bloch’s attempt at establishing a direct link be- tween Duns Scotus and Hobbes, there is an important diff erence between them. If for Hobbes, as Bloch also points out, “autoritas, non veritas facit legem”— a principle fully accepted by Carl Schmitt— for Scotus the making of the law is not the primary concern of the theory of the primacy of the will, nor is the will itself identifi ed with the principle of authority. Instead, the principle of charity, which we shall fi nd in Leibniz too, sets an important limit to the possibly capricious authority of the law. In Scotus’s philosophy of contingency and freedom, it is not the nature of things that is chosen, but

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 2 7

their event, or eventualization. Th is is so also because in Duns Scotus we have the formation of the will as such (Loiret 2003: 21), not simply its em- ployment at the empirical level. God, in Scotus’s and Leibniz’s theologies, or human beings, in ethics and in secular thinking, have the will to say yes or no to a just or an unjust world, thereby contingently causing the one or the other, but they cannot bring about a situation in which the just is unjust and the unjust just. In Scotus, in par tic u lar, the will is a rational will. Or rather, as François Loiret says, the will as will implies “a new determination of ratio- nality itself;” it is rationality itself (p. 51). Autoritas, the sovereign, can choose a policy of murder and genocide, but it cannot choose it as just and good. It can choose to outlaw charity, care, and human solidarity, to make them crimes, but it cannot change their essential nature. Th e doctrine of sover- eignty from Hobbes to Schmitt, the doctrine of decisionism and of the ex- ception, remains deprived of ontological and ethical grounding. It is impor- tant for the theory of the law and for that threshold, or zone of indiff erence, which for Agamben is “neither external nor internal to the juridical order” (2005: 23), which suspends the law and yet reiterates it. But it does not reach into the ontological ground of the neither/nor of the law. It remains the task of a po liti cal ontology to see beyond the law, not simply what makes the law possible, any law possible, but the universal and common concept of justice shining in the dignity of each individual being. It is upon such an intuition (for this is how individuation is experienced and grasped, as intuition) and, within that intuition, in the most common that one fi nds the mea sure of a better world.

Rationality and the Will

I have established a link between Leibniz and Duns Scotus, but there is at least one important diff erence that must also be addressed. It has to do with the concept of the will, central in the philosophy of Duns Scotus, but subor- dinated to reason in Leibniz. Th us, in “Th e Common Concept of Justice,” Leibniz says: “And to say stat pro ratione voluntas, my will takes the place of reason, is properly the motto of a tyrant” (1972: 46). However, this impor- tant diff erence is ultimately only formal. In fact, the rational will in Duns Scotus shows the limits of the law as command, and thus of sovereignty, just as much as Leibniz’s primacy of reason does. In both cases, the most impor- tant concept is that of contingency and of its relation to the ontological constitution of its specifi c character. Contingency does not mean that every- thing is always equally possible and that the reality we know might henceforth be underestimated because a diff erent modality of the real would always be

2 8 C H A P T E R 1

possible. Rather, what it means is that when something occurred, the oppo- site could also have occurred. In other words, contingency does not deny necessity; it only denies natural necessity— this is at least Duns Scotus’s teach- ing (see Loiret 2003: 55). In Leibniz, contingency denies necessity, but it does not deny certainty, which can be seen as a special kind of contingency itself, as shown in Discourse on Metaphysics (1989a: 12). With respect to jus- tice, it does not mean that the will is free to make an action just or unjust. Rather, it means that it is free to choose between doing and not doing a just action, as well as doing and not doing an unjust action. As Leibniz says, “It is one thing to be just and another to pass for it, and to take the place of justice” (1972: 47). For Leibniz, the problem does not reside within the will, but within the understanding, for the confusion as to what makes an action just or unjust has to do with the “failure to distinguish between right and fact” (ibid.). Th us,

to say that “just” is what ever pleases the most powerful is nothing else than saying that there is no certain and determined justice which keeps one from doing what ever he wants to do and can do with impunity, however evil it may be. (Ibid.)

However, Leibniz’s attack is not on the will as will, the rational will of Duns Scotus for instance, but on the will as crude power, that is, the will that is merely appetite, and not love.21 What Leibniz calls “formal reason of justice” (1972: 48) also implies a redefi nition of rationality, just as Duns Scotus’s concept of the rational will does. For Leibniz, the formal reason is the con- cept of justice itself, “common to God and to man” (ibid.). Although Leibniz makes no mention of the will here, it is evident that what he has in mind is not simply the understanding that understands, but a “legislating” concept, a universal ontology of which the seemingly easily graspable empirical is but a result. For Leibniz, this ontology includes what he calls “the necessary and demonstrative sciences” (p. 50), from logic and metaphysics to geometry and ethics, which, he says, “are not founded on experiences and facts, and serve rather to give reasons for facts and to control them in advance” (ibid.). And he shows the limits of the law by adding that this same regulating and legis- lating pro cess “would [also] happen with respect to right, if there were no law in the world” (ibid.). Although this falls short of stating the uselessness of the law as command and of sovereignty, it certainly shows the way toward it. Leibniz continues: “Th e error of those who have made justice dependent on power comes in part from confounding right and law” (ibid.). And then, there is the already quoted: “Right cannot be unjust, it is a contradiction; but

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 2 9

law can be” (ibid.). Leibniz does not argue against Hobbes’s tautology that autoritas facit legem. For him, this is not the most important point. Rather, the important question is whether the law is just or unjust. Indeed, it goes without saying that power gives and maintains the law (this is why I speak of a tautology), and at the level of the empirical, the understanding under- stands as much. However, “if this power lacks wisdom or good will, it can give and maintain quite evil laws” (ibid.)— a notion fully accepted by Kant.22 Riley says: “Without a certain kind of will, then, wise charity cannot serve as the heart of a justice which is more than sovereign- ordained law” (1996: 61). It must, however, be said that wisdom or good will is not necessarily the same as will, and this, as Riley notes, “is of course the central moral problem in [Leibniz’s] theory of substance” (ibid.). Th e implication is that the dissolu- tion of power and the law is not the dissolution of justice, but rather, per- haps, the coming to the fore of its common concept. It is obvious that this implies a new form of rationality, one which must be willed— a new form of justice.

Th e Reality of Justice

As Patrick Riley remarks, for Leibniz “it was merely an empiricist prejudice to see justice as “unreal” if it did not consist of tangible commands backed by power and threats” (p. 16). Th is “new” form of justice, then, is already there from the beginning: it is real in the most eminent sense— and it is what Leibniz calls a formal reason, probably not always readily apparent, certainly hindered by the empirical, yet already present. For Leibniz, it is an eternal truth. And, as Riley says,

Leibniz used the notion of objectively certain “eternal verities” po liti- cally and morally to attack the idea of justice as base superior power; the “formal notion” [or reason] of justice, he observed in a commen- tary on Hobbes, has nothing to do with the more “sovereign” com- mand of authorities. (Ibid.)

Instead, and here Riley quotes Leibniz, it depends on “the eternal rules of wisdom and goodness, in men as well as in God” (ibid.).

Here we fi nd again the meeting of understanding and will, the rational will, for, as Leibniz says, “wisdom is in the understanding and goodness in the will” (1972: 50). And in the next sentence he says: “And justice, as a con- sequence, is in both” (ibid.). He is here still speaking about the formal reason of justice:

3 0 C H A P T E R 1

Justice is nothing else than that which conforms to wisdom and goodness joined together. (Ibid.)

Power, Leibniz says,

is a diff erent matter, but if it is used it makes right become fact, and makes what ought to be really exist, in so far as the nature of things permits. (Ibid.)

Power, which is “naturally a good, . . . does not become a certain good until it is joined with wisdom and goodness” (ibid.), and that means, with charity and love.

Th e practical importance of grasping the common concept of justice has to do, for Leibniz, with the need to go beyond the ambiguity and the confu- sion that reigns at the empirical level, the level of opinions in Plato’s sense, the need to build a universal jurisprudence, a universal grammar of the ethi- cal, to unveil the ontological ground of the practice of right and power. Leibniz says:

Most of the questions of right, but particularly that of sovereign and of peoples, are confused, because everyone does not agree on a com- mon concept of justice, with the result that everyone does not under- stand the same thing by the same name, and this is the cause of endless dispute. (p. 53)

For Leibniz, justice is not given by simply refraining from harming others; it requires an active involvement of the will toward benevolence, and this is what he calls the charity of the wise, “that is to say goodness toward others which is conformed to wisdom.” He adds, “And wisdom, in my sense, is noth- ing else than the science of felicity” (p. 54). For Leibniz, good and evil are nega- tively related to one another; the negation of the one lies in a continuum in which the positing of the other becomes probable or even certain:

Whether one does evil or refuses to do good is a matter of degree, but that does not change the species and the nature of the thing. One can also say that the absence of good is an evil and that the absence of evil is a general good. (p. 55)

Th is active disposition toward benevolence is what Leibniz also calls the principle of equity, “which orders that we give each his due: suum cuique

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 3 1

tribuere” (p. 56), and we know what is due by putting ourselves in “the place of the other” (ibid.). At fi rst sight, this might seem to hold only within the framework of individualism, but in truth it can be universalized, and Leib- niz himself proposes that. In a short work called “Notes on Social Life,” he says: “Th e place of others is the true point of perspective in politics as well as in morality” (p. 81). Hence, “the wise” does not have to be one restricted group of people, ultimately dominating over all others. Leibniz notes that

nothing can contribute more to the happiness or the misery of man than men. If they were all wise, and knew how to treat each other, they would all be happy, so far as happiness can be attained by human reason. (p. 57)

Th e importance of Leibniz’s philosophy within the context of a discourse on labor and sovereignty, moving from positions that are certainly diff erent from Leibniz’s, lies in the awareness that radical social change requires that fundamental categories we live by be rethought and some of them, such as sovereignty, eliminated. Leibniz is one of the phi los o phers showing the way. He calls into question the accepted notion of the law as command— widespread in his day, as well as in ours. He does not get rid of the po liti cal concept of sovereignty, but limits it to situations of internal, territorial con- trol. However, as Riley points out, Leibniz’s “eff orts to recast sovereignty led to a broad attack on Hobbes and Pufendorf and, ultimately, to a more gen- eral critique of legal positivism” (1972: 2). Th is critique is, of course, the most important result of the critique of sovereignty itself— a result that is very important for us today if we want to think diff erently about power and the law. What we need in order to do that is a po liti cal ontology (i.e., a sci- ence of the constitution of the social world) that disregards the law as com- mand, disregards sovereignty, and upholds social justice. A simple reversal of the law, of who commands and who obeys, will not do— but commanding and obeying are modalities that must be overcome. In “Opinion on the Principles of Pufendorf,” Leibniz says:

Whoever, indeed, does good out of love for God or for his neighbor, takes plea sure in the action itself (such being the nature of love) and does not need any other incitement, or the command of a superior. (1972: 72)

Leibniz is here criticizing Pufendorf, according to whom, “Obligation is prop- erly introduced into the mind of a man by a superior” (quoted in Leibniz: 74).

3 2 C H A P T E R 1

To conclude, the lesson we can draw from Leibniz’s doctrine of the charity of the wise, his universal jurisprudence, is that singularities, individual sub- stances, individual women and men, fi nd their dignity beyond the empirical law, and become thus capable of bringing about a new form of the empirical, through the praxis of a labor geared toward the production of common and social wealth, not just in the economic sense, of course— perhaps what Leib- niz calls charity, benevolence, and love. In Chapter 5 of this book, this new praxis will appear as the labor of care.

Remark: Kant on Price and Dignity

In Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant says that in

the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. What ever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equiva- lent; on the other hand, what ever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. (1981: 40)

Kant’s “kingdom” has no king, but every rational being, as a legislator, “be- longs to it as sovereign” (ibid.). To be a legislator means that one subjectively brings oneself to stand under the objective and universal moral law. General- ized and disseminated, sovereignty remains: everybody is sovereign, which really entails— as we shall also see with Bataille— that nobody needs to be one. In Kant, the real sovereign is the moral law. But it is probably because of this remainder that dignity is not the only option, the only modality of being, in the kingdom of ends, as one would expect, but it has to share its space with price. On the one hand, this simply seems to be restating the logic of means and end contained in the very defi nition of the kingdom of ends, according to which

all rational beings stand under the law that each of them should treat himself and all others never merely as means but always at the same time as an end. (p. 39)

On the other hand, if the co- presence of means and end is understandable— for realistically the absence of the former would compromise any concept of the useful, and we have to be able to use each other, see each other, as well as ourselves, as means and not only as an end— the co- presence of price and dignity presents more problems. In fact, here we do not simply have the cat- egory of the useful, which cannot be dispensed with at the level of practice,

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 3 3

but we have a category of the market economy: price. One could at fi rst sight be tempted to draw a parallel between price and dignity in Kant and the Marxian categories of exchange value and use value, productive labor and living labor. Price in fact also characterizes “[s]kills and diligence in work” (p. 41). However, why have price (and the type of skills and diligence in work that goes with price) in the kingdom of ends? Answering that this is so because Kant belongs in the bourgeois phase of Western thought cannot be fully acceptable. Karatani, for instance, unequivocally denies that. He says: “Kant was not in the least a bourgeois phi los o pher” (2003: vii), and he sees the kingdom of ends as a description of communism (pp. viii, 128– 129). Th us, the utopian element contained in the concept of kingdom of ends points to something capable of transcending price and the market economy. Kant looks at the moral law and the autonomy of the will, and this compels him to stay away from the empirical content. Th us, he cannot ground the law in the actual practice of labor, the form of living labor, that is, the fact that something must be done and will be done, although the direction of this doing can be determined and defi ned in many diff erent ways: It can be done because of the price attached to it, or it can be done out of the dignity of individuation. In the former case, the determining factor is the law of the market; in the latter, the law that Kant calls of morality and humanity. But this does not have to apply only in typically moral situations, such as “fi del- ity to promises and benevolence” (p. 41). Th e concept of dignity should be broadened, in a Leibnizian sense, to relate to and defi ne each and every indi- vidual substance, each and any singularity, even the monads, the “true atoms of nature,” “the elements of things” (Leibniz 1989b: 213). In the last instance, the determining factor should not be the subjective repre sen ta tion of a uni- versal but abstract ought, for this risks becoming a mere formality again. In- stead, the determining factor should be a practical engagement in the ten- sion of what- could- be, not in the sense of simply following one’s inclinations (to keep close to Kant); rather, the could, which replaces the ought, should be determined by the principle of need, the principle of usefulness, and the principle of common wealth. For it is obvious that many things could be. However, the choice must be made on the basis of what is called into being with greater and most common urgency, the singularity that most certainly and adequately meets the requirements of the common. Th is is not a utilitar- ian claim, nor is it communitarian. Th e determining factor should not be the greatest number, the vast majorities, or the closed community. Rather, it should be what in its simplicity most closely approaches nothing. Th e most important point is to realize that this cannot happen within the realm of necessity and the ought, but rather within that of contingency and the could.

3 4 C H A P T E R 1

Th e seemingly necessary character of the law might be explained by Leibniz’s concept of certainty, which remains within the contingent. By certainty Leibniz means the highest degree of probability, the happening of something when all the conditions for it have been fulfi lled. Th us, in working toward the constitution of a better world, a world that— now everybody recog- nizes— is possible, there might come a time when its certainty and adequacy will also be absolutely evident. However, this does not imply any notion of necessity, although one might have the impression that such a notion is in- volved. Th is should also say something about the Marxian notion of the transition from one mode of production to another, too often understood in mechanical, deterministic terms, as if a genuinely communist society would necessarily come by itself. Instead, it is clear that the very fact that a better world is possible and probable can bring about the certainty of its reality— but this is always a matter of contingency, never of necessity. It is because of this contingency, the potentiality allowing change based on reason rather than only on the will, that Leibniz calls this world the best possible world. It is not the best on account of its empirical, factual, historical confi guration; it is the best in virtue of its contingency; for what ever we call the real, the uni- verse, includes the potential, and each singularity is a mirror of it. In other words, the best possible world, a notion often ridiculed as too silly and ideal- istic (notably, in Voltaire’s Candide), is a world whose contingency makes it better than others. It is a world in which, as Patrick Riley notes at the end of his study, what Leibniz calls “universal jurisprudence”— that is, true jus- tice— is a clear possibility.

Remark: Th e Principle of Subsidiarity

Although there is a vast literature on subsidiarity, for the purpose of this re- mark I rely exclusively on Paolo Carrozza’s essay “Subsidiarity as a Structural Principle of International Human Rights Law” (Carrozza 2003). Th is allows me to make the relationship between subsidiarity and dignity immediately evident. At the same time, I cannot hope to render here the richness and complexity of Carrozza’s essay.

Th e history of the concept of subsidiarity can be certainly traced back to Johannes Althusius (1557– 1638) and perhaps, according to some scholars mentioned by Carrozza, even as far back as ancient Greek thought (Carrozza 2003: 40– 41). It was then formally established in Catholic social thinking by Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 as a middle ground between liberalism and capitalism on the one hand, and communism on the other. However, “its principal purpose was to justify and encourage the protection

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 3 5

of workers from the eff ects of unrestrained capitalism” (p. 41). From social philosophy it was transposed into law in the constitution of the German Federal Republic, and later it was given special relevance in Eu ro pe an Union Law at the 1991 Maastricht Treaty (p. 50).

But what is subsidiarity? In a footnote, Carrozza gives a provisional and “very simplifi ed working defi nition,” which reads as follows:

Subsidiarity is the principle that each social and po liti cal group should help smaller or more local ones accomplish their respective ends without, however, arrogating those tasks to itself. (p. 38; emphasis added)

Th e phrase that I have emphasized is very important, the idea often reiter- ated: subsidiarity must provide “a help that does not destroy” (p. 44); “any form of totalitarian impulse that seeks to subsume every individual or every social group into the whole is incompatible with the basic presumptions of subsidiarity” (pp. 44– 45); as for the international community, the principle of subsidiarity “would generate a responsibility for that order to intervene and assist, but would prohibit it from taking over what more local communi- ties can accomplish by themselves” (p. 57); the goal of subsidiarity is “to assist but not to usurp” (p. 66). In one word, subsidiarity is care.

Carrozza is interested in the application of the principle of subsidiarity to international law and, particularly, to the question of human rights. What is important is that

in international law subsidiarity can be understood to be a concep- tual alternative to the comparatively empty and unhelpful idea of state sovereignty. (p. 40)

Even more important is subsidiarity’s intimate connection to the ideas of dignity and freedom:

Th at is, its fi rst foundation is a conviction that each human individ- ual is endowed with an inherent and inalienable worth, or dignity, and thus that the value of the individual human person is ontologi- cally and morally prior to the state or other social groupings. Because of this value, all other forms of society, from the family to the state and the international order, ought ultimately to be at the ser vice of the human person. Th eir end must be the fl ourishing of the individual. (p. 42)

3 6 C H A P T E R 1

Yet, for all that, subsidiarity does not engender a theory of individualism, for the individual is always understood as “naturally social” (ibid.), in a way that perhaps, adds Carrozza in a footnote, “turn[s] on its head Aristotle’s conclu- sion that the polis exists prior to the individual” (ibid.).

Subsidiarity shares its “fi rst foundation” with the idea of human rights, which is also to be seen as social and relational (p. 46). One might say that Carrozza’s analysis seems to be pointing to a “kingdom of ends” in which there is dignity, but there is no price. It is

a recognition that each individual is unique and unrepeatable, thus incapable of being absorbed by any collectivity without doing vio- lence to his inalienable dignity. (p. 45)

Th us, the principle of subsidiarity must be applied to all situations and spheres of life, “the sum total of the conditions necessary for individual hu- man fl ourishing” (p. 46)— for instance, even in the family or in a friendship. And it is here that the close relationship of subsidiarity and care becomes evi- dent (cf. Chapter 5).

One of Carrozza’s main concerns is to stress, along with other scholars on whose work he also relies (scholars such as Gráinne de Búrca and Ken Endo), the status of the principle of subsidiarity as one of mediation between the par tic u lar and the universal (p. 54)— a relationship that he calls an “anxious dialectic,” which sovereignty is unable to address, let alone resolve (p. 64). Th is is subsidiarity’s paradoxical status, its internal tension (p. 68). Th e par tic u lar and the universal, pluralism and the common good can be brought together by the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity. But for this to happen, sovereignty must be discarded: “Th e idea of subsidiarity leaves no room for sovereignty as such” (p. 69). Sovereignty and subsidiarity oppose one another. What is this to say if not that domination (including price) and dignity oppose one another? However, subsidiarity and dignity are not the same, for, although subsidiarity is “a general principle, not a clear rule” (p. 79), still it is a regulative principle, and indeed the dignity of indi- viduation may be understood as subsidiarity ontological ground. But how, in practice, can pluralism and the universal/fundamental common good co- exist? Carrozza’s answer is that

the freedom and human dignity sought to be achieved through the adequate protection of human rights will be most fully realized where the decision over the reasonable balancing of aspects of the

S I N G U L A R I T Y O R T H E D I G N I T Y O F I N D I V I D UAT I O N 3 7

common good is taken at the closest level to the aff ected person as is eff ectively possible. (p. 73)

Th is is perhaps a diff erent way of formulating the notion of justice as “the place of the other”— a notion we have discussed above. After all, subsidiarity is characterized by “unity- in- diversity” (p. 75), a tension that needs no reso- lution but must be lived as a tension. Yet, who makes the decision? Th e danger here is that of reintroducing the fi gure of the sovereign. Perhaps, “the aff ected person,” evidently “the other,” should be able to determine what she needs, and what ever this is, it should not really be understood as a subsidium, but rather as what the dignity of individuation demands, as that without which this dignity is taken away.

In conclusion, Carrozza says that subsidiarity

values the freedom and integrity of local culture without reducing particularism to pure devolution and decentralization of authority; it affi rms internationalism and intervention without the temptation for a superstate or other centralized global authority. (p. 78)

It would seem that, from the individual to local culture, subsidiarity be- comes a safeguard against domination and oppression. And sovereignty is neutralized. For this to really be the case, however, one would need a form of global governance based on human rights. Th is would still fall within the logic of law, and ultimately of sovereign power. Who, for instance, has the right to intervene? Th is presents as many problems as the notion that the dignity of individuation must become, in Leibniz’s sense, common, in Benjamin’s, di- vine. But this latter option truly does away with all instances of sovereignty. As an epigraph to his essay, Carrozza chooses Rudolf von Jhering’s sentence, “Every individual should say the phrase of Louis XIV: ‘I am the state’ ” (p. 38). Perhaps not.