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  • Sovereignty and the Origins of War Leibniz versus Bodin
  • Petar Bojanić (bio)

In explaining sovereignty (Suprematu[s]), and this is surprising, the difficulty is that I am entering an entirely neglected field. The reason for this is that those who write about it most often write gazing into the past, toward the stunted remains of sovereignty that are barely even there, while completely disregarding what is happening now. I am least astonished by the common lawyers, for whom no wisdom can be found outside of the tomes of Roman Law; I am confused precisely by our illustrious dignitaries, who, when they encounter a difficulty in writing, reach for authority and erudition rather than experience and ability to think for themselves . . . (Leibniz 1984a, 51).

A century after Jean Bodin's renowned work, Les Six Livres de la République (1576), in which the old word "sovereignty" (souveraineté) is used for the first time to refer to a completely new "figure," Leibniz attempts to reorder and rethink a word, because it is no longer clear what it indicates, or hides, or [End Page 93] neglects. His intervention and his attempt to resolve this great confusion and vexation spread by books and "learned people" are today both current and forgotten. I assume that the basic reason for Leibniz's rehashing of the word sovereign (and sovereignty) does not exclusively concern the nature and complexity of this grandiose fancy that nevertheless beset theorists and rulers, both before and after the famous German philosopher. Perhaps the elements that indubitably make Leibniz our contemporary, and facilitate our own job in finding borders and impropriety in sovereignty in "today's age," and toward which Leibniz himself nudges us, are the more important: Leibniz is counsel to numerous rulers of his time, founder of various institutions, a realist and pragmatist, who for the first time speaks of the person of international law (persona jure gentium) (Leibniz 2004, 33) and a fraternity among the sovereigns of Christian Europe (Respublica Christiana) (Leibniz 1984b, 306). Leibniz the mathematician is the forerunner of contemporary science of statistics and the new tax politics; a Protestant and European, he was a great enemy of Islam, an aggressive stoker of hatred and war against Turkey, and the first sophisticated theorist of clashes between civilizations. Leibniz, undoubtedly the creator of the "Philosophy of Europe," is the first thinker who places the security and defense of a regime in the foreground, even before any potential patriotism.1 Finally, Leibniz writes his books in several languages and is, along with Hobbes, the one who bears foremost responsibility for the dissemination and thematization of the French word "sovereignty" in Europe of the time.

It is my intention to follow Leibniz's efforts in interpreting and reconstructing sovereignty and, thus, show the militaristic character of this theological-political fiction by Jean Bodin. Although the figure of sovereignty and the idea of a group of sovereign rulers represents Bodin's, and consequently Leibniz's, attempt at pacifying a Europe of raging civil and religious warfare and bringing peace, the struggle for sovereignty at the same time implies "bloody sacrifices of the innocent by ambitious rulers" (Leibniz 1972, 111-13), constant insecurity, and the production of enemies. The theory, or more precisely the fiction or narrative of sovereignty, could thus represent an unconditional condition for war. [End Page 94]

At the outset, let us imagine a small territory2 and a small Republic, and let us imagine it in the same way in which Leibniz "conceived" of the small imaginary kingdom of Ivetot, all those centuries ago (Leibniz 2004, 18, 61). Ivetot is simply his example or fantasy that ought to regulate the strength or importance of a word handed down to us from books or self-proclaimed and self-important rulers. The imagining of a small territory, small population, small government, and small ruler, as well as a language spoken by a small number of people, is not completely opposite to the imagining of the greatest, the incomparable, and greater than anything comparable, that can be found in the first gesture of the discovery of the adjective "sovereign" or "super" (superus, supra are complex Latin words in the root of the...

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