ABSTRACT
Can we conceive of the relationship between sovereignty and ethics in political community without privileging one over the other? If not, we are then led to one of two positions. Either we end up with a Schmittian ontological prioritization of sovereignty where ethics in political community is entirely overcome. Or we move towards a neo-Kantian reversal of this order of priority, in which, ideally, ethics determines sovereignty to the extent that sovereignty in political community is overcome. This, according to Emmanuel Levinas at least (to whom we shall return), constitutes an unpalatable choice between an ethics-free and a depoliticized vision of political community in which
there would be no alternative between recourse to unscrupulous methods whose model is furnished by Realpolitik and … a careless idealism, lost in utopian dreams but crumbling into dust on contact with any reality or turning into a dangerous, impudent and facile frenzy.
