ABSTRACT

The principle of national sovereignty has recently become controversial in discussions of future monetary arrangements in the European Community. The power of the “logic of sovereignty” proved to be immense. Articulated by Jean Bodin as part of a richly textured historical and sociological account of royal power, it was then used by Thomas Hobbes for his theory of absolute sovereignty. It is, however, conceptually possible to reconcile the idea of state sovereignty with that of the sovereignty of individual human beings or citizens: Let both the state and the individual citizens be sovereign persons. With respect to the internal aspects of sovereignty, the sovereignty of the individual natural person means that he has absolute and final authority over himself and over himself alone. To the extent that the theory of state sovereignty was accepted, it accounted for the traditional prerogatives of the king by providing a sufficient ground for their legitimacy.