Introduction

This introduction provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates some of the existing literature on the state, sovereignty, law and politics. It begins with the analysis of Spinoza's thought. The book presents the most important preconditions of ordering, particularly concentrating on natural and metaphysical philosophy. It focuses on the theories of the state and sovereignty. Most importantly, the role of the state in ensuring communal cohesion and joint progression towards greater reason is to be elucidated. The book provides an analysis of Schmitt's writings. It revisits the four core elements of ordering from a Spinozist-Schmittian perspective with a view to producing an interactive model in which the constitutive and the constituted are holding each other in permanent tension while any status quo is only temporary and caught in the midst of a circular motion from the constitutive to the constituted, then back to the constitutive and so forth.