ABSTRACT
This conclusion gives some closing thoughts on key themes discussed in this book. The book has advocated ordering as a process. It has been argued that, instead of analysing order (which itself is always partial) as a given thing, one must concentrate on constant movement within political communities and the contradictory – constitutive and constituted – forces that animate such movement. A core claim made in the book is one about Spinoza and Schmitt. Although conventionally perceived as incommensurable, they, in fact, complement each other, accounting for different sides of the process of ordering. Throughout the book, it has been demonstrated that both poles are necessary to keep the process of ordering in motion. Correspondingly, both authors manifest complementary views in relation to norm-creation within political communities and their institutional expressions. The movement revealed in the book is one between the organic universality of a strictly self-ordering democratic community in Spinoza and Schmittian groundlessness that renders universality and self-sufficiency contestable.
