ABSTRACT
The dominant approaches to the four core elements of ordering – the state, sovereignty, law and politics – can be characterised by, if anything at all, diversity. The process of ordering is seen to encompass movement between the constitutive and the constituted thrusts of politics, represented in the theories of Spinoza and Schmitt. It is also caught in constant variation between a search for equilibrium (Spinoza) and affirmation of permanent disequilibrium (Schmitt) within communal life. In a sense, the two concepts that belong to the framework of ordering – the state and sovereignty – are the effects of law and politics. The state and sovereignty are closely interrelated phenomena. For both Spinoza and Schmitt, the state is the predominant mode of human (self-)organisation. The conceptualisation of sovereign power in Spinoza and Schmitt is, certainly, closely interrelated with the community-state nexus. For Schmitt, the sovereign power is an entity in and of itself, proceeding from the groundless existence of human beings.
