Captives of Sovereignty

This is the first book length treatment of the connection between religious, political and philosophical skepticism and state sovereignty. The book engages with the writings of Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell. It will appeal to political philosophers, international relations scholars and intellectual historians interested in sovereignty.

A picture of sovereignty holds the study of politics captive. Captives of Sovereignty looks at the historical origins of this picture of politics, critiques its philosophical assumptions and offers a way to move contemporary critiques of sovereignty beyond their current impasse. The first part of the book is diagnostic. Why, despite their best efforts to critique sovereignty, do political scientists who are dissatisfied with the concept continue to reproduce the logic of sovereignty in their thinking? Havercroft draws on the writings of Hobbes and Spinoza to argue that theories of sovereignty are produced and reproduced in response to skepticism. The second part of the book draws on contemporary critiques of skeptical arguments by Wittgenstein and Cavell to argue that their alternative way of responding to skepticism avoids the need to invoke a sovereign as the final arbiter of all political disputes.