Sovereignty

Within the depth-psychology adjacent corpus indexed here, the term ‘Sovereignty’ appears almost exclusively through the political-philosophical lens of Hannah Arendt, as refracted through a scholarly anthology examining her legacy. The passages do not treat sovereignty as a psychic or intrapsychic category — the concept is not employed in the registers of ego-sovereignty, will, or self-mastery familiar from Jungian or existential depth psychology. Instead, the corpus presents sovereignty as a political-juridical concept whose internal tensions Arendt diagnosed with particular acuity: the antithesis between sovereignty (as monological rulership, command, and obedience) and genuine political freedom (as plural, communicative action). A central tension runs through the material: internal versus external sovereignty, the former Arendt regarded as antithetical to republican constitutionalism, the latter she grudgingly conceded as necessary to statehood. The passages further document how unchecked sovereignty — whether monarchical, executive, or national — tends toward tyranny, and how the collapse of the European nation-state system revealed the fragility of sovereign guarantees for human rights. The ‘boomerang effect’ of imperial external sovereignty corrupting domestic institutions, the problem of organ versus state sovereignty, and the circumvention of territorial sovereignty through universal jurisdiction doctrine are among the key analytical nodes. Scholars wishing to locate depth-psychological uses of sovereignty as a metaphor for the self must look beyond this particular cluster of sources.

In the library 16 passages

sovereignty (rule) and politics (no rule) are antithetical; the former is monological, the latter communicative or at least interactive… Sovereignty involves command and obedience; it is an institution of rulership and political hierarchy, not equality

This passage delivers Arendt’s core thesis that sovereignty and genuine political freedom are structurally incompatible, with sovereignty defined as monological domination antithetical to republican plurality and the rule of law.

Hannah, Barbara, Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination as Developed by C. G. Jung, 1981thesis

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At such moments, the banished sovereign tended to reemerge, and its preferred vehicle was the presidency… because of the executive powers lodged in the president for reasons of maintaining the external sovereignty of the federal state.

The passage argues that the structural tension between internal and external sovereignty in the American constitutional order repeatedly produces crises in which suppressed sovereign power reemerges through executive prerogative.

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can a state be at least equal to all others abroad if it is not supreme at home? The classical theory would have denied this also, and this is another reason for the inseparability of external and internal sovereignty.

This passage interrogates the classical doctrine that external and internal sovereignty are mutually constitutive, exposing the contradiction in Arendt’s attempt to preserve external while abolishing internal sovereignty.

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Unilateralism in questions of security and public safety as an expression of state sovereignty ended practically in the inability of the nation-state to act and, therefore, forced it also to dissolve its constitutional foundation without solving the problem.

The passage demonstrates how the Weimar-era conflation of national will with state sovereignty paradoxically destroyed the very constitutional order sovereignty was meant to protect, culminating in the collapse of the European nation-state system.

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full national sovereignty was possible only as long as the comity of European nations existed. Only as long as the ‘spirit of unorganized solidarity and agreement’ existed among the sovereign states was it possible that a balance of the different interests on the one hand and respect for the sovereignty of

Arendt’s argument that full national sovereignty was historically contingent upon a tacit European solidarity reveals how sovereignty’s viability as a political form depended on conditions that nationalism itself ultimately destroyed.

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The new theory of ‘universal jurisdiction’ allowed the court to circumvent the barrier of territorial sovereignty. Respect for the sovereignty of states is manifested in delineating the boundaries of criminal law according to territorial boundaries of states.

The passage traces how post-Holocaust jurisprudence developed universal jurisdiction doctrine precisely to overcome the shield that territorial sovereignty had provided to state-perpetrated crimes against humanity.

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see this phenomenon that often appears in the form of ‘constitutional dictatorship’ as inherent in our sovereignty regime, rather than crime or usurpation, the effect of popular or consumer culture as mediated by public relations

The passage argues that ‘constitutional dictatorship’ should be understood as structurally endemic to the sovereignty regime rather than as aberrant criminality, challenging Arendt’s exculpatory interpretation of the American constitutional system.

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‘monarchical sovereignty’ in foreign affairs seems to be the same absolute, unlimited, solipsistic imperial sovereignty usually claimed and exercised by the executive power posing such threats to domestic republican institutions and to civil rights

The passage identifies the ‘boomerang effect’ whereby the absolute, solipsistic character of external sovereign power exercised imperially abroad threatens to corrode republican institutions at home.

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state sovereignty could manifest itself in questions of residency and nonresidency for ‘foreigners.’ Arendt points out that the presumable advantages of statelessness were not lost on the ‘foreigners’

The passage illustrates how state sovereignty operated practically in the interwar period through the power of deportation and residency control, demonstrating the lived vulnerability of those subject to its exercise.

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According to the Madisonian formula of blending sovereignty between the states and the federal union, sovereign powers monopolized by absolute monarchies (and some American state legislatures) were shared among these instances.

The passage explains how the American founders attempted to dissolve monarchical sovereignty by distributing and blending sovereign powers across federal and state instances rather than abolishing sovereignty altogether.

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Arendt considers the American abolition of sovereignty to pertain to internal affairs only… she even implies (very rightly) that the point or one of the points of forming a more perfect union was to enhance external sovereignty.

The passage clarifies the limited scope of Arendt’s anti-sovereignty argument: her critique targets internal, domestic sovereignty while she accepts the necessity of enhanced external sovereignty for the republic’s survival in an international state system.

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internal sovereignty, 141, 141n12, 142 constitutional powers and, 147–52 paradox of rightlessness and, 188 post-Arendt constructions of, 169–71… sovereignty and, 243 international law… sovereignty and, 137–71

This index entry maps the systematic treatment of sovereignty across the volume, cross-referencing internal sovereignty, international law, the paradox of rightlessness, and totalitarianism as its principal analytical nodes.

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when mixed together provided the most explosive fuel propelling the dramatic reentry of sovereignty on the scene… he certainly benefited from his plebescitary democratic legitimacy.

The passage argues that the combination of Lockean prerogative doctrine and plebiscitary democratic legitimacy created the structural conditions for sovereignty’s dramatic reemergence within the American republic.

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Arendt was deeply skeptical of cosmopolitan discourses on human or minority rights – reasoning from the failures of the League of Nations. She deemed these to be ineffectual within a system of international law that in her view was still one of absolutely sovereign states

Arendt’s skepticism toward cosmopolitan human rights frameworks is grounded in her assessment that the international legal order remained a system of absolutely sovereign states incapable of guaranteeing rights without a political community to enforce them.

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sovereignty as, 139–47… totalitarianism antisemitism and imperialism and, 6… sovereignty and, 243 international law… human plurality and totalitarianism and, 219–43

The index cross-references sovereignty with totalitarianism and imperialism as co-constitutive phenomena in Arendt’s analysis, indicating that unchecked sovereign power is treated as a structural precondition for totalitarian outcomes.

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