The Resistant Monarch: Jean-Luc Nancy on Hegel's Sovereign

Leda Channer The Resistant Monarch; Jean-Luc Nancy on Hegel’s Sovereign

Society for European Philosophy and Forum for European Philosophy Joint Conference Utrecht, Netherlands 5th September, 2014

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The Resistant Monarch; Jean-Luc Nancy on Hegel’s Sovereign

Abstract:

In his 1982 essay, ‘The Jurisdiction of the Hegelian Monarch’, Jean-Luc Nancy writes that the

Monarch is a “singular complication in Hegelian theory”1 and that “the position of The Monarch,

as a position, escapes the deduction that necessitates it.” (JHM, p.137)

For Nancy then, there is something about Hegel’s monarch or sovereign, something about its

position, that means that it escapes, eludes and resists the very thinking that would seem to require

it. For Nancy, attention to the function of the Monarch would therefore reveal something about

Hegel’s thinking in general; indeed it seems that Nancy could be implying here that it is the Hegelian

problem par excellence for those seeking to identify a kind of fundamental internal resistance in

Hegelian thought.

A number of questions arise from this initial reading of these citations. What is meant by deduction

here; is the implication that the speculative method as a whole is resisted in the some way by the

Monarch, or just its application to the specific consideration of constitution of The State? Is it only

when assessing the position of the Monarch that this resistance or escape would be discernible? Is

it possible to assess the Monarch without a sense of position or is the Monarch unthinkable without

a position? If the Monarch does indeed resist or escape the speculative method as a whole, then

how does it do this whilst appearing at the same time to affirm it? Is Nancy saying that there is

something about dialectics and the speculative method that presents a dual appearance of

confirmation and resistance? Would the insight of a double appearance imply a strategy for

(re)reading Hegel?

In this paper, I will consider these questions in the following way. The main focus of the paper will

take the form of an explication Nancy’s essay ‘The Jurisdiction of the Hegelian Monarch’ and my

own reading of the function of Hegel’s Monarch in the concept of The State. In order to enrich this

explication I will also propose a reading of Nancy’s subsequent and perhaps more famous essay

‘The Inoperative Community,’ in which he offers the engagement with union that he considers

Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Rights to have attempted but not completed, as later

commentary and reflection on the earlier essay. In this way, I hope to offer both a description of a

moment of recognition of resistance in Hegel and a reflection upon it.

Keywords: Hegel, Nancy, State, Community, Unworking

1 Nancy, JL “The Jurisdiction of the Hegelian Monarch” in The Birth To Presence, (trans. Mary Ann and Peter Caws, Stanford University Press, 1993 (First published in Social Research, 49, No.2, Summer 1982)), p. 113 (hereafter referred to in the text as JHM, p.)



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N.B. The following is a transcript of an oral presentation which originally featured diagrams on power point

slides, these have been inserted in the text.

The paper I am presenting to you today arises from research undertaken for the second chapter of my PhD

thesis, which is entitled: Unworking Hegel: Reading Jean-Luc Nancy. This second chapter performs a reading

of Jean-Luc Nancy’s 1983 essay, La communauté désœuvrée (‘The Inoperative Community’) read as both

implicit and explicit commentary on Hegel’s 1821 text, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Outline or

Elements of the Philosophy of Right). As I have used the 1990 Nisbet translation which renders the title into

English as Elements of the Philosophy of Right, rather than the 1952 Knox translation that uses Outline, I shall

refer to the text as Elements of the Philosophy of Right or occasionally abbreviate it to Elements. The reading

of two texts each concerned with what could broadly be described as human co-existence is performed in

order to highlight and clarify the varying approach of each thinker and render more explicit Nancy’s frequently

implicit commentary on Hegel and dialectics.

I would like to freely admit right now that this has been an extremely challenging task and at this stage I am

still struggling to fully bring to understanding and expression what it is I find when I perform these readings, I

do however feel that I find something. Hegel might say that my thought has not yet emerged from the negation

of what I have read into the comprehension of a completed concept of it. For Nancy, this completion is not

possible and this tension in which much is still unknown and inaccessible to me is in fact the richest

understanding I could have. However, as part of this taxing chapter I also look at another essay of Nancy’s

written the year before The Inoperative Community and entitled, ‘The Jurisdiction of The Hegelian Monarch’.

This essay considers Hegel’s Monarch (or Sovereign depending on the translation) as it appears in Elements

and in my chapter this explicit commentary therefore serves as a foreshadowing to the implicit commentary

in The Inoperative Community that I wish to bring out. My aim today is to rehearse, at you, a rendering of this

more direct, explicit and narrowly focussed commentary, along with a consideration of what it is commenting

upon. As this is a project very much still underway I therefore warmly welcome suggestions for new angles,

further thought and things I may have missed.

Hegel - Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Elements of the Philosophy of Right is one of Hegel’s mature works, appearing in 1821 after The

Phenomenology of Spirit and at least the first edition of Encyclopaedia. The text of Elements is as a whole is

concerned with freedom, which for Hegel is experienced in the fullest sense when living an Ethical Life as a

participant in the State. The progression to this fullest sense forms the trajectory of Elements, with the various

parts and sections of the book describing stages in the journey which appear initially as the final destination

and fullest sense of freedom but which are ultimately moved beyond.

The essential structure of Elements has the shape of the triangular fractal known as The Sierpinksi Triangle

and I will use a diagram of this shape to aid a summarising of the context in which Hegel’s Sovereign appears.

The Sierpinksi Triangle is an equilateral triangle subdivided into four further equilateral triangles. These new

triangles can then be further subdivided in the same way, reproducing the original shape over and over again

while diminishing in size. Alternatively, the original shape can be expanded by making it a subdivision of a new

larger triangle.



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Elements of the Philosophy of Right is divided into three parts:

Abstract Right and Morality are two different conceptions of freedom, the tension between which is resolved

in the Part 3 The Ethical Life.



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Part 3 The Ethical Life is also divided into three Sections:

The Family and Civil Society are two “moments” in Ethical Life which, again, are resolved in The State.



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The State is divided into three subdivisions:

Constitutional Law describes the internal structure of The State and International Law describes the relations

between the State and other states. World History describes the evolution of The Sate through history with

each stage the result of a resolution between a State’s internal structure and its external relations. The

Sovereign will finally make their appearance in section A but not before a few more subdivisions.



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A Constituional Law divides into two subdivisons:

External Sovereignty describes the external features of the State and covers much the same ground as B

International Law. Internal Constitution however divides again.



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I Internal Constitution divides into three subdivisions:

a covers The Power of The Sovereign and b and c cover the Executive and the Legislative powers. These are

powers that belong to the Sovereign but which are lent to various bodies who carrying out tasks in the name

of the Sovereign. It is a, The Power of the Sovereign that I shall focus on for the rest of the paper.



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Part 3, Section 3, I, a The Power of The Sovereign:

We arrive finally at The Power of The Sovereign. This subdivision is itself further subdivided into three

“moments” as Hegel calls them. These are described in separate numbered paragraphs but not named with a

separate title as such; however, I have named them in the diagram as the Particular, the Universal and

Unity/Decision. Hegel describes all three in the numbered paragraph that opens The Power of The Sovereign:

The power of the sovereign contains the three moments of the totality within itself […] namely, the universality

of the constitution and laws, consultation as the reference of the particular to the universal, and the moment of

ultimate decision as the self-determination to which everything else reverts and from which its actuality originates.

This absolute self-determination constitutes the distinguishing principle of the power of the sovereign as such.2

The constitution and laws of the State are its universal aspect and are the first moment Hegel describes.

The State’s particular aspect occurs when advisors present to the Sovereign situations that require a decision

regarding the application of the universal laws to a specific particular situation, this is the second moment.

When the Sovereign makes their decision, the third moment occurs and for Hegel this moment;

2 Hegel, G.W.F, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, (trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Allan Wood, Cambridge University Press, 1990), Paragraph 275. Hereafter referenced in the text by paragraph number as follows: (EPR §275)



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concerns the universal in and for itself, which is present subjectively in the conscience of the monarch and

objectively in the constitution and laws as a whole. To this extent the power of the sovereign presupposes the

other moments, just as it is presupposed by them. EPR § 285

When the Sovereign exercises their conscience in their decision regarding the particular cases of the

constitution and laws, the self-determination (or unity) to which everything else reverts occurs. For Hegel,

despite his arrangement of the exposition of the moments and the naming of the second and third moments

as such, there is no necessary order to these moments as they each presuppose the other.

The moment of the universal aspect presupposes that there will be particular cases and that these will be

decided upon by a sovereign, by one who will provide unity between the universal and the particular.

The moment of the particular aspect presupposes that there is a universal that cases will be particular cases

of and that these will be decided upon by a sovereign, by one who will provide unity between the universal

and the particular.

The moment of the decision of the sovereign presupposes that there will be a universal aspect, of which there

will be particular cases to be decided upon and provide a unity between.

The Sovereign is necessary to the conception of The State as it is he who gives actual, rather than merely

formal, existence to the (presupposed) unity of the universal and particular, civil society and family.

At this stage, I want to leave any further consideration of Hegel’s explication of The Power of The Sovereign

and turn to Nancy’s commentary.

Nancy – ‘Jurisdiction of the Hegelian Monarch’

‘The Jurisdiction of the Hegelian Monarch’ first appeared the journal Social Research in 1982 and as far as I

have been able to determine it was written for the journal. It was written 7.5 years after Nancy’s first book on

Hegel; the Speculative Remark in 1973 and 15 years before his second; Hegel: The Restlessness of The Negative

in 1997. A more formal earlier work, the essay is divided into four sections and these are entitled: The

Monarch The Whole of The State, The Monarch in No Way Symbolic, The Monarch a Tremendous

Contradiction and The Monarch Separate From Totality.

For Nancy, the Monarch as Hegel describes him, is the whole of the State, “he is the co-presence of the

elements of the State and of the moments of its Idea […] he is -and is only- the synthesis of the State” (JHM,

p. 115). As the synthesis of the State, the co-presence of all its moments, the monarch is synonymous with

the entirety of the State.

However, for Nancy, The Monarch is in no way symbolic,

that is to say [he] exists – only because a necessity, unique but polymorphic, requires that representation of both

the people and of right should be, in the principle of the State, gone beyond and transcended in actual presence.

[…] but he is (and does not symbolize) the absolute position of power. (JHM, p. 120)

As it is necessary that the people (particular cases) and right (constitution and laws) should be more than

merely represented, their unity must have actual (co) presence in the singular being of the Monarch. The

Monarch however does not symbolize the people, right or their unity but in his position or role (which anyone



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born to it could fill) he gives actual existence to them. The Monarch himself has no power (Hegel’s Sovereign

is not a despot) but his role or position does.

For Nancy, the Monarch is a tremendous contradiction,

insofar as he actualizes the solution of relation, the dis-solution of the “union as such” of something whose unity

will always have been presupposed, the monarch simply actualizes the logic of subjectivity. It is this logic that that,

in principle, hides or prohibits the question of relation. (JHM, p. 133)

For Nancy, if a pair of opposites are presupposed to have a unity, which dissolves their opposition, then the

question of relation as such will not have been essentially grasped. In this way the Monarch covers up the

question of relation in the moment it is supposed to solve it.

Finally, for Nancy, the monarch is separate from totality,

strictly speaking, we should say that in the organic totalization of the Hegelian State the monarch is lacking: either

he is not an individual or he is one, and then he is excepted from the totality, he exceeds it or he remains

withdrawn from it […] beyond what Hegel thinks, - he [the monarch] actualizes union by not completing relation,

by inscribing it in the space of separation, which is that of relation itself. (JHM, p. 140)

For Nancy, the Monarch cannot be a member of the State if he is the unity of its people and its right or law,

he must be a separate individual, a subject. What is revealed in Hegel’s supposed place of completed perfect

relation is in fact a separation.

For Nancy ”the question of relation poses a limit-question, indicated everywhere but never examined in itself

by Hegel – at least not without presupposing the resolution of relation in an archi-teleological unity. “ (JHM,

p. 121) For Nancy, what The Monarch shows us is Hegel’s missing of the question of relation, a question missed

because it is masked by the presupposition that all relation has an end point of perfect unity between the

things in relation. However what is revealed in the wake of Hegel’s attempt to provide a total system is as

useful as what the system intended. It is at this none-the less fruitful point of lacking, of not completing as

planned, that Nancy begins ‘The Inoperative Community’, the first in many works that seek to address the

question of relation.

Nancy - The Inoperative Community and Conclusion

The essay ‘The Inoperative Community’ appeared first in Aléa magazine in 1983 before appearing in the

collection of the same name.

In ‘The Inoperative Community’, Nancy tells us that community “has been thought of on the basis of a lost

community – one to be regained or reconstituted.”3 It has been thought of as a project we must pick up and

complete. Community, Nancy tells us is usually assumed to be made up of individuals who strive together to

complete a project of community, to make a completed work of their communion.

For Nancy however, community is not a completed project but is in fact the communion that occurs in the

attempt to complete the project. Specifically it is the communion that occurs when the project does not

3 Nancy, JL, ‘The Inoperative Community’ in The Inoperative Community, (trans. Peter Connor, University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 9. Hereafter referred to in the text as (IC, p.)



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complete, or as he puts it (in a term he borrows but rehabilitates from Bataille), unworks. For Nancy there are

not individuals (singular beings who know themselves as such) who come together in a community, it is rather

that we know our singularity when we co-appear to each other in our attempt to complete a project of

communion. In the moment we realise our singularity we realise that the project will not complete, this is the

moment of relation.

In conclusion then, for Nancy,

It is certainly not a matter of reproaching Hegel with an insufficiency in his interrogation of the origin of relation

or of the ultimate and essential being of relation. […] Hegel, because he masks the question or the impossibility

of the question, shows the impasse of the philosophical solution of relation, and opens up at the same time the

necessity of thinking relation without origin and without realization in a substantial unity. (JHM, p.130)

It is precisely in Hegel’s attempt to complete relation that the impossibility of doing so is revealed. Whilst

Hegel masks the question of relation, he does, for an attentive reader such as Nancy, also bring it up.

For Nancy, Hegel’s State is of course precisely such a project that would attempt complete a community and

must be reckoned to be one of the many nameless theories of community that Nancy describes in ‘The

Inoperative Community’. Hegel’s Sovereign, as the moment in which the previously merely formal unity of

particular and universal has actual being, crucially for Nancy, resists and escapes this function as it in fact

points to the impossibility of the unity. Therefore for Nancy, Hegel’s sovereign unworks Hegel’s theory and

reveals that relation is in fact also separation and spacing.

Leda Channer, Manchester 2014

The Resistant Monarch: Jean-Luc Nancy on Hegel's Sovereign

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