Governability and the paradox of legal foundationalism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30827/acfs.v60i.34578Keywords:
foundationalism, governability, providence, sovereignty, general WillAbstract
This paper explores what is described as the fundamental paradox of modern law—its capacity to suspend itself and to undermine the very rights it is supposed to uphold. Zartaloudis critiques how this paradox has become normalized and obscured within both legal orthodoxy and critique, arguing that modern law’s foundational claims (e.g., universality, impartiality) are historically constructed since the 13th century on a model of understanding power as bipolar. Law’s self-suspending, self-referential logic must be examined through a critical historical lens, especially its Christian theological roots and, by extension, its colonial legacies. Using medieval sources (e.g., John of Salisbury, Bracton), the paper shows how sovereignty has historically been conceived as both absolute and limited. Concepts like the “King’s Two Bodies” (public vs. private personae) and “legibus solutus” (not bound by law) demonstrate how power has been masked by legal and theological fictions. Modern governance mirrors divine providence and its bipolar logic, especially through key distinctions between being/praxis, ordination/execution. Following on from this, the conception of the general will (from divine origins to Rousseau) becomes a central device for transforming the multitude into a unified “People”, enabling both nation-state democracy and authoritarianism. This is further intensified today as governance is shaped by technocratic and algorithmic controls reproducing this depoliticizing machine at the heart of the western notion of power, disguised as consensual democracy
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