Absolutism and time: The origin of modern state politics

My dissertation examines the development of modern state theory through an analysis of early modern absolutist thought. I look specifically at four innovations that absolutist writers introduced into the modern theory of the state: (1) the idea of legislative sovereignty; (2) the theory of reason of state; (3) a more expansive definition of the sovereign's regulative powers; and (4) a new ethic of statecraft emphasizing self-discipline, foresight, probability and statistics. My thesis is that absolutist writers articulated these principles in reference to a new understanding of the relationship between politics and temporality.;Stated most simply, I argue that late medieval writers believed political order was sustained by divine grace and immemorial custom and hence was sheltered from temporality and flux. During the Renaissance, the Italian civic humanists challenged this understanding of the relationship between politics and temporality by arguing that temporality was all-pervading and that human beings actively had to confront it in and through politics. By the later Renaissance, writers in the countries of northern Europe, and especially in France, had adopted this same general perspective on temporality and politics, but claimed that temporal vicissitudes and flux were so extreme and variable that the traditional humanistic means for securing order, such as republican government, were no longer viable. Instead, they attempted to identify a new foundation of universal order amidst the tumult and flux of temporal affairs--which they associated alternatively either with natural right or divine right--and encouraged human beings to construct an artificial, self-regulating and disciplined "state" around it. The principles of legislative sovereignty, reason of state, expansive state powers, and rationalistic rule were proposed as means to implement this new state order.;My study contributes to our understanding of politics by elucidating the ideological dimension of early modern state formation and by providing an answer to the problematic question: what is the state? The state, I suggest, is a unique form of political organization premised upon a distinctive conception of the relationship between politics and temporality.