Table Of Content“Ignas Kalpokas’s carefully argued book shows us that political order is not
a state of affairs, but a constant process of ordering. As he rightly argues,
there is no final balance between creativity and limitation, and one cannot
be privileged at the expense of the other. In short: we are never done with
politics.”
—Lasse Thomassen, Senior Lecturer in Politics,
Queen Mary University of London
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Creativity and Limitation in
Political Communities
There is an inherent tension between popular and establishment powers in
political communities. With anti-establishment sentiment on the rise across
Western democracies, exploring the underpinnings of this dualism and re-
thinking theories of political life within states is of paramount importance.
By combining the theories of Carl Schmitt and Benedict Spinoza, this book
develops a framework of continuous reproduction, whereby the constitutive
and the constituted powers simultaneously hold one another in tension and
supersede one another. In the same vein, political communities are shown to
be perpetually caught in a cycle of creativity/contestation, derived primarily
from Schmitt (the tragic groundlessness of politics) and limitation (derived
primarily from Spinoza as a quasi-theological belief in the status quo).
Providing a novel theoretical framework explaining the workings of
democratic politics, this book also offers a non-traditional reading of
Spinoza and Schmitt. Whereas traditionally both have been treated as
almost polar opposites, here they are held in creative tension, providing
equally important building blocks for the proposed theory. By furthering
their analysis, the author creates a new theory of political action.
Ignas Kalpokas is currently a lecturer at LCC International University and
Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). He received his PhD from the
University of Nottingham. His research and teaching covers the areas of
international relations and international political theory, primarily with
respect to sovereignty and globalisation of norms, identity and formation
of political communities, political use of social media, and information
warfare.
Rethinking Political and International Theory
Series Editors: Keith Breen, Dan Bulley, Susan McManus
For a full list of titles in this series, please see our website: https://www.
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ASHSER1348
Committed to show you in what ways traditional approaches in political and
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in scope, the series will contain works that advance our understanding of
the relevance of seminal thinkers to our current socio- political context(s) as
well as problematize and offer new insights into key political concepts and
phenomena within the arena of politics and international relations.
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Jeremy Kleidosty
Virtue and Economy
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Andrius Bielskis and Kelvin Knight
Revolutionary Subjectivity in Post-Marxist Thought
Laclau, Negri, Badiou
Oliver Harrison
Human Rights, Human Dignity, and Cosmopolitan Ideals
Essays on Critical Theory and Human Rights
Matthias Lutz-Bachmann
Creativity and Limitation in Political Communities
Spinoza, Schmitt and Ordering
Ignas Kalpokas
Creativity and Limitation in
Political Communities
Spinoza, Schmitt and Ordering
Ignas Kalpokas
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Ignas Kalpokas
The right of Ignas Kalpokas to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.
ISBN: 978-1-138-74783-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-18027-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
To my wife Julija and sons Klemensas and Frederikas – for
enduring my writing
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Contents
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
Ordering and the conceptual apparatus 2
Spinoza and Schmitt: not at all incompatible 4
The structure of the book 7
1 The four elements of ordering 11
1.1 The framework: state and sovereignty 12
1.1.1 The state 12
1.1.2 Sovereignty 17
1.2 The content: law and politics 21
1.2.1 Law 22
1.2.2 Politics 28
1.3 Partial excursus on Lefort and the empty locus of power 35
2 Spinoza: the immanent rationality of order 45
2.1 Life between desire and reason 45
2.1.1 Substance and the nature of God 46
2.1.2 Human nature: the primacy of desire 48
2.1.3 The illusion of free will 51
2.1.4 The morality of the void 52
2.1.5 Knowledge: from automata of desire to social beings 55
2.2 The framework: state and sovereignty 58
2.2.1 Agreement and social bonds 58
2.2.2 The organic self-creation of the multitude 60
2.2.3 State of reason and reason of state 62
2.2.4 The nature of citizenship 63
2.2.5 The location of sovereignty 64
2.2.6 Power, law and winning hearts and minds 68
