Statelessness: On Almost Not Existing

330 Pages·2022·15.548 MB·English

by  Tony C. Brown

S t a t e l e s s n e s s
On Almost Not Existing
Tony C. Brown
Statelessness
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STATELESSNESS
ON ALMOST NOT EXISTING
TONY C. BROWN
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Prolegomenon was originally published as “Aristotle’s Stateless One,” Critical Inquiry 46, no. 1
(2019): 118– 39.
Copyright 2022 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
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or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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ISBN 978- 1- 5179- 1241- 3 (hc)
ISBN 978- 1- 5179- 1242- 0 (pb)
A Cataloging- in- Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
UMP BmB 2022
For Katrien, Betty, and my parents, Kathleen and Colin
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Contents
Note on Translations and References ix
Introduction: Among the Names of Being 1
Prolegomenon: Aristotle’s Stateless One 27
PART 1. THE STATE BEING OF STATE METAPHYSICS
1.1. From States Natural to Nonnatural 45
1.2. Reason of State in a World without Law 49
1.3. The Chain of Being 57
1.4. Unfolding the Chain: Becoming Historically Enstated 63
1.5. The Genesis of Social Contract Theory 74
1.6. The Contracted State’s Necessity 82
1.7. Civilized, Barbarian, Savage 94
Intermezzo I 98
PART 2. THE STATE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL SECURITY
2.1. State as Human Vocation 105
2.2. The Higher Actuality: Of Being Human 112
2.3. Being Full of Being- Without 118
2.4. Being Represented: Negating the Natural 123
2.5. The State of Representation: Hobbes’s Mimetic Leviathan 133
2.6. Being Human, Perhaps 139
2.7. Ending a Just Natural Life 150
Intermezzo II 156
PART 3. BEING-A LMOST-A BSOLUTELY-W ITHOUT
3.1. The New Orbis Terrarum 161
3.2. Savage Essence Does Not Involve Existence 173
3.3. Neither by Nature nor by Necessity 179
3.4. Humans, Savages, Animals 191
3.5. Being Negative, Almost Nothing: On the Way to
Being- Almost- Absolutely- Without 200
3.6. The Difference of Not- Nothing 210
3.7. A Being without Consequence 220
Postlegomenon: Arendt’s Mass Statelessness 224
Conclusion: Stateness(less) Today 238
Notes 243
Index 303
Note on Translations and References
All translations are my own, unless noted otherwise. Where appropriate, I
have modernized original foreign language quotations for ease of reading.
References of the type “3.1.1,” without any other specification, are to
other parts of the text. For example, “3.6.1” corresponds to part 3 (“Being-
Almost- Absolutely- Without”), chapter 6 (“The Difference of Not- Nothing”),
numbered section 1. In addition, “Pr” and “Ps” refer to the Prolegomenon and
Postlegomenon respectively, while the Introduction is numbered “0.”
ix