Sovereignty as a Political Philosophic Category of Modern Times

Abstract

The paper attempts at analyzing ‘sovereignty’ as a concept in political philosophy that reflects the political realities of the Modern Age. The author traces down the peculiarities of the theoretical evolution of this notion as collateral to the development of a given form of state to which it is related, the entire process being revealed as a set of theoretical moves by means of which the notion of sovereignty from a concept originally intended to designate the autonomy and independence of an absolutist state has been transformed into a category closely linked to the essence of the modern democratic state. This in part accounts for the contradictory nature of sovereignty which has become particularly manifest in today’s globalizing world.