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The supreme social concept: the un-worldliness of modern security

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 17:39 authored by Patricia Owens
Since Hobbes, the capacity to govern through providing 'security' has been understood as the way of producing and organising political order and subjectivity. Hobbes' claim that the security of domestic peace is founded on fear of violent death meant that modern individuals must be taught to love life. The discourse of 'security' is arguably the most powerful discourse of the modern age since it has largely set the parameters of modern thinking about politics and war. However, contra Schmitt and his followers, this is not because 'security' is the political discourse par excellence, allowing the sovereign to decide the law and exceptions to the law. Modern security is an exemplary instance of the rise of the social, as understood by Hannah Arendt. Modern discourses and practices of security have provided the justification and mechanism for the expansion of what Arendt described as the 'life process' of 'society' and the liberal view that 'life is the highest good'. Arendt's unwieldy and strange concept of 'the social' is eccentric, but defensible, both in terms of its origins in her unique form of philosophical anthropology and her socio-historical analysis of capitalism and the modern bureaucratic state.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

New Formations

ISSN

0950-2378

Publisher

Lawrence and Wishart

Volume

71

Page range

14-29

Department affiliated with

  • International Relations Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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