Sovereignty

" I’m going to go over some of the attributes of this abstracted ideal that we’ve formalized as God, but that’s the first hypothesis: a philosophical or moral ideal manifests itself first as a concrete pattern of behavior that’s characteristic of a single individual. 

And then it’s a set of individuals, and then it’s an abstraction from that set, and then you have the abstraction, and it’s so important. 

Here’s a political implication: One of the debates, we might say, between early Christianity and the late Roman Empire was whether or not an emperor could be God, literally to be deified and put into a temple. 

You can see why that might happen because that’s someone at the pinnacle of a very steep hierarchy who has a tremendous amount of power and influence.

The Christian response to that was, 

Never confuse the specific Sovereign with the principle of Sovereignty itself. 

It’s brilliant. 

You can see how difficult it is to come up with an idea like that, so that even the person who has the power is actually subordinate to a divine principle, for lack of a better word. 

Even the king himself is subordinate to the principle. 

We still believe that because we believe our Prime Minister is subordinate to the damn law.

Whatever the body of law, there's a principle inside that even the leader is subordinate to. 

Without that, you could argue you can’t even have a civilized society, because your leader immediately turns into something that’s transcendent and all-powerful. 

That's certainly what happened in the Soviet Union, and what happened in Maoist China, and what happened in Nazi Germany. There was nothing for the powerful to subordinate themselves to.

You’re supposed to be subordinate to God. 

What does that mean? 

We’re going to tear that idea apart, but partly what that means is that you’re subordinate—even if you’re sovereign—to the principles of sovereignty itself. And then the question is, what the hell is the principles of sovereignty? 

I would say we have been working that out for a very long period of time. That’s one of the things that we’ll talk about. "

Before The Law, there stands a Guard. 

A Man comes from the country, begging admittance to The Law. 

But The Guard cannot admit him. 

May he hope to enter at a later time? 

That is possible, said The Guard. 

The man tries to peer through the entrance. 

He'd been taught that The Law was to be accessible to every man. 

"Do not attempt to enter without my permission", says the guard. "I am very powerful. Yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more powerful than the last."

By the guard's permission, the man sits by the side of the door, and there he waits. 

For years, he waits. 

Everything he has, he gives away in the hope of bribing the guard, who never fails to say to him "I take what you give me only so that you will not feel that you left something undone." 

Keeping his watch during the long years, the man has come to know even the fleas on The Guard's fur collar. 

Growing childish in old age, he begs the fleas to persuade The Guard to change his mind and allow him to enter. 

His sight has dimmed, but in the darkness he perceives a radiance streaming immortally from the door of the law. 

And now, before he dies, all he's experienced condenses into one question, a question he's never asked. He beckons the guard. 

Says the guard, "You are insatiable! What is it now?" 

Says the man, "Every man strives to attain the law. How is it then that in all these years, no one else has ever come here, seeking admittance?"

 His hearing has failed, so the guard yells into his ear. "Nobody else but you could ever have obtained admittance. No one else could enter this door! This door was intended only for you! And now, I'm going to close it." 

This tale is told during the story called "The Trial". 

It's been said that the logic of this story is the logic of a dream... a nightmare.

The notion that every single human being, regardless of their peculiarities, strangenesses, sins, crimes, and all of that, has something divine in them that needs to be regarded with respect, plays an integral role, at least an analogous role, in the creation of habitable order out of chaos. That’s a magnificent, remarkable, crazy idea. And yet we developed it, and I do firmly believe that it sits at the base of our legal system.

I think it is the cornerstone of our legal system. 


That’s the notion that everyone is equal before God, which is, of course, such a strange idea. It’s very difficult to understand how anybody could have ever come up with that idea, because the manifold differences between people are so obvious and so evident that you could say that the natural way of viewing human being is in this extreme hierarchical manner, where some people are contemptible and easily brushed off as pointless and pathological and without value, and all the power accrues to a certain tiny aristocratic minority at the top.


But if you look at the way that the idea of the individual Sovereign developed, it’s clear that it unfolded over thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of years before it became something firmly fixed in the imagination.

Each individual has something of transcendent value about them. 

Man, I tell you, we dispense with that idea at our serious peril. 

If you’re gonna take that idea seriously—which you do because you act it out, because otherwise you wouldn’t be law-abiding citizens—then you act that idea out. It’s firmly shared by everyone who acts in a civilized manner. The question is, why in the world do you believe it?

Assuming that you believe what you act out, which I think is a really good way of fundamentally defining beliefs.