legitimate because it is not the persistence of a secularised theological concept. Although it reoccupied mirror-image pre-Enlightenment questions, say regarding absolutism, it is not first concerned with such categories as ???sovereignty, raison d???etat, will, decision, friend-enemy??? but with ???contract, consent, liberty, law and rights???. However, in Work on Myth, he proposes that man is, and has always been, a maker of mythological magnitudes, of which there can be argued to be an archetypal form. These magnitudes are so fearsome as to allow man to convert his existential fear into fear of an entity the fate of which he can gradually bring into his own hands. In this way, there is the promise of the elimination of existential fear and of the experience of sympathetic conditions of existence. Blumenberg does not address political issues, such as the nature of the State. However, if the State can be shown to be such a magnitude and therefore a political realisation of such an archetype, then it is mythological and so is not modern, even if it is legitimate. It then needs to be criticised to allow the introduction of a radical notion of Enlightenment. The effect of such criticisms would be the replacement of the notions of fear and sympathy with that of self-responsibility as the first interest of the State. Selfresponsibility would need to be promoted progressively. It would require a reconfigured State the prime purpose of which is the promotion of respect and self-reliance of individuals. Its first concern would therefore not be the elimination of fear, which would be understood as unable to be eliminated, nor the creation by it of sympathetic conditions of existence, which would be better a matter for properly prepared and supported, selfreliant individuals. The debate then would be around this axis, where contingency is accepted and managed, not the mythological axis of liberalism and republicanism which has dominated modern political theory since Hobbes. This thesis is first an exploration of the viability of the mythological idea of the State, whether the State is a political realisation of the archetypal myth. It does this through an examination of such thinkers in the political tradition as Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Rawls and Pettit. The conclusion of this examination is, in sum, that the idea of the State since Hobbes has been, and remains, mythological since it shows all the key characteristics of a mythological entity and the arguments for it have mythological presumptions. It is still first concerned with the fear/sympathy nexus and the debates of the political tradition from Hobbes to Pettit have been carried out around that axis. Further, this is argued to be an arrangement which promotes dominant interests rather than widespread participation of non-autonomous, self-responsible individuals. But if this notion of the State as a progressively refined and dispersed mythological entity is viable, it cannot have existed only in the minds of those in the political theoretical tradition. We should expect to see evidence of it in the beliefs and practices of individual men and women. It must have been not just a political realisation of the mythological State as an idea, but an embodied notion. This thesis is also an exploration of the evidence for that embodiment. It does this by looking at Elias??? analysis of the civilising process in the Middle Ages, at Foucault???s analysis of the emergence and proliferation of the disciplines and the art of government from the 17th century and at the dispersal of the myth through cultural imperialism in the 18th century. The conclusions of these analyses are reinforced by the social ontology of Wittgenstein. Further argument for this embodiment is presented regarding both the common notion of citizenship and the perception of other cultures, that each manifest mythological characteristics. Such embodied practices can be seen as strategies promoted through the State by dominant interests, the purpose of which are the claims to generally eliminate fear and create sympathetic conditions of existence. This embodiment reinforces the initial argument that the idea of the State did emerge and has been established and gradually refined as mythological. In essence and in large part, this is a genealogy of post-Hobbesian political society as mythological. That is, as the political realisation of the archetypal mythological form and its embodiment in the material practice of individuals. The explanatory value of this way of perceiving the State is then demonstrated by its application to the complex conditions of the destruction of traditional Aboriginal culture by the colonising and civilising British, that is the dispersal of the mythological State as empire. From this, it is argued that the mythological understanding of the State is more illuminating that other approaches.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/273132 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Grant, David John, Law, Faculty of Law, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Law |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright David John Grant, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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