Sovereignty and Sacrifice

In his provocative 2005 study, Putting Liberalism in Its Place , Yale’s Paul W. Kahn argues that “we will never understand the character of the American rule of law without first understanding the way in which it is embedded in a conception of popular sovereignty. More importantly, we will not understand the way in which the nation-state presents itself to the citizen as an ultimate value, that is, one for which the citizen may be asked to sacrifice his or her life. Liberal thought, as well as liberal politics, believes claims for sacrifice are exterior to the purposes and functions of a legitimate political arrangement – a kind of unfortunate, historical accident.” Kahn argues, by contrast, that “recognition of the possibility of sacrifice is at the base of our experience of the political and an adequate theory of our political beliefs must offer an explanation of sacrifice.”

Liberal theory cannot grasp the foundational character of sacrifice, nor can it grasp “the erotic character of the experience of political meaning.” Kahn means that “attachment to the political community is a matter not of contract but of love.” He clarifies that he is not advocating a new politics grounded in sacrifice and love, but rather showing that “our politics is already one of love and sacrifice; reason finds its place within this experience of self and polity.”

He makes his point about the limits of liberal theory with a theological analogy: It’s not enough for believers to attend to the content of God’s speaking; of equal importance is the fact that God speaks. Similarly, “liberal theorists . . . focus on the content of the speech [of the popular sovereign], that is, on what the sovereign said or should say. They do not reflect on the significance of the belief that it is the popular sovereign who does the speaking.”