Sovereignty and property in the history of European identity

Abstract

The article attempts to reconstruct the history of Western self-consciousness in the context of the development of the concepts of property and sovereignty. The author justifies the validity of this approach by the fact that it is the concept of one’s own as the most obvious and pre-established that presupposes the possibility of posing a problem about the source of everything. After all, philosophy begins with it not only as a specific form of knowledge, but also as the highest form of self–consciousness of Western civilization. In addition, the anthropological domain inherent in the philosophical thought of the theoretical and contemplative sets the practical aspect, which is grasped by the concept of sovereignty. The author consistently examines the ancient, medieval, New European and modern periods of Western history, reconstructing the dynamics of the understanding of property and sovereignty, which reflected the main features of civilizational development. The article emphasizes that during the period of ancient cosmocentrism, an aesthetic understanding of one’s own was formed, realized through its public demonstration in artistic and political amateur activities. The theocentrism of the Middle Ages “reoriented” the understanding of one’s own to the inner content of human existence, fundamentally contrasting the intimate essence of the personality with the tempting sinfulness of the surrounding reality. The New European egocentrism, following in the paradigm of speculative rationalism, the essence of property and, as a consequence, the manifestation of the sovereign status of the individual, confirmed in the active resolution of the contradiction of internal and external, deployed in the temporal dimension of historical reality. According to the author’s point of view, the essence of the bourgeois world, in which the fundamental opposition of self-sufficient subjectivity and a natural element distinct from it was embodied, was expressed by the universality of world history. And the main contradiction that characterizes the present state of modern civilization is determined by the gradual blurring of the boundaries that structure the essence of subjectivity, and indicates the loss of its sovereignty and productive potential.