Medieval Lawand the Foundations of the State
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loginTracingthe growth of the State has become something of an histor-ical industry, but the subject still needs definition. The history of theState has to be more than a history of strong government: it must showhow an abstraction, a piece of metaphysics, came to dominate politicalconsciousness as a thing not only believed to have real existence butloved for its promise of social order and hated for its threat of coercion.The power of the State rests on an idea which is unique in commandingboth the levels of political thought discerned by Charles Taylor: the‘common-sense . . . pre-theoretical understanding of what is going onamong the members of society’ which is necessary for any politicalactivity, and the high theory of the philosophers who criticize and sys-tematize these working notions.1Graffiti urge the smashing of the sameState about which Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel theorized.
