A. V.Yarkeev

Biopolitical Revolution: Pro et Contra

The establishment of the biopolitical paradigm of state governance, which views its main task in the implementation of ambitious socioeconomic and military-political projects in close connection with the control over individuals and even care for their living, has produced a fundamentally new type of social contract that puts the authorities and the population who they patronize into mutual dependence. The balance of interests manifests itself in the form of a welfare state that embodies the positive side of biopolitical governance and provides the public with numerous benefits associated with the admission to participation in the economic and political life.

Based on the analysis of the processes unfolding in the recent years, the authors come to the conclusion that the consensus reached during the “great biopolitical game” is not unshakable. The long journey to include the population into the economy and politics in the interests of the authorities resulted in an unintended long-term consequence for the latter — a progressive decline in the productivity of the investment into the population within the established status quo. The effectiveness of such investments is almost exhausted. The growing demands of the population, who expects greater care from the authorities, reflect the trend towards a consumer revolution from below. However, these demands may turn out to be overwhelming for the biopower that could in the blink of an eye reverse the costly policy that stopped being beneficial, which creates a tendency towards the counter-revolution from above. Against this background, the authorities could regress to the forms of government that deny the people the living standards that they became used to.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2022-105-2-6-23

Pages: 6-23

Miracle as Theological Paradigm of Sovereign Power

The article justifies the approach to the essence of sovereign power from the point of view of the Western Christian theological paradigm. In this regard, the author considers the “miraculous” aspect of the power of the sovereign, derived from the idea of the absolute power of God, whose volitional decision is capable of limiting/suspending the operation of natural laws in the manifested form of a miracle. In the most general sense, a miracle is understood as a divine act that is extraordinary (exceptional) in nature, an act that interrupts the usual phenomenological series, proclaims the will of God and has the property of “salvation”. Thus, the theological concept of a miracle turns out to be a paradigm of secular sovereign power, based on the exclusive right to decide on a state of emergency. The concept of sovereignty, which includes the notion of the absoluteness and indivisibility of the supreme power, has a theological origin, since absolute power can only be an attribute of an absolute being, that is, God. The secularization and politicization of theological concepts build sovereign power on the basis of the equality between the sovereign and God, giving the state ruler the place that God occupied in the universe. The personified image of the sovereign represents a logically necessary completion of the hierarchical system of power. The transformation of the monarchic principle of sovereign power into the people’s democratic one leads to the formation of an administrative-bureaucratic state, where the criterion of sovereignty is not legitimacy, but the effectiveness of managerial actions, which involves the permanent use of emergency measures. The “salvation” of God’s miraculous actions finds its manifestation in the “salvific” purpose of emergency measures aimed at ensuring public safety by preventing fictitious threats. The totalization of the threat establishes a mode of functioning of the sovereign power, which within an exception to the law (“a miracle”) becomes equal to the law.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2021-100-1-27-43

Pages: 27-43