Faith and Responsibility in Individual Sovereignty

Abstract

This paper deals with two conceptual problems of individual sovereignty as pointed out by Duffel (2007) and Duffel (2004), that I call as “theoretical problem” and “aberration problem” respectively. The concept of sovereignty in general, and individual sovereignty in particular, suffered serious theoretical problems that seem irresolvable. But arguably it is a concept with great operational success as proven by four centuries of Western civilization dominance. How can a concept achieve such an operational success yet conceptually flawed? The second problem of sovereignty is related to the objections that it places too much weight on rights. To address both these conceptual problems this paper will resort to the teaching of Jordan Peterson, and speculates that what underpins the concept itself is that of faith as opposed to reason, and argues for the return to the more classical version of it that focuses more on responsibility. It concludes that Christians ought to give more serious thought on individual sovereignty as its manifestation is arguably the greatest gift from Judeo-Christian tradition to mankind, especially in the sphere of socio-politic.