The Paradox of Constituent Power: An Arendtian Solution
The paradox of constituent power is one of the most important issues in modern constitutionalism. Constituent power is the legitimate source of all constitutions. But the people, which is the entity to exercise the power, usually gains its identity from an established constitutional form. I start the thesis with an assumption that Arendt's work contains a possible solution to the paradox, due to the “circular” characteristic of Hannah Arendt’s concept of action, which provides a unique perspective to understand the paradox. Then by reading Arendt together with both liberal-constitutional (Ackerman) and radical (Negri) alternatives to the paradox, I try to achieve an Arendtian solution to the paradox.
MA in Political Philosophy, University of York
MA in Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
BA in Journalism, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
2019.6.20 “Action or Speech? What is the Main Form of Arendtian Politics” on “Politics as a location: New frontiers of political research”, 7th Annual Nottingham Postgraduate Conference in Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
Ruijie is supervised by Professor Monica Brito-Vieira and Professor Matthew Festenstein