In this inaugural volume of the Edinburgh Encounters in Law and Philosophy series, Giorgio Agamben focuses upon the on-going warfare European state power has waged against its most malignant enemy: civil war itself.
The survival of the State is seen to depend on its ability to preserve the political community from factional enmity. Agamben first investigates the Athenian theme of 'Stasis' - the city's struggle against internal revolt - before turning to a new reading of Hobbes' Leviathan and its approach to the peril of the commonwealth's exposure to civil strife, division and revolution.
At the heart of this book is the issue of state powers in their continuous decline - an issue that is key to the renewal of political, philosophical and legal thought.