论主权

Bodin`s Six livres de la repubique is a vast synthesis of comparaitve public law and politics .the theoretical core of which is formed by the four chapters translated in this volume.These contain his celebrated theory of sovereignty,which informed his thinking on the state and made his Republique a landmark in the development of European thought.This theory,however,also ncluded a seductive but erroneous thesis that was of greatimpwrtance for the development of royalist ideology:the idea that sovereignty is indivisible,that the entirepower of the state has to be vested in a single individual or group.This thesis,together with the crisis of authority in the French religious wars ,led Bodin to a systimatically absolutist interpretation of the French and other contemporary monarchies.His primary aim was to exclude any legal groud of forcible resistance.A king of France,he hoped ,would continue to adhere to moral and prudential limitations ,but a proper king,he insisted,could not be lawfully constrained.