The retroactive constitution of the political domain: From Hegel to the European Union constitution.

摘要

This dissertation examines the socio-economic and political modality of a philosophical concept called retroactive constitution. The dissertation develops the hypothesis that the trajectory of retroactive constitution is present in the relation between the socially contracted State form and its basis in Civil Society. More specifically, the dissertation: (1a) examines Hegel's social and political theory in the Philosophy of Right as read through the dialectical principle of retroactive constitution elaborated in the categorial ontology of his Science of Logic; and (1b) analyzes the dialectical notion of the socially contracted State form via the socio-political physiognomy of retroactive constitution exhibited in the Philosophy of Right's development of the relation of Civil Society and the State form. Furthermore, (2) all of these theoretical concerns are given an interdisciplinary impulse by being linked to an empirical object: the recent history of the EU's socio-political and economic transformation via its increasing integration, which has led to the attempt to unify it constitutionally.