Teoria das esferas de soberania de H. Dooyeweerd: uma teoria da liberdade das comunidades civis

Abstract

This study aims to investigate, expose and analyze the concept of sovereignty of the Dutch theorist Herman Dooyeweerd, having as hypotheses that the author represents the displacement of the concept of sovereignty from the political community of the State to civil society in a coexistence of sovereignties, and as a result, that the theory of sphere sovereignty is a theory of the liberties of the civil communities. We defend here that the theory of sphere sovereignty offers a contribution related to the problem of the original competence of jurisdiction and, the legitimacy of power, and of its limits and prerogatives. In our view, the concept of sphere sovereignty consists in a valuable contribution to contemporary political theory. There is in it a way of analyzing the problem of sovereignty and the limits of the exercise of political power, which bequeaths to the theorist of the 21st century a system that proposes greater coherence with the reality of the diversity of associations in society, preventing and fighting abuses of power and liberties based not simply on values of individual freedom, but on the guiding principle of each association. For this, an exposition of the history of the concept of sovereignty is developed, since its prehistory, in the Low Middle Ages, when the term had not yet been coined, remaining as a notion, passing through the first uses of the term and the transformations of its meanings and applications in Modernity contemporaneity. This is followed by an exposition of the intellectual context of the author in question, from the historical moment that lived his country to his biography and formation of his thought, with the exposition of fundamental concepts for the understanding of his theory. It then analyzes his understanding of the concept of sovereignty, and his proposal of the new concept of sphere sovereignty, emphasizing the displacement of the problematic from the sovereignty of the political association of the State to that of civil society in coexisting sovereignties as a theory of the liberties of the civil communities, not sparing the philosopher from the criticisms of which he was and is the target or of those that may still be leveled against him. In this way there will be a reflection on what relevant contributions his concept of sphere sovereignty brings to political theory in the 21st century, with proposals to think about the problems related to the exercise of power and freedoms of the civil communities in a highly differentiated society.