Absolutist doctrine made the king’s body the sole source of national unity

Evidence

Speaking of the nation, you know in general terms (I am going over things I have already said in order to summarize them) that the absolute monarchy’s thesis was that the nation did not exist, or at least that if it did exist, it did so only to the extent that it found its condition of possibility, and its substantive unity, in the person of the king. The nation did not exist simply because there was a group, a crowd, or a multiplicity of individuals inhabiting the same land, speaking the same language, and observing the same customs and the same laws. That is not what makes a nation. What makes a nation 1s the fact that there exist individuals who, insofar as they exist alongside one another, are no more than individuals and do not even form a unit. But they do all have a certain individual relationship—both juridical and physical—with the real, living, and bodily person of the king. It is the body of the king, in his physico-juridical relationship with each of his subjects, that creates the body of the nation, A jurist of the late eighteenth century said: “Every particular subject represents only a single individual to the king.” … The nation in its entirety resides in the person of the king. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 232

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the monarchist theory of national unity as constituted through the king’s physico-juridical body.
• XREF: Connects to the concept of the king’s two bodies and to Kantorowicz; also echoes Ernest Gellner/Anderson on the nation when Foucault pivots to Sieyès. — connects to: Sovereign truth was reserved to the king as a jealously guarded privilege — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 86; The inalienable rights of the abstract individual were immediately fused with national sovereignty; Totalitarian parties absorb the Crown’s arbitrating function.

Broader Connections

• Sovereign truth was reserved to the king as a jealously guarded privilege #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 86
• The inalienable rights of the abstract individual were immediately fused with national sovereignty #contradicts (0.85)
• Totalitarian parties absorb the Crown’s arbitrating function. #expands (0.80)