Rights-based sovereignty and utility calculus both converge on limiting the individual

Evidence

General tendency, but which does not cancel the other. Especially since they produce similar, although undoubtedly not superimposable, effects. For the axiomatic of sovereignty is led to mark imprescriptible rights so strongly that it cannot in fact find any place for an art of government and the exercise of power by a public authority, unless the juridical constitution of the sovereign as the collective will is so strong that the exercise of basic rights are reduced to pure ideality. Toralitarian orientation. But the radicalism of utility, on the basis of the distinction individual utilityI collective utility, will also be led to em,phasize general utility over individual utility and infinitely reduce the independence ofthe governed as a consequence. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 369

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Foucault’s counterintuitive claim that the two antagonist poles of governmentality produce similar effects of crushing the governed — totalitarianism from sovereign rights, radical utility from general-interest calculus — is genuinely dense and invertive.
• XREF: Parallels the Frankfurt School’s analysis of Enlightenment rationalization and domination that was read in a prior book. — connects to: Human rights law and neoliberal economics converge to regulate conduct by quantifying freedom; Rights function as instruments of governance, not just limits on power; Collective utility has prevailed over sovereign rights as the axis of modern government — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 368 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Human rights law and neoliberal economics converge to regulate conduct by quantifying freedom #corroborates (0.85)
• Rights function as instruments of governance, not just limits on power #expands (0.78)
• Human rights become market-dependent floating signifiers of personhood #expands (0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 765
• The system’s celebrated freedoms function as instruments of domination #corroborates (0.74) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 45
• Collective utility has prevailed over sovereign rights as the axis of modern government #corroborates (0.72) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 368
• Autonomy as a secular-liberal ideal is class-differentiated and state-regulated #expands (0.72)