Sovereignty discourse made power-code itself open to negation and contingency

Evidence

This logic of perfection obviously failed for many reasons, among them the purely religious reason of the speculative expansion of the increased potential for negation. In the field of the power-code the discussion about sovereignty which arose in the late Middle Ages may have operated as a trigger, by defining – still in the style of the logic of perfection – the sovereign commonwealth as civitas superiorem non recognoscens (the sovereign/ independent city). No matter how the actual causes occurred, whether more French or more Italian sources first inspired the discussion, this does give greater freedom for addressing the subject-matter and greater potential for negation within the power-code, until finally addressing the topic of the code itself becomes contingent and appears otherwise than what it is. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 689

Categorization

• XREF: The expanding ‘potential for negation’ in the power-code describes a historical arc — from sacred, un-negatable authority to contestable legitimacy — that let the reader frame Darlington’s aristocratic authority as anachronistic, already opened to negation by modernity.