The Anti-Civilisationism of Liberalism

I don't think the sovereign can be a corporation, for this reason. The sovereign is a "legal entity," insofar as each new sovereign doesn't just spring from the ground and rule based completely on his own, spontaneously and unanimously recognized capacities. Like any role, the sovereign is defined by that role: a "shoemaker" is also a "legal entity," even if not in the same terms as a corporation. What makes the sovereign a legal entity is that he defines, recognizes and constrains all the other entities in the tradition of sovereignty over those entities. That's the "outside": being both the source and effect of the legal traditions.

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I think we have to accept a paradox. Let's say that there's one person who gives everyone else a name. Does that person himself have a name? In a sense, no, because names are given by someone else with authority to do so. In another sense, his name is "the Namer," because that's how everyone knows him, as long as he sustains his own naming activity. It what Gregory Bateson called a "pragmatic paradox."