The importance of Coinage

This very vigorous and relentless probing of basic neoabsolutist concepts is very valuable, and we should always be doing that. The question of which unanswered questions discredit a theoretical discourse can't be answered so easily, though. Three objections to the assertion that HLvM is the cause of attempts to aggrandize power have been raised (or, rather, three other causes adduced): empire building; the introduction of new technology; defense against foreign threats. Clearly any political theory needs to take all that into account. But empires are built by sovereigns, and rather than just saying there are now multiple causes and hence the mono-causal theory of neoabsolutism fails we could just as readily say that the failure of the sovereign to integrate the new forms of power that come with empire leads to the independence of other power centers, which in turn... The same with new technology and foreign defense--none of these things just happen, and cause things by themselves--they are, rather mediated through the sovereign. Maybe building these theoretical connections will prove difficult, and maybe the theory will have to be substantially revised or even abandoned. But that is yet to be determined, and trying to make a powerful theory work, turning it into an intellectual tradition, and seeing what it can yield under severe pressure is far preferable to dropping it when a couple of contradictions are pointed out within a single discussion.