POSTMODERN THEORY OF THE STATE AND LAW Paperback – March 14, 2026

This book was not written to soothe consciences or to reinforce inherited certainties. It was born, on the contrary, from a profound unease: the suspicion that the State and Law — as we have known them, studied them, and obeyed them — no longer respond to the real lives of the men and women of our time. Its proposal is classical and ambitious: to link the historical origin of geopolitics to the Peloponnesian War and to demonstrate how, from that point onward, the various conceptions of society, the State, and Law throughout history can be explained — and ultimately surpassed — in order to justify the need for a new conception suited to the Era of the Digital Revolution. This approach is sound from a historical, philosophical, and juridical standpoint. For centuries we were taught to believe that the State was the natural result of reason, that Law was its highest expression, and that obedience to both constituted civilization. We obedience to both constituted civilization. We were told that outside the State there was no order, and outside the Law no justice. This work dares to question that civic faith. Modern State theory promised security; it delivered control. It promised freedom; it delivered the administration of conduct. It promised citizenship; it delivered representation saturated with interests. Law, born as a limit upon power, became its most refined language. The State, presented as guarantor of human dignity, ended up managing bodies, consciences, data, and fears. The history traversed in these pages — from Thucydides to the digital age — demonstrates that power does not disappear when it changes form: it merely learns to justify itself more effectively. This is not a work written from neutrality, for neutrality in matters of power almost always favors the dominator. Nor is it written from nostalgia, for it proposes no return to any idealized past. It is, rather, a lucid gaze upon a present that no longer fits within inherited categories. Here the reader will find no ideal State, no new juridical dogma, no closed theory. Instead, he will encounter a persistent question that runs throughout the entire work: What happens when the State ceases to be an instrument of the citizen, and the citizen becomes an instrument of the State? Postmodernity does not appear in these pages as an intellectual fashion, but as a historical as an intellectual fashion, but as a historical revelation: the recognition that the grand narratives that legitimized power — the social contract, the general will, political representation, abstract sovereignty — no longer explain or justify contemporary reality. In a digital, interconnected, decentralized world, power does not reside where it claims to reside. And Law no longer protects where it asserts protection. This book traverses civilizations, empires, and juridical systems not to display erudition, but to reveal a troubling constant: each time the State is absolutized, human dignity diminishes; each time Law is sacralized, freedom is impoverished. Africa, Europe, Byzantium, Russia, China, North America — different cultures, different answers, yet the same unresolved tension between power and person. It begins with the ancient yet radical idea that sovereignty is not ontologically delegated, that it is not lost through voting, that it does not dissolve into institutions. This text does not ask permission. Nor does it impose conclusions. It invites the reader to think from an uncomfortable yet necessary place: the place where the citizen ceases to be and returns to being a moral and political subject. Whoever opens this book will not find intellectual refuge. He will find a mirror. And perhaps — if he dares to look with And perhaps — if he dares to look with honesty and courage — he will also find a way out. FAISEL IGLESIAS Read more