Conflict, tolerance and power legitimation

This brief paper intends to investigate the dynamics lying at the basis of power legitimation within western society by examining the roles of violence and conflict. In particular, those of the sovereign people and the good citizen are analyzed through the ideological, narrative and symbolic mechanisms that determine their image and meanings within the body politic. Throughout history, different forms of power legitimation alternated, which we can ideally include within a linear pattern where they are arranged along an axis at whose extremes are placed the concepts of immanence and transcendence.