The Ontology of Fictional Sovereignty: Libertine Materialism and Political Order

What is the ontological status of sovereignty? Dominant theoretical traditions treat sovereignty as either juridical attribute (normative approaches), effective capacity (realist approaches), or socially constructed institution (constructivist approaches)—but all presume sovereignty has an ontological status that grounds political order. This paper excavates an alternative ontology from seventeenth-century libertine erudition (libertins érudits): Gabriel Naudé, François de La Mothe Le Vayer, Pierre Gassendi. Libertine materialism offers a radical anti-foundationalism: sovereignty is operational fiction—it has no being beyond its performative effects. This is neither nominalism (sovereignty as mere name) nor social construction (sovereignty as collective belief), but ontology of the surface: sovereignty exists only as strategic dissimulation without substance. Political order, consequently, cannot rest on architectonic principles but emerges as contingent composition of material forces without grounding. Through close analysis of libertine texts on reason of state, political necessity, and dissimulation, I reconstruct their political ontology and trace its systematic exclusion from modern political theory's genealogies. This exclusion is not accidental but symptomatic: modern political thought—from Hobbes through Schmitt—requires ontological foundations (even if minimalist) that libertine skepticism renders impossible. I argue this repressed ontology remains theoretically productive for contemporary political theory facing crises of sovereignty (fragmented statehood, digital platforms, post-national governance) and international order (multipolar configurations without stable form). Libertine materialism offers an ontology adequate to political modernity's radical contingency—one that neither mourns lost foundations (communitarian critiques) nor celebrates their absence (postmodern celebration), but thinks materiality and power without ground.