The Missing Concept in Agonistic Democracy: The Sovereign as a ‘modus’

Chantal Mouffe, who has been contributing to the trajectory of political philosophy for almost fifty years mostly in collaboration with Ernesto Laclau, recently published an article to signal what her political theory finally looks like based on her previous research presented rather in a nutshell fashion. This paper aims at developing an argument for the justification of three remarks based on the program developed in Mouffe's aforementioned latest work: 1) Mouffe is right in her claim that the existing liberal democratic practices of politics are far from responding to current crisis of politics, as they fail to develop relevant ontological convictions to understand the very notion of 'conflict'. 2) Nevertheless, the agonistic relief suggested by Mouffe herself to tackle with the contemporary challenges, which cannot be taken by liberal democracies as such, also falls short and cannot go beyond making moral recommendations for it also lacks an underlying ontological force. 3) Development of a Spinozistic power ontology -together with the conception of 'the ruler' as a 'modus'- is a necessary condition if we are to benefit from Mouffe's agonistic relief