ENCOUNTERS IN LAW AND PHILOSOPHY SERIES EDITORS: Thanos Zartaloudis (University of Kent) & Anton Schütz (Birkbeck College, University of London). This series interrogates, historically and theoretically, the encounters between philosophy and law. Each volume published takes a unique approach and challenges traditional approaches to law and philosophy. A new contribution to Agamben's continuing genealogy of power In this inaugural volume of the Encounters in Law and Philosophy series, Giorgio Agamben focuses upon the on-going warfare European state power has waged against its most malignant enemy: civil war itself. The survival of the State is seen to depend on its ability to preserve the political community from factional enmity. Agamben first investigates the Athenian theme of 'Stasis' - the city's struggle against internal revolt - before turning to a new reading of Hobbes's Leviathan and its approach to the peril of the commonwealth's exposure to civil strife, division and revolution. At the heart of this book is the issue of state powers in their continuous decline - an issue that is key to the renewal of political, philosophical and legal thought. Giorgio Agamben is an Italian philosopher and one of the most vigorous thinkers of our time. He is best known for his recent Homo Sacer series of publications interrogating power and biopolitics. He holds the Baruch Spinoza Chair at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and his professorial career includes teaching at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy. Translator Nicholas Heron is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland. Cover image: www.shutterstock.com Cover design: [EUP logo] www.euppublishing.com