Working from the power dynamics identified in the work of Bertrand de Jouvenel, C. A. Bond performs a comprehensive audit of the assumptions underlying modernity, giving us a radical anthropological account of law, morality, and epistemology.

Bond refines the Jouvenelian model introduced in his work Nemesis, examining the history of justifications for authority, and finding successful justifications determined by patronage. But he extends this model: not only is there a sovereign centre, but the centre is necessarily non-corporeal—the true sovereign is always a metaperson, a god or metaphysical entity. This refinement enables a devastating critique of liberal modernity. From this, the state of nature, the foundation of liberal anthropology, is revealed to be not only false, but fundamentally non-scientific. Consensual governance becomes unintelligible in light of the ritual foundation of social orders. The rule of law altogether lacks meaning given the role of metapersons in issuing commands. Human rights are seen to be not a real thing but a mere fiction in the process of creation. And Marxism fails as a science due to its blind spot about the ritual and cultural root of the social order.

Modernity replaces the rule by a god with rule by abstraction, and thus fails to establish its own moral foundation. The modern state asserts sovereignty without such a foundation, and so cannot command obedience. Bond’s Themis establishes a science that can provide that foundation, and oppose the centrifugal forces pulling apart the social order.