The book at hand examines some of the key theories that were formulated both in favor of and against the civil state, developed between the 17th and 19th centuries.

It critically analyzes the theories that dominated modern political theory and established the bourgeois, liberal world (of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau), explores the "dialogue" between Hegel and Marx regarding the state, and finally presents the theories of classical anarchists that form an iconoclastic "theory against the state."

To live in a different world, we must first imagine it. Without activating the imagination, this potentially revolutionary human capability, we are doomed to continue living within the iron cage of state sovereignty. Humanity, after all, has lived the overwhelming majority of its existence without states, therefore nothing renders the reflection on overcoming them chimerical.

The dichotomy we face is the seemingly invincible and all-powerful Leviathan and the chained Prometheus, this eternal symbol of anti-authoritarian uprising.