“From Political Theology to Political Christology”: The Figure of Hegel in Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology II (original) (raw)
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This deceptively simple proposition opens a highly stimulating and insightful examination of the relationship between sovereignty, law and the state. But what does Political Theology have to do with "political theology" as we understand that term today? I will argue that it has very little to do with political theology. In fact, I will argue that Schmitt had little to do with the emergence of political theology as a "discipline," "subject," or "discourse" (call it what you will) in English-language scholarship.
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Both G.F.W. Hegel and Carl Schmitt took seriously the problem of political sovereignty entailed by liberal political theories. In Dictatorship (1919) and Political Theology (1922), Schmitt rejects liberal political theories that argue for the immediate unity of democracy and legality i.e., popular sovereignty. For he thinks they give rise to the liberal predicament, that is, to totalitarians tendencies by undermining political sovereignty. Hegel, on his part, argues that the immediate identity of the state and the division of powers in liberal political theories gives rise to a similar predicament. Yet given Schmitt’s negative assessment of Hegel their positions are seldom related to one another. I argue in this paper that Schmitt’s analysis of liberal political theories is similar to Hegel’s analysis of Rousseau’s liberal ideas. I contend, however, that Schmitt’s solution, which collapses the distinction between the executive and the legislative power in favor of the former, fails ...
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"Every power is transcendent; the Transcendent is power; every attempt to escape power is a way to seize power; every movement, which is directed to the prevention or limitation of power, is a seizure of power. It makes no sense and is very dangerous to oppose a political myth" (Schmitt, 1991, p. 180). Behind these cryptic words, dated July 19, 1948, lies the ‘mystery’ of Carl Schmitt’s political theology. A complex problematic that has sealed the intellectual and political fate of the German jurist, and around which he has laboured for more than half a century.
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Carl Schmitt's concept of political theology has been read from different points of view, usually reducing the importance of the author's debate with Hans Kelsen over the theories of sovereignty, the state and law. This article aims to underline this debate and propose a reading, according to which Political Theology's third chapter contains an epistemological thesis that opposes Kelsen's pure theory of law, a richer thesis than just a repetition of reactionary common places, as suggested by alternative readings. After justifying this reading, the article deals with the specific characteristics of Schmitt's concept of political theology.
Carl Schmitt once defined himself as a theologian of jurisprudence. This chapter argues that his concept of political theology must be understood within the context of jurisprudence and not as a thesis concerning the use of religion within politics. In its earlier configuration, Schmitt's political theology is a multifaceted response to two juridical critiques of sovereignty: those of Hans Kelsen; and those of Otto von Gierke and the English pluralist school. In this early phase, Schmitt's political theology is centered on the juridical conception of representation and on the state as fictional personality, primarily as it is found in Thomas Hobbes. Through his extensive engagement with Hobbes's interpretation of the Trinity or persons of God, Schmitt shows howjurisprudence aids in the understanding of theology rather than the other way around. Schmitt's later work is a defense against Erik Peterson's critique of political theology, itself based on a juridical interpretation of Christology.
Cutting to the Chase: Carl Schmitt and Hans Blumenberg on Political Theology and Secularization
The term political theology conceptualizes an attempt to rediscover and expose the theological dimension entwined within the fabric of politics. Political theology must be understood against the backdrop of the common perception of "the political" in the modern era, at least since the publication of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan in 1651. On this view, among the distinctive features of the political are its complete independence from any and all lofty theological notions and, conversely, its preoccupation with the here and now. This effort to reexpose the relations of dependence between the theological and political does not entail moving theology or religion back to the center of human existence-a position that these beliefs lost after the profound changes in the modern West's understanding of the world and humanity. Needless to say, religion has not disappeared in the modern epoch, and its place on the pedestal has indeed been subsequently restored. Be that as it may, the motivation for clarifying the relations of dependence between the theological and the political is not religious, but emerged from within modern political and legal thought itself, as it endeavored to answer the following question: to what extent is modern political theory based on or independent of the theological realm?