Hermann Cohen and Socialist Democracy

Living Law ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 35-80
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Minority Nationality ◽  
Hermann Cohen

This chapter is dedicated to Hermann Cohen’s renewal of Jewish theologico-political thought. Cohen is the first to establish an internal, systematic connection between the Jewish messianic idea and a universalistic conception of democracy. He articulates a political theology of socialist democracy, not based on the analogy between One God and One King, but on that between One God and One Humanity. Cohen rejected Zionism as a solution to the political problem caused by the condition of minority nationality in which the Jewish people lived in European states. But he did not believe in assimilation either. He maintained that its messianic religion assigned the Jewish people the task of pointing the way to an international order based not on state sovereignty but on the supremacy of international law founded on human rights that recognized the plurality and right to self-determination of nationalities.

Humans, Jews, and the Other Others

Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Dynamic Key

The “Introduction” formulates the question of the political, and in particular of the emergence and erasure of the political from the horizon of currently predominant political thought in political theology and political ontology. The “Introduction” further attunes the readers to the dynamic key of “effacement” as both emergence and erasure, thereby defining the main register in which the book is proceeding -- as distinct from the keys of chronological periodisation, linear history, paradigm shifts, or other stabilizing approaches. The “Introduction” further draws a distinction between politics and the political, and advances the question of the political in relation to the Talmud as both a text and a discipline of thinking able to shed a new, contrasting, light on the paradox driven modern political notions of a singularizing and even singling out notion of a “Jew,” and a universalizing notion of the “human being.” The “Introduction” concludes by gesturing towards a much closer connection between the question of the political in the Talmud, the notions of the Jews and of the human beings in modernity, and the question of earth and territory as a part of political equation these concepts spell out.

scholarly journals HEINRICH MEIER E LA SFIDA DELLA TEOLOGIA POLITICA

Il Politico ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-116
Author(s):  
Marco Menon
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Problem

This paper offers a short overview of Heinrich Meier’s books on Carl Schmitt’s political theology, namely Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss, and Die Lehre Carl Schmitts. These writings, published respectively in 1988 and 1994, and recently translated into Italian by Cantagalli (Siena), have raised both enthusiastical appraisal and fierce criticism. The gist of Meier’s interpretation is the following: the core of Schmitt’s thought is his Christian faith. Schmitt’s political doctrine must be unterstood as political theology, that is, as a political doctrine which claims to be grounded on divine revelation. The fundamental attitude of the political theologian, therefore, is pious obedience to God’s unfathomable will. The hypothesis of the paper is that Meier’s reading, which from a historical point of view might appear as highly controversial, is essentially the attempt to articulate the fundamental alternative between political theology and political philosophy. Meier’s alleged stylization of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss is a form of “platonism”, i.e., a theoretical purification aimed at a clear formulation of what he means by “the theologico-political problem”.

Is “the Political” a Romantic Concept?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rüdiger Campe
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Political ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Radical Constructivism ◽  
The French Revolution

This chapter analyzes Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political from the vantage point of German Romanticism. For Schmitt, Romanticism wasan intellectual attitude that precluded the concept and practice of “the political.” Through an in-depth reading of a preeminent document of political thought in German Romanticism, Novalis’s Love and Faith, this chapter considers and qualifies this view, arguing that “political theology” can be understood as a reaction to the French Revolution rather than as a tradition reaching back to medieval or baroque times. This chapter also argues that Novalis’s famous essay must be seen as a precursor to Schmitt’s own political theory. Overlap exists both in the blend of conservatism and radical constructivism in Novalis and Schmitt and in the interventionist character of both men’s statements on politics. Read as a precursor to Schmitt, Novalis’s philosophy of politics also offers a meaningful critique of Schmitt’s later theories.

scholarly journals Jacques Maritain and the Political Theology of Contemporary Democracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-72
Author(s):  
Jerónimo Molina-Cano
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Spiritual Power ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
Political Religion ◽  
Political Work

This article analyzes the democratic thought of the philosopher Jacques Maritain. A methodical reading of the integrity of his political work published since the 20s demonstrates a great continuity in the defense of a univocal concept of democratic governance, called social democracy, new Christianity, integral democracy or organic democracy in order to accommodate his thought to the political circumstances. Starting from the principle of superiority of spiritual power, Maritain has redefined the notion of democracy in an anti-rousseaunian sense. Maritain postulates a community and pluralist regime under a presidential government and non partitocratic political system. Maritainian democracy and the secular faith that must animate it, based on human rights, is conceived as an antidote against liberal neutralism and against the totalitarian temptation of a democracy understood as a political religion.

scholarly journals The political problem of internal "ἀσφάλεια" in Niketas Choniates' Chronikè Diéghesis: a contributing factor to the Constantinople's fall in 1204

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea CATANZARO
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Significant Source ◽  
The Political ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
History Of

In this essay I analyze the idea of aspháleia (safety) in the political thought of the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates (1150-55/1217 ca.), as it appears in his Chronikè Diéghesis. This historical work covers the period 1118-1206 and is a very significant source about the history of Byzantine Empire in the XII century and about its fall in the 1204. Particularly I focus on three aspects of the idea of aspháleia in the “second class aristocracy”, as Paul Magdalino defined it in his works. According to Niketa’s thought, the lack of safety in the Empire competes to create in the XII century some preconditions of the Constantinople’s fall in 1204.

scholarly journals Trinitarian political theology and radical democracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91
Author(s):  
David Haddorff
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Detailed Comparison ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
Contemporary Context

This article brings into dialogue Karl Barth and the political philosopher Chantal Mouffe. The purpose here is not to provide a detailed comparison, but to explore why Mouffe’s thought is relevant to the current political situation, which providesthe contemporary context for engaging Barth’s political theology. This argument involves: 1) a political analysis of the current political situation offered by Mouffe; 2) a particular interpretation of Barth’s political theology emerging from a trinitarian theological framework; 3) a comparison between the political thought of Mouffe and Barth emerging from Barth’s trinitarian political theology. This engagement is less concerned with critiquing Mouffe from a theological viewpoint, than positively demonstrating how Mouffe’s thought can be seen as a “secular parable” for a political theology in which trinitarian theology provides a framework. Central to this political theology are the ideas of equality, freedom, participation, and promise, which provide a theo-political framework for a radical democracy.

The Question of the Political: Back to Where You Once Belonged?

Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Jacques Rancière

The chapter analyses how the question of the political in two currently predominant and competing schools of political thought, political theology, exemplified by Carl Schmitt, and political ontology, exemplified by Jacques Rancière. The notion of the other others comes front and centre in this analysis. In political ontology, the concept of the political is predicated on an ability of a politician, a lawyer, or an artist to employ the philosophical, and in modern terms, “ontological” distinction between what is the case in each case and what seems to be the case in each case. In political theology, it is no longer “being” as opposed to “seeming”, but rather an ability to represent as radically distinct from any particular content conveyed. The chapter further traces foundations of both political theology and political ontology in Kant’s transcendentalism -- in particular in the necessity by which transcendentalism denies “positive law,” which Christianity traditionally ascribed to the Jews. The balance of the chapter shows how, however mutually exclusive, both political theology and political ontology remain intersubjective in their scope and thereby both efface and help notice what, in the following chapters will emerge on the pages of the Talmud as interpersonal rather than intersubjective dimension of the political.

Jacques Maritain and Human Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-132
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Human Person ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Universal Human Rights

This chapter discusses the connection between Christian political theology and human rights in the thought of Jacques Maritain. It argues that Maritain understood universal human rights as part and parcel of a new ‘democratic’ Christian political theology centred on the struggle between multitude and empire and on the rejection of state sovereignty. The chapter shows that Maritain’s philosophical foundation of the universality of human rights is not based on a ‘metaphysics’ of the human person as much as it offers a biopolitical account of rights and adopts ideas of governmentality that parallel emerging neoliberal critiques of sovereignty. It ends with a discussion of Maritain’s turn to human rights in the context of his own struggle with anti-Semitism and establishes a comparison with Alain Badiou’s adoption of Paul’s political theology as the foundational discourse of egalitarian universalism.

scholarly journals Political theology; revising the relation of theology and the political issue with the emphasis on the narratives of Karl Schmidt

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-146
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Secular Theology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theological Concept

In this paper, three commonly used concepts of political theology in different periods of the history of Western thoughts are briefly reviewd. The golden age of political thought in the west called most of the politics functions for theology as political theology. The political issue is considered as an autonomous and independent subject, which reserves the ability for itself to change theology. With the advent of Christianity and its influence on the political and governance pillars, this equation was reversed for centuries, and politics,as the theology servant,was identified as an ancestral affair. It is only in the modern times that Weber, by stating that science should be away from value, created a bedrock for political theology, in which it was not necessary to be a theologist to reach theology. In this context, Schmidt serves the concept of political theology in a sociological sense to serving to depict that the modern state, alongside with its preceding times, is a theological concept that has survived by omitting secular theology.

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