The New Political Theology of Metz: Confronting Schmitt's Decisionist Political Theology of Exclusion

Horizons ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-254
Author(s):  
Derek Simon
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Pluralistic Societies

ABSTRACTThe New Political Theology has always raised questions regarding the contrast implied by its qualification as “new.” The qualification “new” suggests a comparison resulting from an innovation, a departure. Precisely what comparison, is at stake? Various kinds of readings assume that the innovation of Metz's political theology is established in relation to Rahner's transcendental theology, in relation to left-Hegelian and neo-Marxist influences, or to the voices of Jewish testimony after Auschwitz. Taken alone, these lines of interpretation are valid yet insufficient, therefore potentially misleading in following the development of the New Political Theology. A different reading, therefore, proposes that Metz's New Political Theology is an effort to delegitimate and deliver an alternative to the antidemocratic and anti-Semitic political theology of Carl Schmitt. In diametric opposition to the violent identity politics of exclusion that defines Schmitt's decisionist political theology, the New Political Theology proposes an identity politics of difference, empowering responsibility for movements of justice and reconciliation in pluralistic societies through a deliberative social democracy oriented towards solidarity by the memory of the suffering of others.

Divine Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
The Public ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Theological Foundations ◽  
The Public Sphere

The ‘return of religion’ in the public sphere and the emergence of postsecular societies have propelled the discourse of political theology into the centre of contemporary democratic theory. This situation calls forth the question addressed in this book: Is a democratic political theology possible? Carl Schmitt first developed the idea of the Christian theological foundations of modern legal and political concepts in order to criticize the secular basis of liberal democracy. He employed political theology to argue for the continued legitimacy of the absolute sovereignty of the state against the claims raised by pluralist and globalized civil society. This book shows how, after Schmitt, some of the main political theorists of the 20th century, from Jacques Maritain to Jürgen Habermas, sought to establish an affirmative connection between Christian political theology, popular sovereignty, and the legitimacy of democratic government. In so doing, the political representation of God in the world was no longer placed in the hands of hierarchical and sovereign lieutenants (Church, Empire, Nation), but in a series of democratic institutions, practices and conceptions like direct representation, constitutionalism, universal human rights, and public reason that reject the primacy of sovereignty.

scholarly journals Czas biednych diabłów. Carla Schmitta krytyka współczesnej mu epoki w drugim dziesięcioleciu XX wieku oraz jego narodziny jako myśliciela politycznego

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 211-234
Author(s):  
Wojciech Engelking
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The Times ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Political Thinker ◽  
Original Thinker

The author examines the critique of the epoch, which German philosopher of law and political theoretician Carl Schmitt worked out in the 1920s. Since this topic is present in most of Schmitt’s works from that period, author chose to discuss three, in which this subject isn’t considered on the margins, but on the foreground: a text  concerning the poem by Theodor Däubler Nordlicht, Political Romanticism and Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations. While the latter is well known in Poland, the first two – a little worse, as well as the whole reflection and biography of Carl Schmitt in that period. The consistency with which Schmitt engaged in the criticism of the times in which he lived, allows us to show how he was born as a political thinker: main ideas of his political theology have their source in the criticism of the era. In addition, the author presents criticism created by Schmitt on the background of that one developed by other thinkers, to point out the differences between this two approaches to the same epoch. The aim of the study is, first, to bring Polish reader closer to the not-so-well-studied period of Schmitt’s reflection and biography (by reaching beyond the above-mentioned works also to the journal of Carl Schmitt, as well as his youthful literary work Schattenrisse, written together with Fritz Eisler), secondly: to present Schmitt as an original thinker of his era.

Enmity and Culture: The Rhetoric of Political Theology and the Exception in Carl Schmitt

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Jürgen Fohrmann ◽  
Dimitris Vardoulakis
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Carl Schmitt

Gothic Comedy

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-202
Author(s):  
Catherine Spooner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Romantic Comedy ◽  
Significant Function ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
The Family ◽  
Twenty First Century

Comedy has become an increasingly prevalent feature of Gothic in the twenty-first century, and thus Gothic comedy can be found across a multitude of media. This chapter surveys the kinds of comedy that appear in contemporary Gothic (such as sitcom, stand-up, romantic comedy, mock-documentary) and argues that, in the twenty-first century, Gothic comedy often functions to travesty culturally significant concepts of family, domesticity and childhood in the light of a liberal identity politics. Beginning with twentieth-century precedents such as television sitcom The Addams Family (1964–6) and Edward Gorey’s illustrations, the chapter analyses a range of contemporary texts including The League of Gentlemen (1999–2017), Corpse Bride (2005), Ruby Gloom (2006–8),Hotel Transylvania (2012) and What We Do in the Shadows (2014). It concludes that far from being frivolous or disposable, contemporary Gothic comedy forms a politically significant function in its tendency to undermine right-wing ideologies of the family and promote a celebratory politics of difference and inclusion.

Introduction

Living Law ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Charismatic Leadership ◽  
Alternative Conception ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Divine Sovereignty ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Higher Law

This chapter situates Jewish political theology as a discourse developed in the 20th century, mainly by German Jewish thinkers. It sets out the basic differences between this analysis and the discourse on political theology developed by Carl Schmitt, centered on the need for absolute sovereignty to “restrain” disorder and revolutionary upheavals. The chapter argues that Jewish political theology offers an alternative conception of divine sovereignty and its implications for democracy and revolution. Jewish political theology is both republican and anarchic, attached to the idea of a higher law above human sovereignty and to the egalitarian ideal of a politics beyond domination. This chapter presents the two analytical-conceptual guiding-threads of the investigation. The first is concerned with Max Weber’s category of charismatic leadership and the problem of its functioning within a constitutional idea of democratic legitimacy. The second guiding-thread is concerned with the process of secularization. This chapter argues that Jewish political theology reconceives divine providence in order to criticize the assumption of human progress in and through history.

Stasiology (Rothaug, Peterson, Schmitt, Gregory of Nazianzus)

2021 ◽  
pp. 280-300
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The One ◽  
The Trinity

Beginning with a curious invocation of our line from Homer by one of the defendants at the so-called “Justices Trial” at Nuremberg, the chapter analyses the famous exchange over “political theology” between Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson. The inconsistencies of Peterson’s argument are brought out, and attention is drawn to the importance of the use he makes in establishing the supposed impossiblity of a Christian political theology of a quotation about the Trinity from Gregory of Nazianzus. Schmitt’s own claim as to a “stasiology” at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity, that would support the thought of a political theology of Christianity, is shown to rely on an egregious misreading of Gregory’s text, but doubt is nonetheless cast on the ability of that doctrine successfully to solve the problems associated with the self-destructive properties of the One, as more clearly brought out by Derrida.

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