The Political Theology of Carl Schmitt

Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter

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.

Author(s):  
Feisal G. Mohamed

A modern politics attaching itself to the state must adopt a position sovereignty, by which is meant the political settlement in which potestas and auctoritas are aligned. Three competing forms are identified: unitary sovereignty, divided and balanced sovereignty, and the view that sovereign power must be limited by universal principles. Each of these forms can be divided into “red” and “black” varieties, depending on the imagined relationship between sovereign power and modern conditions of flux. A chapter outline introduces the figures who will be explored in the book as a whole: Thomas Hobbes; William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele; John Barclay and the romance writers of the 1650s whom he influences; John Milton; and Andrew Marvell. Also described is the book’s sustained engagement of Carl Schmitt, and the ways in which his thought on sovereignty is an example of the competition amongst the concept’s three competing forms.


Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 19-35
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski

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.


Author(s):  
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde ◽  
Mirjam Künkler ◽  
Tine Stein

In this article, Böckenförde tries to determine the proper means of conducting political theology. After dismissing juridical political theology in the vein of Carl Schmitt as not so much theological but rather sociological in its discussion of how original theological terms such as ‘sovereignty’ were transposed to the state, people, or government, he turns to two other models: Böckenförde sees a shift away from classical institutional political theology à la Augustine, which explores what Christianity has to say about a state’s status, legitimation, and structure, to what he calls appellative political theology. Immediately concerned with action, the latter manifests itself inter alia as liberation theology and tends to run the risk of dissolving into theologically justified, and ultimately arbitrary, politics. As an alternative model, Böckenförde extols the political theology of Pope John Paul II. By focusing on the words of Jesus and the Gospel and other topics that appear ‘nonpolitical’ at first glance, the pope makes the case for dignity, liberty, and the purpose of man, taking the side of the weak and rejecting violence. In Böckenförde’s view, such a political theology is not about to be rendered obsolete by modernity. Since politics is essentially concerned with relations between individuals and groups, religion cannot avoid being drawn into the political field and raise its voice there as well.


Conatus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Ελένη Λάμπρου (Eleni Lamprou)

Carl Schmitt in his book Political Theology: Four Chapters on the concept of sovereignty deals with the issue of sovereignty and furthermore in which cases the sovereign is likely to emerge. Initially, he tries to define what sovereignty is. He claims that sovereignty has to do with a ‘situation of extraordinary emergency’. In such a case, the sovereign ought to concede the existence of the exception of the current legal status and in the end, he should defend the public security, the order of the state and furthermore he has to aim at the salut public. Schmitt speaks for the suspension of the current order and the existence of a state but not a state of justice. He maintains that there is no anarchy or iniquity since the sovereign has legislated and no law can exist or be implemented in chaos. The law has been sited by the sovereign arbitrarily. Thereafter, a genealogical approximation for the term of sovereignty has been attempted, which has been based on claims of Bodin, Kelsen (whose theory has been counterfeited by Schmitt), Krabbe and Thomas Hobbes. The most important part in his book is the analysis of the term of political theology, the way in which religion interferes with the legal state of law, through one sovereign that creates the law and his decisions are vicious. Science and theology are mixed as a social phenomenon. Schmitt believes that sovereignty must in no way be hidden behind religion but it must be seated in science. He thinks that monarchy has found the power to create a state of law and this has been maintained through religion.


Author(s):  
Oleg Kil'dyushov

The paper is a review of a number of writings in the humanities and in social science devoted to George Martin’s series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, and the television-serial drama Game of Thrones. At the beginning, we analyze the researchers’ most heuristically-fruitful intellectual reactions to Game of Thrones, that is, specific products such as texts that may be of interest to social theory. The main part of the article considers the institutional and discursive order of George Martin’s saga through the research lens of the classics of modern social theory, such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Max Weber. The paper then briefly touches upon the religious situation in Westeros, whose system of values and norms is paradoxically characterized by both post-secularism and a surge of religious fundamentalism. As a next step, it analyzes the political theology in the Game of Thrones, which is considered within the perspective of a transcendental legitimization of politics as proposed by Carl Schmitt. In conclusion, the paper considers Westeros’ cognitive landscape which consists of various competing epistemic sets (maesters, septons, white walkers, etc.), and structurally reproduces the situation in the societies of late modernity.


2020 ◽  
pp. 21-66
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter

This chapter reconstructs the origins of political theology in Carl Schmitt’s polemical engagement with the jurisprudence of Hans Kelsen and with the critique of sovereignty in English pluralist political theory. Kelsen sought to dismiss the idea of the state as a legal personality standing above the legal system as the product of an unscientific approach to jurisprudence because reliant on theological analogies with God’s transcendence over nature. This chapter shows that what Schmitt calls ‘political theology’ is a defence of these politico-theological analogies based on the claim that the political unity of a people requires a non-electoral form of representation of divine transcendence. The chapter then discusses Schmitt’s interpretation of Hobbes as recovering for modernity this Christian idea of political representation and compares it with the critique of Hobbes found in English pluralist theory. The chapter ends with a discussion of the debate between Schmitt and the German theologian Erik Peterson on Trinitarianism as ‘Christian’ political theology.


Author(s):  
Timofey Dmitriev

The evolution of Thomas Hobbes’ political thought in the 1630s–1640s was marked by a considerable increase in an interest in the problems of the relations between politics and religion, and the state and the Church. This interest was expressed in his creation of the original conception of political theology, of which the most complete exposition is contained in his treatise Leviathan. In his concept of political theology, Hobbes saw an effective way to solve the theologico-political problem of modernity. At the heart of his political theology lays a new interpretation given by Hobbes to a number of doctrinal propositions of the Christian faith, which was designed to harmonize it with the absolute power of the temporal sovereign. Particular attention is paid to the consideration of those pragmatic strategies where Hobbes proposed to neutralize the explosive potential of the Christian religion for civil peace and the security of the state. It is also shown that the complete subordination of the Church to the State in the political theology of Hobbes served as a starting point for the impotent stage of the process of secularization of the Western world, which led to the separation of politics from religion, and the state from the Church.


Author(s):  
Anatolii Petrovich Mykolaiets

It is noted that from the standpoint of sociology, “management — a function of organized systems of various nature — (technical, biological, social), which ensures the preservation of their structure, maintaining a certain state or transfer to another state, in accordance with the objective laws of the existence of this system, which implemented by a program or deliberately set aside”. Management is carried out through the influence of one subsystem-controlling, on the other-controlled, on the processes taking place in it with the help of information signals or administrative actions. It is proved that self-government allows all members of society or a separate association to fully express their will and interests, overcome alienation, effectively combat bureaucracy, and promote public self-realization of the individual. At the same time, wide direct participation in the management of insufficiently competent participants who are not responsible for their decisions, contradicts the social division of labor, reduces the effectiveness of management, complicates the rationalization of production. This can lead to the dominance of short-term interests over promising interests. Therefore, it is always important for society to find the optimal measure of a combination of self-management and professional management. It is determined that social representation acts, on the one hand, as the most important intermediary between the state and the population, the protection of social interests in a politically heterogeneous environment. On the other hand, it ensures the operation of a mechanism for correcting the political system, which makes it possible to correct previously adopted decisions in a legitimate way, without resorting to violence. It is proved that the system of social representation influences the most important political relations, promotes social integration, that is, the inclusion of various social groups and public associations in the political system. It is proposed to use the term “self-government” in relation to several levels of people’s association: the whole community — public self-government or self-government of the people, to individual regions or communities — local, to production management — production self-government. Traditionally, self-government is seen as an alternative to public administration. Ideology and practice of selfgovernment originate from the primitive, communal-tribal democracy. It is established that, in practice, centralization has become a “natural form of government”. In its pure form, centralization does not recognize the autonomy of places and even local life. It is characteristic of authoritarian regimes, but it is also widely used by democratic regimes, where they believe that political freedoms should be fixed only at the national level. It is determined that since the state has achieved certain sizes, it is impossible to abandon the admission of the existence of local authorities. Thus, deconcentration appears as one of the forms of centralization and as a cure for the excesses of the latter. Deconcentration assumes the presence of local bodies, which depend on the government functionally and in the order of subordination of their officials. The dependency of officials means that the leadership of local authorities is appointed by the central government and may be displaced.


Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington

Scatter 2 identifies politics as an object of perennial difficulty for philosophy—as recalcitrant to philosophical mastery as is philosophy’s traditional adversary, poetry. That difficulty makes it an attractive area of attention for any deconstructive approach to the tradition from which we inevitably inherit our language and our concepts. Scatter 2 pursues that deconstruction, often starting, and sometimes departing, from the work of Jacques Derrida, by attending to the concepts of sovereignty on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Part I follows the fate of a line from Book II of Homer’s Iliad, where Odysseus asserts that “the rule of many is no good thing, let there be one ruler, one king,” as it is quoted and misquoted, and progressively Christianized, by authors including Aristotle, Philo Judaeus, Suetonius, the early Church Fathers, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Bodin, Etienne de la Boétie, up to Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson, and even one of the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, before being discussed by Derrida himself. Part II begins again, as it were, with Plato and Aristotle, and tracks the concept of democracy as it regularly impacts and tends to undermine that sovereignist tradition, and, more especially in detailed readings of Hobbes and Rousseau, develops a notion of “proto-democracy” as a possible name for the scatter that underlies and drives the political as such, and that will always prevent politics from achieving its aim of bringing itself to an end.


Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski

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.


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