scholarly journals The King Never Dies: Royal Renunciation and the Fiction of Jain Sovereignty

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 986
Author(s):  
Sarah Pierce Taylor
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Metaphorical Language ◽  
Political Problem

To theorize Jain sovereignty, this essay takes up Ernst Kantorowicz’s underlying query of what happens when a king dies. In turning to medieval Jain authors such as Jinasena, we see how sovereignty and renunciation were mutually constituted such that the king’s renunciation completely subverts the problem of the king’s death. If the fiction of Jain kingship properly practiced culminates in renunciation, then such a movement yields up a new figure of the ascetic self-sovereign. Renunciation does not sever sovereignty but extends it into a higher spiritual domain. Worldly and spiritual sovereignty share a metaphorical language and set of techniques that render them as adjacent but hierarchical spheres of authority. In so doing, Jain authors provide a religious answer to a political problem and make the political inbuilt into the religious, thereby revealing their interpenetrating and bounded nature.

The Political Problem

Potentia ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 78-106
Author(s):  
Sandra Leonie Field
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Early View

This chapter argues that Hobbes’s late view of human collective power, unlike the early view, is able to grasp informal and emergent collective power. Hobbes’s later works, with their new relational conception of potentia, offer both theoretical resources to conceive informal collective power distinct from the state, and also analytical reasons to expect such power to be politically troubling. The ‘political problem’ emerges: in order to achieve the concrete power sufficient to uphold its absolute authority (potestas), the state needs to harness or tame the informal collective powers within the populace. The chapter argues that the political problem explains the absence of the ‘sleeping sovereign’, so central to the radical democratic interpretation of Hobbes, from Hobbes’s later writings. But informal collective power cannot necessarily be celebrated as a welcome popular insurgency against excessive state power: for its characteristic inner structure is complex oligarchic allegiance rather than equal horizontal affiliation.

Keeping Faith with Immigrant Military Personnel and Veterans

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-117
Author(s):  
Michael J. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Military Personnel ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Normative Argument ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Normative Content ◽  
The U.S

This chapter considers why immigrant military personnel and veterans should be granted unconditional naturalization immediately upon enlistment. It makes a normative argument for reviving the connection between the obligations of military service and the rights of citizenship. It applies this argument to the political problem of deporting noncitizen military personnel and veterans. In the U.S., military service currently does not immediately result in naturalization. Nor does it protect a noncitizen veteran from deportation. The normative content of the oath of enlistment should be construed as creating a permanent reciprocal relationship of rights and obligations between the U.S. government and a soldier regardless of citizenship status. Noncitizens who serve in a nation’s armed forces during a period of declared hostilities should be rendered immune from deportation for the rest of their lives. If they commit an offense, they should be punished for their crimes without being deported or denaturalized.

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”.

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