The Problem of Our Law: Political Theology and the Theological-Political Problem in Giorgio Agamben and Leo Strauss

Telos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (188) ◽  
pp. 153-172
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Political Problem

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”.

Leo Strauss and the Concrete Order of Law

Living Law ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 191-236
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Mosaic Law

This chapter is dedicated to Leo Strauss’s attempt to recover the medieval Islamic and Jewish conceptions of the prophet as a political founder of the perfect legal order. The chapter situates Strauss’s political theology within the Weimar debate between proponents of legality and defenders of an extra-legal conception of legitimacy. It argues that Strauss turns back to the ancient conception of law as nomos in order to give a philosophical foundation to legality beyond Christian conceptions of legitimacy. Christian political theology has always pivoted around the polemical claim that Mosaic law was “tyrannical” in some way. Strauss’s contribution to Jewish political theology consists in examining Jewish and Islamic prophetology by formulating it in terms of the so-called tyrannical teaching of Platonic political philosophy. The chapter shows that Strauss ultimately held to the view of a profound compatibility and mutual need between the traditions of Greek philosophy and biblical prophecy.

The Alpine Limits of Jewish Thought: Leo Strauss, National Socialism, and Judentum ohne Gott

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Altman
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Significant Change ◽  
The Right

AbstractWriting in 1935 as "Hugo Fiala," Karl Löwith not only connected Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt to an apparently contentless "decisionism" but drew attention to the fact that his correspondent Leo Strauss (1899–1973) had attacked Schmitt—like Heidegger an open Nazi since 1933—from the Right in 1932. In opposition to the views of Peter Eli Gordon, Heidegger's bellicose stance at the Davos Hochschule of 1929 is presented as "political" in Schmitt's sense of the term while Strauss's embrace of Heidegger, never regretted, showed that he ceased to be Nietzsche's "Good European" in his thirtieth year. A more significant "change of orientation" is revealed in Strauss's 1932 version of the "second cave," a pseudo-Platonic image of Verjudung. Revelation had disrupted a nihilistic "natural ignorance" that could only be reversed by an elite's secret decision for a self-contradictory content: only an atheistic religion provides a post-liberal solution to "the theological-political problem."

scholarly journals Excavating Government: Giorgio Agamben’s Archaeological Dig

2009 ◽  
pp. 81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Fuggle
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Collateral Damage ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Archaeological Method ◽  
Economic Theology

This paper looks at the development of certain Foucauldian concepts and themes within the work of the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. Where Agamben is well-known for his critique of biopower in Homo Sacer, his recent work a more complex engagement with Foucault both in terms of his subject matter, governmentality and economy (oikonomia), and his critical methodology, most notably, his reaffirmation of the value of Foucault’s archaeological method. Focusing on three of Agamben’s recent publications, Signatura Rerum: Sul Metodo, Il regno e la gloria. Per una genealogia teologica dell'economia e del governo and What is an Apparatus?, the article looks first at Agamben’s development of Foucault’s archaeological method within his own concept of the signature. It then goes on to consider Agamben’s identification of an economic theology in contradistinction to Schmitt’s political theology and how Agamben’s discussion of collateral damage might be related to Foucault’s notion of security as developed in Security, Territory, Population. Finally, the article considers how Agamben links Foucault’s notion of ‘dispositif’ [apparatus] to an economic theology of government, calling for the development of counter-apparatuses in a similar way to Foucault’s call for ‘resistances.’ The article concludes by considering both the benefits and the limitations of Agamben’s engagement with Foucault.

The securitization audience in theologico-political perspective: Giorgio Agamben, doxological acclamations, and paraconsistent logic

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. A. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Paraconsistent Logic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The Past ◽  
Active Audience ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Copenhagen School ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
Referent Object

Over the past two decades, securitization theory has developed into a robust literature of cases and critiques. The vast majority of the attention paid to securitization has been to the securitizing actor and the referent object, leaving the audience – the body that determines the fate of a securitizing move by accepting or rejecting the securitizing actor’s request – undertheorized. The audience is presented as a problematic contradiction, because as a collectivity called by the securitizing actor it appears to be a passive body, critiqued thereby as potentially irrelevant. On the other hand, both the original Copenhagen school formulation of securitization theory and many of its current theorists reaffirm the agency of the audience to actively determine the success or failure of the securitizing move. This article turns to political theology for guidance, and explains the contradiction of the passive/active audience through homology to the ekklesia and the acclamation of ‘amen’ in liturgical doxology. The fact that the congregation is passive recipient of a call does not negate the essential and substantial role that it must actively play, just as the contradiction of the passive/active description of the securitization audience is not a problem of illogic, but a paraconsistent truth.

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.

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