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.

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.

Other Others

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Political Figure

Denying existence to certain others, while still tolerating diversity, stabilizes a political order in a society; or does it? Addressing this classical question of political thought, Other Others intervenes both to the study of the Talmud and Jewish Thought in its aftermath, and to political theory in general. Braking through the horizon of the currently predominant approaches to the concept of the political in political ontology and political theology, the book turns to the Talmud. In light and despite these theories, the pages of the Talmud provide a (dis)appearing display of the interpersonal rather than intersubjective political, which entails a radically different take on what engaging others means in society. The book shows how philosophy- and theology-driven approaches to the concept of the political have tacitly elided a concept of the interpersonal political, which the Talmud exemplifies. Both addressing and resisting such an elision, the book rereads the Talmud, while at the same time and by the same move reconsidering contemporary political theory. At the center of the analysis are figures of excluded others – of the “other others” who programmatically do not claim any “original” belonging to a territory and therefore by the logic of the currently predominant schools of political thought are questionable in their right to exist. The Political moves from a modern political figure of “Jews” as such “other others” to the Talmud, arriving, at the end, to a demand to think earth anew, now beyond the notions of territory, land, nationalism, internationalism, or even beyond the scope of a territorialized universe.

There’s No Regime beyond Representation

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Michaela Fiserova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Jacques Rancière ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One

The paper invites a rethink of the political conception of Jacques Rancière, a philosopher who devoted considerable reflexion to the problem of the sharing of the sensible. Rancière proposes considering the aesthetic regime without the concept of representation. According to the author, this leads him to a paradox: on the one hand, he states that the aesthetic regime takes images for art; on the other hand, he doesn’t pay attention to the fact that it shouldn’t be possible to conceive of any regime of sharing without the concept of representation. Therefore, the author proposes a deconstructive reading of Rancière’s critique of representation, demonstrating that if the contemporary image is conceived and produced in order to be shared, it can’t be freed from representation. Finally, the author puts forth the notion of meta-representation as a solution avoiding Rancière’s antinomies.

The Political Thought of Jacques Rancière

Symposium ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-155
Author(s):  
Joseph J. Tanke ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
Jacques Rancière

The Earth for the Other Others

Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 204-226
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
The Earth

This chapter explores an implication of the question of effacement of the other others, which this book advanced, for and in thinking the Earth. Mobilizing the question of the other others to think the Earth anew is no more but also no less than an articulation of yet another, perhaps the most important part of the question: How, or is it possible, to think the Earth in the first place? Advancing this problem moves the argument in the chapters beyond the hitherto predominant paradigms of linear otherness, in which the other and the question of belonging to a territory have been inextricably connected one to another. Is that connection between other and territory necessary, and what does that connection preclude from the view? To formulate and advance these questions the chapter engages with Gilles Deleuze’s notion of territorialization, and in particular with his questioning of the relationships between territorialization and existence, as well as between earth and being. The argument shows both necessity and insufficiency of Deleuze’s analysis of territorialization in relation to otherness in order to ask about of those others who remain in an intrinsically necessary relationship to the earth without ever finalizing their relation with a particular territory. In that way, the chapter provides a view of the political before it locks into either political ontology or political theology -- now extending the question of the effacement of the political beyond its exemplification as the political in the Talmud.

The Political Theology of Carl Schmitt

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Early Phase ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
The Trinity

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.

Scatter 2

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Bennington
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Political ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua ◽  
The One ◽  
Nuremberg Trials

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.

Interroga virtutes naturales: Nature in Giles of Rome’s On Ecclesiastical Power

Vivarium ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 22-50
Author(s):  
Peter Adamson
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ability To Work ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Marsilius Of Padua

AbstractGiles of Rome’s On Ecclesiastical Power (De ecclesiastica potestate), a polemical work arguing for the political supremacy of the pope, claims that the papacy holds a ‘plenitude of power’ and has direct or indirect authority over all aspects of human life. This paper shows how Giles uses themes from natural philosophy in developing his argument. He compares cosmic and human ordering and draws an analogy between the relations of soul to body and of Church to state. He also understands the pope’s power to be ‘universal’ in nature, another idea taken from Aristotelian physics. Further, Giles views the pope’s right to intervene arbitrarily in the affairs of the Christian community as mirroring God’s ability to work miracles. We thus see that Giles, no less than intellectuals on the other side of this debate such as Dante and Marsilius of Padua, believed that Aristotelian natural philosophy could be enlisted in the service of political thought.

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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