Postlude Pardoning and Liberal Constitutionalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 249-274
Author(s):  
Bernadette Meyler
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Liberal Constitutionalism

Its historical association with monarchical sovereignty has tarred pardoning with an illiberal brush. This Postlude examines Carl Schmitt’s Constitutional Theory, Political Theology and other writings to argue that the pardon resembles the sovereign decision on the state of exception. The vision of pardoning as opposed to liberal constitutionalism dates further back than Schmitt, however; it appears as well in the writings of Immanuel Kant, one of the foundational figures of modern liberalism. Only by disassociating pardoning from sovereignty can it be reconciled with constitutionalism. The Postlude concludes by turning to the work of Hannah Arendt as one source for a non-sovereign vision of pardoning.

Occasional decisiveness: Exception, decision and resistance in Kierkegaard and Schmitt

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-107
Author(s):  
Birte Löschenkohl
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
State Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Order ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Face ◽  
Main Protagonist

This article explores the political potential of Kierkegaard's Repetition and develops a model of non-sovereign agency by analysing the figure of the ‘young man’, the main protagonist of the book. A curious reference in Schmitt's Political Theology serves as a cue for exploring Repetition through contrast with Schmitt's notions of sovereignty, decision and exception, as well as his critique of occasionalism in Political Romanticism. As in the case of Schmitt's sovereign, the young man's conflict is centred on the question of the exception. But by contrast to the former, the young man struggles with the exception from a position of opposition to the powers that govern. Furthermore, the exception in Repetition does not seek to stabilise a given order in the face of a threat, but, rather, to destabilise and transform order. The perspective offered facilitates a shift from thinking the exception as a state of exception, a concept that mostly concerns state politics, to an exception from the state. Kierkegaard's Repetition is thus shown to be relevant for conceptualising transformative agency from a position of marginalisation and exclusion from the hegemonic political order.

The State of Emergency and the State Without a Name in Carl Schmitt’s Thought: A Proposal for Radical Separation

2019 ◽  
pp. 174387211988716
Author(s):  
Wojciech Engelking
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Different Types

The concept of the state of emergency is one of the most frequently evoked elements from Carl Schmitt’s thought. In discussions which are referring to it, however, the conceptualization of the state of emergency, which Schmitt proposed in his juridical comment on Article 48 of the Weimar Republic’s constitution, is often linked with the theory of Ausnahmezustand. In this article I propose to separate the state of emergency from Ausnahmezustand. The main difference between the two consists in the different types of legitimacy. The state of emergency from the Constitution of the Weimar Republic finds its legitimacy in this document, however, read by Schmitt in a way that in his Constitutional Theory, he referred to it as relativization. To find legitimacy of the state without a name, one must refer to Schmitt’s political theology as not just a proposal rooted in the faith in Revelation.

scholarly journals Estado de exceção: o poder soberano e a captura da vida / State of exception: the soberan power and the capture of life

Profanações ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Lara Emanuele da Luz
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
The State ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Current Time ◽  
The One

Giorgio Agamben, filósofo italiano, apresenta um diagnóstico da modernidade bastante relevante para nosso tempo atual. Para ele, a biopolítica existe desde o nascimento do pensamento político Ocidental, e é ela que rege e captura a vida das pessoas pertencentes à polis. Para isso, é necessário que o Estado de exceção comece a tornar-se regra para que nele, tudo possa ser instaurado. Nestes termos, o presente artigo pretende apresentar, por um lado, o que é e quais as características do Estado de exceção para Agamben, ressaltando o diálogo deste com o Carl Schmitt, grande inspirador do filósofo italiano sobre o Estado de Exceção. Por outro lado, explicar-se-á de que modo a biopolítica e o campo de concentração nascem através desse, e suas principais características. Para isso, faz-se necessário passar por um percurso explicativo, analisando aspectos da biopolítica sob a perspectiva de Hannah Arendt e Michel Foucault, grandes inspiradores de Agamben neste aspecto.AbstractGiorgio Agamben, Italian philosopher, presents a diagnosis of modernity very relevant to our current time. For him, biopolitics has existed since the birth of Western political thought, and it’s it that rules and captures the lives of people belonging to the polis. For this, it’s necessary that the State of exception begins to become the rule so that everything can be established in it. However, this article intends to present, on the one hand, what’s and what the characteristics of the State of exception for Agamben, highlighting his dialogue with Carl Schmitt, great inspiration of the Italian philosopher on the State of Exception. On the other hand, it’ll be explained how the biopolitics and the concentration camp are born through this, and its main characteristics. For this, it’s necessary to go through an explanatory course, analyzing aspects of biopolitics from the perspective of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault, Agamben's great inspirers in this regard.

A “Catholic Layman of German Nationality and Citizenship”?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinhard Mehring
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Political Position ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Nationality

Carl Schmitt positioned his constitutional theory in the context of a “political theology” and referred to himself repeatedly as a Catholic. Schmitt scholarship has long pursued this self-depiction without establishing a convincing “Catholic” doctrine, political position, or life praxis. This chapter provides an overview and critical interrogation of Schmitt’s self-description. By emphasizing his political and theological distance from his early background and from the political Catholicism of the interwar period, the chapter analyzes his systematic connection of theism, personalism, and decisionism, and considers Schmitt as a “religious” author and person. Schmitt’s apocalyptically dramatized perception and stylization of life as a permanent “state of exception” can be seen as a religious practice of testing contingency and sovereignty and self-assigning to “salvation.” Schmitt must thus be understood not as a part of majority Catholicism, but beyond it, among the religious movements in the history of modern secular faith.

scholarly journals Stan wyjątkowy i stan bez nazwy w myśli Carla Schmitta. Propozycja rozdzielenia

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
Wojciech Engelking
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
The State ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Paul's Letters ◽  
The One

The concept of a state of emergency is one of the most frequently cited elements of the thought of the German philosopher of the law and political theorist Carl Schmitt. In its discussions, however, the conceptualization of the state of emergency, which Schmitt proposed in 1924 in his juridical comments on Article 48 of the Weimar Republic’s constitution, is often linked with the theory of Ausnahmezustand from Political Theology (1922). Such a juxtaposition is a mistake, because Schmitt was not a consistent thinker and his texts can be mutually contradictory. I propose, therefore, to separate the state of emergency from Ausnahmezustand – translated from German literally as a state without a name. The main difference between them consists in the different types of legitimacy. The state of emergency from the Constitution of the Weimar Republic finds its legitimacy in this document from 1919, however, read by Schmitt in a way that in his Constitutional Theory (1928) he referred to as relativization of the constitution. For the state without a name, as not being included in the legal order and the equivalent of a miracle in theology, such legitimacy is impossible. In order to find it, one must refer to other Schmitt’s works than the strictly judicial ones. I believe that the state without a name may be legally valid – in a word: not a coup d’état – if we acknowledge that Schmitt’s political theology is not just a methodological project that translates theological notions into political and legal ones, but a wider proposal rooted in the faith in Revelation. Therefore, this figure from the work of the German thinker in which the state of emergency finds its legitimacy is taken from St. Paul’s letters; it is the figure of a katechon: the one who comes and stops the world from disintegration. The use of such legitimacy emphasizes the reluctance to accept modernity, which Schmitt did exhibit, and presents him as a thinker who continued the medieval way of thinking, which is completely incompatible with the strictly modern concept of a state of emergency.

A Postmodern Hetoimasia—Feigning Sovereignty during the State of Exception

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-233
Author(s):  
Marinos Diamantides
Keyword(s):  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Sovereign Debt Crisis ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Coercive State ◽  
Game Of Thrones

Inspired by images from Greece during its sovereign debt crisis—including of a dog that ended up on the Hellenic President’s throne!—this chapter both illustrates Agamben’s notion of a Christian economic-political theology, for which the sovereign’s glory is never affected by his impotence, and nuances it as specifically occidental. Contrasting it with the earlier, embarrassingly incoherent political theology during the era of Byzantine “game of thrones”—when no reasons were offered for why a religion that claimed to be a fraternity of equals was in bed with a coercive state—the chapter shows how the anomie of oikonomia has been repressed in the Occidental constitutional imagination that obsesses over the so-called paradox of constituent/constituted sovereign power. The chapter further speculates on how this repressed sense of embarrassment can be recuperated together with an ethical sense of responsibility.

Political Theology/Theopolitics: The Thresholds and Vulnerabilities of Sovereignty

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlota McAllister ◽  
Valentina Napolitano
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
History Of Anthropology ◽  
Negative Theology ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
History Of

Anthropological work on political theology has been informed by Agamben's work on the state of exception and, thus, by a Schmittian account of sovereignty as analogous to that of the God who bestows miracles. In this review, we read gestures to this analogy's limits in recent ethnographies of the state, vital force, and the Anthropocene as also pointing to the limits of anthropology's secularity and its embedding in the colonial enterprise. In so doing, we recover a potential opening to theistic force that anthropology has long fought to foreclose. We conclude by proposing a conceptual counter to political theology, grounded in negative theology as well as critical theories drawing on the force of the negative, which we call theopolitics. Theopolitics refers to a sovereignty from below characterized by vulnerability and openness to an ever-provisional messianic force that partakes in history, including the colonial history of anthropology itself. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 50 is August 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Immanuel Kant

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Brophy
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
Advanced Capitalism ◽  
Moral Feeling ◽  
Transcendental Idealist

Agamben’s complicated engagement with Immanuel Kant celebrates the brilliance of the German idealist’s thought by disclosing its condemnatory weight in Western philosophy. Kant was writing in the midst of burgeoning industrial capitalism, when each new scientific discovery seemed to push back the fog of religion in favour of science and reason; meanwhile Agamben’s work develops in concert with the crises of advanced capitalism and borrows significantly from those philosophers who endured the most demoralising upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century. Whatever lanugo Kant was eager for us to shed in the name of individual freedom,1 Agamben sees in this crusade for civic maturity a surprising prescience: ‘[I]t is truly astounding how Kant, almost two centuries ago and under the heading of a sublime “moral feeling,” was able to describe the very condition that was to become familiar to the mass societies and great totalitarian states of our time’ (HS 52). To a remarkable extent, Agamben finds that Kant’s transcendental idealist frame of thought lays the philosophical foundation for the state of exception.

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