Carl Raschke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231173841
- eISBN:
- 9780231539623
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231173841.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
For theorists in search of a political theology that is more responsive to the challenges now facing Western democracies, this book tenders a new political economy anchored in a theory of value. The ...
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For theorists in search of a political theology that is more responsive to the challenges now facing Western democracies, this book tenders a new political economy anchored in a theory of value. The political theology of the future, Carl Raschke argues, must draw on a powerful, hidden impetus—the “force of God”—to frame a new value economy. It must also embrace a radical, “faith-based” revolutionary style of theory that reconceives the power of the “theological” in political thought and action. Raschke ties democracy’s retreat to the West’s failure to confront its decadence and mobilize its vast spiritual resources. Worsening debt, rising unemployment, and gross income inequality have led to a crisis in political representation and values that twentieth-century theorists never anticipated. Drawing on the thought of Hegel and Nietzsche as well as recent work by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Joseph Goux, Giorgio Agamben, and Alain Badiou, among others, Raschke recasts political theology for a new generation. He proposes a bold, uncompromising critical theory that acknowledges the enduring significance of Marx without his materialism and builds a vital, more spiritually grounded relationship between politics and the religious imaginary.Less
For theorists in search of a political theology that is more responsive to the challenges now facing Western democracies, this book tenders a new political economy anchored in a theory of value. The political theology of the future, Carl Raschke argues, must draw on a powerful, hidden impetus—the “force of God”—to frame a new value economy. It must also embrace a radical, “faith-based” revolutionary style of theory that reconceives the power of the “theological” in political thought and action. Raschke ties democracy’s retreat to the West’s failure to confront its decadence and mobilize its vast spiritual resources. Worsening debt, rising unemployment, and gross income inequality have led to a crisis in political representation and values that twentieth-century theorists never anticipated. Drawing on the thought of Hegel and Nietzsche as well as recent work by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Joseph Goux, Giorgio Agamben, and Alain Badiou, among others, Raschke recasts political theology for a new generation. He proposes a bold, uncompromising critical theory that acknowledges the enduring significance of Marx without his materialism and builds a vital, more spiritually grounded relationship between politics and the religious imaginary.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501726545
- eISBN:
- 9781501730665
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501726545.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The fifth chapter goes back to Schmitt’s 1922 Political Theology to frame the author’s late return to this theme. The chapter argues that this return underscores the centrality of political theology ...
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The fifth chapter goes back to Schmitt’s 1922 Political Theology to frame the author’s late return to this theme. The chapter argues that this return underscores the centrality of political theology for Schmitt’s late work in general. It means to show that Schmitt in his debate with the theologian Erik Peterson and the philosopher Hans Blumenberg in Political Theology II emphasizes the need for theological foundations. They can be found in the New Testament. As a consequence, he stresses the continued relevance of political theology.Less
The fifth chapter goes back to Schmitt’s 1922 Political Theology to frame the author’s late return to this theme. The chapter argues that this return underscores the centrality of political theology for Schmitt’s late work in general. It means to show that Schmitt in his debate with the theologian Erik Peterson and the philosopher Hans Blumenberg in Political Theology II emphasizes the need for theological foundations. They can be found in the New Testament. As a consequence, he stresses the continued relevance of political theology.
Dimitris Vardoulakis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251353
- eISBN:
- 9780823252893
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251353.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Dimitris Vardoulakis asks how it is possible to think of a politics that is not commensurate with sovereignty. For such a politics, he argues, sovereignty is defined not in terms of the exception but ...
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Dimitris Vardoulakis asks how it is possible to think of a politics that is not commensurate with sovereignty. For such a politics, he argues, sovereignty is defined not in terms of the exception but as the different ways in which violence is justified. Vardoulakis shows how it is possible to deconstruct the various justifications of violence. Such dejustifications can take place only by presupposing an other to sovereignty, which Vardoulakis identifies with agonistic democracy. In doing so, Sovereignty and Its Other puts forward both a novel critique of sovereignty and an original philosophical theory of democratic practice.Less
Dimitris Vardoulakis asks how it is possible to think of a politics that is not commensurate with sovereignty. For such a politics, he argues, sovereignty is defined not in terms of the exception but as the different ways in which violence is justified. Vardoulakis shows how it is possible to deconstruct the various justifications of violence. Such dejustifications can take place only by presupposing an other to sovereignty, which Vardoulakis identifies with agonistic democracy. In doing so, Sovereignty and Its Other puts forward both a novel critique of sovereignty and an original philosophical theory of democratic practice.
Rosemary P. Carbine
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257522
- eISBN:
- 9780823261567
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257522.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter takes up the challenge of non-Western voices for theology’s political relevance, more specifically for elaborating a constructive feminist public theology. Rosemary P. Carbine critically ...
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This chapter takes up the challenge of non-Western voices for theology’s political relevance, more specifically for elaborating a constructive feminist public theology. Rosemary P. Carbine critically analyzes public theology’s prevailing anthropology, which often aligns itself with Euro-American modernity’s rationalist notion of humanity and its associated modes of political participation. This modern anthropology falsely naturalizes elite gendered, racial, nativist, and corporatist constructs of the human person. To offer a theo-political alternative view of public engagement and personhood, Carbine reconfigures public theology as the praxis of imagining, creating, and sustaining a community, and does so by revisiting Catholic social teaching on the Church’s public role in an eschatological and anthropological light. Feminist, womanist, and mujerista theological anthropologies propose a relational notion of the person, which Carbine weaves with Catholic social teaching into a religio-political reconceptualization of the imago Dei, beckoning us to live our full humanity in an ever more just community. Carbine argues that effective public theology should subsist in rhetorical, symbolical and prophetic practices that perform this community-creating work as exemplified by movements for social and economic justice as well as for the civil rights of immigrants.Less
This chapter takes up the challenge of non-Western voices for theology’s political relevance, more specifically for elaborating a constructive feminist public theology. Rosemary P. Carbine critically analyzes public theology’s prevailing anthropology, which often aligns itself with Euro-American modernity’s rationalist notion of humanity and its associated modes of political participation. This modern anthropology falsely naturalizes elite gendered, racial, nativist, and corporatist constructs of the human person. To offer a theo-political alternative view of public engagement and personhood, Carbine reconfigures public theology as the praxis of imagining, creating, and sustaining a community, and does so by revisiting Catholic social teaching on the Church’s public role in an eschatological and anthropological light. Feminist, womanist, and mujerista theological anthropologies propose a relational notion of the person, which Carbine weaves with Catholic social teaching into a religio-political reconceptualization of the imago Dei, beckoning us to live our full humanity in an ever more just community. Carbine argues that effective public theology should subsist in rhetorical, symbolical and prophetic practices that perform this community-creating work as exemplified by movements for social and economic justice as well as for the civil rights of immigrants.
Sergey Dolgopolski
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280186
- eISBN:
- 9780823281640
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280186.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
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 ...
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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.Less
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.
Philip Lorenz
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251308
- eISBN:
- 9780823252633
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251308.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The Tears of Sovereignty – Perspectives of Power in Renaissance Drama examines the representation of sovereignty in canonical works of the Renaissance: Shakespeare's Richard II, Measure for Measure ...
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The Tears of Sovereignty – Perspectives of Power in Renaissance Drama examines the representation of sovereignty in canonical works of the Renaissance: Shakespeare's Richard II, Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale, Lope de Vega's Fuenteovejuna, and Calderón de la Barca's Life is a Dream. Structured as a series of questions and answers regarding the concept of sovereignty, each chapter is organized around a key representational operation performed on a “body” of power increasingly spectacularized, sacralized, de-sacralized, and, above all, troped in various ways: from the analogical relations of Richard II, through the metaphorical transfers staged in Measure for Measure, to the autoimmune resistances and allegorical returns they give rise to in Lope's Fuenteovejuna, Calderón's Life is a Dream, and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. The book's method is comparative and conceptual, linking literary and religious discourse at the level of metaphor, and positing relations between English and Spanish drama, in terms of the “logics” each generates to negotiate the divided terrain of sovereignty. While its tropological approach will be familiar to readers of deconstruction, it also engages with biopolitical, psychoanalytic and feminist criticism, drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Pierre Legendre, Adriana Cavarero and Walter Benjamin, in order to examine the relationship between early modern theater and power from intersecting theoretical perspectives. The “tears” of sovereignty are the exegetical tropes produced and performed on the English stages and Spanish corrales of the seventeenth century through which we continue to view sovereignty.Less
The Tears of Sovereignty – Perspectives of Power in Renaissance Drama examines the representation of sovereignty in canonical works of the Renaissance: Shakespeare's Richard II, Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale, Lope de Vega's Fuenteovejuna, and Calderón de la Barca's Life is a Dream. Structured as a series of questions and answers regarding the concept of sovereignty, each chapter is organized around a key representational operation performed on a “body” of power increasingly spectacularized, sacralized, de-sacralized, and, above all, troped in various ways: from the analogical relations of Richard II, through the metaphorical transfers staged in Measure for Measure, to the autoimmune resistances and allegorical returns they give rise to in Lope's Fuenteovejuna, Calderón's Life is a Dream, and Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. The book's method is comparative and conceptual, linking literary and religious discourse at the level of metaphor, and positing relations between English and Spanish drama, in terms of the “logics” each generates to negotiate the divided terrain of sovereignty. While its tropological approach will be familiar to readers of deconstruction, it also engages with biopolitical, psychoanalytic and feminist criticism, drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Pierre Legendre, Adriana Cavarero and Walter Benjamin, in order to examine the relationship between early modern theater and power from intersecting theoretical perspectives. The “tears” of sovereignty are the exegetical tropes produced and performed on the English stages and Spanish corrales of the seventeenth century through which we continue to view sovereignty.
Kir Kuiken
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257676
- eISBN:
- 9780823261758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257676.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter explores how William Blake, through his revaluation of the imagination as a form of “poetic genius,” creates an alternative political theology to the one that produced traditional ...
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This chapter explores how William Blake, through his revaluation of the imagination as a form of “poetic genius,” creates an alternative political theology to the one that produced traditional conceptions of “divine right.” Rather than make the imagination equivalent to the divine, however, Blake attempts to show how basic categories of political theology- God, Man and especially “the infinite”- rely on a notion of identity and transcendence that forgets prior more radical conceptions of the divine. Focusing on Blake's notion of an infinite that cannot be opposed to the finite, the chapter goes on to lay out the political consequences that Blake thinks will follow from a reconceived understanding of the relation between his quasi-theological conception of the infinite and a finite politics.Less
This chapter explores how William Blake, through his revaluation of the imagination as a form of “poetic genius,” creates an alternative political theology to the one that produced traditional conceptions of “divine right.” Rather than make the imagination equivalent to the divine, however, Blake attempts to show how basic categories of political theology- God, Man and especially “the infinite”- rely on a notion of identity and transcendence that forgets prior more radical conceptions of the divine. Focusing on Blake's notion of an infinite that cannot be opposed to the finite, the chapter goes on to lay out the political consequences that Blake thinks will follow from a reconceived understanding of the relation between his quasi-theological conception of the infinite and a finite politics.
Kir Kuiken
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257676
- eISBN:
- 9780823261758
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257676.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This book argues for a new understanding of the relationship between Romantic conceptions of the imagination and the emergence of modern forms of political sovereignty. Its main thesis is that the ...
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This book argues for a new understanding of the relationship between Romantic conceptions of the imagination and the emergence of modern forms of political sovereignty. Its main thesis is that the Romantics reconceived not just the nature of the aesthetic imagination, but also the conditions in which a particular form of sovereignty could be realized through it. Engaging in close readings of Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Shelley, the book reveals how Romantic authors re-asserted poetic authority in place of divine sovereignty, thereby producing an alternative understanding of the secularization of the political. The book also argues, however, that the Romantics did more than simply replace God as the source of political authority with the subjective imagination; they produced new forms of sovereignty that are no longer modelled on any form of transcendence, divine or human. The book thus aims to re-examine not only our conception of the political significance of Romanticism, but also its continued relevance for our contemporary understanding of the history and development of personal and political sovereignty.Less
This book argues for a new understanding of the relationship between Romantic conceptions of the imagination and the emergence of modern forms of political sovereignty. Its main thesis is that the Romantics reconceived not just the nature of the aesthetic imagination, but also the conditions in which a particular form of sovereignty could be realized through it. Engaging in close readings of Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Shelley, the book reveals how Romantic authors re-asserted poetic authority in place of divine sovereignty, thereby producing an alternative understanding of the secularization of the political. The book also argues, however, that the Romantics did more than simply replace God as the source of political authority with the subjective imagination; they produced new forms of sovereignty that are no longer modelled on any form of transcendence, divine or human. The book thus aims to re-examine not only our conception of the political significance of Romanticism, but also its continued relevance for our contemporary understanding of the history and development of personal and political sovereignty.
Marinos Diamantides and Anton Schütz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748697762
- eISBN:
- 9781474435154
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748697762.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
The big news on the global horizon at the end of the second decade of the 21st century concerns the promise of politics. At stake is no political promise in particular; that would barely be news — ...
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The big news on the global horizon at the end of the second decade of the 21st century concerns the promise of politics. At stake is no political promise in particular; that would barely be news — the presence of some such promise has been Western humankind's invariable self-endowment throughout modernity. The news is that the emancipatory promise proposed by political discourse sounds hollow to most. The equality of human lives appears to be at an all-time low just at the moment in which politics, the site at which such a state of things encounters objections and oppositions, has fallen into silence, but for the noise of populist fake news and regardless of the continuing enjoyment of its theatrical side. Declared king only a few centuries ago, politics, in the age of "function systems" has fallen far below the rank of others, including the economy and the media, which appear today perfectly able to outdo politics in energies, powers, deeds. Take the vast academic success of Political Theology during the past fifty years: what is at stake here, if not the disaster inflicted, first, upon religious devotion by the triumph of ‘glorious’ secular politics and secondly, by the self-inflicted disaster of the latter?Less
The big news on the global horizon at the end of the second decade of the 21st century concerns the promise of politics. At stake is no political promise in particular; that would barely be news — the presence of some such promise has been Western humankind's invariable self-endowment throughout modernity. The news is that the emancipatory promise proposed by political discourse sounds hollow to most. The equality of human lives appears to be at an all-time low just at the moment in which politics, the site at which such a state of things encounters objections and oppositions, has fallen into silence, but for the noise of populist fake news and regardless of the continuing enjoyment of its theatrical side. Declared king only a few centuries ago, politics, in the age of "function systems" has fallen far below the rank of others, including the economy and the media, which appear today perfectly able to outdo politics in energies, powers, deeds. Take the vast academic success of Political Theology during the past fifty years: what is at stake here, if not the disaster inflicted, first, upon religious devotion by the triumph of ‘glorious’ secular politics and secondly, by the self-inflicted disaster of the latter?
Emanuele Castrucci
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474411844
- eISBN:
- 9781474426770
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411844.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
Does there exist a Logos capable of limiting the very power of God? This question closely relates an inquiry arising in classical Greek philosophy to the theological knowledge originating in Jewish ...
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Does there exist a Logos capable of limiting the very power of God? This question closely relates an inquiry arising in classical Greek philosophy to the theological knowledge originating in Jewish biblical exegesis. Two thoroughly unrelated worlds, one would say, yet a historical nexus between them existed, that created by Christianity, which has marked the destiny of our West. As Leo Strauss has masterfully shown, Christianity has been for two thousand years, despite its many inner contradictions, something like an interface between two hitherto unrelated worlds: Greek philosophy and biblical revelation. By reformulating them and turning them on their heads, it has shaped an entire civilization: our Western civilization, which is now drawing to a close. Thus, never has it been as appropriate as the present moment to come to grips with our opening question about the “limits of God”, or about the original laws of logic and ontology that somehow “limit” God’s very actions, since it arises from the profound need – prior to St. Paul unthinkable in concrete terms – to form a link between these two radically different worlds. Our West, with its devastating philosophical rationalism, its systematic Christian-Enlightenment repudiation of the Spinozist-Nietzschean concept of potency, from its very inception hinged on this question of knowledge of a law before God and above God. Today we must acknowledge that – precisely because of what this question, taken to its extreme consequences, implies – it was destined from its origins to end.Less
Does there exist a Logos capable of limiting the very power of God? This question closely relates an inquiry arising in classical Greek philosophy to the theological knowledge originating in Jewish biblical exegesis. Two thoroughly unrelated worlds, one would say, yet a historical nexus between them existed, that created by Christianity, which has marked the destiny of our West. As Leo Strauss has masterfully shown, Christianity has been for two thousand years, despite its many inner contradictions, something like an interface between two hitherto unrelated worlds: Greek philosophy and biblical revelation. By reformulating them and turning them on their heads, it has shaped an entire civilization: our Western civilization, which is now drawing to a close. Thus, never has it been as appropriate as the present moment to come to grips with our opening question about the “limits of God”, or about the original laws of logic and ontology that somehow “limit” God’s very actions, since it arises from the profound need – prior to St. Paul unthinkable in concrete terms – to form a link between these two radically different worlds. Our West, with its devastating philosophical rationalism, its systematic Christian-Enlightenment repudiation of the Spinozist-Nietzschean concept of potency, from its very inception hinged on this question of knowledge of a law before God and above God. Today we must acknowledge that – precisely because of what this question, taken to its extreme consequences, implies – it was destined from its origins to end.
Tracy McNulty
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231161190
- eISBN:
- 9780231537605
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231161190.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter examines Carl Schmitt's claim, articulated in his 1922 book Political Theology, that there is a “gap” in the law corresponding to the place of the exception and that the concept “legal ...
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This chapter examines Carl Schmitt's claim, articulated in his 1922 book Political Theology, that there is a “gap” in the law corresponding to the place of the exception and that the concept “legal order” is made out of two independent and autonomous elements, norm and decision, which together constitute the juristic sphere. Paul and Schmitt challenge spatial notions of law that establish a boundary between an “inside” and an “outside” by topologizing “inside” and “outside” as continuous: through the “fulfillment of the law” in Paul, and through the strategy of sovereign exception in Schmitt. Schmitt even describes sovereignty as a “border concept,” a concept that pertains to borderline cases. This chapter also considers Jacques Lacan's proposal that offers a different understanding of the law as representation, whose function is symbolic rather than imaginary, and concludes by discussing the question of the border within the context of political theology.Less
This chapter examines Carl Schmitt's claim, articulated in his 1922 book Political Theology, that there is a “gap” in the law corresponding to the place of the exception and that the concept “legal order” is made out of two independent and autonomous elements, norm and decision, which together constitute the juristic sphere. Paul and Schmitt challenge spatial notions of law that establish a boundary between an “inside” and an “outside” by topologizing “inside” and “outside” as continuous: through the “fulfillment of the law” in Paul, and through the strategy of sovereign exception in Schmitt. Schmitt even describes sovereignty as a “border concept,” a concept that pertains to borderline cases. This chapter also considers Jacques Lacan's proposal that offers a different understanding of the law as representation, whose function is symbolic rather than imaginary, and concludes by discussing the question of the border within the context of political theology.
Sergey Dolgopolski
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280186
- eISBN:
- 9780823281640
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280186.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
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 ...
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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.Less
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.
Michael Fagenblat
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262034012
- eISBN:
- 9780262334631
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262034012.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
The first part of this chapter discusses Heidegger’s metapolitical critique of Judaism and world-Jewry. I argue for a placeholder interpretation of this critique. To hold that Judaism is a ...
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The first part of this chapter discusses Heidegger’s metapolitical critique of Judaism and world-Jewry. I argue for a placeholder interpretation of this critique. To hold that Judaism is a placeholder in Heidegger’s metapolitical thought implies that the “history of being” is not essentially anti-Semitic. This is not to apologize for Heidegger’s anti-Semitic ravings but to clear a path toward understanding its source. I locate this source in Heidegger’s neglect of the phenomenological-conceptual and ultimately ontological relation between being and evil. In the second part I analyse the conceptual relation between Heidegger’s philosophy and characteristic features of Jewish thought. Building on MàrleneZarader’s work, I elucidate numerous, crucial points of convergence between the two ways of thinking. This motivates an explanation of why it is that leading Jewish philosophers drew on Heidegger’s philosophy in order to articulate their views. Thinkers briefly discussed include F. Rosenzweig, G. Scholem, A. Altmann, E. Fackenheim, J. B. Soloveitchik, L. Strauss, E. Levinas and M. Wyschogrod. I then argue for a conceptual fault-line concerning the theme of Place. I conclude by suggesting that contemporary theologies of Zion extend this trajectory by adopting topological modes of thinking akin to Heidegger’s but rejected by their European predecessors.Less
The first part of this chapter discusses Heidegger’s metapolitical critique of Judaism and world-Jewry. I argue for a placeholder interpretation of this critique. To hold that Judaism is a placeholder in Heidegger’s metapolitical thought implies that the “history of being” is not essentially anti-Semitic. This is not to apologize for Heidegger’s anti-Semitic ravings but to clear a path toward understanding its source. I locate this source in Heidegger’s neglect of the phenomenological-conceptual and ultimately ontological relation between being and evil. In the second part I analyse the conceptual relation between Heidegger’s philosophy and characteristic features of Jewish thought. Building on MàrleneZarader’s work, I elucidate numerous, crucial points of convergence between the two ways of thinking. This motivates an explanation of why it is that leading Jewish philosophers drew on Heidegger’s philosophy in order to articulate their views. Thinkers briefly discussed include F. Rosenzweig, G. Scholem, A. Altmann, E. Fackenheim, J. B. Soloveitchik, L. Strauss, E. Levinas and M. Wyschogrod. I then argue for a conceptual fault-line concerning the theme of Place. I conclude by suggesting that contemporary theologies of Zion extend this trajectory by adopting topological modes of thinking akin to Heidegger’s but rejected by their European predecessors.
Stathis Gourgouris
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823253784
- eISBN:
- 9780823261215
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823253784.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Examines political philosopher Claude Lefort’s notion of the “empty space of power” in the midst of democratic politics and his critique of the relation between the political and the theological.
Examines political philosopher Claude Lefort’s notion of the “empty space of power” in the midst of democratic politics and his critique of the relation between the political and the theological.
Philip Lorenz
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251308
- eISBN:
- 9780823252633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251308.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The chapter reads Shakespeare's late play, The Winter's Tale, along with Francisco Suárez's Mariological writings as anatomies of the media conditions required for a sovereign event. Shakespeare's ...
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The chapter reads Shakespeare's late play, The Winter's Tale, along with Francisco Suárez's Mariological writings as anatomies of the media conditions required for a sovereign event. Shakespeare's play of “wonder” stages a series of recapitulations, as the political and theological pathways of sovereignty viewed in the previous chapters converge in a complex set of returns. Shakespeare's play of “wonder” draws on what Hent de Vries calls the technicity of a theological construction, the art (or techné) in which a mediated and mediating body is fabricated out of a collage of textual authorities, Ovid, Petrarch, and the book of Revelation, in the course of performing a ‘miracle.’ Like Suárez's Mysteries, The Winter's Tale is a discourse of special effects, of a performance that binds and links the spectator to a tradition that is at least as theatrical as theological, and in which what is at stake is less the body of the absolute object of desire (in this case the body of a long lost mother and queen) than the believer's relation to that object. In different ways, Shakespeare and Suárez show that sovereignty bonds are also always media-bonds, as political theology give way to what might be termed psycho-political theology.Less
The chapter reads Shakespeare's late play, The Winter's Tale, along with Francisco Suárez's Mariological writings as anatomies of the media conditions required for a sovereign event. Shakespeare's play of “wonder” stages a series of recapitulations, as the political and theological pathways of sovereignty viewed in the previous chapters converge in a complex set of returns. Shakespeare's play of “wonder” draws on what Hent de Vries calls the technicity of a theological construction, the art (or techné) in which a mediated and mediating body is fabricated out of a collage of textual authorities, Ovid, Petrarch, and the book of Revelation, in the course of performing a ‘miracle.’ Like Suárez's Mysteries, The Winter's Tale is a discourse of special effects, of a performance that binds and links the spectator to a tradition that is at least as theatrical as theological, and in which what is at stake is less the body of the absolute object of desire (in this case the body of a long lost mother and queen) than the believer's relation to that object. In different ways, Shakespeare and Suárez show that sovereignty bonds are also always media-bonds, as political theology give way to what might be termed psycho-political theology.
Philip Lorenz
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251308
- eISBN:
- 9780823252633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251308.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The chapter considers a first paradigm of sovereignty, focusing on the metaphor-logic of substitution that reanimates the body-of-power in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Shakespeare's only play ...
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The chapter considers a first paradigm of sovereignty, focusing on the metaphor-logic of substitution that reanimates the body-of-power in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Shakespeare's only play with a religious title, Measure for Measure (1604), a foundational text for scholars working on political theology, asks us to think about the status, structure and above all staging of the law at an acute moment of national and international crisis. Viewing Measure in relation to the Act and writ of habeas corpus, the chapter shows how the “organ transplant” logic of representation staged in Measure for Measure effectively restores the law and satisfies sovereignty's desire to have the body.Less
The chapter considers a first paradigm of sovereignty, focusing on the metaphor-logic of substitution that reanimates the body-of-power in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Shakespeare's only play with a religious title, Measure for Measure (1604), a foundational text for scholars working on political theology, asks us to think about the status, structure and above all staging of the law at an acute moment of national and international crisis. Viewing Measure in relation to the Act and writ of habeas corpus, the chapter shows how the “organ transplant” logic of representation staged in Measure for Measure effectively restores the law and satisfies sovereignty's desire to have the body.
Kristin Norget, Valentina Napolitano, and Maya Mayblin (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520288423
- eISBN:
- 9780520963368
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520288423.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Religion
A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and ...
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A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and across a wide range of geographical settings. Includes material whose theme is ‘religion’, as well as contributions that expand on Catholicism’s intersection with politics and economics, secularism and modernity, sex and gender, kinship and heritage, and technologies of mediation.Less
A collection of classic and contemporary ethnographic explorations of Catholicism, by anthropologists and religious studies scholars. The book approaches Catholicism through a variety topics and across a wide range of geographical settings. Includes material whose theme is ‘religion’, as well as contributions that expand on Catholicism’s intersection with politics and economics, secularism and modernity, sex and gender, kinship and heritage, and technologies of mediation.
Kir Kuiken
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257676
- eISBN:
- 9780823261758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257676.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter explores how Samuel Coleridge, in the period between writing the Biographia Literaria and his political treatise The Friend, develops a conception of the imagination that involves an ...
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This chapter explores how Samuel Coleridge, in the period between writing the Biographia Literaria and his political treatise The Friend, develops a conception of the imagination that involves an unconditional act of positing that must be immediately exposed to its own finitude. Closely reading specific passages from both the Biographia and The Friend, the chapter focuses on Coleridge's understanding of the necessity of a political “expedient,” and its connection to his theory of the symbol. The chapter then goes on to argue that Coleridge develops a notion of political sovereignty that, because it is exposed to its own finitude, disarticulates his politics of the symbol, and breaks with traditional conceptions of political theology.Less
This chapter explores how Samuel Coleridge, in the period between writing the Biographia Literaria and his political treatise The Friend, develops a conception of the imagination that involves an unconditional act of positing that must be immediately exposed to its own finitude. Closely reading specific passages from both the Biographia and The Friend, the chapter focuses on Coleridge's understanding of the necessity of a political “expedient,” and its connection to his theory of the symbol. The chapter then goes on to argue that Coleridge develops a notion of political sovereignty that, because it is exposed to its own finitude, disarticulates his politics of the symbol, and breaks with traditional conceptions of political theology.
Paul Gifford
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190495732
- eISBN:
- 9780190618506
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190495732.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
African Catholic theology has tended to focus on inculturation, or the expression of Catholicism in African cultural forms, a project that this chapter argues is not without considerable internal ...
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African Catholic theology has tended to focus on inculturation, or the expression of Catholicism in African cultural forms, a project that this chapter argues is not without considerable internal incoherence. The Catholic Church (although sometimes co-opted by governments) has been sometimes known for political involvement to challenge governmental abuses, but this political thinking has tended to come less from theologians than from episcopal conferences; this chapter gives a brief overview of Catholic political involvement in Africa since Independence. The chapter argues that since the fall of communism and the demise of apartheid, there is need for a new agenda: Catholic theology needs to address contemporary needs of Africa like poverty eradication, education, ecology, food and water security, conflict management, creation of jobs and above all Africa’s marginalization in the face of globalization. This new theological agenda is only now taking shape.Less
African Catholic theology has tended to focus on inculturation, or the expression of Catholicism in African cultural forms, a project that this chapter argues is not without considerable internal incoherence. The Catholic Church (although sometimes co-opted by governments) has been sometimes known for political involvement to challenge governmental abuses, but this political thinking has tended to come less from theologians than from episcopal conferences; this chapter gives a brief overview of Catholic political involvement in Africa since Independence. The chapter argues that since the fall of communism and the demise of apartheid, there is need for a new agenda: Catholic theology needs to address contemporary needs of Africa like poverty eradication, education, ecology, food and water security, conflict management, creation of jobs and above all Africa’s marginalization in the face of globalization. This new theological agenda is only now taking shape.
Eric Daryl Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280148
- eISBN:
- 9780823281619
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280148.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter works to refigure humanity’s place in creation, shifting from accounts centered in the imago dei that inculcate a sovereign anthropological exceptionalism and toward an account in which ...
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This chapter works to refigure humanity’s place in creation, shifting from accounts centered in the imago dei that inculcate a sovereign anthropological exceptionalism and toward an account in which human beings find themselves personally and spiritually constituted by relations with nonhuman creatures. To that end, the chapter balances conventional emphasis on Genesis 1 with a reading of Nebuchadnezzar’s character arc in the book of Daniel, which configures sovereignty and human uniqueness in a very different way. Moving to the New Testament Gospels, the chapter suggests that one’s identity in the Realm of God is always determined from the perspective of the oppressed. Following this insight through, the chapter imagines who human beings might be in the eyes of various nonhuman neighbors, from pets to animals confined in factory farms.Less
This chapter works to refigure humanity’s place in creation, shifting from accounts centered in the imago dei that inculcate a sovereign anthropological exceptionalism and toward an account in which human beings find themselves personally and spiritually constituted by relations with nonhuman creatures. To that end, the chapter balances conventional emphasis on Genesis 1 with a reading of Nebuchadnezzar’s character arc in the book of Daniel, which configures sovereignty and human uniqueness in a very different way. Moving to the New Testament Gospels, the chapter suggests that one’s identity in the Realm of God is always determined from the perspective of the oppressed. Following this insight through, the chapter imagines who human beings might be in the eyes of various nonhuman neighbors, from pets to animals confined in factory farms.
