Political Theology or Theological Politics? Hugo Ball, Early Christian Hagiography, and a New Vision for Society

2020 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-102
Author(s):  
Sebastian P. Klinger
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Modernist Studies ◽  
Theological Politics ◽  
Peculiar Case

A contribution to modernist studies and the history of political ideas, this article examines the unlikely intellectual dialogue between Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) and the former Dadaist Hugo Ball (1886–1927) that frames the formative scene of politico-theological discourse in the twentieth century. Based on close readings of Ball’s aesthetic, intellectual, and philosophical exchanges with Schmitt, the essay offers insights into the peculiar case of a Catholic intervention into political theology.

scholarly journals Carl Schmitt in the USSR

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-309
Author(s):  
Mikhail Kiselev
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
New Wave ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Harsh Criticism ◽  
Spiritual State

The article is devoted to the problem of the perception in the USSR of C. Schmitt and his works. It is shown that the Russian Empire paid attention to and criticized Schmitt’s 1912 work Law and Judgment. Soviet readers in the 1920s–1940s were already acquainted with the content of Schmitt’s key works such as Political Romanticism, Dictatorship, The Historical and Spiritual State of Modern Parliamentarism, Political Theology, The Concept of Political, The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations, and On the Three Types of Juristic Thought, and a discussion of these works was a part of the intellectual life of the USSR in the 1920s–1940s. Moreover, Soviet Marxist-theorists of law, while criticizing Schmitt’s ideas, agreed with some of his ideas regarding the criticism of the bourgeois state and law until 1933. However, after 1933, Schmitt’s works in the USSR turned into an object of harsh criticism, and he himself was proclaimed a key fascist theoretician of state and law. Since the late 1940s, because of the so-called struggle with “cosmopolitanism”, Schmitt’s works received less attention. In the 1950s–1970s, Schmitt’s works appeared only in some critical statements, and the works of Soviet authors of the 1920s-1940s about Schmitt actually fell into oblivion. A new wave of interest in Schmitt began only in the second half of the 1980s, and his works can already be considered in the context of the intellectual history of modern Russia.

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.

LIBERALISM AND HISTORY AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR: THE CASE OF JACOB TAUBES

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMIE MARTIN
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Postwar Germany ◽  
Hans Blumenberg ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
Theological Critique ◽  
European Thought ◽  
Second World

Before his death in 1987, Jacob Taubes played an important role in postwar German academic philosophy and religious thought. Best known for his leftist political theology and scholarship on the history of Western eschatology, Taubes's thought was influential on mid-twentieth-century debates in Germany about secularization and modern political theology. Outside his relationship with Carl Schmitt, however, Taubes has received little attention in histories of postwar European thought, and few attempts have been made to understand his idiosyncratic work on its own terms. This essay presents new contexts for understanding Taubes and his political-theological critique of the ideological dominance of liberalism in postwar Germany. By analyzing Taubes's thought through the lens of his intellectual quarrel with Hans Blumenberg over secularization, it reassesses his contributions to postwar debates about the political temporality appropriate to a secular and non-utopian social theory, and the consequences of these debates for broader critiques of political liberalism.

Divine Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Jacques Maritain ◽  
The Public ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Theological Foundations ◽  
The Public Sphere

The ‘return of religion’ in the public sphere and the emergence of postsecular societies have propelled the discourse of political theology into the centre of contemporary democratic theory. This situation calls forth the question addressed in this book: Is a democratic political theology possible? Carl Schmitt first developed the idea of the Christian theological foundations of modern legal and political concepts in order to criticize the secular basis of liberal democracy. He employed political theology to argue for the continued legitimacy of the absolute sovereignty of the state against the claims raised by pluralist and globalized civil society. This book shows how, after Schmitt, some of the main political theorists of the 20th century, from Jacques Maritain to Jürgen Habermas, sought to establish an affirmative connection between Christian political theology, popular sovereignty, and the legitimacy of democratic government. In so doing, the political representation of God in the world was no longer placed in the hands of hierarchical and sovereign lieutenants (Church, Empire, Nation), but in a series of democratic institutions, practices and conceptions like direct representation, constitutionalism, universal human rights, and public reason that reject the primacy of sovereignty.

scholarly journals Early Christian Epigraphy, Evil, and the Apotropaic Function of Romans 8.31

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-329
Author(s):  
Jennifer Strawbridge
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Text ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

Epigraphic evidence offers an important and yet oft-neglected dimension to the history of biblical reception. One of the most curious cases of epigraphic incidence of a biblical text is the use of Romans 8.31. Within early Christian writings, this Pauline passage is used approximately 20 times across nine different writers before 604 ce. However, the words of Romans 8.31 may be found on at least 23 epigraphic artifacts from this same period, and in particular, on the door lintels of homes. This article explores what might account for the discrepancy between the literary and epigraphic use of Romans 8.31, the possible apotropaic function of this phrase, and how such evidence might inform the interpretation and reception of this Pauline passage.

Countering terrorism or criminalizing curiosity? The troubled history of UK responses to right-wing and other extremism

2021 ◽  
pp. 147377952198934
Author(s):  
Lucia Zedner
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Right Wing Extremism

The growth of right-wing extremism, especially where it segues into hate crime and terrorism, poses new challenges for governments, not least because its perpetrators are typically lone actors, often radicalized online. The United Kingdom has struggled to define, tackle or legitimate against extremism, though it already has an extensive array of terrorism-related offences that target expression, encouragement, publication and possession of terrorist material. In 2019, the United Kingdom went further to make viewing terrorist-related material online on a single occasion a crime carrying a 15-year maximum sentence. This article considers whether UK responses to extremism, particularly those that target non-violent extremism, are necessary, proportionate, effective and compliant with fundamental rights. It explores whether criminalizing the curiosity of those who explore radical political ideas constitutes legitimate criminalization or overextends state power and risks chilling effects on freedom of speech, association, academic freedom, journalistic enquiry and informed public debate—all of which are the lifeblood of a liberal democracy.

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