POLITICAL ONTO-THEOLOGIES OR TOWARDS A POLITICAL METAPHYSICS. SOME CRITICAL ANALOGIES FROM PLATO TO JÜRGEN MOLTMANN

Abstract

The fruitful revival of political onto-theology in the 20th century, just in the heart of the so-called Weimar Renaissance, is connected not only with the revised image of the Middle Ages, but also with the total recall of the problem evil in the epicenter of late modernity, due to the bloody and barbaric World Wars. Both New Political Theology and post-fundamental political onto-theologies, in the sense of a radical onto-theologia negativa, brought to the forefront of contemporary social, political and ethical theory the essential issues of ontological, theological and moral interpretation of the political. It is not by accident that New Political Theology comes to the postwar theoretical and experiential scene as a rival against Schmittian political theology. Now, the focal point of analysis is not political power, in the sense of state sovereignty, but a radical return to the forgotten theologian principles of Christology and Trinitarianism. As far as New Political Theology is concerned, the new content of political theology pursues more the republican and democratic aspects of a Crucified God on the Cross next to Jesus Christ, the poor and the pariahs. It is no coincidence that Moltmannian theology of hope is seen, in the final analysis, as a political theologia crucis. It is important to add that a significant role in the non-Schmittian political theology of the 20th century plays the messianic and/or apocalyptic Jewish political theology with apparent Marxist connotations and strong links with Critical Theory.