Weighing Schmitt’s political theology anew: Implicit religion in politics

Christo Lombaard

doi:10.4102/hts.v75i3.5511

Abstract

Carl Schmitt, in a sense the initiator of Political Theology, proposed that all important political concepts are reinterpretations of or parallels to theological concepts. This insight is in this contribution described and applied to current political thought, for which it is valuable as modern democracies emerge from the secularism of modernism to a more fully self-aware post-secularism.

Highlights

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was a German legal scholar, with great interest in politics and some interests in religion and literature. (On him, biographically, see, for example, Mehring 2014a and Balakrishnan 2000.) Central to his thinking on law and democracy was authority-justification and legitimacy in exercising power, with a democratic orientation in general, but with a focus on the state of exception and on the role of a strong political leader and state
The latter later proved useful for the -emerging Dritte Reich thinking, in which political order his career met with quick but limited success; it is enough, to have him seriously investigated during the Nuremberg trials processes
The first works important here on Schmitt’s understanding of the role of religion in political systems are the last two essays collected in his 1922 volume, Politische Theologie and Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität

Summary

Introduction

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was a German legal scholar, with great interest in politics and some interests in religion (he describes himself as a lay theologian) and literature. (On him, biographically, see, for example, Mehring 2014a and Balakrishnan 2000.) Central to his thinking on law and democracy was authority-justification and legitimacy in exercising power, with a democratic orientation in general, but with a focus on the state of exception and on the role of a strong political leader and state. The first works important here on Schmitt’s understanding of the role of religion in political systems are the last two essays collected in his 1922 volume, Politische Theologie and Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität.

Results

Conclusion