Schmitt's Political Theology Research Articles

Baroque Sovereignty Reconsidered: Walter Benjamin Quotes Diego Saavedra Fajardo

ABSTRACT: In Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels ( The Origin of German Tragic Drama , 1928), Walter Benjamin illustrates his argument on baroque sovereignty, which responds to Carl Schmitt's political theology, with a fragment from Diego Saavedra Fajardo's Empresas políticas . The quotation has hitherto been overlooked in scholarly discussions, which have often sidelined the role played by the seventeenth-century texts that represent the actual subject of Ursprung , and especially those texts from the Spanish baroque. The aim of this article is to reconsider Benjamin's interpretation of baroque political theory, and thus his critique of Schmitt, by engaging with the work of Saavedra Fajardo.

The plight of the exception: why Carl Schmitt bid farewell to Hobbes

ABSTRACT This article offers an in-depth analysis of Carl Schmitt's social ontology to explain how and why he came to reject exceptionalist decisionism. To this end, the authors unearth the considerable shifts in terms of social ontology that paved the way for this conceptual turn. The gist of their argument is that Schmitt's Political Theology (1922) espoused a Hobbesian conception of the political as the possibility condition for stable patters of social interaction. Though the first three chapters of Political Theology were originally designed for and published in a posthumous Festschrift for Max Weber, his understanding of the social was indebted to a Hobbesian legacy. Nonetheless, shortly thereafter, he began to revise his conception of the social and to put stress on the organisational dynamics of social institutions as independent of there being a political authority. From 1927 through to 1950, Schmitt never got back to his 1922 exceptionalist view of politics and rather sought to make sense of how the state could and should draw the contents of the legal order from the normative life of social institutions.

Processes of Destitution in Spain: Unavowable Communities between the Regime of ’78 and the Total State

This essay analyzes what I call processes of destitution as a result of the various social movements that took place in Spain throughout the 2010s. I argue that the exhaustion of the Regime of ’78 meant an epistemological turn away from hegemonic concepts such as consensus, truth, and historical agreement toward those central to a new destituent process: dissent, divergence, and plurality, among others. Over the course of this essay, I carry out a genealogical review of the two intersecting social movements of the period which drove that change: first, the anti-austerity movement—better known as the indignados, or 15M, movement and its political derivatives, such as municipal platforms, the “mareas,” and Podemos—and second, the Catalan pro-independence movement. Finally, based on Carl Schmitt's political theology, I study the Spanish State's reaction beginning in 2017 as the creation of a state of exception based on the intensification of “the political” and on a shift in the “friend/enemy” paradigm, from a relationship between nation-states to an intranational relationship between the Spanish State and the Catalan pro-independence movement.

Miracles, Temporality, and Unfulfillment in A Diagram for Fire

Miracles, Temporality, and Unfulfillment in A Diagram for Fire Bruno Reinhardt Jon Bialecki, Vineyard Movement, charismatic, Pentecostalism, Gilles Deleuze, Holy Spirit, necromancy, exorcism, Bruno Reinhardt Miracles are one of the most widely acknowledged indexes of "religion" in secular scholarship and common sense. Yet, their theoretical role remains paradoxically residual, as if miracles were good to recognize but not to account for religious lifeworlds. The fundamental pressures imposed by the miraculous upon secular knowledges justify such opaqueness. By following empathetically miraculous veridiction, scholars can be led astray from basic epistemological principles such as neutrality and critical reflexivity, becoming theologians. A possible solution has been to circumvent miracles by sticking to their human co-participants, proposing theories of recognition that bracket their existence while focusing on their institutional, sociocultural, historical, ethical, or cognitive conditions of receptivity or construction. From this angle, the ultimate object of study of disciplines like the anthropology of religion or religious studies would not be miracles, but the media whereby miraculous truth is relayed, from social structures, symbolic systems, and semiotic ideologies to culturally embodied schema and the nervous system. Scholars might also import miracles into social theory through analogy and substitution. A classic example is Max Weber's secularized notion of charisma, borrowed from Pauline Christianity through theologian Rudolf Sohm and converted into a type of legitimate authority. What Weber calls pure charisma is explicitly residual, existing "only in the process of originating."1 Pure charisma nevertheless introduces a strategic dose of freedom and unexpectedness into Weber's otherwise bleak theory of modern rationalization, becoming a deterrent for determinism. Carl Schmitt's political theology performs similar work through the analogy between miracles and sovereignty: it selects a particular property of miracles—their extra-normative givenness— [End Page 456] and imports it to political philosophy as a critique of liberal democracy. 2 A more recent example of such procedure is Hent de Vries's argument about the "structural resemblances" between miracles and special effects, which—like the arguments of Weber and Schmitt—establishes parallels between religious and secular phenomena (leadership, sovereignty, mediation) and oscillates between analogy and substitution.3 Miracles for these authors operate primarily as tools for reading secular modernity otherwise, often against its self-image. Is it possible to propose a theoretical approach to religion that does not dilute the originary force of the miraculous through either constructivism or analogical thinking? Moreover, can we do that while still recognizing the otherness of social theory vis-à-vis theology or religious experience? Jon Bialecki's A Diagram for Fire faces bravely these major ethical and theoretical challenges through a rich ethnographic engagement with the evangelical Charismatic Vineyard Church. Bialecki's initial research problem was how to account for the dazzling plurality as well as the inchoate family resemblances he encountered in the field under the umbrella "Vineyard Church." How to recognize such inner difference without reifying the Vineyard in terms of stable doctrines, identities, or centralized organization, which ultimately do not empirically exist? This initial problematic expands in the book two ways: it scales up to wider objects that share similar qualities, such as "actually existing Christianity" and "religion" itself, and it scales down ethnographically from the Vineyard movement (they avoid denomination) to particular churches at different locations, small meetings, practices, and experiences. The resulting argument has a fractal design, which oscillates recursively between what we conventionally understand as "micro" and "macro" levels of analysis while showing these terms' inappropriateness. Such design reflects Bialecki's attempt to avoid both nominalism and essentialism. If there is a religious atom or lowest common denominator in the book, it is not substantial, but an iterable pattern of differentiation traceable across various scales, a "type of recurrent event" (xviii), which is best accessed through what Vineyard members call miracles. This spreadable but aggregating, elusive but affective force is diagrammatic: "a diagram for fire." According to Bialecki, diagrams are "abstract maps of how forces play out that point as much toward [End Page 457] the different potentials in outcomes as they do toward a similarity in relations or constitution" (69). Such focus on a set of fundamental relations reminded me of classic structural analysis, with the exception that the stuff of diagrams is...

Myth and the Human Sciences: Hans Blumenberg's Theory of Myth by Angus Nicholls

Reviewed by: Myth and the Human Sciences: Hans Blumenberg's Theory of Myth by Angus Nicholls Spencer Hawkins Angus Nicholls. Myth and the Human Sciences: Hans Blumenberg's Theory of Myth. New York: Routledge, 2015. 259 pp. This book provides a deeply researched introduction to Hans Blumenberg's theory of myth, largely by highlighting the influence of well-known and forgotten thinkers on Blumenberg's thought. In its historiographical detail, it reads almost like a work of Blumenberg's own hand—a self-reflexivity the author acknowledges in the prologue's title, "A Story about the Telling of Stories" (1). Chapters 1–4 are the most historical-documentary. They are a wonderful resource for readers unfamiliar with Blumenberg since much of this material summarizes current Blumenberg scholarship. Experienced Blumenberg readers will also find new insights from these chapters. Chapter 4, for instance, discusses Blumenberg's admiration for anthropologist Paul Alsberg's imaginative visions in his theory of Köperausschaltung, humanity's ever growing ability to engage its surroundings across physical distances, first with long-range weapons, later with concepts (111–16). Chapter 5, on the reception history of Prometheus myths, prepares the ground for the ambitious argumentation of Chapter 6, on Blumenberg's theory of mythic reception events through the example of Goethe's self-fashioning as a Promethean writer. Chapter 7 and 8 are equally ambitious. They respond to Götz Müller's criticism that Work on Myth does not discuss "the dangerous proliferation of modern myths." Nicholls presents "political polytheism" as Blumenberg's [End Page 310] answer to Schmitt's political theology (200, 210–15). Nicholls then explicates Blumenberg's unpublished diagnosis of Hitler's narcissistic mythology (238, also see Präfiguration). Hitler's delusions negate Blumenberg's ideal by denying the checks and balances found in the polytheistic division of powers. Blumenberg is challenging to read because he conducts theory through examples, implicitly reducing the theory to a description of the examples. For instance, Höhlenausgänge (Cave Exits), the last major work Blumenberg published during his lifetime, enlists "leaving the cave" as a myth of emerging human civilization, but gives little theorization of myth or metaphor. Instead we learn about the pathos of intellectual history and about the pathos of caves. If analysis does not drive the last nail into the coffin of myth, as jokes can be explained to death, Blumenberg uses narrative to persuade us that cavernous spaces affect us emotionally because they are, always already, an effective metaphor for human emergence. Myth and the Human Sciences carries Blumenberg scholarship forward by extracting a well-situated theory of myth from Blumenberg's work. In chapter six, it explains how myth and "absolute metaphor" often serve the same function for Blumenberg, whose arguments in Work on Myth present a more robust version of those introduced in Paradigms for a Metaphorology. Blumenberg proposes that myths survive through a "cultural selection" process, whose adaptive products are as stable as those of natural selection in biology (171). Nicholls articulates the problem with Blumenberg's evolutionary claims about "mythologems"—Nicholls' useful coinage to describe the images and very short narratives that seem, like insects, to achieve their unusual durability through their minute structures. Nicholls outlines the implicit hypotheses behind Blumenberg's claims: 1) "a high degree of accuracy" pertains when transmitting core "mythologems," 2) texts are adequate vehicles of mythologems, 3) they can vary without necessarily losing their specific functionality, like genes, 4) historical contexts exert analogous pressure to adapt on mythologems as environmental contexts do on genes. While exploring this analogy may seem frivolous since Blumenberg rarely insists on it (and his commentators prefer to focus on his technological analogies), it would provide the most coherent, systematic analogy for making sense of Blumenberg's work. Nicholls deflates the force of Blumenberg's analogy by showing that even theorists who develop notions of stable cultural data ("memes"), such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, have run into these problems and all but retracted their theories (171–72). Blumenberg criticism too often foregoes close reading in favor of supplying the broader claims absent in Blumenberg's text. Chapter six offers a faithful close reading of Blumenberg's engagement with...

The Blood of the Martyrs: Erik Peterson's Theology of Martyrdom and Carl Schmitt's Political Theology of Sovereignty

AbstractThere is a growing literature on the theological roots of Schmitt's theory, however, such interpretations depart from the same position as Schmitt: from the political into the theological. In this quarrel between politics and theology, there is a less known contender, the theologian Erik Peterson, who developed a theological critique of Schmitt and shows the impossibility of a Christian political theology. InPolitical Theology II(1970), Schmitt criticizes the apolitical nature of Peterson's theology, but he ignores Peterson's theology of martyrdom. This paper recovers the centrality of martyrdom in Peterson's theology and argues that the martyr represents a counter model to Schmitt's sovereign. For Peterson, martyrdom is not apolitical act, but a public claim in which the martyrs testify in the public sphere that the highest human good is not political but eschatological. By recovering this eschatological dimension, Peterson shows the limits of Schmitt's interpretation of the political.

Beyond Political Theology and its Liquidation: From Theopolitical Monotheism to Trinitarianism

AbstractOne of the central theological challenges facing Erik Peterson was to help the mid‐twentieth century Catholic Church define its relationship with the wider world. He responded by advancing a distinctive understanding of the ‘polis.’ In this essay, I critically analyze Peterson's central and perhaps best known proposal about how the Church ought to negotiate the modern world — encapsulated in his expression, the ‘liquidation of political theology.’ I contend that Peterson's proposal is not congruent with a right understanding of patristic trinitarian monarchy, although a view that stands in sharp contrast to that of Carl Schmitt. Notwithstanding the effectiveness of Peterson's critique of Schmitt's political theology, I argue that Peterson nonetheless fails in his exposition of the thought of Gregory of Nazianzus and therefore in his interpretation of the role of the Church in what we have learned to call the ‘political’ and the ‘social.’ I conclude by outlining several ways that the Church today might take up the challenge of regaining a truly political thought, a new ekklesioteia, nourished by the monarchy of the triune God.

The Theology of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology

The theological turn in studies of Carl Schmitt is pronounced. This paper does not challenge this turn, but questions what theology means for Schmitt. Specifically, it challenges the assumption that Schmitt's political theology is grounded in divine revelation. By distinguishing between “theology in the sense of divine revelation” and “theology in the sense of epistemic faith,” it argues that Schmitt's political theology is epistemic in origin. Schmitt's political theology is not rooted in faith in divine revelation, but in the narrower notion that human cognition is, ultimately, rooted in faith not reason, revelation, or common sense.

Political theology and eschatological war

The intent of this paper is to describe the antagonism that constitutes the eschatological position, i.e., the inseparability of eschatology from a concept of eschatological war, through 1) the political theology of Carl Schmitt, 2) Orthodox Christological anthropology and 3) the nomadology of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Schmitt's political theology can be understood as a theory of eschatological war. The theological character of Schimtt's work entails that 'the secularisation of theological concepts' is constitutive of the eschatological concept of cosmological finitude. Moreover, Schmitt's distinction between friend and enemy, which informs his concept of politics as the 'political', aims to identify the primary antagonism of eschatological history. For Schmitt, the liberal end of history is the absolutisation of the enemy, as liberalism denies the fundamental distinction of the political, namely, liberalism maintains that war is over on the basis of its claim to immanent historical truth. From the position of Orthodox Christological anthropology, liberalism also contains a clear eschatological element. The anthropology of liberalism is consistent with the gnomic will, which, according to St. Maximus the Confessor, is the fallen definition of human freedom, i.e., freedom as choice. Freedom as the natural will, in contrast, determines the ethical mission of man as the soteriological deification of cosmos. The lines of eschatological war can be further illustrated through the work of Deleuze and Guattari as well as Heinz Von Foerster, whose concepts of diagram/ abstract machine and trivial/non-trivial machine may contribute to an understanding of how a concept of war informs the transformative cosmology which belongs to the eschatological logic of cosmic finitude and deification, theosis.

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

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 Sovereign Wears No Clothes! Defrocking Carl Schmitt'sPolitical Theology

ConstellationsVolume 23, Issue 2 p. 160-169 Original Article The Sovereign Wears No Clothes! Defrocking Carl Schmitt's Political Theology Jack Reilly, Jack ReillySearch for more papers by this author Jack Reilly, Jack ReillySearch for more papers by this author First published: 30 September 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12177Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume23, Issue2June 2016Pages 160-169 RelatedInformation

From Dionysus to the Anti-Christ

This essay is a reconstruction of Rene Girard's Christian apology in “I saw the Devil fall like Lightening.” It develops Nietzsche's antithesis between Christ and Dionysius which Girard identifies as the antithesis of modernity as such. Against Girard's own alliance with Carl Schmitt the essay adopts the Trinitarian point of view suggested by the author, in order to show that it is Erik Peterson's “Trinitarian” critique of Carl Schmitt's political theology of sovereignty which could fulfill the “true” aim of the author in fact much better.

Introduction to the Special Issue: The Emergency of Philosophy

Yet from where does of future of come? Must not itself-in act of beginning-first awaken this emergency? Such stands on this side of misery and grief, which always roam merely in some corner of established beings and of their truth.-M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of Event), 1936-1938In order to introduce this special issue of Philosophy Today I would like to start by pointing out how German terms Ausnahmezustand and Notlosigkeit have often, although not exclusively, been translated as or of emergency. While first term is central in Carl Schmitt's state of theory,1 second has acquired significant meaning in Martin Heidegger's later thought on of emergency.2 Ever since publication of Giorgio Agamben's State of Exception3 and Richard Polt's Emergency of Being, Ausnahmezustand and Notlosigkeit have become synonymous not only for several contemporary philosophers but also for political theorists and literary critics who have contributed to this volume. Their common translation is crux of this volume not because contributors engage Schmitt's and Heidegger's thought but because they disengage from it.As Tracy B. Strong explains in his brilliant foreword to English translation of Schmitt's Political Theology, a dictionary will tell you that Ausnahmezustand means state of but idea of a state of has of a legal connotation, and is more confined than an 'exception.' This is why the is part of 'order' even if that order is not precisely juridical.4 A similar argument can be made for Notlosigkeit. While a dictionary will tell us Notlosigkeit means of notion of distress has more of a psychological connotation and seems more confined than emergency.Schwab translated Soveran ist, wer uber den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet as Sovereign is he who decides on exceptional case.5 Harry Zohn, who undertook translation of Benjamin's Theses on Philosophy of History, rendered Die Tradition der Unterdruckten belehrt uns daruber, das der 'Ausnahmezustand,' in dem wir leben, die Regel ist as The tradition of oppressed teaches us that 'state of emergency' in which we live is not but rule.6 Agamben, who relies heavily on both Schmitt and Benjamin, has used equivalent in Italian of state of (stato di eccezione).7 Heidegger's Woher die Notlosigkeit als die hochste Not?8 has been translated as Whence Lack of Distress as Utmost Distress?9 or Whence lack of a sense of plight as greatest plight?10 and paraphrased as, How can of itself become an emergency?11As we can see, while translators of Schmitt, Benjamin, and Agamben used both state of and state of to translate Ausnahmezustand, Heidegger's translators opted for of of and absence of to translate Notlosigkeit. When a word is translated in various forms, it does not mean that one translator made a mistake but rather that they have all interpreted and understood differently. As Hans-Georg Gadamer used to say, We understand only when we understand differently, that is, through altering generally accepted meanings. This is why difference between exception and has a lot to do with particular use that Schmitt, Benjamin, and Agamben made of Ausnahmezustand in relation to problem of sovereignty. same occurs with Notlosigkeit. In order to choose among distress, plight, and emergency, one must interpret Heidegger's Notlosigkeit in terms of Being's abandonment.This brief discourse on translations of Ausnahmezustand and Notlosigkeit was not meant to dispute which one is closer to original meaning in German but rather to point out how emergency of philosophy that this volume refers to is a result of both. …

Contemporary Russian Messianism and New Russian Foreign Policy

This article aims to explore the connection between the new 2013 Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation and Christian messianism in contemporary Russian intellectual thought. The ‘conservative turn’ in Russian politics is associated with the return to the cultural and political ideologeme of Katechon, which is proposed by several right-wing intellectuals as the basis for the Russia's new state ideology and foreign and security policy. The theological concept of Katechon (from the Greek ό Κατέχων, ‘the withholding’) that protects the world from the advent of the Antichrist originates in the Byzantine Empire. In Russian tradition, this concept is presented in the well-known doctrine of Moscow as the Third Rome, dating back to the 16th century. The term ‘Katechon’ in contemporary Russian political discourse is relatively new and can be traced to the post-Soviet reception of Carl Schmitt's political theology. The concept of Russia as Katechon is directly connected to the national security and defence policy, because it is used as the ideological ground for the new wave of militarization and anti-Western sentiment, as well as for Russia's actions during the Ukrainian crisis. This analysis puts the internal political and cultural debate on Russia's role in international affairs and its relations with the West into historical perspective and demonstrates the right-wing intellectual circles’ influence on the Kremlin's new domestic and foreign policy.

Why should one be interested in the theological dimension within the project of modern politics? On the Chinese acceptance of Carl Schmitt's political theology

Why has Schmitt's political theology been influential among some Chinese scholars? It is pointed out in this article that this special phenomenon resulted from the Chinese awareness of the deep crisis within modern politics as well as the Chinese hope for the alternative model of modern politics. To these Chinese scholars, Schmitt, by making clear the hidden theological dimension of modern politics, seems to have offered both a sharp criticism of the tendency of mechanization of the state and a creative proposal to save modern politics. Based on the analysis of the reasons for these Chinese scholars' preference for Schmitt's political theology to Marx's criticism of modern politics, it is also argued that this acceptance of Schmitt's political theology could actually hamper the Chinese efforts toward new possibilities of modern politics.

The Great Criminal, the Exception, and Bare Life in James Joyce’s <em>Ulysses</em>

In twentieth and twenty-first centuries, theories of state increasingly grappled with ethical questions raised by specters of colonial violence that give rise to equally violent nationalist revolutions. In few places has this violence been so sustained and long-drawn-out as in Ireland, and James Joyce directly confronts rhetorical and physical violence of this conflict in Ulysses (1921-22).1 This article uses theories of origins of state offered by two of Joyce's German contemporaries-jurist Carl Schmitt and literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin-to think through interdependent ethics of violence, narratives of national origins and sovereignty, and role of would-be citizen in Joyce's novel. I propose that, in character of Leopold Bloom, Ulysses develops strategies for negotiating violence and conceptualizing a form of citizenship that is more inclusive than those offered by prevailing colonial and nationalist models. Bloom's actions attempt to imagine an Irish future beyond terms offered by these models. These actions can be situated relative not only to critique formulated by novel's engagements with Irish nationalism but also to broader concerns of those interested in questions of how state power rhetorically legitimizes itself.Violence and Sovereign: Benjamin, Schmitt, AgambenBenjamin's Critique of Violence (1921) and Schmitt's Political Theology: Four Essays on Concept of Sovereignty (1922) each provide an origin story for sovereign state.' Schmitt's work famously opens Sovereign is he who decides on and work as a whole focuses on structure and maintenance of sovereignty.3 According to Schmitt, sovereign's power rests on his ability not to enforce but rather abrogate law and declare a state of emergency; this power includes ability to define terms of both emergency and its resolution. As a result, the legal order rests on a decision and not on a norm becausethe sovereign produces and guarantees situation in its totality. . . . The essence of state's monopoly . . . must be juristically defined correctly, not as monopoly to coerce or rule, but as monopoly to decide. . . . The decision parts here from legal norm, and (to formulate it paradoxically) authority proves that to law it need not be based on law.4Schmitt's sovereign has power not simply to establish law but also to determine when that law should be suspended, to decide what constitutes emergency and exception, and thus to produce rather than simply react to juridical situation.When this definition of sovereignty is read in tandem with Benjamin's account of state origins, it becomes evident that Schmitt's account elides or underestimates violence of sovereign decision over both law and norm. If legal order rests on an original decision on exception that defines boundaries, both temporal and geopolitical, of state, then that decision arises out of a violence that is inherent to act of distinguishing inside from outside, exception from norm. This dynamic forms context for Benjamin's Critique of Violence, in which he treats theories of law that take as justification for violent means as ethically inadequate; his essay concludes that the violence of an action can be assessed no more from its than from its ends, but only from law of its suggesting with distinction between effects and ends that neither intended nor unintended results of an act can serve as a basis on which to judge its ethical status.1Faced with a lack of criteria for judging violence, Benjamin writes anatomy of (foundational) violence, one that closely resembles Schmitt's sovereign decision:The function of violence in lawmaking is twofold, in sense that lawmaking pursues as its end, with violence as means, what is to be established as law, but at moment of instatement does not dismiss violence; rather, at this very moment of lawmaking, it specifically establishes as law not an end unalloyed by violence, but one necessarily and intimately bound to it, under title of power. …

Afterword: Hugo Ball's Theology

In 1970, the jurist, ex-Nazi, and perennial cause célèbre Carl Schmitt was interviewed about his relationship to Hugo Ball. “Hugo Ball,” he reflected, “encountered a kind of brother in me. We both came from very Catholic families; and then we were dragged into the Wilhelmine age and had to see how we'd find our place. Each of us achieved this in our own way. This is how I explain the otherwise inexplicable enthusiasm of his essay.” The essay in question is “Carl Schmitt's Political Theology,” published in 1924 and translated into English here for the first time. Ball's review was one of the first-ever published examinations of Schmitt's work, one that even today reveals new aspects of his theologico-political theory.

The Exception: Force of Argument in Terry Eagleton's William Shakespeare

An English text of Carl Schmitt's Hamlet or Hecuba makes it vital to question the turn from French theory to Germany philosophy in Shakespeare studies, given a Left flirtation with Schmitt's Political Theology begun by Walter Benjamin. The Marxist critic's fascination with fascism was decried by Terry Eagleton as a theoretical error. So it is ironic that Eagleton's William Shakespeare was driven by the same Schmittian idea that “sovereign is he who decides the exception” in language or law. Eagleton backtracked on its cult of violence after 9/11. But 25 years on, his introduction to the plays shows the danger of using Shakespeare to decide necessary violence, not least in its own exceptional force of argument. This article thus considers Eagleton's book to be an early example of the coincidence of opposites that currently attracts Shakespeareans to dubious existentialist notions of decision and risk.

Homo Kantius

One of fundamental insights of Immanuel Kant's Copernican revolution is discovery of an essentially legislative, law-giving aspect of not only our practical relationship to world, but of our knowing relation to objects. Such legislative dimension, and justification it requires, has recently been highlighted as requiring paradoxical space of illegitimacy in Giorgio Agamben's account of state of exception. In this essay I will argue that by extending Agamben's description of paradoxes of sovereignty to Kant's of Pure Reason, we are able to articulate new understanding of sovereignty of transcendental subject. I do so by showing that there is zone of indistinction between interiority and exteriority that grounds Kant's analytic in such way that paradox of sovereignty is at work at two limits of transcendental project: transcendental unity of apperception and thing in itself. These correlate concepts and dualism they produce are not an evasion of those paradoxes and flight into subjective sovereignty, but rather an explication of state of exception upon which Kantian law is itself erected. I will argue that Kant's attempt to secure legality of Reason's self-critique is only arrived at through detour into careful articulation of paradoxes of limits of law and state of exception. In order to do so, I will first justify extension of Agamben's analysis of law to Kant's first critique, and then turn to way paradoxical space of illegitimacy opens up respectively in Kant's account of transcendental unity of apperception and thing in itself. I conclude by suggesting that Kant's project of self-legislation or self-grounding is an attentive response to such paradoxical and difficult zones of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion. This conclusion opens up third option of interpreting sovereign law in Kant against dominant though contradictory criticisms of Kant, namely, that Kantian subject is not sovereign enough and that it is too sovereign and despotic. Quaestio Juris What right (quid juris) could one possibly have in extending juridical concepts of sovereignty and state of exception to analytic of Kant's of Pure Reason! Of course, Agamben himself claims that these concepts are not merely juridical, but extend to very being of politics and its relation to Ufe.1 But it is one thing to extend them to political ontology, and yet another to text that is primarily about relationship between rational finite cognition and its objects of knowledge. One possible justification might be found in fact that main sources of Agamben's analysis, namely, Carl Schmitt's Political Theology and Walter Benjamin's Critique of Violence, are themselves engaged with and against Neo-Kantian interpretations of same concepts. Beyond fact that Benjamin's text cites Hermann Cohen's work on ethics of pure will,2 it is also written few years after he claimed that the central task of coming philosophy will be to take deepest intimations it draws from our times and our expectation of great future, and turn them into knowledge by relating them to Kantian system.3 Alternatively, Schmitt's text is an attack on Hans Kelsen's Kantian attempt to base all legal points of ascription on one fundamental Grundnorm.4 These contacts with Neo-Kantianism may well help explain why certain Kantian themes surreptitiously appear in Agamben's analysis, but do they justify their extension to supposed epistemological problems of first Critique? Since we do not want to justify this extension by appealing to facts and possibly mistaking quid facti for quid juris, legitimacy must rest on Kant's own text. That of Pure Reason is teeming with juridical metaphors can hardly be overlooked. In preface, Kant calls book a tribunal which will assure to reason its lawful claims. …

Crisis, Modernity, Authority: Carl Schmitt on Order and the State

Jurist Carl Schmitt's work Political Theology is used as a focal point for analysis of contemporary crisis politics.