Divine Democracy: Political Theology after Carl Schmitt

313 Pages·2021·15.486 MB·English

by  Miguel Vatter

Divine Democracy

Divine Democracy
Political Theology after Carl Schmitt
MIGUEL VATTER
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Miguel Vatter, author.
Title: Divine democracy : political theology after Carl Schmitt / [Miguel Vatter].
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020018270 (print) | LCCN 2020018271 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190942359 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190942366 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780190942380 (epub) | ISBN 9780190942397 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Schmitt, Carl, 1888–1985—Influence. | Political theology. |
Democracy—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Christianity and politics.
Classification: LCC BT 83.59 .V38 2021 (print) |
LCC BT 83.59 (ebook) | DDC 261.7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018270
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018271
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Political Theology and Democratic Legitimacy
in the 20th Century 1
1. Carl Schmitt and Sovereignty 21
2. Eric Voegelin and Representation 67
3. Jacques Maritain and Human Rights 97
4. Ernst Kantorowicz and Government 133
5. Jürgen Habermas and Public Reason 189
Conclusion—“Only a god can resist god”: Gnosticism
and Political Theology 241
References 257
Index 285

Acknowledgements
Many friends have generously discussed political theology with me and
commented on my texts on this subject over the years: Hauke Brunkhorst,
Gonzalo Bustamante, Julie Cooper, Renato Cristi, Mick Dillon, Jorge Dotti
(†), Roberto Esposito, Andreas Greiert, Agnes Heller (†), Nicholas Heron,
Lucien Jaume, James Martel, John McCormick, Cary Nederman, Diego
Rossello, Quentin Skinner, Helen Tartar (†), José- Luis Villacañas, Samuel
Weber, and Jessica Whyte. Not being myself a historian, I was lucky to have
encountered early on two medieval historians who opened new horizons for
me: in high school, Jack Ullman, who suggested I read Kantorowicz’s biog-
raphy of Frederick II, and in college, Francis Oakley, who gave me my early
training in the history of ideas. I am fortunate to count on the friendship and
advice of Simona Forti, who read through the whole manuscript. The ideas
found in these pages have been presented at several conferences over the years,
but one in particular, “Sovereignty, Religion, and Secularism: Interrogating
the Foundations of Polity,” Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, Munich, July
2018, stands out for the intense and productive discussions I had with some
of the participants, including Bruce Rosenstock, Cécile Laborde, Montserrat
Herrero, and Vincent Lloyd. I thank the organizer, Robert Yelle, for his
generous invitation. Finally, I am grateful to my editor at Oxford, Angela
Chnapko, for believing in the project. My greatest debt of gratitude, as al-
ways, is to Vanessa Lemm, who shepherded an amorphous book project to
its current form, and to our children Lou, Esteban, Alizé, and Sebastian, who
make it all worthwhile.
The germ for this book is found in a series of lectures I delivered in the
graduate seminar of Roberto Esposito at the Istituto Scienze Umane, Naples,
Italy, in November 2009; in a long paper I presented in September 2010 at
the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Washington,
DC, entitled “Political Theology without Sovereignty: Some 20th Century
Examples (Voegelin, Maritain, Badiou)”; and in the Introduction to my ed-
ited volume from 2011, Crediting God: Sovereignty and Religion in the Age
of Global Capitalism (New York: Fordham University Press). I consolidated
my interpretation of Maritain in the 2013 article “Politico-Th eological
viii Acknowledgements
Foundations of Universal Human Rights: The Case of Maritain,” Social
Research 80 (1): pp. 233–6 0. Chapter 3 in this volume is a much revised
and expanded version of this article. This book is anchored on the reading
of Schmitt’s conception of political theology that I proposed in the 2016
chapter “The Political Theology of Carl Schmitt,” in The Oxford Handbook
of Carl Schmitt, edited by Jens Meierhenrich and Oliver Simons, pp. 245–6 8
(New York: Oxford University Press). Chapter 1 is a considerably revised
and updated version of the above text. The interpretation of Kantorowicz
offered in Chapter 4 draws upon some material from my 2019 essay “Liberal
Governmentality and the Political Theology of Constitutionalism,” in
Sovereignty in Action, edited by Neil Walker and Bas Leijssenaar, pp. 115–
43 (New York: Cambridge University Press). Lastly, the Conclusion is
based on my 2019 discussion of Blumenberg in “ ‘Only a God can resist a
God’: Political Theology between Polytheism and Gnosticism,” Political
Theology 20 (6): pp. 472–9 7. I thank all the editors and publishers for permis-
sion to use this material.
Introduction
Political Theology and Democratic Legitimacy in
the 20th Century
The problem of democratic political theology
Political theology is a discourse developed in the 20th century that looks
back on a millennial history in which western societies tightly interwove re-
ligion and politics, as political rulers sought support in religion and religions
pursued political power. Have we left this past behind because we are now
living in a secular age? Political theology takes a critical view on the claim
that the modern Atlantic republican revolutions, responsible for the emer-
gence of modern representative democracy, led to a definitive divorce of the
political from the theological. But political theology is also a postmodern
and post-s ecular discourse that seeks to reconfigure both religion and pol-
itics in a new democratic constellation.1 Nearly forty years ago, the French
theorist of democracy Claude Lefort penned a remarkably influential article
on the problem of political theology. He concluded that religion resists and
insists in modern secular politics because it is ‘an expression of the unavoid-
able . . . difficulty democracy has of reading its story’ (Lefort 2006, 187). What
makes it difficult for modern democracy to tell its own secular story is the
problem of the legitimacy of power.
Carl Schmitt, who first coined the term, argued that political theology was
inevitably implied in any legitimation discourse. Legitimacy assumes that
the activity of ruling and being ruled, at some basic level, is good and should
be sanctified. The idea of legitimacy intertwines political rule and spiritual
salvation.2 For this same reason, Schmitt believed that power is legitimate
1 For one recent and influential narrative bringing these three elements of political theology to-
gether see (Taylor 2007).
2 Schmitt considered Jacob Burckhardt’s claim that power is always evil as the highest expression
of atheism (Schmitt 1988, 57; 2007, 60). For examples of wide-r anging discussions of the connec-
tion between the exercise of legitimate power and salvation in political theology, see (Taubes 1983;
Esposito 1988; Assmann 2002; and Kahn 2011).
Divine Democracy. Miguel Vatter, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190942359.001.0001.