Political theology : four new chapters on the concept of sovereignty

220 Pages·2011·8.402 MB·English

by  Schmitt, Carl, Kahn, Paul W., Schmitt, Carl

Kahn
praiSe for
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PolITICAl THeoloGY o PolITICAl THeoloGY
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r in thiS StriKingly original worK,
“Paul W. Kahn is a distinguished political and legal theorist who has written many N Four NeW CHAPTerS Paul W. Kahn rethinks the meaning of political
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important books on the American political imagination before. Yet in this case, he theology. In a text innovative in both form and
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oN THe CoNCePT
directly engages a thinker with whom he has slowly discovered a philosophical kinship, P substance, he describes an American political

the great German legal and political theorist Carl Schmitt. The encounter is providen- C
Ho oF SovereIGNTY theology as a secular inquiry into ultimate mean-
tial. Quite apart from providing another version of Kahn’s thinking about the nature
A ings sustaining our faith in the popular sovereign.
of American political life, Kahn’s new book offers an extremely original and insight- l
P
ful proposal about what to take away from Schmitt’s project of ‘political theology.’ TI Kahn works out his view through an engagement
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This is a very attractive and imaginative project, and it is executed with brilliance and with Carl Schmitt’s 1922 classic, Political Theol-
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provocation.” SI ogy: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty.
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Samuel moyn, Columbia university, author of The Last Utopia: o He forces an engagement with Schmitt’s four
Human Rights in History and coeditor of Democracy Past and Future NA
chapters, offering a new version of each that is

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l responsive to the American political imaginary.
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“Paul W. Kahn has written a profoundly disturbing book for profoundly disturbing e The result is a contemporary political theology.
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times about the violence of politics and the logic of exception. This new political the- C As in Schmitt’s work, sovereignty remains cen-
ology grapples with the subjects that preoccupied Carl Schmitt in his original Politi- oH tral, yet Kahn shows how popular sovereignty
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cal Theology of 1922. Neither simply a commentary nor primarily an interpretation, e creates an ethos of sacrifice in the modern state.
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Kahn’s Political Theology is instead a riff, a structured improvisation on the themes of eo Turning to law, Kahn demonstrates how the line
Schmitt. Kahn recasts Schmitt’s enduring ideas about faith, sacrifice, and the sacred as P
between exception and judicial decision is not as
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part of the current political debate over national security and as a reminder of the way
sharp as Schmitt led us to believe. He reminds
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that theology threads through secular legality. He probes Schmitt’s enduring appeal as
paul w. Kahn is robert W. Winner F readers that American political life begins with
Professor of law and the Humanities and well as the enduring dangers of his ideas at a time when our politics are again defined SG the revolutionary willingness to sacrifice and
by existential threats. The new political theology shows us a way to understand both o
director of the orville H. Schell Jr. Center for Y that both sacrifice and law continue to ground
the call and the limits of law in our moment. As regular readers of Kahn’s earlier books v
Human rights at Yale law School. He earned will know, no one is better situated to probe these urgent topics.” e the American political imagination. Kahn offers
his Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale university r a political theology that has at its center the
Kim lane SCheppele, princeton university e
and his J.D. from Yale law School. He is the I practice of freedom realized in political deci-
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author of numerous books, including Putting sions, legal judgments, and finally in philosophi-
Columbia StudieS in politiCal thought/politiCal hiStory N
Liberalism in Its Place; Out of Eden: Adam T cal inquiry itself.
Columbia univerSity preSS / new yorK
and Eve and the Problem of Evil; and Sacred Y
www.cup.columbia.edu
Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty.
printed in the u.S.a.
ISBN: 978-0-231-15340-9
jacket design: noah arlow PAul W. KAHN
jacket image: getty images 9 780231 153409 Columbia
Political Theology
columbia studies in political thought/political history
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columbia studies in political thought/political history
Dick Howard, General Editor
Columbia Studies in Political Thought/Political History is a series
dedicated to exploring the possibilities for democratic initiative and the
revitalization of politics in the wake of the exhaustion of twentieth-cen-
tury ideological “isms.” By taking a historical approach to the politics of
ideas about power, governance, and the just society, this series seeks to
foster and illuminate new political spaces for human action and choice.
Pierre Rosanvallon, Democracy Past and Future, edited by Samuel
Moyn (2006)
Claude Lefort, Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of
Democracy, translated by Julian Bourg (2007)
Benjamin R. Barber, The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs
in the Clinton White House (2008)
Andrew Arato, Constitution Making Under Occupation:
The Politics of Imposed Revolution in Iraq (2009)
Dick Howard, The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political
Thought from the Greeks to the French and American Revolution (2009)
Robert Meister, After Evil: Human Rights Discourse
in the Twenty-first Century (2011)
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Political Theology
four new chapters on the concept
of sovereignty
Paul W. Kahn
Columbia University Press New York
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Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2011 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kahn, Paul W., 1952–
Political theology : four new chapters on the concept of sovereignty / Paul W. Kahn.
p. cm. — (Columbia studies in political thought/political history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-15340-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-52700-2 (electronic)
1. Sovereignty. 2. Political theology. 3. Schmitt, Carl, 1888–1985. I. Title. II. Series.
JC327.K34 2011
320.1’5—dc222010025215
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
This book was printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
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CONTENTS
Foreword / Dick Howard vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Why Political Theology Again 1
1. Definition of Sovereignty 31
2. The Problem of Sovereignty as the Problem
of the Legal Form and of the Decision 62
3. Political Theology 91
4. On the Counterrevolutionary Philosophy of the State 123
Conclusion: Political Theology and the End of Discourse 153
Notes 159
Index 191
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FOREWORD
it is a pleasure to add paul w. kahn’s book to the Political
Thought/Political History series. This book broadens the reach of the
series, whose premise, expressed in the editor’s introduction to Claude
Lefort’s Complications, can be summed up in the phrase “no political
thought without history, no historical thought without politics.” Kahn’s
book suggests another set of complementary imperatives, “no politics
without philosophy, no philosophy without politics.” The Anglo-Amer-
ican discovery of the work of Carl Schmitt has unfortunately been more
political than it has been philosophical. Kahn, a professor of law at Yale
University, takes the opposite approach; concentrating on one relatively
brief but central work by Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, he draws out
philosophical implications of which Schmitt himself may not have been
fully aware. What is more, he is able to do so because of his own inti-
mate knowledge of American jurisprudence. By using simple examples
from American legal experience, he shows that the radical reasoning that
influenced Schmitt’s own—bad!—political choices is founded on a phi-
losophy of freedom that can be realized only when the freedom of phi-
losophy is ensured. This, Kahn shows, is the central meaning of Schmitt’s
often-cited but equally often misunderstood definition of the sovereign
as “he who decides on the exception.”
Readers of this concise work will find not only that they come better to
understand the thought of Carl Schmitt but also that they are helped to
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viii the problem of sovereignty
rethink the apparently self-evident values of liberal legal thought. They will
have the pleasure of watching Paul Kahn interpret Carl Schmitt’s famous
argument that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state
are secularized theological concepts” in a straightforward dialogue that
Kahn skillfully sets up with Schmitt. By avoiding lengthy scholarly debate,
political polemic, and exegetical erudition, Kahn has produced a critical
work that joins politics and philosophy in a unique synthesis.
dick howard
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
over the course of the last few years, I have received advice
and comments on this project from many, colleagues, friends, students,
and even some strangers. More often than not, they disagreed with me.
Still, they were generous in taking the time to deal seriously with the
project. I greatly appreciated their encouragement, as well as their efforts
to set me right. I tried to take in as much as I could, but there is much
about which we will continue to disagree. I owe special thanks to my
Yale Law School colleagues, Bruce Ackerman, Owen Fiss, and Robert
Post. I also had the benefit of comments from two intellectual historians,
Samuel Moyn and Jonathan Sheehan. As I get older, those who had been
students become friends and colleagues. Several deserve special mention
in connection with this manuscript: Ulrich Haltern, Benjamin Berger,
and Mateo Taussig-Rubbo. The manuscript was the subject of a seminar
at the Yale Law School, and I would like to thank the students of that
class, who were unrestrained in letting me know what they thought. I
especially want to thank Han Liu, Benjamin Johnson, Fernando Leon
Munoz, Sophia Khan, and Kiel Brennan-Marquez for their help with the
research. Thanks finally to Barbara Mianzo, upon whose administrative
help I continue to rely.
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