I knew that my new book, Political Theology, would be controversial. It covers a lot of ground; it produces odd…
Political Theology
In Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Columbia University Press, 2011), Paul W. Kahn contends that American political experience is incomprehensible outside the terms of political theology—not because the United States is, or ever was, a “Christian nation,” but because the state “creates and maintains its own sacred space and history.” Engaging Carl Schmitt’s 1922 Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty as a basis from which to explore how America’s faith in the popular sovereign generates an ethos of sacrifice and a logic of exception that structure the nation’s political life and jurisprudence in ways that have become particularly visible in the post-9/11 world, Kahn’s argument raises questions of pressing concern:
What is political theology and how does it function in a liberal constitutional order, in America or elsewhere?
Can political theology form the basis for a “secular” mode of inquiry into politics and society?
What resources does it offer for understanding freedom and its relation to law and justice?
Ground: Zero
Hence, the tenets of liberal positive theory are opposed in Kahn’s book via the recourse to questions of state violence,…
American exceptionalism redux
I find Kahn's book as a whole less coherent than some others have. One issue I want to raise is…
Don’t tread on me
Paul Kahn, in his rereading of Carl Schmitt by way of the American context, seeks to “depersonalize the sovereign.” As…
Not for the squeamish
Paul Kahn has written a remarkable meditation on Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology. A truly adequate response would undoubtedly require a…
For a new migration of Abraham
At a moment when some of the theoretical gestures being inspired by old, new, or futuristic political theologies have become…
Democracy under exception
I agree with Kahn (and with Schmitt) about the fact that political theory should leave room for decision and exception.…
Political theology and political existentialism
“At stake in our political life,” Paul Kahn observes, “has been not our capacity to be reasonable, but our capacity…
Paul Kahn’s mis-prognosis of America’s social imaginary
As I argued in my previous post, there are indications that Paul Kahn subscribes to Carl Schmitt’s belief in the…
Is sovereignty necessarily theological?
Paul Kahn's task, he says, is to describe and interpret, rather than demystify, America’s political theology. That political theology, he…