Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty

Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History

by Paul W. Kahn

In this strikingly original work, Paul W. Kahn rethinks the meaning of political theology. In a text innovative in both form and substance, he describes an American political theology as a secular inquiry into ultimate meanings sustaining our faith in the popular sovereign.

Kahn works out his view through an engagement with Carl Schmitt's 1922 classic, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. He forces an engagement with Schmitt's four chapters, offering a new version of each that is responsive to the American political imaginary. The result is a contemporary political theology. As in Schmitt's work, sovereignty remains central, yet Kahn shows how popular sovereignty creates an ethos of sacrifice in the modern state. Turning to law, Kahn demonstrates how the line between exception and judicial decision is not as sharp as Schmitt led us to believe. He reminds readers that American political life begins with the revolutionary willingness to sacrifice and that both sacrifice and law continue to ground the American political imagination. Kahn offers a political theology that has at its center the practice of freedom realized in political decisions, legal judgments, and finally in philosophical inquiry itself.

Genres: Theology, Politics, Political Science, Law, Philosophy

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 24, 2011

Reviews

[Matt Cavedon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kahn argues that liberal theory fails to provide an adequate account of actual political experience, even in liberal states. By liberal theory he means the idea that politics can be reduced to either deductive reasoning about justice or the pursuit of material interests. The materialist explanation of politics denies the capacity for self-transcendence; the rationalist's belief in universal reason misunderstands the persistent character of intelligent political disagreement. Both theories deny freedom, one deeming it false consciousness and the other believing the will to be utterly bound by deductions regarding justice that every rational person will make given enough conversation.

Instead, Kahn posits free decision as the real stuff of politics. Establishing sovereignty through revolution, declaring a binding judgment of law, and even taking a philosophical stance involve the will. The will only freely acts in response to things like information, conditions, and interests, but it is not bound to any of these. It only ever responds freely, creatively, and personally. It is, fundamentally, an act of faith in the significance of the state and of the people as sovereign.

Politics, then, is situated in personality and a social locale, rather than being a conclusion of pure justice - a sight of social right taken from nowhere, by no one. So much for the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, the universalism of international human rights theory, and the idea that politics is just a consented-to working out of individuals' welfare.

An important corrective to liberal theory, Kahn offers effective explanations of why a soldier's sacrifice has such deep resonance, a revolution from several centuries ago and its constitution are the primary frame for contemporary American politics, and America threatens nuclear annihilation despite its liberal ideals. Refraining from whether American sovereignty is worth it, Kahn understands it better than most.

[Ray Harajuku · Rating 4 out of 5]

The negative reviews are accurate but a little harsh. Nothing particularly memorable here but well-written and better than 95% of whatever else is on the shelf nowadays. Kind of like that song thats on your playlist and youre happy when it comes on the radio, but its not a go-to.

[Luke Echo · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a perplexing book. But mostly because it claims to be Four NEW Chapters on Schmitt's Political Theology, when in fact it is primarily a rather pedestrian exegesis of Schmitt's own work. Kahn steps through all the key points made by other writers on Schmitt offering numerous contemporary "examples". It almost reads like a "Carl Schmitt for Dummies", due to the popular nature of the prose and a certain tendency of simplification of Schmitt's ideas.

And then the "extensions" of Schmitt posing the centrality of freedom, imagination, artistic "creativity" to Schmitt's method. Its all just a bit populist, and really just shows up the inadequacies of Kahn's conception of aesthetics and art.

I found it tedious, and inadequate. Read Agamben on Schmitt instead.