1st Edition
Past and Present Political Theology Expanding the Canon
This book demonstrates how discussions of Political Theology have been a constant feature throughout philosophical modernity and that they continue to impact contemporary political debates. By tracing the historical roots and detailing the contemporary outworking of Political Theology in Europe, it contends that this growing field requires a broader "canon" in order for it to mature.
Political Theology is shown here to be about the diversity of relationships between religious beliefs and political orientations. First engaging with historical debates, chapters re-examine the relationship between personal conviction and societal orientation on such topics as the will to believe, evil, individualism, the relationship between church and state, and the relationship between belief and natural science. The volume then establishes the relevance of these debates for the present day. As such, it invites engagement on the back and forth between religion and politics in a liberal democracy and a communist state, on how communitarianism relates to religious language, on the diversity of Christian and Jewish political theology, and the politics of toleration.
By broadening out the field of Political Theology this book offers the reader a more nuanced understanding of its sustained influence on public life. As such it will be of interest to academics working in Political Theology, but also Theology, Philosophy and Political Science more generally.
Introduction
Dennis Vanden Auweele and Miklós Vassányi
1 Kepler, the Supra-Confessional Lutheran
Miklós Vassányi
2 The Subject’s Perspective in Leibniz’s Philosophy
Dániel Schmal
3 From a Pagan Theologia Civilis in Rome to a Fictitious Political Theology in Kant
Martin Moors
4 On Evil and Political Theology: Reflections on Kant and After
William Desmond
5 The Political Theology of Witnessing: The Canaanite Woman and Kierkegaard’s Tax-Collector
Orsolya Horváth
6 The Politics of Religious Commitment: Pascal and Dostoevsky
Dennis Vanden Auweele and Hanna Vandenbussche
7 The East-West Divide in the European Union and Its Overcoming
Balázs M. Mezei
8 Spiritual Communism: The Career of a Theory from Saint Augustine to MacIntyre.
Gábor Kendeffy
9 Dispositives of Political Theology: Analysing non-discursive Elements of the Josephinian
Dispositive of Pastoral Power
Michael Hoelzl
10 Theological Motives in Hannah Arendt’s Thought
Csaba Olay
11 A Political Theology ‘of Doubtful Solidity’: Leo Strauss on Rousseau via Spinoza
Gabor Boros
12 Religious Moral Languages, Secularity, and Hermeneutical Injustice
Gorazd Andrejc
13 "State-persecution" in the works of Raffaele Pettazzoni. A religious history
Valerio Severino
14 Christ versus the Llama Sacrifice: Rodolfo Kusch’s Theological Criticism of the Colonization of Latin America
Péter Szakács
15 Religious Atheism: Assessing Political Religion through Critchley’s Faith of the Faithless
Dennis Vanden Auweele
Biography
Dennis Vanden Auweele is Lecturer in Philosophy at the Higher Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven (University of Leuven, Belgium).
Miklós Vassányi is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Károli University of the Reformed Church, Hungary.
