Order, Crisis, and Redemption

Political Theology after Schmitt

Peter Langford, Saul Newman

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781438493435, 9781438493442
• eBook ISBN: 9781438493459
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A critical reflection on the limitations of Carl Schmitt's political theology, reconsidered in light of the current crisis of the liberal democratic order.

Recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, the rise of right-wing populism, the growing economic inequality and political instability, and the climate emergency, are indicative of the decomposition of the global liberal democratic order. Order, Crisis, and Redemption is a critical reflection on the limitations of Carl Schmitt's political theology, an attempt to think, with and beyond Schmitt, about the parameters of this crisis. Through a sustained critical engagement, ranging over Schmittian texts, including the lesser known, from the 1920s to the 1970s, the book elaborates three main themes that preoccupied Schmitt: order, crisis, and redemption. In times of crisis, as with the one we are currently experiencing, we are faced with the dilemma of either shoring up the current political and legal order-through ever more authoritarian measures-or radically transforming it. Redemption, in the full theological sense of the word, thus implies the possibility of a new understanding of ethics and politics, aimed at creating a more just world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 From States of Emergency to Forms of the Political
• Chapter 2 Who Is the Subject of Political Theology?
• Chapter 3 Person, Identity, Transformation
• Chapter 4 Political Theology and the Anthropocene
• Chapter 5 Technology as Political Theology
• Chapter 6 Political Theology and Democratic Constitutionalism
• Chapter 7 Political Theology and Contemporary Challenges to Democratic Constitutionalism
• Chapter 8 Katechon and the Problem of Order
• Coda
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Back Cover