This book presents the idea of Nomos of the Earth as the key idea that organizes the whole of Schmitt’s discourse about politics.

SUMMARYIn recent years, Ernst H. Kantorowicz's work The King's Two Bodies has been the object of both historical and philosophical research. Kantorowicz decided to subtitle his book ‘A Study in Medieval Political Theology’, but few scholars have actually recognised his work as research in ‘political theology’. The aim of this article, then, is to uncover the sense in which his book might be considered a work of ‘political theology’, especially in the sense coined by Carl Schmitt in 1922. Such a (...) discussion ultimately aims to contribute to the foundation of political-theology research, a subject that has been widespread among European intellectuals in the twentieth century and which continues to be a focus of interest. This article argues that Kantorowicz's book can be interpreted as a practice of—and also an enriching addition to—Schmitt's thesis on political theology, even if it does not mention Schmitt's name. Such a conclusion is only possible by accepting that there was a heated dialogue between Kantorowicz and Schmitt through Erik Peterson's work. The article further discusses its approach with other scholars that, even though they are based on similar hypotheses, make different conclusions. (shrink)

Worldwide, vulnerable neighbourhoods of large cities are often the scene of collective violent conflicts linked with migration and ethnic minorities’ struggles for social justice. However, urban conflicts of this kind have not taken place in Spanish cities with high immigration rates, even though the country has been deeply affected by two recent socioeconomic crises (2009 and 2020). This article reports findings of a study aimed at understanding what lies behind this apparent social peace. The research methodology was based on an (...) analysis of secondary socio-economic and socio-relational data from the Spanish Institute of Statistics and from key national surveys and reports. Results confirmed that immigrant population living in the country are strongly segregated in the lower strata of the labour and socioeconomic structure and have been disproportionately affected by the crises. However, research findings also pointed to the existence of strong closed support networks where social capital has been effective at palliating members’ disadvantage and unrest. Drawing on the Theory of Rupture Frames, we argue that this is a fragile and unsustainable social peace, rooted in social injustice, and anticipate that unless actively prevented, uncontrolled conflict will eventually emerge in main cities’ neighbourhoods in Spain. (shrink)

The article addresses the question of whether Derrida in his political theology can be considered an “unfaithful” reader of Schmitt. While Derrida does not quote Schmitt’s Political Theology, some of his assertions are reminiscent of Schmitt’s disciplinary use of political theology. Indeed, Schmitt’s account of the relationship between exception, decision, and sovereignty was abundantly discussed in Derrida’s last seminar, The Beast and the Sovereign. Derrida attempts in this seminar to deconstruct the sovereignty of the nation-state and its onto-theologico-political foundation. The (...) question I raise in this article is whether, in previous years, Derrida himself had not implicitly made a different political theology that, considering the negative theological path, develops an alternative idea of power. The hypothesis explored is that this alternative paradigm is derived from one of the names of the impossible: the gift. (shrink)

Almost all scholars of the Enlightenment consider Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke as the founding theorists of the “secular modern state.” In contrast to the widely held view of the modern state, I argue that far from being “secular” it was the product of the sacralization of politics, which resulted from the way these philosophers interpreted the Scriptures as part of their philosophical inquiries. The analysis of the “linguistic turn” in their biblical interpretations reveals how they tried to undermine the power (...) of the Church to claim greater freedoms for the state. Their philosophical inquiries initiated the secularization of the Christian religion and the sacralization of politics as two correlative developments, rather than the secularization of the state per se, as is usually supposed. The philosophical arguments proposed by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke helped to resolve the religious battles of Europe’s many confessions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but are still pertinent to our c... (shrink)

The dual character of acclamations, religious and political, makes of acclamations a perfect place to explore theological-political transferences. Acclamations were central in ancient times in order to constitute a community and to show its acceptance, whether they took place in a republic while deciding in assemblies or during the accession of an emperor. The Christian-Church adopted this imperial ceremonial style with the introduction of imperial laudes into the Church and accommodated it to its own needs. Modern times recovered the magic (...) of acclamations in order to give space to the vox populi in the constitution of the political community. The aim of the present article is to explore the centrality of acclamations in religious and political life through three key texts: Kantorowicz’s Laudes regiae, Peterson’s Heis Theos and Schmitt’s Volksentscheid und Volksbegehren. These texts are interrelated and could be considered a particular case of a broad hidden dialogue between these three authors. The theological-political character and evolution of the practice of acclamations in the West coming from the East shows that the line that divided the sacred from the secular has been always far from fixed, and was instead subject to fluctuation, pressures from every side, and constant renegotiation. (shrink)

This article explores the possibilities offered by Collins’ model of interaction rituals to an understanding of the emotional dynamics of art auctions. It argues that whilst it explains how the art object becomes the focus of attention, and thus the repository of solidarity and emotional energy, it also obliterates some of the institutional aspects of the auction market that can influence such outcomes. It discusses the need to include an examination of the specific practices of auction houses operating in an (...) international market in their capacity to target specific audiences for their sales. (shrink)

The paper deals with the critic of the interpretation of the relationship between the Quijote and the idea of Spain by the "Generation of 98".

Human conscience is intrinsically related to time, in the extent in which its essence is pure expectation. This is the main thesis of Grimaldi in his writing on the “Three sources of the relation: life, conscience, time”, a thesis which is developed in four steps: 1) There is no present without experience of antecedence; 2) There is no present without experience of expectation; 3) Time is, therefore, the scheme of life; 4) Conscience is witness of the metaphysical split. Some questions (...) are put: Could the conscience objectivise time without being beyond it? It is better founded the thesis of the absence than the thesis of the presence? (shrink)

The article analyzes the main manners of conceptualizing the public realm in political thinking of the late 20th century. The four principal focus of thinking are: the igualitarian liberalism of Rawls; the theory of the communicative action of Habermas; the libertarian liberalism of Nozick and Narveson and the political perfectionism of Taylor, Sandel and Walzer.

This article analizes the possibilities for a legitimation in contemporary democracies. Grounding in Weber's tipology in Economy and Society we analyze the models of rational, traditional and charismatic legitimacy as they appear in contamporary thinkers as J. Habermas, C. Schmitt and J. Derrida.

One of the ways of thinking God in contemporary philosophy is reflecting on violence. In fact, reflecting on violence implies always at the same time to refer to the difficulty of thinking about the co-implication of law and violence, a typical prerogative of divine action. From this perspec-tive, political theology is concerned with the status and the possibilities or impossibilities of rep-resenting violence in a given political order. Three are the classical texts in the backdrop of this reflection on the (...) hiatus between law and violence: Walter Benjamin Critique of Violence of 1921, Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology of 1922 and Derrida’s Force of Law of 1989. The article exam-ines another paradigm, that of Ernesto Laclau. The article concludes that only a non-presentable idea of God as a negative fundament allows for a non-authoritarian political idea. But this non-presentable character is only made possible by revolutionary politics. (shrink)

Approaches to Nietzsche’s political philosophy abound. In this article, however, we explore the possibility of identifying not only a political philosophy, but also a political-theological reading in Nietzsche’s texts. In fact, such a political-theological reading already has something of a genealogy. In the 1960s, “radical theology” appropriated the Nietzschean topic of the death of God, which engendered a transferred radical political theology consisting in radical democracy. The first part of this article explores twentieth-century political theologies surrounding the death of God. (...) We ask herein if this is the only possible political-theological reading of Nietzsche’s texts. The second part argues that, in fact, we can ascribe to Nietzsche a “theological” intention that is transferable to his political theory in a way that differs from the attempts of radical political theology and other political theologies surrounding the death of God. We conclude that, in any case, Nietzsche’s political theology aims to counterbalance St. Paul’s nihilism more than to constitute a determined political view. (shrink)

This presentation analyzes in a general way the relationship between politics and conflict. The main argument is based on Carl Schmitt’s criterion for the definition of politics. In doing so, I introduce the central points of the different articles of this volume.

Una de las características que asumieron las epidemias a lo largo de la historia fue el desarrollo de manifestaciones populares a fin de combatirlas o, por lo menos, atenuar el impacto que generaban en términos de mortalidad y morbilidad. Las procesiones constituyeron un ejemplo de dichas intenciones que, en muchos casos, fueron aprovechadas por la Iglesia a fin de generar capital político. Estas manifestaciones fueron, en su mayoría, en contra de las medidas que desde los sucesivos gobiernos se pretendían imponer (...) a los fines de combatir las dolencias. Pero en otros, las epidemias constituyeron catalizadores de problemáticas de amplio espectro y las políticas públicas que se generaron en torno a ellas fueron causa de reacciones que poco tenían que ver con la religión. En el presente artículo nos proponemos analizar, a partir de los periódicos de la época, las repercusiones y respuestas sociales que generaron determinadas políticas públicas, suscitadas a partir de la crisis que forjó la epidemia de gripe española en los años 1918-1919 en tres puntos de la Argentina con características políticas, económicas y socio-demográficas particulares: en las ciudades de Buenos Aires, Córdoba y Salta. (shrink)