Federico Filauri

Theme and Focus: In the field of social and human sciences, it is currently generally accepted that the processes of secularization Western societies seemed to undergo following a linear trend not only display considerable differences, but appear to be questioned altogether by the resurgence of interest and importance of religious phenomena. In brief, to quote Habermas, we live in ‘postsecular’ societies – and any discourse ignoring the religious elements underpinning political theories, actions and language would fall short of understanding the complexity of the sociopolitical reality we live in. Among the many configurations of the theologico-political tangle, the notion of ‘theocracy’ is striking in its multifaceted – and somewhat internally contradicting – features, lending the side to quasi-opposite readings, usages, interpretations. While on the one hand, ‘theocracy’ might refer to the institutionalised and accepted rule of the priestly class, on the other hand one may use the notion to point to the mystical rulership of God himself. This vagueness – or rather, proneness to opposed appropriations – is symptomatic of a notion that rightly sits at the core of the politico-theological battlefield, a theoretical and/or imaginative space that is increasingly open to contestations. In the course of the 20th century, the problematic of political theology has been raised time and again by a series of notable thinkers. Schmitt’s 1922 seminal namesake essay first reopened the question of political theology framing it in terms of an analogous ‘systematic structure’ between the concepts of modern theory of the state and their theological antecedents, allegedly the basis of a secularisation process (Schmitt, Political Theology, 36). Around the same period – between the end of the First World War and the Nazi rise to power – the relation between two different frames of the politico-theological diptych came under the attention of German-Jewish thinkers such as Bloch, Benjamin, and Buber. While in Bloch’s Spirit of Utopia (149), the articulation between those levels calls for a ‘second truth’, a more substantial yet subjective plan of experience, in Benjamin’s Theologico-political fragment (Selected Writings, vol. 3, 305) one finds it pictured in the oft commented image of the arrow, pointing towards the consummation of history, yet promoting ‘the coming of the Messianic Kingdom’ – a ‘category of its approach’. If it is true that the longing and approximation of the coming of the Kingdom are but one of the most powerful images Bloch summons to present the nature of the utopian spirit, Benjamin seems to recognise in Bloch’s work a firm rejection of the political character of theocracy. Lastly, Buber’s later work Kingship of God, while presenting a historical treatment of the matter, also addresses the problem, raising it from another angle. In what several scholars recognised as an implicit rebuttal of Schmitt’s theses, one finds the distinction between the historical aspects of charismatic rulership – sociologically expounded – and the level exceeding covenant and statute, the level of the pure spiritual χάρις (charis). It is only through opening a communication to this level – the ‘theopolitical’ one – that one fully grasps the poignancy of theocracy and not only its potentially detrimental aspects. The image and idea of a religiously imbued political command, once alien from political debates in the West, has once again become present, raising a new set of problems and questions, at a national and at an international level. Conflicts, uprisings, aggressions are often tinged with religious connotations, either embedding a religious imaginary inside the political discourse, or taking place against the backdrop of a theologically bent narrative. It is in view of this renewed centrally politico-theological tropes that we wish to reopen and resume the discussions kindled by 20th-century thinkers, in the hope of casting some new light on the overall political panorama, questioning its presupposes and foundations. The contributions include these – and related – topics : • What exactly is political theology? Does it have a normative or descriptive character? Is it intrinsically polemical? Is there an atheist political theology? • What is the relation between positive and negative political theology? • How can we define and describe the distinguishing line between the secular and the religious, the profane and the messianic, immanence and transcendence? • Are those categories and dichotomies still useful or do we need to devise new conceptual instruments? If so, which ones? • How and why is it relevant to maintain such a lens to look at the political panorama today? What is instead outdated in these formulations and discussions? • How can we make sense of current theories of secularisation? Is the notion of secularisation still helpful today?

This article suggests that Buber's idea of the community may hint at an alternative to the more common foundations of political thought, usually grounded on notions of power or rationality. Showing how Buber's idea of the community developed from a neo-romantic form (in his early writings) to a principle informed by the dialogical dimension of human life (from I and Thou onwards), I will point out the vertical dimension of political life ensuing from Buber's discourse. A discussion of the theopolitical principle as expressed in Buber's Kingship of God will lead to the conclusion that, both descriptively and normatively, politics needs an openness to transcendence.

During the last two decades, a sharp re-reading of St. Paul’s letters allowed several thinkers to embed a messianic element in their political philosophy. In these readings, the messianic refusal of the world and its laws is understood through the suspensive act of ‘subtraction’ – a movement of withdrawal which nonetheless proved too often ineffective when translated in political practice. After having analysed Agamben’s declension of Subtraction in terms of ‘inoperativity’, this article focuses on the notion of Parousia as a key element to understand his anti-utopian account of messianic time. In contrast with Agamben’s reading, Bloch’s interpretation of the Pauline Parousia envisages the messianic event as infra-historical, but at the same time opened to ultimate (meta-historical) purposes. Bloch’s messianic call – I argue – takes the form of mediation, a correction of subtraction towards the direction of a more committed political engagement. I conclude suggesting that the concrete implementations of this mediation perform their emancipatory function in so far as they assume the character of practical ethics, with the attention directed to the underprivileged and marginalised.