From Political Theology To Political Religion, Eric Voegelin and Carl Schmit - Thierry Gontier

From "Political Theology" to "Political Religion": Eric Voegelin and Carl Schmitt
Author(s): Thierry Gontier

Source: The Review of Politics , WINTER 2013, Vol. 75, No. 1 (WINTER 2013), pp. 25-43
Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on
behalf of Review of Politics
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23355713
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics and Cambridge University
Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of
Politics
This content downloaded from

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Review of Politics 75 (2013), 25-^3.
© University of Notre Dame
doi: 10.1017/S0034670512001064
From "Political Theology" to "Political

Religion": Eric Voegelin and Carl Schmitt1
Thierry Gontier
In his work Politics as Religion, Emilio Gentile credits Eric Voegelin with
having invented, if not the expression itself, then at least the concept of "pol
itical religion" which the latter would use consistently throughout the 1960s
to describe totalitarian regimes.2 In his Autobiographical Reflections, drawn
from an interview recorded in 1973, Voegelin revisits the use of this
expression3 and gives an indication of the sources that inspired him to
adopt it:
Thierry Gontier is Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of

Lyon, Director of the Institute of Political Researches of Lyon (IRPhiL), and member
of the Institut universitaire de France; Université Lyon 3, 18 rue Chevreuil, 69007
Lyon, FRANCE ([email protected]).
A condensed version of this article has appeared at the Voegelinview website, edited
by Fritz Wagner (http://www.voegelinview.com/). I am grateful to Céline Jouin,
Dominique Weber, and Bruno Godefroy for helping me to locate certain references
in this article pertaining to Schmitt and Löwith. I would also like to thank both the
reviewers of this article, whose insights I have incorporated as far as is possible,
and Johanna Louw for translating this article into English.
1A11 references to the works of Voegelin are taken from the The Collected Works of Eric
Voegelin, ed. Paul Caringella, Jürgen Gebhardt, Thomas A. Hollweck, and Ellis Sandoz,
34 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press and Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1990-2009) (henceforward CW).
2On the use of the term "political religion" before Voegelin, see Emilio Gentile,
Politics as Religion, trans. G. Staunton (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2006), 2, which cites Condorcet, Abraham Lincoln, Luigi Settembrini, Karl
Polanyi, and Reinhold Niebuhr. In fact, Voegelin rarely uses this term (only
twice, excluding the title, in the 1938 work), and it barely makes an appearance
after 1938.
3On the causes of Voegelin's abandonment of the term (although not necessarily the
idea), see Thierry Gontier, "Totalitarisme, religions politiques et modernité chez Eric
Voegelin," in Naissances du totalitarisme, ed. Philippe de Lara (Paris: Cerf, 2011), 157
81. In summary, we can say that the reasons for this abandonment are twofold. (1)
Totalitarianisms are false religions, since religion implies a relationship with a pole
25

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
26 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
When I spoke of the politischen Religionen, I conformed to the usage of a

literature that interpreted ideological movements as a variety of religions.
Representative of this literature was Louis Rougier's successful volume on
Les Mystiques politiques,4
Besides the work by Louis Rougier, it is highly likely that Voegelin is think
of the French Catholic "personalist" philosophers, such as Jacques Ma
Henri de Lubac, and Joseph Vialatoux,5 who also interpreted the eme
totalitarian movements less in terms of social and political phenomen
as a profound spiritual disorder. These readings are also enriche
Bergson's work (which proved decisive for Voegelin) The Two Sour
Morality and Religion. It may appear surprising that Voegelin does not
to the emblematic work by Carl Schmitt, the Political Theology of 1
Schmitt had also invented, if not a term, then at least a concept destin
a productive career.6 Moreover, Political Theology and Voegelin's Poli
Religions (1938) have similar objectives, namely, to show that all politi
trines involve a relationship between mankind and the sacred in one f
another—even (and perhaps especially) those that claim to have elimin
the religious element entirely.
How do we explain this omission, when Voegelin even cites Schmitt s
times in his earlier works? The first answer that comes to mind is that in
of transcendence, which is immanentized in totalitarian regimes. (2) The term

gion" is ambiguous, in that it designates both a fundamental experience of
existence and an institution based on a body of doctrine ("I would no longer u
term religions because it is too vague and already deforms the real problem of
ences by mixing them with the further problem of dogma or doc
[Autobiographical Reflexions, in CW, 34:78]). However, the main issue withi
subject is religious experience (regardless of whether it is corrupt or not). It
therefore be better to speak of religiosity or spiritual experience than of r
Even though the terms might change, Voegelin's fundamental idea (that all p
involve a relationship with the sacred, and that the forms of totalitarianism them
involve a spiritual act) thus remains unchanged after the 1930s.
4CW, 34:78.
5Although it is highly improbable that Voegelin might somehow have known of the
work of Simone Weil, the affinities between the two authors are striking, as Sylvie
Courtine-Denamy shows in her recent monograph Simone Weil: La quête des racines
célestes (Paris: Cerf, 2009), as well as in her two articles "La chasse aux démons: Eric
Voegelin et Simone Weil; points communs et divergences," in Politique, religion et his
toire chez Eric Voegelin, ed. Thierry Gontier (Paris: Cerf, 2011), 67-87, and "The Revival
of Religion: A Device against Totalitarianism? A Philosophical Debate between Eric
Voegelin and Hannah Arendt," Voegeliniana: Occasional Papers, no. 88 (2011): 7-29.
6The expression "political theology" was already being used by Varro (see
Augustine, The City of God VI.5), who had himself retrieved it from the Stoic tradition.
It is still in use in a pamphlet by Bakunin against Mazzini (The Political Theology of
Mazzini and the International) of 1871, which is probably Schmitt's immediate source.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
FROM "POLITICAL THEOLOGY" TO "POLITICAL RELIGION" 27
Carl Schmitt was considered one of the major figures of Nazism. Strange
when he published his work The Authoritarian State in 1936 (when Sch
was at the very height of his career within the institutions of the Thi
Reich), Voegelin appeared to be unaware of this development, or else fa
to take it into consideration,7 by referring only to those works by Schm
that date from the early 1930s. While the authoritarian solutions advoc
by Schmitt at that time against the suicidal legalism of parliamentary de
racy and the takeover of politics by radical parties were irrelevant in German
after 1933, they were still significant in the Austria of 1936. We can ass
that in 1938 Voegelin was more keenly aware of Schmitt's intellect
project, which is undoubtedly one of the main reasons why Voegelin ci
him so rarely in his later works.8
Moreover, even if Voegelin frequently compares his thought to that of
Schmitt in the years 1930-1936, it is significant that he undertook no
comparison in relation to the religious question. The texts by Schmitt t
which he refers belong to the period 1928-1932. Constitutional Theory (1
forms the subject of a long review published in 1931.9 And in the f
chapter of his 1936 work The Authoritarian State, 10 Voegelin summariz
in order to then critique for its incompleteness—the genealogy of the to
state, laid bare by Schmitt in The Guardian of the Constitution (1931).
The Authoritarian State,11 Voegelin also summarizes the analysis of the d
opment of parliamentary democracy that Schmitt gives in Legality
7A simple footnote in the first chapter refers—without comment—to "new

egories" in Schmitt's thought (Authoritarian State, in CW, 4:62n).
8We will not dwell here on the personal relations between the two thinkers. Judg
from the letter written by Voegelin to Schmitt in 1955 (CW, 30:249-50), those relat
appear more courteous than truly warm. In the two volumes of the Collected W
devoted to a selection of Voegelin's correspondence (CW, vols. 29-30), we find
two letters addressed to Carl Schmitt; but the four letters by Schmitt located in
archives of the Hoover Institute (file 33-5) indicate clearly that there were mo
(although I have been unable to find the name of Schmitt in the various lists of
addressees to whom Voegelin sent his books and articles). A letter by Schmitt da
1931, relating to the review made by Voegelin of Constitutional Theory, shows
the two authors knew each other before the Nazi period (see also CW, 30:249-5
This file also contains a typed manuscript of Ex captivitate salus sent by Carl Schmi
although it appears that Voegelin failed to respond to this communication
Voegelin's letter to Carl Schmitt of May 1951, in CW, 30:90nl). This corresponde
between Schmitt and Voegelin is not mentioned in Claus Heimes, Politik
Transzendenz: Ordnungsdenken bei Carl Schmitt und Eric Voegelin (Berlin: Dunck
Humblot, 2009).
9CW, 13:42-66. The same work is discussed at the lectures held in Geneva at
beginning of the 1930s, recorded in the Collected Works under the title "Nati
types of mind" (CW, 32:470-71).
10CW, 4:58-63.
"CW, 4:218-21.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
Legitimacy (1932) in order to draw comparisons with those of Max Web

Maurice Hauriou. Finally, in various texts and lectures from the early
Voegelin discusses a number of the fundamental ideas of The Concept
Political (1932), in particular the theory of hostility.12 In these texts, whic
stitute the core of the corpus devoted to Carl Schmitt (and which, it shoul
noted, all date from before 1935—after which Voegelin no longer show
direct interest in Schmitt's thought), Voegelin is focused almost entire
politico-legal questions, especially those dealing with constitutional law
on theological questions. As far as can be ascertained, Voegelin never ci
emblematic Political Theology of 1922 in his works. He rarely uses the
reinvented by Schmitt,13 and if he occasionally uses expressions such a
theology" (theologia civilis) or "state theology," this is less in order to desc
structural and symbolic relationship between two fields in which norm
rationality is confronted with its limits, than a direct, institutio
means of instrumentalizing theological discourse through the political
Thus, in relation to this question, we are led to construct for ourselve
logue that never directly (or only infrequently) took place,15 but that eme
12See especially the unfinished work of 1930-1932, the Theory of Governanc

32:360-66). In 1937, Voegelin also wrote a brief critical review of a text by
Krupa on the political theory of Schmitt (CW, 13:109).
13One of the rare instances of this is to be found in New Science of Politics, cha
(CW, 4:170-74), where Voegelin summarizes the thesis developed in the 1935 w
Erik Peterson, Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem: Ein Betrag zur Geschichte d
tischen Theologie in Imperium Romanum, on the impossibility of a Christian
theology. Admittedly, the work does not question the general premise that i
be possible to model political power in theological terms (for example, in Jew
Roman Pagan theology), but only the legitimacy of drawing such parallels in r
to Christian theology. Following Peterson, Voegelin speaks of the "end of p
theology in orthodox Christianity" (174). This reference by Voegelin to Peter
interesting insofar as the latter, in a scholarly study of the various theologies of
liest centuries of the Roman Empire, and in particular Eusebius of Caesarea
Augustine, openly contests the notion of "political theology" developed
Schmitt—even if, for other reasons which will become clearer in the remain
this study, the general concept of an "apolitical" Christianity appears inadequ
both Voegelin and Schmitt.
14In addition to the Political Religions of 1938, see especially the letter to
Hallowell of 28 January 1953, in CW, 30:140.
15The rare references Carl Schmitt makes to the works of Voegelin are also
superficial. The few that I have found relate to (1) analysis of the historical c
of normativism in Austria, especially during the interwar period, in
Authoritarian State. (See Carl Schmitt, Die Wendung zum diskrimierenden Kriegs
[Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2003], 6n8. The same work is cited in passi
letter by Schmitt to Sander in 1975, in Carl Schmitt and Hans-Dietrich San
Werkstatt-Discorsi: Briefwechsel 1967 bis 1981, ed. Erik Lehnert and Günter M
[Schnellroda: Antaios, 2008], 363.) (2) Analysis of Goethe's worship of the fo

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
clearly from the opposing views of the respective authors. Our objective
is, as it were, to demonstrate the existence of an implicit dialogue bet
them, a dialogue that should help to clarify the terms of a fundament
different way of understanding the question of how the political relat
to the religious in our secular age. I will first consider the relation
between the two thinkers during the 1930s, in relation to what in
opinion constitutes a false proximity, namely, their common desire to m
beyond the reduction of politics to a rationalistic and normative l
theory. I will then undertake a theoretical investigation of the more f
mental differences, although they may not have led directly to confrontatio
within the framework of the doctrinal and anthropological issues raise
the relationship between the theological and the political as conceived
the two authors.
Beyond Normativism
Let us return to the Voegelinian writings of the 1930s, in which the author
refers to slightly earlier texts by Carl Schmitt. We may appreciate the points
of congruity between the two authors, particularly their common criticism
of the vulnerability of parliamentary democracy when confronted with the
rise of antidemocratic parties, whether Nazi or Communist. The political
differences would become clearer in subsequent years, not only in the oppos
ing attitudes of the two thinkers in the face of Nazism, but also after the war;
for example, in the adherence of Voegelin to the American democratic model,
which according to Schmitt had always opposed his conception of the politi
cal. They would also emerge at the theological level, in the sympathy dis
played consistently by Voegelin for the intellectual movement initiated by
Vatican II, to which Schmitt, for his part, was fundamentally hostile. In fact,
however, even during the 1930s, the similarities between the two authors
remain highly superficial since even then they disagreed profoundly over
metaphysical and theological questions. Even support for authoritarian poli
tics (from Brüning, von Papen, and von Schleicher in Germany, and from
Dollfuss and his successors in Austria) does not hold the same meaning for
the two authors; for Carl Schmitt, it rests upon an ethic of authority and obe
dience, which finds its extension at the metaphysical and theological level.
This kind of metaphysics is entirely absent in Voegelin, for whom the question
the soul in German Romantic thought, which is found in The History of the Race Idea:
From Ray to Carus (Schmitt, in common with Voegelin, sees in the Goethean concept
of the demonic the intellectual origin of the modern political idea of race), a result
perhaps of a reading made in the'1930s, to which two passing references are made
in the Glossarium. See Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951,
ed. Eberhard Freiherr von Medem (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), 65, 240.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
of authoritarianism is not of the very essence of politics, but falls mo

matically within the scope of techniques of governance subordinated
itical ends, which vary according to the particular circumstances
economic, cultural, and so on). Or, to put it another way, Voegelin con
dictatorship to be an extralegal means to which recourse must be
exceptional circumstances for the safety of the state; it does not in th
represent the underlying structure of the "normal" political order.16
Another point of consensus, which is in our view misleading, may be
in both authors' opposition to the theory of legal norms of Hans Kelsen
his earliest writings onward, Voegelin critiques the Kelsenian reducti
political science to legal science.1 He considered himself to belon
school of thought that attempted to overcome the separation of soci
and law by reviving classical political science—a school of thoug
which Carl Schmitt also belongs (as well as others such as Max W
Rudolf Smend, and Fritz Sander, to name a few).18 This superficial agr
nevertheless masks highly significant differences regarding the genera
tation of the political thought of the two thinkers.1
The problem as stated by Schmitt is that of the actual effectiveness o
norms. Owing to its purely ideal and formal character, Kelsen's system
be reduced to a tautology, which Schmitt, in his Constitutional Theo
1928, summarizes in this way: "something is valid when it is val
because it is valid."20 However, what Schmitt critiques is not strictly sp
the positivism of Kelsen, the fact that a thing is only valid if it is, in
resort, presented as being valid—a formulation in which we mig
tempted to see a form of tautology. It is not this tautology that Sch
attacks. Rather, what Schmitt means is that for Kelsen, a norm is vali
insofar as it is founded upon another valid norm, and so on down to t
damental norm (Grundnorm). We thus find ourselves enclosed within
realm of a purely ideal legal rationality, and consequently incapable o
fronting actual political reality. The logic of norms, whatever its de
technorational perfection, cannot resolve the problem of the state, wh
16On the authoritarianism found in both authors, see also Heimes, Politik
Transcendenz, 40.
17See my article "Le 'fétichisme de la norme': Voegelin critique de Ke
Dissensus, no. 1 (December 2008): 125-47, http://popups.ulg.ac.be/dissensus/
ment.php?id=368.
18See especially Voegelin's review of Die Moderne Nation, by Heinz O. Ziegler
in CW, 13:68, as well as his review of Politische und soziologische Staatlehre,
Rumpf (1934), in CW, 13:84.
19Heimes, Politik und Transcendenz, chap. 2 is about this same topic, although
from a different perspective (which, in my opinion, has a tendency to inte
Voegelin using Schmittian categories).
20Carl Schmitt, Constitutional Theory, ed. Jeffrey Seitzer (Durham, NC:
University Press, 2008), 64.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
that of actual authority. For Schmitt it is really a question of defining

conditions under which the legal norm is valid; not, however, like Kels
from the purely formal perspective of normative ideality (as sim
'"should be"), but from the perspective of political effectiveness—when
the reply by Schmitt: "The fact is a constitution is valid because it der
from a constitution-making capacity (power or authority) and is establis
by the will of this constitution-making power."21 The issue here is no
of knowing how a constituting power is legitimized, but indee
knowing by which act a legal norm may be brought into existence; exist
in this case refers to visibility within the social sphere, as opposed to the pur
ideality of the Kelsenian norm. The condition of its existence is that the nor
must be based upon a prescriptive act that itself exists, namely, the will of o
or several actual persons: "In contrast to mere norms, the word 'will' de
an actually existing power as the origin of a command. The will is existential
present." The legal norm, continues Schmitt, possesses value not because
"correct," but only "because it is positively established, in other words
virtue of an existing will."22
For Voegelin, it is not the ideal character of the Kelsenian norm and
deficiency in terms of positive existence that constitutes a problem. F
this point of view, Schmitt still remains a prisoner of the Kelsenian (a
also, more generally, neo-Kantian) opposition between natural reality a
normative ideality—of the Sein and the Sollen23—which he succeeds in o
coming only by referring to the quasi-miraculous nature of the decisi
Voegelin has, for his part, succeeded in extricating himself from this r
schema under the combined influence of Husserlian phenomenology
American pragmatism. Let us cite an extract from his review of the w
by Hans Krupa dedicated to Schmitt's political theory: "The theory of
decision is incapable of overcoming the aporia of pure normativism. ...
authentic 'dialectic' and 'synthetic' theory should surmount the 'separa
thought of Schmitt and recognize that norms are components of realit
the same way as decisions." 4 If "norms are components of reality in t
same way as decisions," the opposition between nonreal idealities, on
one hand, and "natural" realities, on the other, appears illusory. Ideas a
never pure abstract beings: they are the object of real experience and ar
such, realities. The term "reality" (as also "existence") does not
Voegelin, refer back to reality as understood by a positivist empiricist
21Ibid.
22Ibid. Thus, for example, "The Weimar Constitution is valid because the German
people 'gave itself this constitution'" (ibid., 65).
2TThus, in the Constitutional Theory, we read that "the concept of legal order contains
two entirely different elements: the normative element of justice and the actually exist
ing element of concrete order" (ibid., 65).
4Voegelin, review of Carl Schmitts Theorie des "Politischen, " by Hans Krupa (1937), in
CW, 13:109-10. Unless otherwise stated, translations of Voegelin are my own.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
visible reality—and we know how often this question of visibility rec

Schmitt), but to the "actual experience" of the human mind. When ref
to this experience, it becomes impossible, if only for purely methodo
reasons, to dissociate the norm in its pure normative ideality from i
resentation within the human mind, by which we recognize it as a m
for action, or a "value" in the Weberian sense of the term.
Voegelin's principal criticism of Kelsen thus belongs to a very differe
ister from that of Schmitt. Voegelin lays stress on the fact that legal scien
not an autonomous science but a subordinate science, dependent u
architectonic science of the significance-contents of legal norms and t
texts of their elaboration. This criticism is to be found in the critical surv
the Constitutional Theory:
The application of the principle of methodological purity to the sphere of a

human science [Geisteswissenschaft] such as political theory is in my
opinion not feasible, because the field that ought to serve as the subject
matter of scientific research constitutes itself outside the context estab
lished by the science. Thus the scientific account of the subject matter
cannot be executed independently and solely according to its own prin
ciples, but rather has to follow the contours of source material.25
Pure legal science must therefore be supplemented by a hermeneutic of the

significance-contents, which lies not within the positive law itself, but
within the domain of existential anthropology—and it is that which forms
the purpose of political science. The critique made by Voegelin therefore con
cerns not the inability of the norm to make itself politically effective, but
rather the inability of the positive law to pose the question of the norms, as
understood in their very normative ideality. Pure legal theory does not
embody a deficit of reality (in the realist sense of the term), but a deficit of
meaning. What Voegelin disputes in Kelsen is therefore not normativism,
but positivism. Political science analyses that from which the (positive) legal
norm is assumed, that is to say, its horizon of ethical meaning: "In my
opinion, neither a theory of the state nor a more narrow theory of consti
tutional law may neglect the normative element of the law, if only because
moral convictions are indispensable as principles of interpretation of norms
(including constitutional norms)."26
These remarks would be summarized by Voegelin in the introduction to
Race and State in 1933:
An essential problem, as yet posed only inadequately in Staatslehre, is the

justification of the phenomenon of law [Rechtserscheinung]. The phenom
enon of law is to be traced to its origins, one of which is to be found in
the moral experience of the individual, while the other resides in the
experience of the community. From the moral experience of the individual
25Voegelin/ review of Die Verfassungslehre, by Carl Schmitt (1931), in CW, 13:44.

26Ibid., 49.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
future real states of affairs (actions and their consequences in the enviro
ment) receive the index of "what should be done," from communal exp
ence, it seems to me, emerges that universality of the norm that renders
obligatory for a majority of persons. Individual and community are t
fundamental human experiences from which the "norm" in the sense
an anticipatory design for the future actions of people as members of
community arises.27
In this text we may note: (1) that normative ideality is the subject
experience—it is therefore in that sense (and most certainly no
realist positivist sense) an existential "reality"; (2) that the phenom
law does not require realization at the actual/positive level, but mus
tified" by returning "to the origins of the phenomenon of law," that is
in the fundamental experience of the human community within w
mative ideality is formed.
The Kelsenian system of norms thus exhibits a lack of positivity
viewed from a Schmittian perspective, the reference to the Gr
being insufficient to confer upon it a visible existence in the public
while in Voegelin it is seen as demonstrating a lack of normati
Schmitt, the resolution of this problem involves reference to a positive
mative foundation, whereas for Voegelin it entails reference to a pr
horizon of normativity.
Decision and Belief
This shifting of the problem, from the condition of the positive existence of the
legal norms to their normative condition, assists greatly in explaining the cri
tiques Voegelin levels at the decisionism of Schmitt. Voegelin is aware that
Schmitt's doctrine is not restricted to decisionism.28 He nevertheless tends
to view that decisionism not merely as a specific moment in Schmitt's doc
trinal evolution, but as a permanent structure of Schmittian thought, which
translates into the absence of a spiritual foundation and explains his political
reversals of opinion—particularly his adherence to Nazism. In short, even
though he had not always defended decisionism as a doctrine, Schmitt
remains a decisionist for Voegelin in the sense of being "an agnostic and an
unprincipled existentialist like Sartre," in other words, essentially a sort of
nihilist.2 The critique of decisionism is thus subsumed within the more
27CW, 2:2-3.
28The "Catholic" moment in Schmitt's thought is mentioned in the letter to Theo
Morse of 18 November 1953 (CW, 30:184). The "institutionalist" phase is vaguely
alluded to in The Authoritarian State (CW, 4:53) and in more precise fashion in the
review of Krupa's Theorie des "Politischen" (CW, 13:109).
29Voegelin, letter to Theo Morse, 18 November 1953, in CW, 30:184.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
general critique of a form of pneumopathology implying a corrupted r

ship with the theological—to which we will return later.
One of the most explicit texts by Voegelin on Schmittian decisionism is t
found in a series of lectures given at Geneva at the beginning of the 1
[Carl Schmitt] conceives the problem [of the existence of the state] in terms
of his theory of decision; he does not go into the matter of beliefs because
he himself lives so perfectly and unreflected in his own type of belief that
he does not see it at all. The state for him is given by its decision on its own
existence.... I cannot accept Schmitfs decision. For who decides? Schmitt
does not tell us; he says the state bears the decision within itself, thus
avoiding naming the subject. ... The essence of the nation-state, as of
any part of political existence, is belief, not ... decision.30
"Who decides?"—the question appears to evoke that of Hobbes, Quis j

vit? Quis interpretabitur? The question also recurs in Carl Schmit
decides, that is to say, who is the actual authorized person who embo
the legal norm, which is itself abstract, in order to ensure its visibility
public sphere? The legal norm is incapable of being established by an
other than a simultaneously prescriptive and creative act, existing an
dently to the norms: "From a normative perspective, the decision, con
in the law, is born out of nothingness [aus einem Nichts geboren]. Out of c
tual necessity, it is 'dictated' [diktiert]."31 The question has an entirely dif
meaning for Voegelin. The issue is not one of knowing who embodie
ority and gives him "visibility" within the public sphere. The question
ciated is rather that of the nature of the will that takes decisions. F
decision is not an irrational act, bringing political order to existence
the normative nihil; it is the act of a rational will, animated by a represen
of the good. As the medieval Aristotelians put it, quidquid appetitur, ap
sub ratione boni—we only desire something insofar as we are able to co
it as participating in the good. We must therefore proceed from the will t
representation that governs it. Whence the conclusion drawn by Voe
"the essence of the nation-state is belief, not ... decision." No decision
be made without the representation of a motive for action, understo
its relation to the good. Any decision therefore presupposes a nor
objective and a prior orientation of the will toward the good. This op
of the human mind toward the good is, for Voegelin, simultaneously t
damental experience that man makes for himself out of his existence a
substantial center of political order.32
30Voegelin, "National Types of Mind and the Limits to Interstate Relations,"

32:477-78.
31Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur: Von den Anfangen des modernen Souveränitätgedankens bis
zum proletarischen Klassenkampf, 4th ed. (Berlin: Duncker & Homblot, 1978), 23.
32A similar criticism of Schmitt's occasionalism, although from another point of
view, can be found in Karl Löwith (who is close on this point to German jurists

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
Thus, for both authors, political order revolves around a pole of tra
dence. However, transcendence does not carry the same meaning for
and for Voegelin. For the former, it means essentially the radical hete
of a decision with regard to any form of legal rationality. For Voegelin, it
back to the subsuming of the legal order to a higher ethical and meta
order in which its original meaning is to be found. The two political
are dependent upon radically different theological models. The decis
political model of Schmitt analogically corresponds to the theology
potentia absoluta Dei, the model for which may be found in late me
Scotist and Occamist theologies. Voegelin, for his part, refers to a t
of Platonic inspiration in which the divine is understood not as radic
ness but as the transcendent good to which the human soul remains n
open.
These opposing theological models are both extended into the p
sphere. For Schmitt, the sovereign decision creates political ord
because it prescribes the simple (and unconditional) obedience o
subject; that obedience does not exist by virtue of the correctness o
norm but arises solely from the recognition of the competence of th
eign that decreed it—political analogue of an unquestioned and unqu
able faith.33 We know that Voegelin would always refuse, and especiall
dialogue with Leo Strauss (who on this issue positions himself as the h
Carl Schmitt), to interpret religious faith as a blind adhesion to irr
such as Hermann Heller and Erich Kaufmann). See his article "The Occasional
Decisionism of Carl Schmitt," first published, in German, in 1935: "Hence it will
remain to be asked: by faith in what is Schmitt's 'demanding moral decision' sustained,
if he clearly has faith in neither the theology of the sixteenth century nor the metaphy
sics of the seventeenth century and least of all in the humanitarian morality of the
eighteenth century, but instead has faith only in the power of decision?" (Löwith,
Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, ed. R. Wolin, trans. Gary Steiner [New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995], 140). Löwith underlines the fact that, paradoxically,
Schmitt's hostility toward romantic occasionalism (i.e., a way of seing the whole world
as an occasion for spiritual expression) turns into a new type of occasionalism (every
thing being an occasion for the diktat of decision). Heimes tends to miss this point, by
defending Schmitt (and, he thinks, also Voegelin) for using "ideas of order"
(Ordnungsideen) from a strictly normative perspective, and independently of any
actual content (Politik und Transzendenz, 52). On this point, see also Hans-Jörg
Sidgwart, Das Politische und die Wissenschaft: Intellektuell-biographische Studien zum
Frühwerk Eric Voegelins (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005), 161-76:
Sidgwart speaks of an "existential formalism" (162) in Schmitt, who, according to
Voegelin, fails to rise above an immanentist position about the law, and so to reach
a position of transcendence (within a theory of the individual and his motives).
33On this point, see Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the
Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy, trans. Marcus Brainard
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 10-25.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
dogma;34 faith, understood in the same sense as the Greek pistis, deno
erotic and continually questioning dynamic of the foundation. This th
is also extended into the political domain. Voegelin cannot express hi
sufficiently harshly, particularly in his course Hitler and the Germans, ag
the irresponsible obedience of the state functionaries,35 one of the ca
which is to be found in legal positivism—a positivism that Schmitt's d
ism only serves to intensify in reality. Voegelin's defense of the Am
model of a plurality of institutional sources of legality in the recogni
a transcendent ethical horizon of legitimacy is for him transformed
defense of the responsibilization of subjects. The norm cannot be repre
except through mental abstraction, outside of its ethical context:
spiritedness does not consist of unconditional obedience to positiv
but of openness to the universal good, via communal symbols.
Anthropological Continuations
The radicalization of the transcendent character of political power in S

and its interpretation within a fundamentally irrationalist schema lea
doxically to an absolutization of the political as intramundane real
of the divine, in other words, to the formation of precisely that
Voegelin in 1938 calls a "political religion." This shifting of the radical
ogies of the potentia absoluta Dei to a position of self-affirmation of m
has been studied thoroughly, in a different context (the transition fr
Middle Ages to the Renaissance), by Hans Blumenberg, for whom "th
vocation of the transcendent absolute passes over at the point of its
extreme radicalization into the uncovering of the immanent absol
The radicalization of transcendence by Schmitt is overturned in the
way, thus moving into a position of absolute immanence, which leav
without eros in either an otherworldly existence or political society.
It is clear that Schmitt is severely critical of the Promethean thoughts o
autopoiesis of mankind and of their political equivalent in the sponta
constitution of the state by civil society. Against this liberal optimi
offers the Christian theology of original sin. The problem arises
meaning that he gives to that notion of original sin. Let us ment
fourth chapter of the Political Theology of 1922: "Every political idea
way or another takes a position on the 'nature' of man and presu
34See Thierry Gontier, Voegelin: Symboles du politique (Paris: Michalon, 2008),

35CW, 31:219-21. See also the humorous barbs directed against the "function
mankind" in Veogelin's letter to Alfred Schütz concerning Edmund Hus
September 1943, in CW, 6:49 and CW, 29:367.
Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. R. W. W
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 178.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
that he is either 'by nature good' or 'by nature evil.'"37 Against the "
anarchists," who believe that "man is manifestly good," Schmitt sets
de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and Donoso Cortes, all three of whom a
ponents of the "natural wickedness of mankind." This radicalism, Sc
explains, is opposed to Tridentine dogma, which "asserts no absolute
lessness, but only distortion, opacity, or injury, and leaves open the possib
of the natural good."38 In addition to the opposition between n
goodness and original sin, another—also fundamental—exists betw
original sin that does not suppress the desire for good and an origin
that does suppress it. What is the position adopted by Schmitt hims
placing the provocative portrait of Donoso Cortès at the end of the P
Theology, has he not given the latter conclusive value? In the Concep
Political, Schmitt speaks on his own behalf: "One could test all the t
of state and political ideas according to their anthropology and there
sify these as to whether they consciously or unconsciously presuppose
be by nature evil or by nature good. ... All genuine political theories
pose man to be evil, i.e. by no means an unproblematic but a danger
dynamic being."39 Among these "authentic" political theories (which
liberal political theories as being "false" political theories), Schmitt ci
addition to Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bossuet, Fichte, Taine, and Hege
names of Joseph de Maistre and Donoso Cortès. Schmitt's political ant
ogy draws here upon the radical and heterodox version of original sin
suppresses even the desire for God in mankind.
What does this mean for Voegelin? The negation of the dogma of o
sin for him constitutes a specific feature of the secularization proce
us refer to the article of 1940 in which Voegelin synthesizes his 1933
on race: "In the Christian anthropology man is an essentially im
being, burdened with original sin, and leading his life under the cat
of grace and repentance, damnation and salvation. Such evil as there
the world is intimately connected with the status of man in genera
every single human being in particular. Nobody can escape his p
share of responsibility for the sinfulness of mankind and the resultin
fection of society."40 The modern phenomenon of secularization ind
ceeds in turning the internal structural problem of mankind i
external problem to which a "technical" response may be applied. Vo
does not offer a consistent interpretation from the systematic perspe
the "dogma" of original sin. He discusses it in a quite general manne
order to denote the finite condition of mankind. TTiis condition ma
37Schmitt, Political Theology I, 65.

38Ibid„ 57.
39Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, ed. G. Schwab (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2007), 58, 61.
40Voegelin, "The Growth of the Race Idea" (1940), in CW, 10:50.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
two quite different meanings, referring sometimes to the inherent inability o

human nature to reach the transcendent good by itself (although not to st
toward it), and sometimes to the permanent possibility he possesses of de
ing from the quest for this essentially inaccessible good in favor of anot
object which he believes himself capable of possessing—something akin
the allotriosis of the Stoics. Borrowing from Augustinian vocabular
Voegelin frequently calls the cause of this apostasy superbia, amor sui,
libido dominandi. The decisive factor remains the fact that this apostas
not the inevitable destiny of mankind and always remains in its power.
short, for Voegelin, man never ceases to strive toward the transcend
good; even though the latter can never possibly be appropriated in t
world, it is no less significant in structuring the totality of human, speculativ
moral and political actions.
Nothing is more revealing than Schmitt's indulgence toward this post
sarian state.41 Indeed, the paradox is that however great the fault may h
been, it nonetheless remains fortunate for mankind. Felix culpa, it migh
said, since with it hostility is preserved as the foundation of political identity
an identity founded not only upon a community of economic or cultural i
ests, but, to return to the formula of Leo Strauss in his highly lucid survey o
The Concept of the Political, upon the "seriousness of human life."42 Supposin
we were to abolish sin, and with it hostility: we would have, as Strauss
cates, what amounts to an economic and cultural society, a society of en
tainment, but without the possibility of sacrifice and therefore devoid o
ethical dimension. Schmitt, also according to Strauss, is not content wit
saying that this pacified world—terrestrial substitute for the kingdom
God—is unachievable in this world (a statement with which Voege
would concur); he expresses his profound disgust for this depolitici
world devoid of any ethical dimension, and condemns in advance a
project that might seek to establish it, if only as the outcome of an underlyin
tendency. Thus, hostility is less the punishing of a fault than grace given
God to mankind to save it from the inauguration of the chaos represen
by the kind of world in which political institutions were no longer necess
This apparently "dark" vision of original sin43 therefore has the paradox
4'This remark can also be found in the analysis of Schmitt's political theory
Löwith in 1935: "So little does Schmitt return to 'unscathed, uncorrupted natu
that on the contrary he leaves human affairs in their corrupt condition" (
Occasional Decisionism of Carl Schmitt," 144).
42See Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, trans
Harvey Lomax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 112.
43However, is it really as "dark" as all that? Although it is true that we find hi
"pessimistic" formulations of hostility ("The sufferings inflicted by men upon
other are terrible [furchtbar]," Ex captivitate salus: Erfahrungen der Zeit 1945-1947
ed. [Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002], 60), we nevertheless find others which
undeniably "optimistic." Thus, in the same work, while continuing to refe

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
effect of opening up a world of immanence—closed to transcendenc

mankind.
Hostility does not in the least constitute the substance of the political for
Voegelin. In his abortive writing project of the early 1930s Theory of
Governance, he accuses Schmitt of having confused the essence of the political
with what is only in fact a peripheral phenomenon.44 If it is true that the unity
of men ready to sacrifice their lives in combat demonstrates the consciousness
of a political community the agon is however of itself not in the least consti
tutive of that identity. It is, rather, composed of the community of beliefs and
symbolic representations, themselves based on the openness of the members
to "the same transcendent content, each according to his capacity to receive
the objective spirit."45 However diverse these beliefs and representations
may be, they refer back to the same ineffable human experience derived
from participation in transcendent reality. A consequence of this is that the
fundamental political framework is not for Voegelin limited to the nation
state. The latter is merely a stopgap solution, as are interstate alliances (for
example, leagues and military agreements) which Schmitt defends against
universalist and pacifist ideologies. Hostility is an identity category used by
a closed society, in the Bergsonian sense; in other words, of a society which
is not only closed in on itself, but closed to experiencing the opening of the
soul to the transcendent good. Voegelin, for his part, always presents
himself as the defender of the open society in a twofold, mystical and cosmo
politan, sense. The figure of the ruler of the Imperium sacrum is the ecumenical
equivalent of the Platonic archon; in some sense, he constitutes a Voegelinian
foil to the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoyevsky who so fascinated Schmitt, and
who condemns Christ to death for the sake of protecting an earthly
theologico-political order.46 In this cosmopolitico-ecumenical context, the
Hegel, Schmitt also adopts a Rosenzweigian, pre-Levinasian tone: "Who should I, in

fact, recognize as my enemy? Quite obviously, only that person who calls me into
question. By recognizing him as an enemy, I recognize that he is able to call me into
question. Who then is truly able to call me into question? Myself alone. Or, indeed,
my brother. There it is: the other person is my brother. ... Remember the great
words of the philosopher: the relation to the other in oneself, that is the truly infinite"
(ibid., 168). Schmitt also cites a verse by Theodor Däubler: "The enemy is our own
question as figure" (Der Feind ist unsere eigene Frage als Gestalt). If hostility, as a pure
form of otherness, constitutes the "truly infinite," is not the world of the political,
however stained it may be by the abjection of sin, more than sufficient for the desire
of the human soul?
44Voegelin, Theory of Governance, in CW, 32:364.
45Ibid„ 367.
4éOn the Schmittian figure of the Grand Inquisitor, see Théodore Paléologue, Sous
l'œil du Grand Inquisiteur: Carl Schmitt et l'héritage de la théologie politique (Paris: Cerf,
2004). On this figure in Voegelin, see Theory of Governance, in CW, 32:326-32, and

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
friend-enemy relation is constitutive not of an authentic political identity

of a pathological identity.47
In depriving mankind of its dynamic toward the divine, the Schmitt
ception corresponds, at least functionally, to that of secularized libera
its most extreme form—to that of the atheist anarchism of Baku
Voegelin analyzes this phenomenon on several occasions in his stu
Hobbes—and in particular in the development in Political Religions o
of his thought on the Leviathan. In thus severing homo politicus from his
tual life and his striving toward a sovereign good (substituted by fear
supreme evil which is a physical evil), Hobbes had created a substitut
politics based upon desire for the good—foundation of the philia politike of
ancients—in the form of an ethics and a politics built solely upon the
anical interaction of the passions, whose most incisive expression is t
also Hans-Jörg Sigwart, "Modes of Experience—On Eric Voegelin's Theo

Governance," Review of Politics 68, no. 2 (2006): 259-86. For a more general ap
see Ellis Sandoz, Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, 2
(Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000).
47The analysis carried out by Voegelin on the political concept of race in the
may help to clarify this point. The self-representation of society as a racial comm
is only meaningful for Voegelin when correlated with the representation of a "c
race." In this sense, race has no political reality of itself; it is only, as it were, "c
counter-race." The idea of race understood in this way is a product of the phen
of secularization, of which one of the fundamental properties is what Voegelin c
"exteriorization of evil," namely, the projection of an inherent evil in man onto
nized enemy (the Jew being the image of Nazi totalitarianism) that must be elim
In his 1933 works, Voegelin does not cite Schmitt, who would only begin to p
openly anti-Semitic texts after his acceptance of Nazism. That anti-Semitism
nevertheless become the target of indirect critiques by Voegelin—see, for ex
the remarks made by Voegelin concerning the Jewishness of Bodin in his let
Carl Schmitt of May 1951 (CW, 30:89). In his Autobiographical Reflections, Voege
fronts Schmitt ironically with the Semitic roots of the Arab thinkers to whom
Nazi authors elected to refer (CW, 34:80, 85-86).
48Moreover, on occasion, does Schmitt himself not reveal a secret fascinatio
these Promethean thoughts? See, for instance, Political Theology II: The Myth
Closure of Any Political Theology, ed. M. Hoelz and G. Ward (Cambridge: Po
2008), 128-30, where Schmitt pushes the Blumenbergian idea of modernity as
of the self-affirmation of mankind to its logical conclusion. Jan-Werner Mülle
this text merely as a satire and caricature of Blumenbergian thought (Mülle
Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought [New Heaven:
University Press, 2003], 162). In common with Donoso Cortès, who spoke of h
tempt for liberals and his respect for his mortal enemy, anarchistic and atheisti
ism, to which he imparted a diabolic dimension" (Political Theology I, 71), Carl
never hides his admiration for the courage of the great radical nihilists, su
Bakunin or Lenin, nor his disdain for the compromises of bourgeois liberal th

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
found in. the metaphor of life as a race.49 The distortion of the meanin
transcendence into a radical heteronomy, and its corollary which is the
cation of the human desire for God, serves in the same way to transform
worldly political institution into an absolute immanence.
Conclusion: The Finiteness of the Political
Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin therefore represent two rival figures in the
contemporary (post-Hegelian) theologico-political order, which has aban
doned the notion of the state as a historical and worldly incarnation of the
eternal kingdom. This scission of the eschatological and historical occurs in
both Schmitt and Voegelin. However, it leads to divergent ethical con
ceptions. For Schmitt, the fundamental political virtue is the virtue of
patience; against the figure of the Antichrist, who in Schmitt represents the
impatience of the liberal to establish the hereafter on earth, there stands
that of the katechon, keeping political society at a distance from the eschatolo
gical which will always remain unattainable for mankind. In short, the bliss of
the elect is not the concern of politics—which must be refocused on the reality
of mankind in this world. At this point, the profession of Christian faith works
in tandem with the defense of Realpolitik.5 For Voegelin, on the other hand,
the virtue of man (and of the citizen) remains structured by the eros for the
principle. It is certain that this eros cannot be achieved on the earth; the prin
ciple is experienced as existing beyond the world and history, while remain
ing the ultimate objective of all human will. The antagonist of this ethic is also
a form of impatience. During the 1950s, Voegelin (preceded in this respect by
Karl Löwith and Jacob Taubes) would typify this impatience using the figure
49See Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, ed. F. Tönnies, 2nd ed.
(London: Frank Cass, 1969), 47-48. This idea, which is found in substantial form in
chapter 1 of De cive (Hobbes, De Cive, ed. H. Warrender [Oxford: Clarendon, 1983],
41-46, 89-95), is however substantially modified in chapter 11 of the Leviathan
(Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. E. Curley [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994], esp. 58). On this
point, see F. S. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan (London: MacmiOan, 1968), 144
55, and Luc Foisneau, "Que reste-t-il de l'état de nature de Hobbes derrière le voile
d'ignorance de Rawls?," in "Hobbes et les néocontractualismes contemporain,"
special issue, Études philosophiques, no. 4 (2006): 439-60.
3°It is important not to confuse this "Realpolitik" with the political pragmatism that
Voegelin adopts, and for which political authority must maintain an awareness of socio
historical circumstances. As I have written above, Voegelin does not possess a doctrine of
authoritarianism, rooted in a theological concept of authority: the former remains a last
resort, reprehensible in itself, although sometimes necessary in order to escape even
greater disorder—as was the case, for example, in the Germany or Austria of the
1930s. The model adopted by Voegelin is not, as for Schmitt, the Roman dictator, but
rather the Platonic archon who maintains order in society using the means of persuasion
at his disposal.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
of the Gnostic, who, incapable of bearing the extreme tension of existen

immanentizes the eschaton, thereby reducing it to the outcome of hum
activity in history.51 The Gnostic identifies the meaning of history wit
history itself. Although Voegelin and Schmitt might still appear to be so
what in agreement at this point (in viewing modern politics as the imma
tization of a promise for the next life), it nevertheless remains the case that
superficial agreement hides a deeper disagreement, and that Schmitt's po
cal theology leads, by an undoubtedly paradoxical route (that of a simple
lucid disenchantment with the means and ends of politics), to the same re
as the liberal politics that it claims to critique.
This is where the meaning of the condemnation issued by Voegelin is to
found. In a letter to Alfred Schütz of 1950, Voegelin interprets Schmitt's adhe
ence to Nazism not as the consequence of deep conviction, but as a decis
motivated principally by opportunism. Moreover, Voegelin questions
notion "that we might resolve the problems raised by Carl Schmitt sim
by calling him a Nazi." This opportunism is itself nevertheless revealing
the conception Schmitt has constructed of human life deprived of
dynamic of conversion toward the good: "I now firmly believe that his
Heidegger's] N. S. [National Socialism] has similar reasons as that of
Schmitt, or like Laski's racism: an intellectual anticipating of the politica
the level of the innerworldly-historical—more intelligent than the 'decen
of many others whose stubbornness keeps them safe from dangerous adv
tures—but [of] insufficient spiritual stature to be able to escape the mischief
the world-immanent seduction—it is never enough for the 'periagoge' in
Platonic sense."52 In common with Heidegger, Schmitt has undermined
meaning of transcendence that Plato understood to be the purpose of the
agoge. In both writers, the position of radical transcendence (radical to
extent of no longer providing a horizon of meaning for mankind) is rever
thereby becoming the affirmation of an absolute immanence. As Voege
writes in Political Religions, "When God is invisible behind the world, the
tents of the world will become new gods."53 When viewed from this per
tive, Schmitt's apparently opportunistic participation in Nazism from 1
does not, intellectually speaking, stand in contradiction to the positions
adopted in 1920-1932 (even despite the fact that Schmitt is undoubtedly
insofar as this distinction makes sense, more a thinker of authoritarian
than of totalitarianism, of the separation of civil society and state than
their convergence).
51 Although Voegelin abandoned the symbolization of the immanentization o

eschatology, via the figure of the Gnostic, after the 1950s, the actual concept of
order of the soul and society that takes hold owing to an impatience when confro
with existential questions that are insoluble in this world, remains a constant featur
his work.
52Voegelin, letter to Alfred Schütz, 20 May 1950, in CW, 30:56.

53CW, 5:60.

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00
By destroying order in the soul, Schmitt has also destroyed that of the city
which is man writ large. It is impossible, in reality, to speak of a "political th
ogy" in Voegelin in the sense that Schmitt uses this term, namely, in the sens
a structural analogy between two rationalities confronted with their limits, b
both remaining autonomous within their respective orders. Such autono
does not exist .for Voegelin. The question of the relations between theolo
and politics is never for him stated in terms of a structural analogy betw
two types of mutually independent rationality; it is always posed in ter
of a direct relation—whether that relation be authentic or corrupt. The c
man is the same individual who aspires after a transcendent end.5
Moreover, the state cannot of itself be accorded the status of an authentic soc
tas perfecta. The "religious politics," if we may use that phrase, of Voegelin p
sesses a different meaning. It designates a type of attraction of the political t
pole of transcendence, structured by the experience of transcendence present
the heart of the rational activity of mankind, and in particular of its commu
activity. This experience preserves the finiteness of the political, preempt
self-constitution as a mundane theology (irrespective, moreover, of
precise institutional form), while conserving the fundamental restlessnes
mankind and its openness to the question of foundational transcendence.
Voegelin, the religious thus functions primarily as a radical critical autho
and guarantor of a zetetic of the political.
54One of the consequences of this is that the churches cannot withdraw from the
of the city for the sake of an "apolitical" ideal—this is a major point that Voeg
emphasizes in his lectures on Hitler and the Germans. "If we speak in clichés o
church and state, it then looks as if two different societies are opposed to
another here, and we forget that the personnel of these societies is indeed ident
that they are thus the same societies, only with different representations, temp
and spiritual.... That is not a situation where first there are churches and second
itical people: rather, the people are the same in both cases" (Hitler and the Germans,
CW, 31:156, 175).

140.82.46.104 on Tue, 15 Aug 2023 16:10:04 +00:00

From Political Theology To Political Religion, Eric Voegelin and Carl Schmit - Thierry Gontier

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

From Political Theology To Political Religion, Eric Voegelin and Carl Schmit - Thierry Gontier

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

From Political Theology To Political Religion, Eric Voegelin and Carl Schmit - Thierry Gontier

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

From "Political Theology" to "Political Religion": Eric Voegelin and Carl Schmitt

Author(s): Thierry Gontier

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23355713

This content downloaded from