Political Theology and Early Modernity

Political Theology and Early Modernity PDF Author: Graham Hammill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226314979
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Political theology is a distinctly modern problem, one that takes shape in some of the most important theoretical writings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But its origins stem from the early modern period, in medieval iconographies of sacred kinship and the critique of traditional sovereignty mounted by Hobbes and Spinoza. In this book, Graham Hammill and Julia Reinhard Lupton assemble established and emerging scholars in early modern studies to examine the role played by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature and thought in modern conceptions of political theology. Political Theology and Early Modernity explores texts by Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Milton, and others that have served as points of departure for such thinkers as Schmitt, Strauss, Benjamin, and Arendt. Written from a spectrum of positions ranging from renewed defenses of secularism to attempts to reconceive the religious character of collective life and literary experience, these essays probe moments of productive conflict, disavowal, and entanglement in politics and religion as they pass between early modern and modern scenes of thought. This stimulating collection is the first to answer not only how Renaissance and baroque literature help explain the persistence of political theology in modernity and postmodernity, but also how the reemergence of political theology as an intellectual and political problem deepens our understanding of the early modern period.--Publisher description.

Political Theology and Early Modernity

Political Theology and Early Modernity PDF Author: Graham Hammill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226314979
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book

Book Description
Political theology is a distinctly modern problem, one that takes shape in some of the most important theoretical writings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But its origins stem from the early modern period, in medieval iconographies of sacred kinship and the critique of traditional sovereignty mounted by Hobbes and Spinoza. In this book, Graham Hammill and Julia Reinhard Lupton assemble established and emerging scholars in early modern studies to examine the role played by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature and thought in modern conceptions of political theology. Political Theology and Early Modernity explores texts by Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Milton, and others that have served as points of departure for such thinkers as Schmitt, Strauss, Benjamin, and Arendt. Written from a spectrum of positions ranging from renewed defenses of secularism to attempts to reconceive the religious character of collective life and literary experience, these essays probe moments of productive conflict, disavowal, and entanglement in politics and religion as they pass between early modern and modern scenes of thought. This stimulating collection is the first to answer not only how Renaissance and baroque literature help explain the persistence of political theology in modernity and postmodernity, but also how the reemergence of political theology as an intellectual and political problem deepens our understanding of the early modern period.--Publisher description.

The Future of Illusion

The Future of Illusion PDF Author: Victoria Kahn
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022608390X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
In recent years, the rise of fundamentalism and a related turn to religion in the humanities have led to a powerful resurgence of interest in the problem of political theology. In a critique of this contemporary fascination with the theological underpinnings of modern politics, Victoria Kahn proposes a return to secularism—whose origins she locates in the art, literature, and political theory of the early modern period—and argues in defense of literature and art as a force for secular liberal culture. Kahn draws on theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt and their readings of Shakespeare, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Spinoza to illustrate that the dialogue between these modern and early modern figures can help us rethink the contemporary problem of political theology. Twentieth-century critics, she shows, saw the early modern period as a break from the older form of political theology that entailed the theological legitimization of the state. Rather, the period signaled a new emphasis on a secular notion of human agency and a new preoccupation with the ways art and fiction intersected the terrain of religion.

Political Theology in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Political Theology in Medieval and Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Montserrat Herrero López
Publisher: Institut Historique Belge de Rome
ISBN: 9782503568348
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book aims to provide new historical and theoretical perspectives on political theology with an interdisciplinary approach, from political philosophy and theology to art and history. After a comprehensive introduction and three introductory chapters on both the theory and the concept of "political theology" (based on the works of Schmitt, de Lubac, and Kantorowicz), this volume explores the transferences between the temporal and the spiritual experimented on the past. It interprets some historical events (medieval crusades, royal wisdom, and early modern idea of tolerance), examines some philosophical and theological narratives (John of Paris, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle, Leibniz, Montesquieu, Toqueville), and deciphers some rites (royal coronations) and representations (the Holy Crown, royal banquets, royal coats of arms).

The Future of Illusion

The Future of Illusion PDF Author: Victoria Kahn
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226083872
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In recent years, the rise of fundamentalism and a related turn to religion in the humanities have led to a powerful resurgence of interest in the problem of political theology. In a critique of this contemporary fascination with the theological underpinnings of modern politics, Victoria Kahn proposes a return to secularism—whose origins she locates in the art, literature, and political theory of the early modern period—and argues in defense of literature and art as a force for secular liberal culture. Kahn draws on theorists such as Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt and their readings of Shakespeare, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Spinoza to illustrate that the dialogue between these modern and early modern figures can help us rethink the contemporary problem of political theology. Twentieth-century critics, she shows, saw the early modern period as a break from the older form of political theology that entailed the theological legitimization of the state. Rather, the period signaled a new emphasis on a secular notion of human agency and a new preoccupation with the ways art and fiction intersected the terrain of religion.

Politics and Eternity: Studies in the History of Medieval and Early-Modern Political Thought

Politics and Eternity: Studies in the History of Medieval and Early-Modern Political Thought PDF Author: Francis Oakley
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004452745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
This book is composed of a series of studies in the history of political thought from late antiquity to the early-eighteenth century. They range broadly across theories of kingship, political theology, constitutional ideas, natural-law thinking, and consent theory.

The Mosaic Constitution

The Mosaic Constitution PDF Author: Graham Hammill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226315428
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
It is a common belief that scripture has no place in modern, secular politics. Graham Hammill challenges this notion in The Mosaic Constitution, arguing that Moses’s constitution of Israel, which created people bound by the rule of law, was central to early modern writings about government and state. Hammill shows how political writers from Machiavelli to Spinoza drew on Mosaic narrative to imagine constitutional forms of government. At the same time, literary writers like Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, and John Milton turned to Hebrew scripture to probe such fundamental divisions as those between populace and multitude, citizenship and race, and obedience and individual choice. As these writers used biblical narrative to fuse politics with the creative resources of language, Mosaic narrative also gave them a means for exploring divine authority as a product of literary imagination. The first book to place Hebrew scripture at the cutting edge of seventeenth-century literary and political innovation, The Mosaic Constitution offers a fresh perspective on political theology and the relations between literary representation and the founding of political communities.

Political Theology

Political Theology PDF Author: Carl Schmitt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226738901
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Written in the intense political and intellectual tumult of the early years of the Weimar Republic, Political Theology develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that made Carl Schmitt one of the most significant and controversial political theorists of the twentieth century. Focusing on the relationships among political leadership, the norms of the legal order, and the state of political emergency, Schmitt argues in Political Theology that legal order ultimately rests upon the decisions of the sovereign. According to Schmitt, only the sovereign can meet the needs of an "exceptional" time and transcend legal order so that order can then be reestablished. Convinced that the state is governed by the ever-present possibility of conflict, Schmitt theorizes that the state exists only to maintain its integrity in order to ensure order and stability. Suggesting that all concepts of modern political thought are secularized theological concepts, Schmitt concludes Political Theology with a critique of liberalism and its attempt to depoliticize political thought by avoiding fundamental political decisions.

Race and Political Theology

Race and Political Theology PDF Author: Vincent Lloyd
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804781834
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In this volume, senior scholars come together to explore how Jewish and African American experiences can make us think differently about the nexus of religion and politics, or political theology. Some wrestle with historical figures, such as William Shakespeare, W. E. B. Du Bois, Nazi journalist Wilhelm Stapel, and Austrian historian Otto Brunner. Others ponder what political theology can contribute to contemporary politics, particularly relating to Israel's complicated religious/racial/national identity and to the religious currents in African American politics. Race and Political Theology opens novel avenues for research in intellectual history, religious studies, political theory, and cultural studies, showing how timely questions about religion and politics must be reframed when race is taken into account.

The Theological Origins of Modernity

The Theological Origins of Modernity PDF Author: Michael Allen Gillespie
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1459606124
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 762

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Book Description
Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life- and that they did so not out of hostility but in order to sustain certain religious beliefs. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as the result of a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology.

Political Theology and Early Modernity

Political Theology and Early Modernity PDF Author: Graham Hammill
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226314995
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Political theology is a distinctly modern problem, one that takes shape in some of the most important theoretical writings of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But its origins stem from the early modern period, in medieval iconographies of sacred kinship and the critique of traditional sovereignty mounted by Hobbes and Spinoza. In this book, Graham Hammill and Julia Reinhard Lupton assemble established and emerging scholars in early modern studies to examine the role played by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature and thought in modern conceptions of political theology. Political Theology and Early Modernity explores texts by Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Milton, and others that have served as points of departure for such thinkers as Schmitt, Strauss, Benjamin, and Arendt. Written from a spectrum of positions ranging from renewed defenses of secularism to attempts to reconceive the religious character of collective life and literary experience, these essays probe moments of productive conflict, disavowal, and entanglement in politics and religion as they pass between early modern and modern scenes of thought. This stimulating collection is the first to answer not only how Renaissance and baroque literature help explain the persistence of political theology in modernity and postmodernity, but also how the reemergence of political theology as an intellectual and political problem deepens our understanding of the early modern period.