Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

brill.nl/jph

Secularization, History, and Political Theology: The Hans Blumenberg and Carl Schmitt Debate
Celina Mara Bragagnolo
Stony Brook University cbragagn@ic.sunysb.edu

Abstract Considering the enormous outpouring of scholarly work on Schmitt over the last two decades, the absence of an adequate treatment in English of Schmitts concept of history and the problem of secularization is quite surprising. After all, it is Schmitt himself who claims that all human beings who plan and attempt to unite the masses behind their plans engage in some form of philosophy of history, such that the attempt to make sense of Schmitts program remains incomplete without a serious treatment of his philosophy of history. This article is an attempt to address this problem by means of his exchange with Hans Blumenberg who, more than any other critic of Schmitt, was privy to the political intentions behind Schmitts metaphorical use of theology. While their discussion is extensive and wide-ranging, I focus here on their diverging philosophies of history, precisely that aspect that is most relevant to gaining a more expansive understanding of Schmitts arguments, and indeed the relationship between political thought and historical thought. Keywords political theology, secularization, Carl Schmitt, Hans Blumenberg

To construct a philosophy of history is a thing quite dierent from making history. We might well make it as we please, even as we try to cover over that fact, and declare our construction to be determined precisely by circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.1 In
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in Selected Writings, (Indianapolis, Hackett, 1994), 188.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/187226311X555473
1)

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

85

some sense, this is the nature of Carl Schmitts philosophy of history. As theorists, we all like to claim that: we can do no other. Worse than being able to do no other, however, is nding that we do what we do in pursuit of untenable political goals. Considering the enormous outpouring of scholarly work on Schmitt over the last two decades, the absence of an adequate treatment in English of Schmitts concept of history and the problem of secularization is quite surprising.2 This is not to say that the importance of Schmitts concept of history to his critique of liberalism has gone unnoticed; it is rather to claim that it has not received the systematic treatment demanded by its centrality. After all, it is Schmitt himself who claims that all human beings who plan and attempt to unite the masses behind their plans engage in some form of philosophy of history,3 such that the attempt to make sense of Schmitts program remains incomplete without a serious treatment of his philosophy of history. Readers of Schmitt limited to research in English have at their disposal some of the major works of Hans Blumberg who, more than any other critic of Schmitt, was privy to the political intentions behind Schmitts metaphorical use of theology. Blumenbergs rich correspondence with Schmitt, however, remains untranslated a fact which has delayed the longoverdue examination of his critique of Schmitt.4 While their discussion is extensive and wide-ranging, I focus here on their diverging philosophies of history, precisely that aspect that is most relevant to gaining a more expansive understanding of Schmitts arguments, and indeed the relationship between political thought and historical thought.
Until Charles Taylors, Our Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2008) the problem of secularization from any kind of philosophical perspective has been wanting in the Anglo-American literature in comparison with debates in France. For treatments of Blumenberg in particular see Jean-Claude Monod, La querelle de la secularization de Hegel Blumenberg, (Paris: Vrin, 2002) as well as his Hans Blumenberg, (Paris:Belin, 2007). 3) Carl Schmitt, Three Possibilities for a Christian Conception of History, M. Wenig, (trans.) Telos, 147 (Summer 2009), 167. 4) There are two exceptions to this. Hans-Werner Mller treated the Blumenberg-Schmitt debate hurriedly in A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-war European Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). See also Oliver Mller, Beyond the Political: Hans Blumenbergs Criticism of Carl Schmitt in Svetozar Minkov and Piotr Nowak (Hg.): Man and his enemies. Essays on Carl Schmitt. (University of Bialystok Press: 2008). This is the only article in English that makes reference to the Briefwechsel.
2)

86

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

Blumenberg argues that the exigency of the moment that Schmitt seeks is founded upon a historical substantialism that, in Schmitts own words, insert[s] the eternal into the course of time.5 Blumenbergs project is to fend o this substantialism and the specter of decisionism it represents by appeal to a narrative of historical self-consciousness. While he concedes to Schmitt that there have been persistent attempts throughout modernity to reintroduce the absolute into the political order, he denies the necessity of the reoccupation of the void left by religion by an immanent absolutism. Schmitts political theological project is thus unmasked as an attempt to cover over its conscious and active eorts at retheologizing history and politics with the cloak of necessity. This I take to be one of the valuable lessons of Blumenbergs critique. I lay the groundwork for Blumenbergs critique in section one, where I focus on his account of modern historical self-consciousness. In section two, I undertake a critical examination of the Gnostic conception of history developed by Schmitt in his rst response to Blumenberg. This proves fundamental to understanding Schmitts concept of the political as a dualistic, ahistorical and transcendental order, an order left unscathed by the Enlightenment and Bourgeois revolutions. I then conclude with the question of Schmitt as a political actor, and the diagnosis of his intentions as presented by Blumenberg.

I. Historical Substantialism versus the Historicity of Reason: Two Conceptions of History in Blumenbergs The Legitimacy of the Modern Age The Legitimacy of the Modern Age was published in 1966 as a response to Karl Lwiths Meaning in History, a book which described modern philosophical consciousness, in particular the idea of progress, as a product of the secularization of Christian ideas.6 Part one of LMA, dealt not only with Lwiths secularization thesis but also with a wide variety of instantiations
5) 6)

Schmitt,Three Possibilities, 170. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, R. Wallace (trans.), (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1983). The English translation is based on the revised edition which came out in three volumes in 1973, 1974 and 1976. Hereafter LMA. Karl Lwith, Meaning and History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

87

of the thesis, including Schmitts which claimed that all signicant (prgnanten) concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.7 Blumenbergs line of attack here was to depict all secularization theses as forms of historical substantialism reminiscent of a Platonism committed to the original property in ideas theory. It was Blumenbergs view, furthermore, that the secularization thesis presupposes a theological conception of history which is not transparent to theory itself. Contrary to Christian Platonism, the modern age produced the axiom that the legitimate ownership of ideas can be derived only from their authentic production.8 Under the self-assertion of reason, the selfinherence of truth is guaranteed by its self-generation which is available to all rational subjects by carrying out the work of knowledge.9 What distinguishes the modern age is precisely the attempt to ground knowledge not on a divine intervention but on the basis of a self-assertion expressed in the idea of method which is potentially available for anyone to carry out. For Blumenberg, the theological element in the concept of secularization is thus unavailable to our historical understanding. This is what ultimately undermines the critical standpoint of secularization theorists. The sort of philosophy of history that makes use of secularization as an explanation of history involves itself in the contradiction that it excludes its own tool (the secularization thesis) from the rational criticism that it assigns to itself as the characteristic of its historical standpoint.10 Blumenbergs explanation of why the modern state does in fact display absolutist elements is realized by means of an account of the development of the modern state as an unnished product of modernity. In his view, the absolute state displayed both, a self-assertive moment (its founding out of the rationality of a contract) while still containing pre-modern elements (remnants of theological absolutism). While Schmitt takes the state of the ius publicum Europaeum to be a nished product of Western rationalism, Blumenberg takes it to be an unnished product of modernity, the absolute
7) Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 36. Politische Theologie, (Mnchen: Dunker & Humblot, 1922), 35. 8) Blumenberg, LMA, 29. 9) Blumenberg, LMA, 73. 10) Elizabeth Brient, The Immanence of the Innite: Hans Blumenberg and the Threshold to Modernity (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 24.

88

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

state being a short-lived interlude within history.11 Perhaps it was the bleakness of the times that led Blumenberg to the prediction that the Cold War was the ultimate conict of the experiment of absolute authorities.12 In his view, the concept of the absolute state is a reoccupation of an answer position absoluteness. The absolute state took on the function of theological absolutism and served only to bring the cause of political absolutism into the sphere of what was familiar and sanctioned and hence to be accepted fatalistically.13 Perhaps, Blumenberg suggests, a new form of cosmopolitanism is in order, one which does away with the primacy of the political and the sense of peril to which states and citizens are constantly exposed.14 The rest of LMA traces the proper development of modern consciousness and culture out of the contradictions of late medieval Christian conceptions of the cosmos and our relation to it; contradictions that were unsolvable within the Christian framework. The shift in attitude from contemplation to self-assertion means that the question about the fundamental grounding of our knowledge can be ignored because all that we have available to us are rhetorical transactions, in the vocabulary that Blumenberg picks up later, that help us come to terms with the provisionality of reason.15 It is not within the scope of this paper to oer a critique of Blumenbergs concept of rationality and historical self-consciousness. Needless to say, the functionalist account underlying these concepts provides little in terms of a normative framework by which to chose or reject among a variety of cultural and political institutions.16 The point here is to provide an outline of Blumenbergs characterization and critique of any kind of secularization thesis which is based on an ontology of substance such as Lwiths and Schmitts. Blumenbergs rst attempt at a refutation of Schmitt ended
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology. (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008), 117118. Blumenberg, LMA, 91. 12) Blumenberg, LMA, 91. 13) Blumenberg, LMA, 90. 14) Blumenberg, LMA, 91. 15) Hans Blumenberg, An Anthropological Approach to the Contemporary Signicance of Rhetoric in Ken Baynes, J. Bohman and T. McCarthy, (eds.) After Philosophy: End or Transformation? (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), 452. 16) For a classic critique of Blumenberg along these lines see Robert Pippin. Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
11)

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

89

here. From here on, their debate never shifted ground; Blumenberg holding fast to a conception of historical consciousness that in its attempt to break away from absolutism makes use of non-totalizing and nonessentialist discursive practices and Schmitt who, working from the opposite tendency, never let go of the exigency of absolutism whether it be in immanent or transcendent form.

2. Schmitts Theological Grounding of the Political: Gnosticism as Absolute Politics Blumenberg conceded in a letter to Schmitt that out of all the criticisms LMA received, Schmitts was the one that unsettled him (innerviert) the most.17 Schmitts rst and most scathing response to LMA came in a postscript to his 1970 Political Theology II. Here he began by protesting Blumenbergs generalizing mixture of his secularization thesis with all sorts of confused parallels between religious, eschatological and political ideas.18 Before getting to Schmitts postscript, however, let me contextualize it by giving a broad overview of Political Theology II since Schmitts exposure of Blumenberg as a closet political theologian follows the same logic as his indictment of Erick Peterson. As Schmitt confesses, Political Theology II is, rst and foremost, a reply to Erick Peterson in an attempt to settle old scores.19 Petersons 1935 Monotheism as a Political Problem, claimed to refute the possibility of a political theology based on two reasons. First, political theology is incapable of accounting for the Christian trinity since it has no corresponding institutional example on earth.20 Secondly, political theologies fail to
Blumenberg to Schmitt, 3/24/1971 in Hans Blumenberg, Carl Schmitt. Briefwechsel 19711978 (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp 2007), 105. 18) Schmitt, Political Theology, 117. Blumenberg would later say in a letter that his generalizing mixture has to do with the method by which he criticizes positions. Here, he makes use of gewisse Formulierungshilfen in order to pin down the general intention of the various positions on an issue. Letter to Carl Schmitt, 24/3/1971 in Briefwechsel, pp. 105106. 19) A comment made by Hans Barion in a study on the Second Vatican Council published in a Festschrift dedicated to Schmitt, provoked Schmitt to recall an old challenge and to rip the Parthian arrow from the wound. Political Theology II, 32. 20) Erik Peterson, El monotesmo como problema politico, Agustn Andreu (trans.), (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 1999).
17)

90

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

properly understand the role of the church in the history of salvation. Here Peterson makes use of Augustines teaching of the two kingdoms and the discontinuity between the church and the Roman Empire. Underlying Petersons treatise is the idea of a pure theology based on an Augustinean eschatological understanding of time. The kingdom of god cannot be identied with any secular empire, thus heavenly and earthly matters (politics) remain distinct. Petersons critique found widespread acceptance in the aftermath of the war since it ruptured the connection between religion and politics. During the Nazi regime many Catholic and Protestant theologians had attempted to legitimize the partys power in the name of Christ.21 Secondly, Political Theology II is an intervention in the aftermath discussion of Vatican II where a new wave of political theology from the left pushed for more progressive involvement of theology in social issues. Schmitt did not question the ability of theology to intervene in social and political issues. For Schmitt at issue were the political goals of such intervention; whether they were progressive or conservative, whether they fostered democracy or authority.22 One of the ways in which Political Theology II diers from Political Theology is that here Schmitt attempts to theologically ground the friend-enemy distinction. For many, this provides Schmitts concept of the political with a theological grounding missing in his early Weimar period writings and proves that Schmitts theological claims have to be taken seriously.23 Taking a closer look, however, it becomes evident that in Political Theology II, Schmitt makes use of theological vocabulary as a tool for the grounding of the political and that little of his concept of the political derives from theological dogma. In other words, the primacy of the political over other spheres (the economy, aesthetics, or theology) is still operative in Political Theology II. Theology here is subsumed under the imperatives of the politM. Hoelzl and G. Ward, Editors Introduction to Political Theology II, 9; Peter Hohendal, Political Theology Revisited: Carl Schmitts Postwar Reassessment, in Konturen 1 (2008), 3. 22) Hohendal, Political Theology Revisited, 4, 8, 11. 23) See M. Hoelzl and G. Ward in the Editors Introduction to Political Theology II; Alfonso Galindo Hervs, Autonoma o secularizacin? Un falso dilemma sobre la poltica moderna in Reyes Mate, (ed.) Nuevas teologas polticas: Pablo de Tarso en la construccin del Occidente, (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2006). Hohendal waivers between interpreting Schmitts concept of the political as theologically grounded and understanding his use of theology as being in the service of the friend-enemy distinction. See Hohendal, Political Theology Revisited.
21)

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

91

ical, not the other way around. This further puts into relief Schmitts ontological grounding of the political as the constitutive basis for struggle in other areas. This ontological grounding lends authority to decisions that result from confrontation, a grounding that would upset modernitys postmetaphysical and post-ontological orientation. How does all this play out in Political Theology II ?? Schmitts belated response to Peterson in Political Theology II raises two points which bring us back, full circle, to his concept of the political as outlined in his earlier Weimar period. 1) First he rearms the historic and political mission of the Church rst broached in Roman Catholicism and Political Form.24 Against Augustines distinction between the two cities and his characterization of Christianity as spiritual rather than political, Schmitt evaluates the role of the Holy Roman Empire in light of the eschatological expectations of the early Church. In Schmitts eschatological view of history, the Roman Empire is a power which delays the coming of the Antichrist at the end of history. Throughout Political Theology II as well as in his correspondence with Blumenberg, Schmitt frequently makes use of the gure of the Katechon as that person or power which delays, or restrains history.25 While Petersons strict eschatological interpretation of history devalues history, the work of the Katechon, in this case the Roman Empire, gives history meaning by establishing a political order in the face of chaos. The theological immerses itself in the political once it begins to occupy the public space of the church. As Schmitt argues, The church of Christ is not of this world and its history, but it is in this world. That means: it is localised and opens up a space; and space here means impermeability, visibility and the public sphere.26 While Peterson wanted to restrict the inuence of the church, Schmitt endeavored to extend it.27 In Schmitts argument, political theology is not derived from theological dogma. On the contrary, for him, anything that is engaged with human aairs, in this
Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, G. Ulmen (trans.), (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996). 25) Katechon is a biblical concept/gure which appears in Paul (2 Thessalonians 2: 67). According to one letter, the question of the Katechon is the ultimate problem (Kernfrage) of his political theology. Letter to Blumenberg, 10/20/1974, Briefwechsel, 120. 26) Schmitt, Political Theology II, 65. 27) This is Schmitt interpretation of Petersons text. For a reading of Schmitts misinterpretation of Petersons account of the proper role of the church see Gerby, Political Theology versus Theological Politics, 26.
24)

92

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

world, regardless of its self-conception must necessarily be political: [t]he mere fact that a theological argument extends into the realm of praxis makes it political.28 Clearly, the political maintains its autonomy vis-a-vis theology. 2) Schmitts second objection towards Peterson also takes us back to his formulation of the concept of the political outlined during the Weimar period. Against Petersons argument that a political theology is impossible since the Christian trinity cannot be translated into rule by one Monarch Schmitt rearms the friend-enemy distinction as the essence of the political when he provides a Gnostic interpretation to the trinity.29 Schmitts Gnostic interpretation pits a godly Christ against a human Christ at the same time that it provides a concept of human nature as inherently evil. The doctrine of the Trinity accommodates the identity of the God of creation as the God of salvation through the unity between Father and Son . . . Thereby a dualism of two natures, God-human, becomes a unity in the second person.30 The unity of God thus includes the hostility between God the father and God the son and therefore, the possibility of uproar. It is the states function, as Katechon, to contain the implications of this continuous stasis (civil war, political unrest).31 Schmitts Gnostic interpretation of the trinity also serves to ground his belief in the fundamental enmity between humans theologically so as to legitimate the function of the politHohendal, Political Theology Revisited, 10. As Schmitt indicates, The main structural problem with Gnostic dualism, that is, with the problem of the God of creation and the God of salvation, dominates not only every religion of salvation and redemption. It exists inescapably in every world in need of change and renewal, and is both immanent and ineradicable. Political Theology II, 125. 30) Schmitt, Political Theology II, 124. One could also take Schmitts argument here as directed against Hobbes account of the Trinity in the Leviathan. Hobbes understanding of the Trinity as a series of representations of God by articial persons such as Moses, Jesus, and the Apostles, is crucial to his construction of the concept of the Sovereign as an oce which dierent, replaceable persons can occupy in their representation of the people. Schmitts distinction between liberal representation (Vertretung) as against a more substantive form of representation (reprsentieren) was of crucial concern to him beginning with the book Roman Catholicism and Political Form, G. L. Ulmen, trans., (Greenwood Press, 1996). For an analysis of the importance of Hobbes Trinity for the construction of a peaceful and secure political community see Jonothan J. Edwards, Calvin and Hobbes: Trinity, Authority, and Community in Philosophy and Rhetoric, 42 (2009): 116133. I thank one of the reviewers for this insight. 31) Schmitt, Political Theology II, 123.
29) 28)

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

93

ical sovereign. One cannot get rid of the enmity between human beings by prohibiting wars between states in the traditional sense, by advocating a world revolution and by transforming world politics into world policing.32 Although some interpret Schmitts Gnosticism as deviating from orthodox Catholic dogma into a private form of mythology or Gnosticism,33 I would argue that Schmitt is still working here with his early Weimar concept of the political as total. As Schmitt suggests, the trinity should be understood as partaking in the structure of the political, a structure which can also be detected in its entirely de-theologized counter-image. The reality of the enemy is present in the old political theology as much as it is the totally new, purely secular and humane humanity.34 Schmitts draws on the motto that prefaces Goethes fourth book of Dichtung und Warheit, nemo contra deum nisi dues ipse [no one is/can do anything against God except God himself ] in order to reinforce the discord inherent in every unity. Much of Schmitts assessment of Blumenbergian concepts such as self-assertion and self-empowerment arise out of what he thinks to be the modern ages blindness towards its inbuilt political theological constitution. Much of the debate surrounding Schmitts Gnostic interpretation of the trinity came through in his correspondence with Blumenberg. The Extraordinary Saying, as Goethes motto is oftentimes called, is of central concern beginning with their rst contact which was initiated by Blumenberg. In his rst letter Blumenberg lends the motto a polytheistic interpretation linking it to the gure of Prometheus.35 Goethes motto captures the general meaning of Polytheism as the separation of powers, its hindering of absolute power, and every religion as the feeling of the absolute impossibility of becoming independent of it.36 With this strategy, Blumenbergs critical analysis of myth from the anthropological standpoint in
Schmitt, Political Theology II, 125. Ruth Groh, Arbeit an der Heillosigkeit der Welt. Zur politisch-theologischen Mythologie Carl Schmitts, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998), cited in Hohendal, Political Theology Revisited, 19. For Hohendal, however, Schmitt does displays Gnostic ideas. Hohendal, 1920. 34) Schmitt, Political Theology II, 123. 35) Letter to Schmitt, 24/3/1971 in Briefwechsel, 105. See also letter to Schmitt, 7/8/1975, 133. 36) Letter to Schmitt, 7/8/1975, 133, my translation.
33) 32)

94

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

his Work on Myth is already foreshadowed.37 Blumenbergs anthropological turn can be taken as a programmatic rejection of political theology. At the heart of this project is Blumenbergs anthropogenesis, a story about how our primitive human ancestors were able to reduce the Angst provoked by the absolutism of reality by means of cultural symbolization, the paradigmatic form being myth. Polytheistic mythology succeeds in reducing Angst because each power works within a limited domain. Competing powers are balanced out resulting in a separation of powers, a restraint on absoluteness, the elimination of arbitrariness, and nally, to an overall mastery of the environment.38 As Blumenberg argues, myth rationalizes general, undened Angst into fear of specic and separate agencies that can be named and accounted for. Blumenberg extended his account of myth to include other forms of rationality that serve as a devices for coping in a world which for us lacks coherence, harmony and a unied conception of the good. Blumenberg labeled rhetoric all those forms of rationality whose objective is to establish, by means of a consensus, meaning where there is none.39 Lacking denitive evidence and being compelled to act are the prerequisits of the rhetorical situation.40 The opposite of this, for Blumenberg, results in a potentially violent decisionism. Consensus, in the absence of absolute truths, becomes an alternative to terror.41 One could say that the necessity of familiarizing oneself with the uncanny, with the absolutism of reality, as myth does, underlies Blumenbergs notion of self-assertion and his account of secularization in LMA. Gods absolute sovereignty grew more and more unwieldy throughout the advancement of the middle ages until it reached a stage where any salvageable notion of divine order was out of sight leaving humans disoriented
Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, Robert M. Wallace, trans. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985). 38) Myth is a way of expressing the fact that the world and the powers that hold sway in it are not abandoned to pure arbitrariness. However this may be signied, whether by a separation of powers or through a codication of competences or through a legalization of relationships, it is a system of the elimination of arbitrariness. Work On Myth, 4243. 39) Blumenberg, An Anthropological Approach. 40) Blumenberg, An Anthropological Approach, 441. 41) To see oneself in the perspective of rhetoric means to be conscious both of being compelled to act and of the lack of norms in a nite situation. Everything that is not force here goes over to the side of rhetoric, and rhetoric implies the renunciation of force. Blumenberg, An Anthropological Approach, 437.
37)

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

95

and at their own mercy. The idea of Gods absoluteness run wild gave way to the modern ages self-assertion with its inbuilt disposition towards self-preservation.42 While the guiding principle of Gnosticism is the notion of das Fremde the strange, the foreign, the other, the uncanny,43 the secularizing impulse could be understood as its opposite. Gnosticism privileged Entweltlichung, literally a deworldlication, an evacuation or making-absent from the world . . . Against Gnostic Entweltlichung, to secularize involves a Verweltlichung, a making-of-this-world.44 As one reading suggests, Blumenbergs LMA could be read as the attempt at a third overcoming of Gnosticism, modernity constituting its second overcoming.45 Indeed, Gnostic thought had made a return in early Weimar culture; in particular it had made a strong resurgence in theology. Barths theology of krisis, for example, centered around the rejection of human centered solutions to the historical situation of post World War I Europe establishing an absolute dichotomy between the divine and the profane.46 Needless to say,
In his typically functionalist approach, Blumenberg notes that what he then described as reoccupation is nothing other than a rhetorical transaction: In our traditions system of the explanation of reality there is a position for this historical subject, a position to which vacancy and occupation refer. The accomplishment and establishment of the reoccupation are rhetorical acts. An Anthropological Approach, 451. Blumenberg recalls the old rhetorical gure of translatio imperii [the transfer of power] as the act by which the historical subject is determined and legitimized. What goes on under reoccupation is the bertragung, the carrying over of metaphorical functions. The link between LMA and his work on myth can be further extended in that myth, in contrast to someone like Cassirer is treated as something fully and radically historical. There are no archetypal images, gures or species-specic rhetorical devices as in Cassirers account of myth.The following quote from Pippin illustrates Blumenbergs non-essentialist approach to myth: What we take up, use, alter, and expand in some standard narrative always represents a working out of a historically particular version of the fears and anxieties Blumenberg has identied as unavoidable in human experience. Pippin, 291. 43) Benjamin Lazier, Overcoming Gnosticism: Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg and the Legitimacy of the Natural World in Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), 619. 44) Benjamin Lazier, Overcoming Gnosticism, 623. 45) Benjamin Lazier, Overcoming Gnosticism, 620. It seems more plausible to think of Legitimacy as a monumental but occulted response to the crisis theologians of the 1920s, and to eschatological crisis though more generally. 624. Lazier goes on to note an addition Blumenberg made in the second edition of LMA in which he implicitly makes reference to crisis theologians such as Barth. See LMA, 5, cited in Lazier, 624. 46) Douglas J. Cremer, Protestant Theology in Early Weimar Theology: Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann in Journal of the History of Ideas, 56, No.2 (1995), 294.
42)

96

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

gnosis, as a type of knowledge dependent on revelation issued from a transcendent source went counter to the system of knowledge particular to the modern age as defended by Blumenberg. As I argued above, Blumenbergs critique of the secularization thesis focuses on a critique of historical explanations predicated on a continuity of substance. For Blumenberg, the modern age derives its radicalness from divorcing human existence from nature and the cosmos, or in Blumenbergs anthropological term the absoluteness of reality (realms to which we have no natural connection) and ties it to the capacity to create a life world (as our brief description of myth shows). One could say that the rejection of absolutism, in either of its theological or political variants, is Blumenbergs Lebensthema.47 This is why Blumenberg had such a strong reaction to Schmitts Gnosticism and his political theology in general. Dened by the friend-enemy distinction, political theology deals in unmediated absolutes and thus cannot aord consensus or the endlessness of the type of discursive rationality characteristic of the modern age hence Schmitts distaste for Parliamentarism, the institutional form of rhetoric par excellance.

3. The Political as the Total: Schmitts Political Use of Theology But perhaps more important for Schmitt is that Peterson, insofar as he claimed to bring to an end a political question (the possibility of political theology) is intervening in a political issue. For Schmitt, a theology which
47) Alexander Schmitz und Marcel Lepper, Nachwort in Hans Blumenberg, Carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel, 305. A quote from Blumenbergs essay Political Theology III neatly summarizes this position: If anthropogenesis has already become itself the crisis of all crises, because it made the non-extinction of humans into a biological inconsequence of evolution, then it is at the same time the cultivation of the conditions of life which earns the title of an absolutism, and this in the most general and theologically unspecied sense: that of an absolutism of reality itself. Humans, escaped from a situation of the near impossibility of life, had the absolute animosity of nature directly behind them, but so close behind them that they always had to survive under actually inhospitable, or selectively hospitable conditions. Whichever absolutisms humans might have created over the course of their history, this at their origin was not to be overcome. All others [absolutisms] stand rather in the service of its overcoming. The creature that came into being was a master in dealing with the absolute in its always already depotentiated forms. Politische Theologie III in Hans Blumenberg/Carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel 19711978 und weitere Materialen, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2007, 171. My translation.

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

97

takes itself to be separate from politics (such as Petersons) is in itself a political intervention. Here we can detect the basis of Reinhart Kosellecks critique of the Enlightenment bourgeoisie as hypocritical in that this class either refused or did not recognize their quest for political power at the same time that they were engaged in repressing the political realm.48 The Bourgeoisies positioning of itself within the moral realm as against the political realm served, Koselleck argues, to enhance their claim to domination.49 Similarly as regards Petersons thesis,
The theologian can reasonably declare the closure of issues of political signicance only by establishing himself as a political voice which makes political claims . . . The statement political monotheism is theologically brought to an end implies the theologians claim to the right of making decisions in the political sphere too, and his demand for authority over the political power. This claim becomes politically more intense along with the degree to which theological authority claims to supersede political power.50

Of course, this seems to be one of Schmitts favorite tactics to accuse his opponent of being a political theologian in disguise. Schmitt even ends his Political Theology by accusing Bakunin of being the theologian of the antitheological and the dictator of an anti-dictatorship.51 Bakunins anarchy faces authority as its negation. Schmitt sees both positions as absolutes one decides for the decision, the other decides against the decision; hence, for Schmitt, Bakunins decisionism. In Political Theology II, Schmitt extends the same kind of accusation towards Blumenberg. After having shown Petersons theological closure of political theology to be incorrect, Schmitt directs his eorts at Blumenbergs scientic closure of political theology. Blumenbergs was the latest and most recognized account of all matters pertaining to the historical development of modernity. While Schmitts attempt to refute Peterson remained within the horizon of Hellenistic
48)

Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 12. I thank one of the article reviewers for reminding me of this relationship. 49) Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, 61. 50) Schmitt, Political Theology II, 113. This is identical to Schmitts claim in Political Theology, that those who claim theyre unpolitical are being political because the political is the total. 2. 51) Schmitt, Political Theology, 66.

98

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

philosophy, Schmitt would confront the closure of political theology in the contemporary, secular horizon by means of a critique of Blumenberg. Schmitts tactic here is to expose the modern phenomenon of selfassertion outlined in LMA as a decisionistic force of creation ex nihilo it is the creation of nothingness as the condition for the possibility of the self-creation of an ever new worldliness52 and whats more as a vehicle for that which is radically aggressive.53 The modern age is nothing but a theology turned inwards. The modern ages foundation, as well as its practices, presuppose a form of sovereign decision-making since by its nature Knowledge does not need any justication, it justies itself . . . Its immanence, directed polemically against a theological transcendence, is nothing but self-empowerment.54 We can begin to see here the relation between the concepts of the political and political theology. Political theology, in this context, is an attempt to hide the decisionistic core of modern selfassertion. Self-assertion occupies the same structural position God does in theology. This position is none other than sovereignty.55 Political Theology II thus rearms Schmitts illiberal and anti-modern reaction towards the Western process of secularization and its claim to produce legitimacy through the generation of its own epistemic standards. He condemns the modern ages mechanistic nature while exposing, at the same time, the political (i.e., transcendent) element underlying it. If one were to narrow down on Schmitts conception of secularization, one would have to say that secularization is for him the transguration of divine power into the immanent transcendental subject.
When a god creates the world from nothing, he then transforms nothingness into something utterly astonishing, namely something out of which a world can be created. Today, we dont even need a god for this any longer. Selfexpression, self-armation and self-empowerment one of the many phrases prexed by self , a so-called auto-composition are enough to allow a new and unforeseen world to emerge. These new worlds produce themselves and,

Schmitt, Political Theology II, 129. Schmitt, Political Theology II, 120. 54) Schmitt, Political Theology II, 120. 55) Here I rely on Andrew Norris reading in Carl Schmitts Political Metaphysics: On the Secularization of the Outermost Sphere, Theory and Event 4, no. 1 (Summer 2000), 272295.
53)

52)

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

99

moreover, they produce the conditions for their own possibility at least those articial laboratory conditions.56

Secularization did not change the (politico-theological) structure of the world, it made it less visible. For Schmitt, however, this new transgured subject is an aggressive negation of what precedes it. In a highly sarcastic passage towards the end, Schmitt portrays Blumenbergs self-assertive modern subject as an aggressive, divinely self-produced God whose new science (which is really a new theology) expresses human freedom as a product of neutrality, use and objectivity. As Schmitt warns us, the new, secular world originated through an aggressive negation of the old. Thus, the reality of the enemy is still present in the secular, de-theologized world. The transposition of the enemy from the old political theology into a pretentious and totally new, purely secular and humane humanity needs to be watched closely and critically, for it remains indeed the permanent function [Ocium] of any scientic struggle for knowledge.57 Political Theology II follows thus in the footsteps of the early The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations, an essay where Schmitt showed how European history developed according to shifts in central intellectual domains leading to the current age of economic technicity whose center is still shrouded in a magical religiosity.58 For Schmitt, however, almost any kind of epistemic stance or attitude is considered to be a form of decision and a decision, furthermore, is always raised against some other decision. Schmitts use of the concept of political theology is not used to expose political theories that contain theological arguments or ideas. The gures he attempts to expose make no use of theology or, in the case of Bakunin and Blumenberg, outright reject it. Under Schmitts concept of the political as the total, one cannot decline to take a side. Neutrality is impossible and whoever disagrees with this claim only attempts to disguise their decision.

Schmitt, Political Theology II, 34. Schmitt, Political Theology II, 128. For an excellent paper that explains why Blumenbergs concept of self-assertion is not a form of Nietzschean will to power see Lazier, Overcoming Gnosticism, 636. 58) Carl Schmitt, The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations, in The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 85.
57)

56)

100

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

The revision of LMA appeared in three volumes in 1973, 1974, and 1976.59 For Blumenberg this was an attempt to answer criticisms expressed in the substantial number of reviews the text received. Despite what may seem as a harsh and uncharitable criticism on Schmitts part, Blumenberg took his criticisms earnestly and even initiated what would turn out to be a seven-year intellectual exchange via letter. As Blumenberg notes in one letter, Schmitts was the only response that bothered (innerviert) him. Those few pages in Political Theology II impelled Blumenberg to substantively revise his understanding of Schmitts secularization thesis as well as sharpen his concept of self-assertion.60 Blumenbergs reevaluation of Schmitts secularization thesis rst reassesses the structural element in Schmitts secularization thesis and the conceptualization of the primacy of politics over other spheres of life, including theology.61 Blumenberg wonders why Schmitt made use of the secularization nexus at all, since, in view of the intention behind his political theology, his thesis establishes the reverse relation of derivation. As Blumenberg rightly notes, what Schmitts thesis establishes is the absolute quality of political realities, not a theological derivation of political concepts in the process of history. In order to underscore the primacy of politics, Schmitt makes recourse to the sanctioned vocabulary of theology making of the sacred vocabulary a mere means to underscore and clarify the exigencies that the idea of the political is meant to conjure.62 Yet, for Blumenberg, the fact that the modern constitutional state displays moments of sovereignty moments where political exigency indeed obscures the normal functioning of the law does not mean that we are forced to go back to the medieval Christian political constellation and repeat its concepts and ideas in secularized form in order to give an account of it. Just because the absolute state shares the attribute of omnipotence with God, it cannot be implied that one is derived from the other. What
See note 6. Blumenberg to Schmitt. 9/10/1974, Briefwechsel, p 105. In LMA, Blumenberg calls Schmitts version of the secularization thesis the strongest version. LMA, 92. 61) I use structural here as opposed to historical following Andrew Norris reading of Schmitts secularization thesis. Under his reading, secularization refers to the structural parallel between political and Christian concepts, in contradistinction to the historical relation of inuence. Norris, Carl Schmitts Political Metaphysics. 62) Blumenberg, LMA, 92.
60) 59)

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

101

Schmitts secularization thesis does is make something visible the structural analogy between god and sovereignty but it does not entail that one structure is derived from the other or that they both are derived from a third prototype. For Blumenberg, what really lies behind Schmitts secularization thesis is a dualistic typology of situations. Here two concepts such as political authority and the omnipotence of god are structurally comparable only in terms of a coordination of positions within a systematic context. This is not, he argues, enough to warrant the characterization of political theory as political theology.63 So what is at the bottom of Schmitts secularization thesis? As Blumenberg suggests, Schmitts decisionistic conception of the state is not the secularization of a theological creation ex nihilo but a skillful metaphorical interpretation of revolutionary starting points. Much like the revolutions of 1848, which made their historical appearance in disguise, as Marx informed us in his Eighteenth Brumaire, Schmitts approach consists in employing the old language, rhetoric and costume in order to establish historical continuity. According to Blumenberg, the choice of linguistic means is not determined by the system of what is available for borrowing but rather by the requirements of the situation in which the choice is being made.64 As a result, what underlies the phenomena of linguistic secularization cannot be an extensively demonstrable recourse to theology as such; rather it is a choice of elements from the selective point of view of the immediate need, in each case, for background and pathos.65 As Blumenberg sees it, Schmitts political theology could be understood as a set of metaphors, as a particular rhetoric, which says more about the immediate present than about the origins of these metaphors and rhetoric. But the use of old ideas and metaphors for the purposes of increasing legitimacy is not the only explanation behind their recurrence. As Blumenberg attempts to highlight throughout Part I, the persistence of theological language in the modern age can also be interpretable within the same framework of functions and reoccupations. Linguistic constancy goes hand in hand with the reoccupation of systematic functions. When an interpretive framework loses its ability to orient human beings in a meaningful way a new context of meaning comes into play which, in the process,
63) 64) 65)

Blumenberg, LMA, 94. Blumenberg, LMA, 93. Blumenberg, LMA, 94.

102

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

utilizes for its own purposes the old frameworks sanctioned status as something that is beyond questioning.66 For Blumenberg, this is particularly evident for the new political theory. At yet other times the appropriation of old language and expressions for a new form of thinking is due simply to a deciency in language and the diculty, for lack of new concepts, of constructing a new secular terminology.67 Evidence for this sort of diculty can be found in Ciceros plight to translate Greek philosophy into Latin. At the modern threshold, persistence of the old language creates the appearance of secularization but it is, nevertheless, the result of the reoccupation of answer positions.68 As Blumenberg states, there is nothing in which language is more productive than in the formulation of claims in the realm of the intangible.69 The use of religious language thus cannot be mechanically ascribed to a transguration of sacred concepts. This is the case, especially for Schmitts critique which, as Blumenberg insists, is a critique of modernity which selectively makes use of charged language in order to conjure an exigency that would otherwise be hard to convey. Ultimately, for Blumenberg, Schmitts secularization thesis is a means to nd legitimacy for a sovereign dictator. In a move reminiscent of Hegel, Schmitt deduces the necessary existence of an absolute willing person (or sovereign) from the necessary existence of an absolute will, although for Hegel, legitimacy does not come by means of an implant from the Christian tradition but rather from a rational consolidation that lls the abstract with concrete contents.70 Without the ontological deduction of the existence of the sovereign Schmitt would have to nd legitimacy elsewhere.71 Thus arises Schmitts need for the kind of secularization spelled out in Political Theology. Particularly, Blumenberg notes, Schmitts secularization thesis requires a special concept of the person in order to ll the position of the highest decision-maker. This person can only be thought of in a
Blumenberg, LMA, 78. Blumenberg, LMA, 78. 68) Blumenberg, LMA, 86. 69) Blumenberg, LMA, 86. 70) Blumenberg, LMA, 100. 71) Blumenberg, LMA, 100. Obviously, as Blumenberg rightly notes, this is not a form of argument that Schmitt attempts to imitate if only because absolutism of sovereignty prohibits arguments even about its concept . . . Quoting Schmitt: About a concept as such there will in general be no dispute, least of all in the history of sovereignty. LMA, 100101.
67) 66)

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

103

metaphorical sense because the person of the sovereign needs to be vested with legitimacy. A person in the literal sense will not do. In Blumenbergs view,
Political theology is a metaphorical theology: the quasi-divine person of the sovereign possesses legitimacy, and has to possess it, because for him there is no longer legality, or not yet, since he has rst to constitute or to reconstitute it. The enviable position in which the political theologian places himself by means of his assertion of secularization consists in the fact that he nds his stock of images ready to hand and thus avoids the cynicism of an open theological politics . . . The assumption of secularization allows the political theologian to nd ready for use what he would otherwise have had to invent, once it turned out after all not to be something whose existence could be deduced.72

For Blumenberg, political theology is a masked theology employed at the service of legitimizing decisionism. The absoluteness of theological concepts serves to express the exigency of the situation. Reading through Blumenberg and Schmitts correspondence it becomes clear that Blumenberg struggled from the outset to nd a common vocabulary in order to deepen and enrich his intellectual exchange with Schmitt. While at times their exchange reads as if they were talking past each other, the strength in Blumenbergs position lies in its critical standpoint, a standpoint unavailable to a philosophy of history mired in the extra-worldly. In his rst letter, Blumenberg states that if he had to formulate the dierence in their position in a simple way it would be that Schmitts position is an answer to the question where can we nd the extreme condition? [Wo liegt der extreme Zustand?]73 Only in the extreme can the decisive, absolute, come forth. This is the extreme moment of the binding of Isaac, the precursory tale for any absolutist politics since it is the moment where our true allegiance is revealed.74 For Blumenberg, in contrast, the question is how can this maintain itself ? [Wie kann dies sich erhalten?]75 Modern self-consciousness is able to understand itself, as well as any other
Blumenberg, LMA, 101. Letter to Schmitt, 3/24/1071, Briefwechsel, 105. 74) Jan Assman, The Price of Monotheism, Robert Savage (trans.), (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 38. 75) Letter to Schmitt, 3/24/1071, Briefwechsel, 105.
73) 72)

104

C. M. Bragagnolo / Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011) 84104

theoretical eort, by giving an account of the problem that it is trying to come to terms with. This problem is always a new historical challenge that we face at rst with the symbolic means oered by a philosophical tradition, which is itself the history of the confrontation with specic challenges, and then subsequently through a conceptual deliberation that asks whether we have grasped rationally the task ahead of us. Blumenbergs critique of Schmitt reveals how Schmitt confused the metaphorical or symbolic meaning of certain ideas with their specic rational potential. Myth that gives birth to reason has been betrayed by turning the concept of sovereignty into a new mythology: the omnipotent, transcendent sovereign who is always beyond the law and is itself the source of the law.