Genealogies of the Secular: The Making of Modern German Thought (SUNY series in Theology and Continental Thought)

Presents a historical and philosophical overview of the twentieth-century German debates on secularization and their significance for contemporary discussions about the relationship between theology and modernity. While the concept of secularization is traditionally used to define the nature of modern culture, and sometimes to uncover the theological origins of secular modernity, its validity is being questioned ever more radically today. Genealogies of the Secular returns to the historical, intellectual, and philosophical roots of this concept in the twentieth-century German debates on religion and modernity, and presents a wide range of strategies that German thinkers have applied to apprehend the connection between religion and secularism. In fundamentally heterogeneous ways, these strategies all developed “genealogies of the secular” by tracing modern phenomena back to their religious or theological roots. This book aims to disclose the complex prehistory of the contemporary debates on political theology and postsecularism, and to show how prominent thinkers continue this German tradition today. It explores and assesses the classic theories of secularization that are epitomized in Carl Schmitt’s writings on political theology, but also addresses German philosophers whose work has been rarely associated with secularization, including Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, and Hannah Arendt. Attention is also paid to two thinkers whose role in these discourses has not been fully explored yet: Jacob Taubes and Jan Assmann. By introducing their thinking on religion, politics, and secularization, the book also makes two of their own key texts available to an English-language readership. Willem Styfhals is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven. Stéphane Symons is Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven. Contents Introduction Secularization and Genealogy Religion and Genealogy Reflections on the Secular in Twentieth-Century German Thought (Synopsis) Secularization, Political Theology and Genealogy Today Notes Part I Genealogy and Secularization: Conceptual Perspectives Genealogy Trouble: Secularization and the Leveling of Theory Weak Genealogical Reason Weberian Genealogy Weber’s Children Unsubstantiated Rumors about “Secularization” Agamben’s The Kingdom and the Glory Notes “The God of Myth Is Not Dead”—Modernity and Its Cryptotheologies: A Jewish Perspective Which Death, of Whose God? Factum brutum, or Matter on the Rocks “Earth without Heaven”: The Story Continues ... Yes, Yes, but Not Yet: The Specter Notes Part II Philosophy and the Secular: An Alternative History of the German Secularization Debate The “Distance to Revelation” and the Difference between Divine and Worldly Order: Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Secularization as Historical Development On the Virtuality of Mere Language (Reine Sprache) Transformation and Transferal: Blumenberg and Schmitt Reference to Biblical Terms: Benjamin’s Language Theory Threshold-Knowledge: The Span between Creation and Last Judgment Benjamin’s Critique of People Claiming a “Divine Mandate” Task (Aufgabe) versus Exaction (Forderung) Creation (Geschöpf) versus Shaped Form (Gebilde) Choice (Wahl) versus Decision (Entscheidung) Double Reference: Benjamin’s Work on Difference Notes Theology and Politics: Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger before, in, and after the Davos Debate Cassirer and Heidegger: The Initial Setting Philosophy and Religion in Heidegger Philosophy and Theology: Aesthetic Preconceptions Cassirer’s “Heidegger-Vorlesung” and the Theological Background to the Davos Debate Theology and Politics: Cassirer’s Later Critique of Heidegger Notes Is Progress a Category of Consolation? Kant, Blumenberg, and the Politics of the Moderns The Impossible Secularization of Eschatology The Genesis of the Idea of Progress Modernity and Consolation Notes Hannah Arendt, Secularization Theory, and the Politics of Secularism The Problem of an Absolute Bound to Appear in Revolution The Paradoxical Fact To Fall Back on or At Least to Invoke Pleading for Some Religious Sanction In Principle Independent of Religious Sanction Only Immanent Categories Coda: Separating Politics and Religion Once and for All Notes Part III Jacob Taubes: Secularization, Heresy, and Democracy Secularization and the Symbols of Democracy: Jacob Taubes’s Critique of Carl Schmitt Les extrêmes se touchent Religious Speech and the History of Religion Taubes on Democracy Two Images of Democracy Notes On the Symbolic Order of Modern Democracy Political and Religious Symbolism Democracy and Mystical Heresy Kierkegaard and Marx, Donoso Cortés and Proudhon Conclusion Notes In Paul’s Mask: Jacob Taubes Reads Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin’s Spirit Citation: Amalgamation of Benjamin’s Theoretical Figures in Taubes’s Writings Taubes in the Circle of Poetik und Hermeneutik Benjamin in the Guise of a Marxist and Marcionite Carl Schmitt and Jacob Taubes: On the Production of a Composite Portrait Misreadings: Taubes’s Creation of a Pauline Benjamin Notes Part IV Jan Assmann: A Late Voice in the German Secularization Debate Secularization and Theologization: Introduction to Jan Assmann’s Monotheism Theologization: Overcoming Carl Schmitt The Birth of Political Theology Anti-Semitic? Assmann and the End of the German Secularization Debate Notes Monotheism Secularization and theologization The Political Meaning of Banning Images: Iconoclasm as Political Theology The Ban on Images as Denunciation of Cosmo-theistic Symbioses Monotheism’s Potential for Violence Notes Contributors Index "While the concept of secularization is traditionally used to define the nature of modern culture, and sometimes to uncover the theological origins of secular modernity, its validity is being questioned ever more radically today. Genealogies of the Secular returns to the historical, intellectual, and philosophical roots of this concept in the twentieth-century German debates on religion and modernity, and presents a wide range of strategies that German thinkers have applied to apprehend the connection between religion and secularism. In fundamentally heterogeneous ways, these strategies all developed "genealogies of the secular" by tracing modern phenomena back to their religious or theological roots. This book aims to disclose the complex prehistory of the contemporary debates on political theology and postsecularism, and to show how prominent thinkers continue this German tradition today. It explores and assesses the classic theories of secularization that are epitomized in Carl Schmitt's writings on political theology and in Löwith-Blumenberg debate, but also addresses German philosophers whose work has been rarely associated with secularization (Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, and Hannah Arendt) but who have been concerned nonetheless with the complex relations between religion and modernity. In addition, special attention is paid to two thinkers whose role in these discourses has not been fully explored yet: Jacob Taubes and Jan Assmann. In addition introducing their thinking on religion, politics and secularization, the book also makes two of their own key texts available to an English-language readership"-- Provided by publisher