Political Theology Political Theology
Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History

Political Theology

Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty

    • $27.99
    • $27.99

Publisher Description

In this strikingly original work, Paul W. Kahn rethinks the meaning of political theology. In a text innovative in both form and substance, he describes an American political theology as a secular inquiry into ultimate meanings sustaining our faith in the popular sovereign.

Kahn works out his view through an engagement with Carl Schmitt's 1922 classic, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. He forces an engagement with Schmitt's four chapters, offering a new version of each that is responsive to the American political imaginary. The result is a contemporary political theology. As in Schmitt's work, sovereignty remains central, yet Kahn shows how popular sovereignty creates an ethos of sacrifice in the modern state. Turning to law, Kahn demonstrates how the line between exception and judicial decision is not as sharp as Schmitt led us to believe. He reminds readers that American political life begins with the revolutionary willingness to sacrifice and that both sacrifice and law continue to ground the American political imagination. Kahn offers a political theology that has at its center the practice of freedom realized in political decisions, legal judgments, and finally in philosophical inquiry itself.

GENRE
Nonfiction
RELEASED
2011
February 23
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
224
Pages
PUBLISHER
Columbia University Press
SELLER
Perseus Books, LLC
SIZE
972.7
KB

More Books Like This

The Force of the Example The Force of the Example
2008
Across the Great Divide Across the Great Divide
2020
Inclusion of the Other Inclusion of the Other
2015
Freedom and Time Freedom and Time
2008
Legal Rules, Moral Norms and Democratic Principles Legal Rules, Moral Norms and Democratic Principles
2013
Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament
2009

More Books by Paul Kahn

Other Books in This Series

Sovereignty Sovereignty
2015
The Primacy of the Political The Primacy of the Political
2010
The Scaffolding of Sovereignty The Scaffolding of Sovereignty
2017
An Archaeology of the Political An Archaeology of the Political
2017
States of War States of War
2011
What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings What Is a Nation? and Other Political Writings
2018