Book contents
- Sovereignty in Action
- Sovereignty in Action
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Theory in History
- Part II History of Theory
- 5 Liberal Governmentality and the Political Theology of Constitutionalism
- 6 Popular Sovereignty
- 7 Nations against the People
- 8 A Positive or Negative Conception of Sovereignty? Marcel Gauchet, Benjamin Constant and Liberal Democracy
- 9 Political Idolatry
- Index
9 - Political Idolatry
The Relation of Schmitt’s Two Claims in Political Theology
from Part II - History of Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2019
- Sovereignty in Action
- Sovereignty in Action
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Theory in History
- Part II History of Theory
- 5 Liberal Governmentality and the Political Theology of Constitutionalism
- 6 Popular Sovereignty
- 7 Nations against the People
- 8 A Positive or Negative Conception of Sovereignty? Marcel Gauchet, Benjamin Constant and Liberal Democracy
- 9 Political Idolatry
- Index
Summary
Elsewhere I have published a series of articles describing a register in which a version of Carl Schmitt’s claim that “all the concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts” was coherent, and perhaps even true in some cases. In those articles, I argued that what was, perhaps, the theoretical turning point of the French Revolution – the Abbé Sieyès’ argument for the mode of representation of the National Assembly in the mandat imperatif debates of 1789 – was an uncanny echo of the theologian Nicolas Malebranche’s argument from a century earlier regarding the mode of representation of the church.
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- Sovereignty in Action , pp. 207 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019