The Theological-Political Turn : A Critique

In recent years numerous authors have claimed that underneath everything political there lies something religious – an underground religious substance, as it were. These religious elements, it is said, are the essence of political phenomena and the driving force of their history. Even in our modern 'secularized' politics, the heart of the matter, it is alleged, is religious, just as it was in the past. This fashion for the theological-political can be observed in the most varied trends in contemporary philosophy, from the work of Giorgio Agamben and Charles Taylor to that of Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas. In Géraldine Muhlmann's view, this 'theological-political' idea is a sham. It sheds no light on the factors that underlie key political developments, such as the crisis of liberal democracies and the rise of authoritarianism. It has nothing to say about the concrete ways in which religious points of reference, when they do exist, are used to wage war or to make politics. It contributes nothing to reflection on political matters and it leads us astray by failing to attend to their specific, complex and intertwined logics. So what accounts for the rise of theological-political thought? Muhlmann argues that its popularity has less to do with a genuine attempt to understand politics and more to do with a desire by philosophers to demonstrate their ability to grasp the substantial basis of politics and the true direction of political history. In other words, the triumph of the theological-political is a philosophical hubris – and a dangerous one at that. This ambitious inquiry into the rise of a troubling philosophical zeitgeist will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, political theory and religious studies and to anyone interested in the ideas that are shaping our world today.