CAREY Postdoctoral Fellow 2005-06
Paulina Ochoa Espejo
Johns Hopkins University, Political Science
Political Theology: Sources of Legitimacy in the Liberal
Democratic State
Liberal democratic states present themselves as inclusive and plural.
They claim to be founded on universal principles that do not exclude
any faiths or religious beliefs. It has also been claimed, however,
that the liberal democratic state is Christian in essence, and that
it is grounded on a secularized version of religious ideas. But,
even if there were some relation between secular and religious arguments
in liberal democratic politics, does this relation entail that the
liberal democratic state excludes non-Christian faiths? In order
to answer this question we first have to understand the relation,
if there is any, between secular and religious sources of legitimacy
in the state. The project that I will pursue during my fellowship
at Erasmus Institute concerns Political Theology, specifically,
the relation between religious arguments, and secular arguments
that liberal democratic states use to legitimize their rule.
I will examine Carl Schmitt’s claim that “all relevant
concepts in the theory of the state are secularized theological
concepts.” Such an examination is important because the claim,
if true, tells us that the liberal democratic state is not independent
of religion. Schmitt holds that the original and legitimate formulation
of the arguments that constitute the modern theory of the state
date to the Catholic Middle Ages. Hans Blumenberg, in contrast,
argues that the legitimacy of the modern age is related to religious
formulations, but does not depend on them. Instead, the rational
secular ethos of man's self-assertion is the essential core of modernity.
My project introduces this philosophical debate into political theory,
in order to address the problem of the universal character of the
liberal democratic state. I follow Blumenberg in arguing that the
liberal democratic state can be pluralistic, inclusive, and secular,
although it cannot be detached from its theological history. The
concepts and arguments in the theory of the liberal democratic state
are not secularized medieval concepts: they are essentially modern.
However, the cogency of the arguments in which these concepts are
embedded depends on adaptations of, and reactions to, metaphysical
and epistemological systems of the Catholic Middle Ages. In order
to make my argument I focus on the concept of coincidentia oppositorum,
which Nicholas of Cusa formulated at the dawn of the modern age.
My examination of Cusanus’s doctrine of coincidence of opposites
will allow me to give an answer to the question of how modern political
concepts relate to older religious ones, and contribute to the debate
on Political Theology and the universality of the liberal democratic
state.
Dr. Ochoa Espejo will teach POLS 30731 - Authority and Legitimacy - for the Political Science department in Spring 2006.
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