In the last years, a theological turn had a pervasive influence in the reception of Carl Schmitt’s writings. According to this view, his thought has a strong, substantial religious foundation. With regards to understanding not only Schmitt’s position but also his current influence in authoritarian countries, this essay argues that this interpretation is misleading and proposes a different and comprehensive analysis of Schmitt’s concept of political theology that replaces it in a political-legal framework. Against the theological reading, it argues that (...) Schmitt’s concept of “political theology” refers to his own conception of legal theory as an attempt to relegitimize authority in a secular context. As “political theology,” this legal theory is designed to overcome normativism and parliamentarism by “substantializing” the legal form. Using Schmitt’s post-1933 works as an example, the essay shows that, as theology translates faith into a written doctrine, legal theory must, according to Schmitt, substantialize the legal form by translating the political idea into jurisprudence. Hence, this article concludes that Schmitt’s theory might be described as “political theology” but only in a formal, ideological sense. It is part of an authoritarian theory that is not religious but uses theology to revive an appearance of absolute legitimacy. (shrink)

This essay argues that Charles Mills’s normative vision for racial justice—a reformed, race-attentive liberalism—is fundamentally self-undermining because it embraces the liberal property form. Specifically, I show how Mills’s insistence on the practical utility of the property form for racial justice ignores both W.E.B. Du Bois’s signal warning about the reactionary power of propertied interests and how the hegemony of Lockean liberalism is a key mediator of racial/colonial domination in the United States. The essay first shows how Mills’s anti-racist, social democratic (...) liberalism relies on and legitimizes a property rights framework. I then analyze Du Bois’s critique of liberal abolition-democracy during Reconstruction, surfacing how white propertied interests constantly threaten progressive gains and social democratic change. Building on Du Bois, I argue that Mills’s reformed liberalism, by preserving the property form, places racial justice on an inherently unstable foundation while also excluding struggles for Indigenous sovereignty. Finally, I question Mills’s pragmatic argument for restricting racial justice to a reformed liberalism. Mills’s “Black radical liberalism” is not as straightforwardly practical as he suggests because of the deep historical hold of Lockean, rather than Kantian, liberalism. Here, I excavate how hegemony around Lockean liberalism in the United States has been periodically reconsolidated, looking at the interwar and Cold War context as well as the deeper influence of Locke on US constitutionalism. Ultimately, against a politics that restricts racial justice to a social democratic horizon, I contend that it is necessary to challenge the liberal property form in the pursuit of racial justice and Indigenous sovereignty. (shrink)

Myths—symbolically dense narratives in wide cultural circulation that resist critical scrutiny—are often thought to be counterproductive to political discourse, but they are also ubiquitous in contemporary culture and society. Just two years apart, Jürgen Habermas and Hans Blumenberg developed contrasting visions of how we ought to respond to the myths in our society. By reconstructing their disagreement, this paper uncovers the distinctive challenge of balancing a commitment to political emancipation with the opacity of myths to critical reason. I argue for (...) an alternative approach to myths than those in the theoretical mainstream, taking Blumenberg’s relatively neglected position as a starting point. Blumenberg invites us to pay closer attention to the cognitive needs that necessitate the generation of myths while simultaneously reminding us of our own creative agency to reinvent them. (shrink)

Hume devised a third way between Hobbes and Locke that bolstered the former’s defense of stability and the latter’s defense of rebellion. This feat remains underappreciated. Hume’s third way rests on the idea of the public conscience, which, like Hobbes’s idea of the public conscience, derives from communication and consensus. The public conscience orients us toward the public interest, which, in Hume’s theory, is the authoritative standard by which individuals and government alike must abide. In this paper, I elaborate on (...) the moral psychological principles that underlie Hume’s concept of the public conscience, which is liable to both conservative liberal and progressive liberal interpretations. And I argue that Hume’s third way provides valuable insight into the logic of public political discourse in liberal societies. (shrink)