In his extensive work as a theologian and a historian, Walter H. Principe, CSB, (1922-1996) was committed to reflecting on both the present and the past. He was well-known as an historian of medieval theology and philosophy - especially through the work of Thomas Aquinas, as well as a contemporary theologian. This memorial collection addresses a fundamental feature of Principe's thought, namely his concern that the history of medieval theology and philosophy have a significant role to play in contemporary (...) discussions. Strengthening the ties between historical study and contemporary theological and philosophical thought, this book offers much to those who teach and research in historical theology and the history of philosophy. The ten essays provide significant test cases of how modern scholars may utilise the historical record judiciously for contemporary debates. Those who are concerned with intellectual history (both medieval and modern), the history of doctrines, and Thomism will also find this collection a useful contribution to modern scholarship. (shrink)

Historically, laws and policies to criminalize drug use or possession were rooted in explicit racism, and they continue to wreak havoc on certain racialized communities. We are a group of bioethicists, drug experts, legal scholars, criminal justice researchers, sociologists, psychologists, and other allied professionals who have come together in support of a policy proposal that is evidence-based and ethically recommended. We call for the immediate decriminalization of all so-called recreational drugs and, ultimately, for their timely and appropriate legal regulation. We (...) also call for criminal convictions for nonviolent offenses pertaining to the use or possession of small quantities of such drugs to be expunged, and for those currently serving time for these offenses to be released. In effect, we call for an end to the “war on drugs.”. (shrink)

This volume includes Felix Noeggerath's dissertation from 1916, published here for the first time in a reliable critical edition. The dissertation represents a daring and far-reaching re-conceptualization of Kantian and neo-Kantian thought that consists in "critique of anti-rationalism," especially in the form of vitalism. Both Kant's and Hermann Cohen's philosophies can be experienced anew through the far-reaching optic that Noeggerath developed - an optic that he reiterates and develops into a comprehensive theory of art in a 1951 essay - republished (...) here, as well. The introduction by Hartwig Wiebebach provides an overview and incisive analysis of Noeggerath's philosophical program, while the afterword by Peter Fenves describes in detail the effect of Noeggerath's thought on Walter Benjamin's own attempts at a critique of anti-rationalism. Altogether, the volume provides a new point of access to the important legacy of neo-Kantian thought in the early twentieth century not only in terms of the systematic philosophy, but also in relation to the theory of art and the philosophy of modern science. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin called Felix Noeggerath (1885-1960) the “universal genius” or simply “genius.” In his 1916 treatise “Synthesis and the Concept of System in Philosophy,” Noeggerath offered a reading of Kant’s concept of synthesis in an original and radical manner. He dares to confront thought with the incommensurability of atheoretical Being. The linkage between logic and incommensurability is what he calls rationalism. In contradiction to this claim, any attempt to exclude atheoretical Being from the realm of logic is anti-rationalism. Noeggerath (...) elaborates on this in a penetrating discussion and modification of epistemological positions, especially those of the Marburg School and Hermann Cohen. Noeggerath constructs a notion of the philosophical system with the help of Kant’s three tables of transcendental judgements, categories, and principles in the Critique of Pure Reason. Each of these tables is known to contain 12 individual elements in four groups of three each. For the systematic division, the third group under the title “Relation” is decisive. Noeggerath assigns one systemic part to each kind of relation: “For it is to be connected: the categorical relation with ethics, the hypothetical with logic, and the disjunctive with aesthetics.” As a result the classical sequence, beginning with logic, is changed. “The order of the limbs is: a) ethics, b) logic, c) aesthetics.” In Noeggerath’s logical outline, specific mathematical concepts of meta-geometry play a decisive role. According to him, philosophy can resemble their preciseness in building a viable concept of the infinite. The prerequisite is that philosophy does not itself behave mathematically but proceeds along its own path in critical distance to the “specialized, act-kindred thinking” of the mathematician. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno were intellectual giants of the first half of the twentieth century. The drama _Foreplay_ explores their deeply human and psychologically intriguing private lives, focusing on professional and personal jealousies, the mutual dislike of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, the association between Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille, and the border between erotica and pornography. Djerassi’s extensive biographical research brings to light many fascinating details revealed in the dialogues among the characters, including (...) Adorno’s obsession with his dreams, Benjamin’s admiration for Franz Kafka, and the intimate correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. The introduction of a fictitious character, Fräulein X, intensifies the complex interplay among the four lead protagonists and allows for a comparison of Adorno’s philandering and the similar behavior of Martin Heidegger, whose affair with Hannah Arendt is well known. _Foreplay_ brims with intrigue and the friction created when strong personalities clash. (shrink)

Walter Kaufmann completed this, the third and final volume of his landmark trilogy, shortly before his death in 1980. The trilogy is the crowning achievement of a lifetime of study, writing, and teaching. This final volume contains Kaufmann's tribute to Sigmund Freud, the man he thought had done as much as anyone to discover and illuminate the human mind. Kaufmann's own analytical brilliance seems a fitting reflection of Freud's, and his acute commentary affords fitting company to Freud's own thought. (...) Kaufmann traces the intellectual tradition that culminated in Freud's blending of analytic scientific thinking with humanistic insight to create "a poetic science of the mind." He argues that despite Freud's great achievement and celebrity, his work and person have often been misunderstood and unfairly maligned, the victim of poor translations and hostile critics. Kaufmann dispels some of the myths that have surrounded Freud and damaged his reputation. He takes pains to show how undogmatic, how open to discussion, and how modest Freud actually was. Kaufmann endeavors to defend Freud against the attacks of his two most prominent apostate disciples, Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung. Adler is revealed as having been jealous, hostile, and an ingrate, a muddled thinker and unskilled writer, and remarkably lacking in self-understanding. Jung emerges in Kaufmann's depiction as an unattractive, petty, and envious human being, an anti-Semite, an obscure and obscurantist thinker, and, like Adler, lacking insight into himself. Freud, on the contrary, is argued to have displayed great nobility and great insight into himself and his wayward disciples in the course of their famous fallings-out. (shrink)

_This book features a CD of rarely performed music, including a specially commissioned rap by Erik Weiner of Walter Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History." _ Theodor W. Adorno was the prototypical German Jewish non-Jew, Walter Benjamin vacillated between German Jew and Jewish German, Gershom Scholem was a committed Zionist, and Arnold Schönberg converted to Protestantism for professional reasons but later returned to Judaism. Carl Djerassi, himself a refugee from Hitler's Austria, dramatizes a dialogue between these (...) four men in which they discuss fraternity, religious identity, and legacy as well as reveal aspects of their lives-notably their relations with their wives-that many have ignored, underemphasized, or misrepresented. The desire for canonization and the process by which it is obtained are the underlying themes of this dialogue, with emphasis on Paul Klee's _Angelus Novus _(1920), a canonized work that resonated deeply with Benjamin, Adorno, and Scholem (and for which Djerassi and Gabrielle Seethaler present a revisionist and richly illustrated interpretation). Basing his dialogue on extensive archival research and interviews, Djerassi concludes with a daring speculation on the putative contents of Benjamin's famous briefcase, which disappeared upon his suicide. (shrink)

In this first issue of the new Erkenntnis, it seems fitting to recall at least briefly the character and the main achievements of its distinguished namesake and predecessor. The old Erkenntnis came into existence when Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap assumed the editorship of the Annalen der Philosophie and gave the journal its new title and its characteristic orientation; the first issue appeared in 1930. The journal was backed by the Gesellschaft f r Empirische Philosophie in Berlin, in which Reichenbach, (...) Walter Dubislav, and Kurt Grelling were the leading figures, and by the Verein Ernst Mach in Vienna, whose philosophical position was strongly influenced by that of the Vienna Circle; a brief account of these groups, and of several kindred schools and trends of scientific and philosophical thinking, was given by Otto Neurath in his 'Historische Anmerkungen' (Vol. 1, pp. 311-314). As Reichenbach noted in his introduction to the first issue, the editors of Erkenntnis were concerned to carry on philosophical inquiry in close consideration of the procedures and results of the various scientific disciplines: analysis of scientific research and its presuppositions was expected to yield insight into the character of all human knowledge, while at the same time, the objectivity and the progressive character of science inspired the convection that philosophy need not remain an array of conflicting 'systems', but could attain to the status of objective knowledge. As a student in Berlin and Vienna during those years, I experienced vividly the exhilarating sense, shared by those close to those two philosophical groups, of being jointly engaged in a novel and challenging intellectual enterprise in which philosophical issues were dealt with 'scientifically' and philosophical claims were amenable to support or criticism by logically rigorous arguments. The 'logical analyses' and 'rational reconstructions' set forth by adherents of this program often made extensive use of the concepts, methods, and symbolic apparatus of contemporary symbolic logic, whose importance for philosophy was the subject of Carnap's article, 'Die Alte und die Neue Logik', which appeared in the first issue.. (shrink)

In a long note in his epoch-making book on ancient Pythagoreanism Walter Burkert raised some grave doubts about the authenticity of Archytas Fr. 1 which have recently been challenged in an article by A. C. Bowen. In this paper I have two goals. First, I will evaluate Burkert's doubts and the success of some of Bowen's arguments against them. Second, I will present a further consideration that both clarifies the text of the fragment and also removes the most serious (...) problem raised by Burkert. The upshot of both these points is to increase the likelihood that the fragment is authentic. I reproduce the text of just the first part of the fragment as given in DK followed by the text as it appears in the two primary sources, Nicomachus and Porphyry. (shrink)

The first part of this contribution is devoted to my recollection of Christoph Schwöbel; both of us were pupils of Carl Heinz Ratschow, albeit at different times and in different roles. However, we both have been following a twofold counsel of our teacher, first not to restrict theology to value judgments but to strive for an ontology of Christian belief and second to work with a “Trinitarian definition of Christology”. Part two recounts the turmoil around Andreas Osiander in a (...) turbulent time of a crisis of authority around 1550. He was in the end judged to be heretic and was excluded from “true” Lutheranism in the Formula of Concord 1577. Indeed, his doctrine of justification, influenced by humanistic Neoplatonism and even the Kabbala was contrary to the predominant position of the Wittenberg school. However, the crucial point was Osiander’s constellation of Soteriology, Christology and Trinitarian concept of God on a strictly exegetic basis. Part three offers a sketch of the interrelation of Osiander’s soteriological model of the believer’s ascension to God, his Christology of a mediator, and his concept of the divine Logos. In his time, Osiander in a way fulfilled Ratschow’s twofold counsel, in opposition to Christological functionalism and theological positivism. Even today, in view of the ecumenical debate on the doctrine of justification, his thought might give useful hints for revising the aforementioned tasks in fundamental theology. (shrink)

This miscellany reports on a newly found dedication copy of Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of mere Reason (1793) to his dear friend and former student Carl Gottlieb Fischer.

The realization relation that allegedly holds between mental and physical properties plays a crucial role for so-called non-reductive physicalism because it is supposed to secure both the ontological autonomy of mental properties and, despite their irreducibility, their ability to make a causal difference to the course of the causally closed physical world. For a long time however, the nature of realization has largely been ignored in the philosophy of mind until a couple of years ago authors like Carl Gillett, (...) Derk Pereboom, or Sydney Shoemaker proposed accounts according to which realization is understood against the background of the so-called 'causal theory of properties'. At least partially, the hope was to solve the problem of mental causation, in particular the kind of causal exclusion reasoning made famous by Jaegwon Kim, in a way acceptable to nonreductive physicalists. The paper asks whether a proper explication of the realization relation can indeed help explain how physically realized mental properties can be causally efficacious in the causally closed physical world and argues for a negative answer: it is important for the non-reductive physicalist to understand what exactly the realization relation amounts to, but it does not solve the problem of mental causation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche in the Light of his Suppressed Manuscripts WALTER KAUFMANN SINCE THE EIGHTEEN-NINETIES there has been considerable discussion about the adequacy of the editing of Nietzsche's late works, and occasionally bitter polemics about suppressed material have appeared in German newspapers and periodicals as well as in a few books. In the mid-fifties the controversy was revived in the wake of a new three-volume edition of Nietzsche's works, edited (...) by Karl Schlechta, ~ but the acrimonious debate was not very illuminating, and the sensational claims that traveled across the ocean were largely misleading. More and more often it was asked how reliable our printed texts are; also, what new revelations may be expected from unpublished manuscripts. I shall try to answer both questions. The discussion will revolve largely around a recent German work by Erich F. Podach 2 who makes sensational claims about The Antichrist and, above all, Ecce Homo, and who wants to supersede all previous editions of these works, including Schlechta's. 3 II Erich Podach holds a unique place in the Nietzsche literature: nobody else has contributed five genuinely important books. Yet Podach is not a philosopher, and he has never shown any profound understanding of Nietzsche 's thought. The point is that all of his books make use of unpublished documents. His study of Nietzsches Zusammenbruch (1930) was translated i Werke in drei Biinden (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1954-1956), 1282, 1276, and 1476 pp..2Friedrich Nietzsches Werke des Zusammenbruehs (Heidelberg: Wolfgang Rothe Verlag, 1961), 432 pp. and 24 plates with 29 facsimiles of MS pages. 3My article was completed before two reviews of Podach's book appeared in The Philosophical Review, April 1964, pp. 282-285, and in The Journal ot Philosophy, April 23, 1964, pp. 286-288. Both reviews are by Henry Walter Brann; both accept uncritically Podach's editing and Podach's claims; and both add original errors. Brann says that Podach tells "the amazing story of the most brazen literary fraud committed in recent times," and he quotes Podach as saying that "Nietzsche is the most brazenly falsified figure of recent literary and cultural history with regard both to his life and to his works." (The last sentence is rendered into smoother English in The Philosophical Review, and the two reviews arc altogether slightly different.) I shall try to show how Podach and Brann themselves have contributed to this "amazing story" by trying to convince us that one of Nietzsche's best hooks was not written by him. [2051 206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY into English in 1931. Gestalten um Nietzsche (1932) 4 is his most interesting book and deserves to be translated: it offers chapters on Nietzsche's mother, Rohde, Gast, Bernhard and Elisabeth F6rster (Nietzsche's sister and her husband), and Julius Langbehn. In 1937 Podach published Der kranke Nietzsche : Briefe seiner Mutter an Franz Overbeck, and after that Friedrich Nietzsche und Lou Salom& All of these volumes are important for the biography of Nietzsche. The fifth book aims to offer philologically reliable texts of Nietzsches Werke des Zusammenbruchs, i.e., Nietzsche contra Wagner, Der Antichrist, Ecce Homo, and Dionysos-Dithyramben. All of these were first published after Nietzsche had become insane (in January, 1889), and while no philosophically important changes were made, the early editors were not greatly concerned about philological exactitude. Nietzsche contra Wagner, for example, as published first in 1895 and reprinted many times since, differs quite strikingly from the final version of which Nietzsche himself was reading proofs in January, 1889, when he collapsed. Yet a very few copies of the original version were actually printed in 1889. This version contained a third chapter, "Intermezzo," deleted in 1895 and ever since, and this, a page and a half long, ended with the poem variously called, in later collections of Nietzsche's verse, "Venice" or "Gondola Song." The reason for this omission was not at all sinister. Nietzsche was working on several books late in 1888. Initially, this section formed part of Ecce Homo; then he inserted it in Nietzsche contra Wagner; then he wrote his publisher that after all he preferred to move it back into Ecce Homo; but when soon thereafter he received proofs of... (shrink)

Austrian economics - the school of thought associated with Carl Menger, Frederick von Weiser, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, and in this century, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Murray N. Rothbard, and Israel Kirzner - is based on a framework of methodological principles and assumptions much at variance with those of traditional or 'orthodox' economists. Robert Nozick, in his 'On Austrian Methodology', focuses attention on the most fundamental features of this framework, and subjects them to a thoroughgoing and scathing analysis. Singled (...) out for detailed and critical review are: (1) the praxeological concepts of methodological individualism; (2) the claim that economics is an a priori science of human action; (3) the nature of preference and its relation to choice and action; and (4) the assumptions of time-preference theory. Although Nozick does not consider Austrian views on business cycles, market process analysis, the coordinative and informational effects of the price system, competition, and several other fundamental aspects of praxeology, his criticism strikes at the very root of the praxeological school. This paper attempts to refute each criticism made of the praxeological school by Nozick on a point-by-point basis. It thus follows the same pattern as the original paper, and scrutinizes in detail the arguments made by its author. (shrink)

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents: Introduction. Marc SLORS: Epiphenomenalism and Cross-Realization Induction. Michael PAUEN: Is Type Identity Incompatible with Multiple Realization? Sven WALTER: Need Multiple Realizability Deter the Identity-Theorist? Achim STEPHAN: Emergentism, Irreducibility, and Downward Causation. Carl GILLETT: The Varieties of Emergence: Their Purposes, Obligations and Importance. Wim DE MUIJNCK: Causation by Relational Properties. Albert NEWEN & Rimas ČUPLINSKAS: Mental Causation: A Real Phenomenon in a Physicalistic World without Epiphenomenalism or Overdetermination. Bernd LUDWIG: Warum kommen „mentale Ursachen“ physikalischen Erklärungen eigentlich (...) nicht in die Quere? Einige grundsätzliche Überlegungen zur Verwendung des Ausdrucks „A verursacht B“ im Umkreis moderner naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien. Besprechungen/Review Articles. Buchnotizen/Critical Notes. (shrink)

In a series of articles, the most extensive of which are [9] and [10], Carl R. Kordig has attacked the "new empiricism" of the late Norwood R. Hanson, P. K. Feyerabend, Thomas S. Kuhn, and Stephen E. Toulmin. While there are differ- ences among the views of these philosophers, they agree at least on the following claims: (1) scientific method does not proceed inductively from neutral observations because (a) observations are not free of interpretation; and (b) scientists, as a (...) matter of history, have not used induction as the means of arriving at scientific laws; and (2) the key to scientific progress is the discovery of theories, hypotheses, or paradigms which order phenomena and influence the ways in which data are experienced. While Kordig admits that the new empiricism has the valuable effect of underscoring the truth that scientific revolutions do not consist merely in finding new facts or in paying closer attention to already known facts, contrary to the new view, he maintains that observations must be and are neutral ([9], pp. 478-479). Kordig contends against the new empiricists that if observations are not neutral but theory-laden, then it is impossible to test, compare and verify theories. Conse- quently, Kordig concludes that the new empiricist view implies that scientific progress is impossible ([9], pp. 470-471; [10j, p. 470). In opposition to their view, Kordig maintains that observations are neutral and independent of theories (and this was the insight of the logical empiricists) ([10], p. 468); and moreover, observa- tions must be neutral to and independent of theory in order that (a) differing theories may be truly said to compete and (b) the observations may be the basis of testing and deciding between competing theories. (shrink)

El presente ensayo busca contraponer la producción escrita de Walter Benjamin y Carl Schmitt, en busca de la vinculación y ruptura filosófica política de ambos en torno a conceptos como el de estado de excepción y soberanía. Para ello proponemos una lectura en orden cronológico de sus obras entre 1920 y 1930, cual si existiese un diálogo mudo, en el cual el punto de partida es común pero las críticas y distanciamiento entre ambos se vuelven más evidentes y (...) abismales. (shrink)

There is a particular ressonance between the thinking of Walter Benjamin and that of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, including the fact that both analyse the 16th and 17th centuries in order to understand the 20th. Regarding this fact, the article attempts to clarify some themes that lead Schmitt’s work, i.e that of State of Exception, that of theologization of politics, the critique of parliamentarism as support of the Modern State, the tension between democracy and dictatorship, to explain (...) how the dialog between the two thinkers occurs, seeking thus for a better understanding of key works of Benjamin, specially The Origin of German Tragic Drama. (shrink)

This paper deals with the intellectual relationship between Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt. It takes as starting point Benjamin’s famous letter to Schmitt on The Origin of German Tragic Drama as well as Benjamin`s mentions of Schmitt’s Political Theology in his work on the Baroque. Nevertheless, I prove the importance of Schmitt’s book on Dictatorship for Benjamin’s portrayal of sovereignty during the Baroque period and therefore its character of hidden reference for the Jewish thinker. The last section is (...) devoted to Schmitt`s public and private reading of The Origin of German Tragic Drama and to his critique of Benjamin’s Habilitationsschrift, namely his incapacity of understanding the difference between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Hobbes’s Leviathan. (shrink)

Im Materialismusstreit der 1850er Jahre prallen die oft provokativ vorgetragenen Positionen des naturwissenschaftlich-weltanschaulichen Materialismus (vor allem Carl Vogts, Jacob Moleschotts und Ludwig Büchners) auf Positionen (insbesondere diejenige Rudolf Wagners), die die Naturwissenschaften mit den traditionellen religiösen Überzeugungen – etwa von der Unsterblichkeit der Seele, von der Gültigkeit der biblischen Weltchronologie oder von der Abstammung der Menschheit von einem einzigen Elternpaar – bruchlos verbinden zu können glauben. Mit den wissenschaftlichen Überzeugungen verbinden sich zudem politische Optionen. Jenseits aller lautstarken Polemik werden (...) in diesem Streit die Erklärungskompetenzen der Religion, der Philosophie und der Naturwissenschaften neu gegeneinander abgegrenzt – wobei der Philosophie (in ihren Vertretern I. H. Fichte und F. A. Lange) eine vermittelnde Rolle zufällt. (shrink)

El presente artículo es un estudio comparativo donde se argumenta la relación disonante entre las obras de Schmitt y Benjamin sobre la estética barroca. Se defiende que la diferencia entre ambos consiste en su concepción de lo político. Para Benjamin, son dos los aspectos fundamentales del Trauerspiel alemán: 1) la diferencia entre drama barroco y tragedia clásica y 2) el recurso a la alegoría como técnica de expresión. Schmitt, por su parte, encuentra lo singular del drama barroco en la irrupción (...) del tiempo histórico-político dentro de la forma estética. Para el crítico berlinés, lo alegórico debe estudiarse desde la filosofía de la historia, mientras que para Schmitt lo decisivo es lo político, ejecutado a través de la soberanía y la decisión. Tal es la línea argumental del presente estudio. This paper is a comparative study about the Works of Benjamin and Schmitt on the baroque art. It argues that the specific difference between them most be found in their concept of the political. For Benjamin there is a difference between tragedy and drama, the german Trauerspiel it is an allegorical approach to thingsand history. Schmitt argues that the singularity of baroque drama is the irruption of time in the plastic form. These are the points that the paper proposes. (shrink)

On 9 December 1930, Walter Benjamin sent a copy of his book The Origin of German Tragic Drama to Carl Schmitt, accompanied by a letter in which he expressed his indebtedness to Schmitt: "You will very quickly recognize how much my book is indebted to you for its presentation of the doctrine of sovereignty in the seventeenth century. Perhaps I may say, in addition, that I have also derived from your later works, especially Die Diktatur, a confirmation of (...) my modes of research in the philosophy of art from yours in the philosophy of the state. If the reading of my book allows this feeling to emerge in an intelligible fashion, then the purpose of my sending it to you will be achieved" (qtd. in Weber 1992, 5). As .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Politics Is a Mushroom: Worldly Sources of Rule and Exception in Carl Schmitt and Walter BenjaminKam Shapiro (bio)Life is not a mushroom growing out of death.—Carl Schmitt, The Visibility of the ChurchTo isolate death from life, not leaving the one intimately woven in the other, and each one entering into the other’s midst—this is what one must never do.—Jean-Luc Nancy, L’intrus1Carl Schmitt’s theory of the exception (...) was bound up with a thoroughgoing critique of philosophies of immanence, materialism, and “atheism,” which he treated as interchangeable. In his early writings, he adopted the Christian perspective according to which postlapsarian nature cannot by itself yield a juridical order, or in his poetic phrase, “life is not a mushroom growing out of death.” Yet—in accord with Catholic doctrine—he also found sources of life, or law, in this world. While he repudiated theories of collective self-legislation, he embraced a popular sovereign empowered to impose form on a chaotic society. In Political Theology (1922), he compared the form-giving power of the sovereign to an act of divine intervention. Law, he argued, can only function in a lawful or “normal” situation that precedes formalization, and the sovereign “produces and guarantees the situation in its totality” [13]. In The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923) Schmitt retained his theological terms: “A scientific study of democracy must begin with a particular aspect that I have called political theology” [32]. In the modern age, democratic constituent power (pouvoir constituant) replaces the will of God as the transcendent source of a substantial order, namely democratic homogeneity. Democratic will-formation thereby becomes an act prior to its subject, or as Schmitt wrote, “[...] only political power, which should come from the people’s will, can form the people’s will in the first place” [Crisis 28]. A variety of democratic theorists dwell on the paradoxical character of democratic sovereignty, sometimes tracing it back to Rousseau’s well-known formulations [see esp. Connolly and Honig]. They highlight the gap between a transcendent (ideal or fictive) will in whose name political power acts, and the bounded, material consensus it forms, ostensibly rendering the latter vulnerable to challenge. As I argue, however, a closer look at Rousseau’s discussion of democratic founding in On the Social Contract reveals instead a dynamic relay between dispersed substantial or immanent sources of affiliation, on the one hand, and various agents and techniques of political power that draw on and combine them in a collective will, on the other, or what I call the virtual and the virtuosic.2 After briefly exploring this dynamic in Rousseau’s [End Page 121] On the Social Contract, I will highlight similar dynamics at work in Schmitt’s Weimar writings, examining three instances: the complexio oppositorum (1923), national myth (1923), and the polemical opposition of friend and enemy (1927), focusing especially on the first. Contrary to familiar readings of Schmitt’s metaphysical “exceptionalism,” I argue that for Schmitt, as for Rousseau, political power does not create a normative order from a vacuum, and the apparent transcendence of sovereign authority has a variety of worldly sources.3 Finally, I consider what I call “democratic virtuosity,” or virtuosity from below, focusing on Walter Benjamin’s repudiation of sovereign acts of lawmaking or law preserving in favor of ongoing collective habit-formation. As I argue, Benjamin returns spiritual force to the material world not only to shatter human authorities, but also to democratize creation.Rousseau—Anticipating the PeopleIn the Social Contract, Rousseau formulated the paradox of democratic founding to which so many, including Schmitt, would return. “In order for an emerging people to appreciate the healthy maxims of politics, and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit, which should be the result of the institution, would have to preside over the founding of the institution itself; and men would have to be prior to laws what they ought to become by means of laws” [Rousseau 69]. As Rousseau argues, a constitution can form a general will only if it commands the loyalty of the people, that is, if there is... (shrink)

Tracing Walter Benjamin's convergences with, and divergences from, influential German theorist Carl Schmitt, this edited collection places his thinking in the context of broader 20th century political philosophy of his time, and examines the question of whether Benjamin presents the possibility for a distinctive political theology, mapping the coordinates of this question without collapsing the tensions internal to Benjamin's thought. This volume brings together a host of multifaceted contributions that explore why Benjamin has been a fertile source for (...) thinking about political theology and the possibilities that this new perspective brings to light. (shrink)

“Who are you? Tu quis es?” The interrogator was the German philosopher and pedagogue Eduard Spranger. The subject was Carl Schmitt. The place: Berlin. The time: summer of 1945. The question was “precipitous,” as Schmitt acknowledged in Ex Captivitate Salus, the book he completed following his release from Nuremberg in 1947. “Who are you?” Who, but one of the most highly acclaimed and esteemed jurists and political thinkers of the Weimar Republic, whose writings captured the attention of Georg Lukács, (...) Karl Korsch, Felix Gilbert, Leo Strauss, Ferdinand Toennies, and whose concepts significantly influenced Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Otto Kirchheimer, Franz Neumann, Karl Mannheim and many other intellectuals and writers on the Left and the Right? (shrink)