…I see my list on political theology functioning like Wittgenstein’s ladder metaphor in his Tractatus. Once graduate students read and grasp these important texts, they should “throw away the ladder”, so to speak, and deconstruct all they have learned about political theology to illuminate contemporary problems on their own. Once they reach the top, they can throw away the ladder.
Psalm 8’s presentation of human dominion and politics as a creation of God has significant ramifications for our posture towards the various forms of human rule and authority. The juxtaposition of divinely appointed power and human weakness humbles arrogant ambition, encouraging a spirit of meekness and modest service in our politics.
Spectacle has always played an important role in establishing power, authority, and sovereignty. In the unity of the dazzling body of the Transfiguration and the brutalized body of the crucifixion, the integrity of the spectacle and that which lies beneath is made known and our own polities’ lack of such integrity is challenged.
I would not shoe-horn the following contributions into the terms of the remarks posted yesterday, yet there is a familial space where kindred concerns find different expression with these authors. Christoph Schmidt focuses on Rene Girard’s defense of Christianity in encounter with Nietzsche in terms of Nietzsche’s antithesis between Christ and Dionysius. Girard identifies this as the antithesis of modernity as such.