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Crisis & Critique Volume 2 / Issue I, 2015 C R I S I S & C R I T I Q CRISISU & E V O L. 2 I S S U E CRISIS & CRITIQUE#1 CRITIQUE CRISIS & CRITIQUE VOLUME 2 / ISSUE I, 2015 Dialectical Materialism Collective 1 Some Thoughts on the Divine Ex-sistence C Introduction 216 C R R I Hegelian Christology: From Kojeve to I S 12 Žižek, by Gabriel Tupinambá S I Some Thoughts on the Divine I S S Ex-sistence, by Slavoj Žižek 266 & Fichte in Reverse: From Onto-theology & 36 to Materialist Ontology, by Lidija Šumah C C R Confucius and Chairman Mao: R I Towards a Study of Religion and 284 I T T I Chinese Marxism, by Roland Boer The Problem of Evil and the Problem I Q of Legitimacy: On the Roots Future of Q CRISISU &56 Political Theology, by Adam Kotsko U E E Psychoanalysis, Religion, Love, V by Lorenzo Chiesa 300 V O Mysticism as Radical Political Action, O L. L. 2 76 by Catherine Tomas 2 What is Left to Imagine: The Privation I I S of the Absolute, by Felix Ensslin 326 S S Spirit and Utopia: (German) Idealism asS U 94 Political Theology, by Kirill Chepurin U E E #1 A prolegomena to an Emancipatory #1 Reading of Islam, by Sead Zimeri 350 Romanticism, Marxism and Religion in 114 the “Principle of Hope” of Ernst Bloch, CRISIS & CRITIQUEWhat Christians need no longer de- by Michael Löwy (translated by Rodrigo fend: The political stakes of considering Gonsalves) antinomianism as central to the practice and history of theology, by Colby Dickinson 356 Review articles: 152 J.Read: Initiation a la philosophie pour Revisiting a Marxist Encounter with les non-philosophes, by Louis Althusser Spinoza: Alexandre Matheron on Mili- tant Reason and The Intellectual Love of 364 God, by Ted Stolze Notes to Contributors 171 CRISIS & CRITIQUE Editorial Board: ISSN 2311-5475 Political Theology and Comedy: CRITIQUESECOND ISSUE Adrian Johnston Žižek through Rose Tinted Glasses, VOLUME II / ISSUE I, 2015 Joan Copjec by Marcus Pound Henrik Jøker Bjerre EDITORS Aaron Schuster Agon Hamza Robert Pfaller 194 Frank Ruda Gabriel Tupinambá The Comedy of the Great Depression: Sead Zimeri Fabio Vighi On Chaplin’s Modern Times, Benjamin Noys by Simon Hajdini Roland Boer Yuan Yao 2 Some Thoughts on Srdjanthe Divine Cvjetić aninEx-sistence 3 Some Thoughts on the Divine Ex-sistence C Today is seems obvious, even self-evident that religion is back at the C R R I forefront of political thought. Religious commitment is not simply I Introduction S a peculiar side factor, an epiphenomenon of contemporary socio- S I I S political situations; rather, it sees to determine them from within. In S such a (historical) situation it may not only seem plausible, but is & & rather imperative, to again ask the old and often raised question of how C C R to conceive of the relation between politics and religion. Raising the R I question does come with at least four conceptual options: 1. It may be I Agon Hamza & T T I that religion still stands in the centre of political thought, and practice I Q proper, and hence politics needs to be read as a continuation of religion Q U U Frank Ruda E with other means (previously, “thinkers” like Carl Schmitt defended E such a position). If this were true and convincing, the concatenation V V O between religion and politics would in one way or the other delineate O L. L. 2 a transcendental structure of political thought as such. 2. It may be 2 that religion is the opposite of political practice, such that religious I I S commitments and orientations hinder, block or impede politics from S S within, and thereby religion would be nothing but an obstacle to politics S U U E (proper) (Hegel at least in some sense was a proponent of this). From E #1 these two first options follows: 3. It may be that politics needs to #1 embrace, include, or at least integrate, religious commitments and thought as that which either mediates between private and individual life and political collective organisation and practice or as that which is what makes the very stuff that again makes the social bond stick. Religious belief, then, would be precisely the very raw (immaterial) material which makes any social bond, any political thing into a social bond or political thing (Simon Critchley currently advocates a comparable position). Or: 4. Politics to be politics proper needs to, not only take a distance, but exorcise all religious elements from its terrain, simply to remain political and not regress to private modes of believing this or that thing. As unsatisfying these four options may be, this overly abstract schematisation clarifies one thing: raising the question of how to understand the relation between politics and religion, of politics and theology today implies to raise the question of how (collective, individual or anonymous) belief and political practices, organisation(s) are related. And, more precisely, that it is the very relation between politics and religion that needs to be put into the focus of investigation. That this relation is an intricate one was already clear to Hegel, who claimed in an early, yet rarely read text on “love” that one needs to overcome the assumption that one can simply derive the concept of a political organisation, community, etc. from an unquestioned and 4 Introduction 5 Introduction allegedly self-evident form of religious faith. For Hegel, it were precisely C How to actually find a measure that may be able to depict if in C R R some forms of religious belief that seemed internally consistent and I terms of belief the others are actually equal to me or not? The only way I capable to justify and ground a just and free political community, which S to do this is to do precisely what one does not want to do. One seeks to S I I ultimately proved highly problematic. The problematic outcomes of S relate to the others as equal and hence as individuals, precisely because S these belief-systems, if realised politically, not only brings out some one has to find a measure, one relates to them not as equals but through & & implicit and inconsistent presuppositions they nonetheless relied upon the mediation of this very measure (which is, and this makes sense C C (such that one is able to judge the position from the perspective of its R worse, not even a measure properly speaking, as it is actually impossible R outcome, of its consequences), rather it enables the insight into the I to judge if someone believes in the same way, in the intensity, as I do). I T T true problematic assumption that is at stake here: the problem is not I That is to say, one relates to them as being equal with regard to a certain I only that one gets from a maybe inconsistent religious belief system to Q possession, they posses the same amount of belief that I take myself Q U U an inconsistent political model, the problem is that the belief system is E to posses. The problem now is that this very possession (i.e. belief) E inconsistent and hence religious (any religion, Hegel thinks, is at least in is not a possession (belief is subjective and not objective - which is a V V some sense inconsistent, otherwise it would not be religion), precisely O trivial thing to state). This means that the very idea of measurability O L. L. because it implies the belief that one could derive a political model from 2 is inconsistent from the very beginning. Ultimately, this is Hegel’s 2 it. The inconsistency thus concerns the assumption that there is, or can argument, the attempt to derive a political idea of equality from an idea I I be, a relation between religion and politics. It concerns the very idea that S of individual belief by means of objectifying it and generalizing it ends S one can infer a politics from religion, and thereby presuppose some kind S up with a result which it neither wanted nor was able to avoid: namely S U U of stable, given relation between the two fields in question. E that one thereby has to treat all others as if they were objects, and not E Hegel’s short piece argues as follows: He begins with a #1 as individuals and hence not as equals. In the very attempt of realising #1 problematisation of the relation between the political as much as equality, equality is evacuated and abolished. This is what Max Stirner religious concept of equality and argues that the assumption that there will later openly embrace. Hegel’s claim is that this (deriving political can be an objective equality of believers produces a peculiar kind of concepts from religious ones) leads to a strange effect, namely to an paradox. Why? Because if one starts from the idea that one deals with equality of objects, which ultimately only proves that there is a strange an equality of believers, one starts from an individual perspective, since way from religion to capitalism. Hegel’s critique is, thus, related to belief cannot but be the belief of an individual. If one then seeks to what one may call religion as capitalism (he therein more or less openly generalise and apply the idea of individual belief to more than just one follows Martin Luther) and much later Walter Benjamin will argue, individual, and if one therefore seeks to draw political consequences repeating and modifying some of Hegel’s argument, against capitalism from what is a formally religious, one assumes that all individuals that as religion (nowadays again taken up in a modified form by Jean-Pierre are considered to be equal share one, and essentially one only, objective Dupuy).
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