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Das Politische als Passion und Fragment. Erik Peterson und Carl Schmitt in der Auseinandersetzung um die Grundlagen der Politischen Theologie

Published/Copyright: January 14, 2020
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Abstract

In the current dispute over the crisis of democracy arises, among others, the question about a theological concept of the Political. The article traces this problem back to the debate between Erik Peterson and Carl Schmitt after 1933. While Schmitt, apologizing Nazi dictatorship, emphatically proclaimed the Political as the »total«, Peterson responded that the Political in the very moment of its totalization ceases to be political but receives instead a cultlike quality. Opposing this scenario, Peterson developed a concept of the Political which finds its central image in the figure of the martyr whose body is broken by imperial violence. The Political is not conceived out of the political agency, but out of the »passio«, at the place where the new aeon of the crucified and risen Christ and the old aeon of the agonistic political are colliding. The sacramental practice of the church, then, is the place where the presence of the new order of the Political is instituted and anticipated in an eschatological and provisional way.

Online erschienen: 2020-01-14
Erschienen im Druck: 2019-12-01

© 2020 by Gütersloher Verlagshaus

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