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June 30, 2008
In the 1920s Carl Schmitt provided a clear account of “political theology,” an approach to politics that very few modernists understood and systematically confused with theology as such. Schmitt's theory of political theology simply claimed that all political concepts are secularized versions of theological concepts, and, consequently, to attempt to vindicate their universality and uniqueness would have been an unwarranted recycling of theology.
This is why Schmitt always emphasized the Eurocentric character of Western political theory, and claimed that liberals, mired in a universalism that regarded any particularity as variations on the same theme, could not really deal with politics.The liberals’ commitment to a fictitious universalism and to the neutrality of their political model, continues today, by adhering to a political theory that refuses to acknowledge its historical obsolescence — to deny its particularistic traditional foundations and therefore to avoid anything connected with desecularization.
It is now clear that the foundations of Western political institutions are not neutral, and that the modernist celebration of the break with traditions (seen as conformist residues projecting false ideals and possible reconciliations) presuppsoed a unilinear theory of progress dismissive of all traditions and customs. This modernist narrative is now give way to the refunctioning of traditions in that popular sovereignty is now seen to be deeply embedded in the country's very social fiber.
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