RICERCA ITALIANA     

The Power and the Word: Religion, Politics, Communication

Università di Pisa

Abstract

The present research aims to clarify the relation between the power and the word from a political, philosophical and theological perspective. It will be focused on an analysis of the classics of political thought, and on promoting their dissemination through several printing and e-publishing activities.
We shall follow three intertwined directions.
1. The first aspect of our analysis deals with the relation between religion and politics on the background of the secularization process. Secularization was boosted by the multifaceted changes in European thought furthered by the Reformation, It will be analyzed starting from the thought of the Seventeenth Century French Jansenists (Pascal, Nicole, Domat, Arnauld) and, particularly, on its ethical-political and legal aspects. They will be compared with Locke and Hobbes, on the one hand, and with Rousseau, on the other hand. On this basis, our research will scrutinize some theoretical paradigms of secularization, like the model proposed by Foucault.
2. The second aspect studies the role that word and speech play in their relation with power and secular coercion. The focus of such an analysis will be the Enlightenment and in particular Immanuel Kant, because his reflection on the power and the word may be considered as a cornerstone of the idea of philosophy itself. For this reason, our reflection will move from a Kantian perspective in its broadest meaning, in order to elaborate its political and theological implications. The goal of this research part is to reintroduce the complexity and fecundity of Kant's thought in the current debate on the technologies of the word.
3. Finally, a third section will be focused on the problem of political theology. We shall issue translations and critical editions of some fundamental works. From a theoretical perspective,our goal is to examine such a topic in XXth Century thinkers. Besides,we aim to use the theoretical analysis results to study the so-called "political religions" on the background of the classical "civil religion" paradigm. We would like to elaborate some theoretical tools to understand the meaning of religions in the new international political context.
Contributions of the research units will be published both in paper and on the net, and will be prepared and followed by workshops and conferences. Besides, their results will be made public by means of a customized software released under GPL license. Our goal is to offer the scientific community a tool tailored to the needs and skills of Humanities scholars. <<<

Principal Investigator

Giuliano MARINI Università di PISA

Research Objectives

To study the relation between the power and the word, we will focus on three main concepts: `Religion', `Politics', and `Communication'. Their relations will be analyzed on the basis of three major subjects:
- the nexus between religion and politics, and the relation between forms of communication, identity and power structures
- starting from Kant, the Enlightenment thought on "publicness" of philosophical and political logos
- the theological-political debate of the XXth Century, in order to understand its contemporary development
Our further practical goal is the development of digital tools to harvest and distribute the texts and documents produced by our research: we hope to offer other research groups in Italy and abroad a GPL software that can be easily usable by Humanities scholars.

1. Religion and Politics: categories and practices of secularization
The first goal to renew some fundamental questions on the meaning of secularization, in order to understand some of the current trends suggesting that religions play a new meaningful political role. We will follow two main directions. The first direction is a conceptual analysis. starting from the ethical, political and legal theory of Seventeenth Century French Jansenism.. The second one detects some special "practices" (in the meaning attributed to this word by M. Foucault's practical philosophy), which, while finding their roots in Christianity, were secularized in the social power devices, so that they are still surviving in the form of communication of political modernity.

2. Kantian Enlightenment: heritage and perspectives
The second aim of the project is to clarify the peculiarity of Kantian critical philosophy, focusing our attention on the definition of "Enlightenment" and its link to the principle of Publicness (Öffentlichkeit) that implies a nexus between politics and communication as well The role of Word and Speech in their relation with Power and the means of secular coercion comes increasingly to the fore in the Modern age and becomes crucial in the age of Enlightenment. In Immanuel Kant's thought, the link between power and word becomes a fundamental element of the very idea of philosophy. For this reason, we move from a Kantian general perspective, trying to work out its political and theological implication. A goal of this part of the research is to reconsider the importance of Kant's political thought for the current debate on the so-called technologies of the word (Walter Ong).

3. The political-theological debate today
The third aim of the research is to explain the concept of political theology, considering its theoretical complexity and its historical evolution. Some of the works of the most important theorists of the political-theological debate in XXth century will be translated into Italian and published. Moreover, we will study and translate some journals that published fundamental essays in such a debate.. Conferences, workshops and other related activities will be promoted, to evaluate both the presence and the relevance of such a debate today. Furthermore, we aim to broaden the research by including Europe cultural and geographical areas that considerably contributed to the subject. <<<

First Results

The expected results of the first stage are twofold:
1. an increase of literature on the research subject by issuing books, essays, review articles and bibliographical essays; this process will be helped by a new customized software, and especially by a public repository OAI-PMH compatible.
2. a better diffusion of knowledge on our topic both by traditional means (congresses and workshops, for instance) and new media, like a research web site, intended to the publishing of scientific information (bibliographies, review articles of books and scientific journals and so on) and guides (reasoned indexes of web links).As well as in the first year of research, during the second year we expect (1) to increase the number of publications, both on paper and on the Net; (2) to organize workshops and congresses. Moreover, we will work to increase the circulation of translations and critical editions. As a publicly funded research group, our intention is to improve the knowledge on the related subjects by producing public, open access hypertexts and websites. New kinds of software and the open standard we adopt (OAI-PMH) will increase the chance of a wider circulation of ideas. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

According to Eric Weil's well-known thesis, Christianity made democratic the ancient discovery of universality of reason. Ancient philosophy used to be aristocratic and exclusive; Christian doctrine, on the contrary, was preached everywhere. But its universality in scope follows two different tendencies. The first trend may be connected to St. Paul and his idea that the universality of Christianity transcends the ancient reason by replacing it with faith and grace: "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe" (Romans III:21-22) The second trend may be detected in the beginning of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (I:1). Its heritage was received by the neoplatonic Church Fathers: faith and grace were connected to God's logos and sapience. From such a point of view, Christianity could be legitimized both as the "true" philosophy and as the successor of pagan wisdom. These early trends were subjected to two different political applications and to two different kinds of secularization. The former is inclined to submit the Word to the Power; the latter, that was followed by the devotio moderna humanists, is inclined, on the contrary, to celebrate the Power of the Word and tries to bring politics into consonance with reason.
1) TRANSCENDENCE AND POLITICS: CATEGORIES AND PRACTICES OF SECULARIZATION
Information technology and globalization processes bear important consequences on the relations among communication forms, individual and collective identities and power patterns. In particular, it is crucial the relation between religion and politics in the so-called "multiethnic society", because it suggest the need to re-think questions that had been neglected for a long time and in some important versions of contemporary philosophy. Communication, as the virtual space in which different professions of faith can talk to each other, becomes more and more important. Some essential political philosophy topics are at stake, as, for instance:
- the concept of "secularization" should be examined to evaluate whether it can be used to understand not only historical aspects of modernity, but also contemporary history
- established liberal-democratic institutions and concepts,like the public sphere and neutrality between the so-called "comprehensive doctrines" (Rawls), need a renewed reflection
- kind and boundaries of tolerance have to be scrutinized again,because they have to bear the weight of diversities (see N. Bobbio, in AA.VV., "Uguali e diversi nella storia", Il Mulino, Bologna 1993) structurally different from those of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, from which they emerged, to be systematized by locke, Rousseau and Kant.
Because of their historical roots, such questions need to be evaluated from the perspective of the history of philosophy. At same time, however, they describe the beginning of the third millennium and should be evaluated also from the perspective of political theory.
2) POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE WORD'S POWER: FROM SECULARIZATION TO KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
The meaning of Enlightenment in Kant's political philosophy and in his whole critical metaphysics is well-known. Its most important testimony is the 1784 essay An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?, but this subject occurs also in his major critical works, while it is necessary a further interpretative effort to detect it in his main political writings and in the Metaphysics of Morals. In Kant's view, the Aufklärung or Enlightenment is a way to intertwine the autonomy of thought with society and culture. The distinction between the private and the public use of reason allows to advocate the freedom of science from the state, as freedom of thought and speech actively contribute to civil society growth. For this reason, Kant called his whole philosophy "critique". So, Enlightenment is a key concept to understand some of Kant's political philosophy issues,such as the concept of law, the relation between thought and religion and private and public communication. This is also the actual surviving Kantian heritage in a world plagued by several kinds of intellectual or corporate absolutism.
1.Scholars like Norberto Bobbio, Hermann Lübbe, and, more recently, Wolfgang Kersting reduced Kant's theory of sovereignty to Hobbes, in spite of his theory of Enlightenment. Political power has to make and impose decisions: therefore it seems to be in contradiction with the openness of the philosophical and religious world of speech. On the one hand, Hobbes epitomizes the modern conception of the submission of speech to power; on the other hand, Kant represents Enlightenment as a different kind of modernity, which aims to resolve power in speech. Therefore, a comparison between Kant and Hobbes is still interesting, to evaluate whether Kant's Enlightenment itself is a simply consequence or, rather, an alternative to Hobbes' modernity.
2. A second field of disputation is based on the results of a previous research. The core topic will be publicness in knowledge and information. By definition, philosophy and science are "open source" enterprises: they can grow only if a public and open discussion on accessible objects is allowed, and their results come out by means of publicly verifiable procedures. Every new production derives from the ability to use and to refine previous creations. Existing inventions and discoveries inspire the next ones. The great sapiential religions belong to such an ideal community of knowledge as well. But the power, bringing and imposing decisions, seems to be in contradiction with the openness of philosophical and religious speech; and today such a classical philosophical opposition has a very concrete sociological and political meaning, because of the current revolution in the technologizing of the word, as Walter Ong would have said.
The question of the publicness of science is a current philosophical and political topic because of the Internet and the possibilities of a virtually cosmopolitical communication.The major question is the proprietary character of knowledge and information: to which extent are they private goods? To which extent are they commons?

3) THE POWER AND THE WORD: A DEBATE ON POLITICAL THEOLOGY
The so called theological-political debate has been involving jurists, philosophers and theologians, all along the 20th century until now; it originates in Germany, but it has spread to other cultural and geographical areas as well. Particularly in the last decades, scholars have been investigating the history and the development of this debate, which offers still many directions for further researches.
1. A first meaning of the term "political theology" was given by the German jurist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). According to him, there is an historical and systematic analogy between theological and political concepts (for example between the concept of miracle and that of political exception, or between the concept of an almighty God and that of a king or a parliament as the supreme legislator). Schmitt took this analogy from Weber's and Troeltsch's historical researches, as well as from Durkheim's sociology, Freud's psychoanalysis and Kelsen's legal studies. Such an analogy between theology and politics was then used by Schmitt, to assert that political order is opened to transcendence and the catholic Church is indicated by him as guardian of this openness (Schmitt, 1923). According to him, capitalistic society is distinguished by radical immanence, individualistic anarchy, impersonal mechanism, whereas Catholic Church can put together immanence and transcendence in a legal form, because of its power of representation and his capability to make present what is invisible. From Schmitt's point of view, "political theology" has thus at least two "secular" meanings. On one hand, it designates a peculiar research methodology to investigate legal and political concepts, in order to show their analogy with other conceptual areas, above all the metaphysical and the theological ones. On the other hand, "political theology" involves a hermeneutic of the "political", in order to stress its constitutive openness to transcendence, i.e. the importance of the relationship between politics and truth.
2. A second meaning of the term "political theology" emerges during the twenties and the thirties, inside the catholic and protestant theology, following Schmitt's challenges, but also independently from them. This second meaning refers to a "theology of politics", i.e. a theological reflection about politics (it is what we can find in authors as E. Hirsch, F. Gogarten, J. Maritain). Such theological reflection is conducted from very different perspectives: sometimes it declares a direct dependence of the political order from the theological one; sometimes it asserts theologically the radical secularity of political reality; sometimes it sees the very Christian perspective in a distinction between politics and theology and in a subordination of the former to the latter. In this context, the cultural reviews play an important role. Still during the world war I, some reviews were the place where that peculiar connection between religion and politics was carried on (f. e. "Summa" 1917-1918 and "Der Brenner"). During the twenties and the thirties, many other reviews joined this debate (see, for the German and the Austrian area, "Hochland", "Die Schildgenossen", "Abendland", "Una Sancta").
3. Some exponents of these "political theologies" (and particularly the same Carl Schmitt) were politically involved in the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes of the thirties. Therefore the term "political theology" began to be used, by its critics, in a pejorative meaning: "political theology" is seen as a new form of theologia civilis, i.e. a theological justification of a determinate political regime. This meaning of the term is used, among others, in Erik Peterson's book "Monotheism as political problem" (1935). This essay, that assumed a symbolic value against every attempt to justify theologically the Nazi regime, argues that a "political theology", based on the parallelism "ein Gott - ein Reich - ein Volk", is impossible inside Christianity, where the Trinitarian conception of God and the eschatological dimension of the Kingdom do not allow any immediate identification between the divine order and the political one. Traces of Peterson's work can be found in other classics of political theology, such as Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss - not to cite theologians, that have written about political themes, as Karl Barth, Heinich Schlier or Oscar Cullmann. While the totalitarian regimes were presenting themselves as something sacred, other scholars interpret the same regimes as "political religions" (Voegelin, 1938) and "secularized messianism" (Bonhoeffer 1932 and Guardini 1946). That is valid above all for the Nazi-regime, but similar interpretations were been made about the Stalin regime too (Berdiaev, Florenskij).
4. During the sixties, a fourth meaning of the term "political theology" is asserted inside the catholic and protestant theologies (particularly by J.B. Metz, J. Moltmann, D. Sölle). This so called "new political theology" aims to be a "theological hermeneutic in the contemporary context". Christianity is seen as a force that desacralizes political power and that liberates from every idolatric subjection. So the new political theology interprets Christianity not only as religious, but also as historical liberation for the poor of the world. In this direction, the ancient concept of suffering became particularly important as point of view to read the question of social order and of the function of authorities. <<<