The Theological-Political Turn: A Critique

In recent years numerous authors have claimed that underneath everything political there lies something religious an underground religious substance, as it were. These religious elements, it is said, are the essence of political phenomena and the driving force of their history. Even in our modern "secularized" politics, the heart of the matter, it is alleged, is religious, just as it was in the past. This fashion for the theological-political can be observed in the most varied trends in contemporary philosophy, from the work of Giorgio Agamben and Charles Taylor to that of Richard Rorty and J rgen Habermas.In G raldine Muhlmann's view, this "theological-political" idea is a sham. It sheds no light on the factors that underlie key political developments, such as the crisis of liberal democracies and the rise of authoritarianism. It has nothing to say about the concrete ways in which religious points of reference, when they do exist, are used to wage war or to make politics. It contribut