Political Theology: Demystifying the Universal (Encounters in Law and Philosophy)

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[SERIES BLURB] Can secularisation in the legal and political domains settle modernity's scores with religion? This book provides a genealogical mapping of the universalization/secularization thesis that is both widely saluted and mistrusted as master narrative of modern political and normative history. While accepting that foundational issues of religions weigh heavier than political philosophy's aspirations, the authors question the outdated suggestions of Carl Schmitt's political theology, building instead upon a refined version of Giorgio Agamben's close-reading of Christian government as management. The book identifies Western-Christian tensions within jurisprudence and concludes that the West's secular universality is passing off as politics or law what is really the management of its own dwindling primacy. Marinos Diamantides is Reader in Law at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. His research lies at the intersection of public law and social and political theories, philosophy, anthropology and ethics. His publications include The Ethics of Suffering: Modern Law, Philosophy and Medicine (2000), Levinas, Law, Politics (2007) and Islam, Law and Identity (2011). Anton Schutz is Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. He is director of the London-based research centre dealing with political theology (CRIPT). He has published many articles and edited collections on the comparative genealogy of norms and anti-normative movements in Western-Christian history.