The Cunning of the Rationalist: Descartes as the Chief Enemy of Political Theology
Abstract
This article attempts to link Carl Schmitt’s project of political theology to the Cartesian tradition of thought and to point out the aporia of the German jurist’s theory in this way. The analogy of God and the sovereign proposed by Schmitt in his 1922 work is considered in the context of its original formulation as set out in Descartes’ letter to Mersenne. The implications of turning Descartes’ formula «God as sovereign» into the formula «sovereign as God» are examined. For this purpose, the paradoxical place of God in Descartes’ system, which is defined by his constitutive powerlessness, is clarified on the basis of Michael Gillespie’s work. The dependence of Schmitt’s hypothesis on its Cartesian origins reveals the theoretical fragility of the entire construction of political theology. In particular, it is explained that Schmitt’s polemic with Walter Benjamin on the topic of «God’s powerlessness» is the result of a misunderstanding of the real threat to the project of political theology emanating from Descartes’ philosophy.
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