Reoccupying Secularization, Schmitt and Koselleck On Blumenberg's Challenge - Timo Pankakoski

History and Theory 52 (May 2013), 214-245 Wesleyan University 2013 ISSN: 0018-2656
REOCCUPYING SECULARIZATION:
SCHMITT AND KOSELLECK ON BLUMENBERGS CHALLENGE
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
1
ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the compound of the categories of secularization and reoccupation in
its variations from Hans Blumenbergs philosophy to Carl Schmitts political theory and,
ultimately, to Reinhart Kosellecks conceptual history. By revisiting the debate between
Blumenberg and Schmitt on secularization and political theology with regard to the polit-
ical-theoretical aspects of secularization and the methodological aspects of reoccupation,
I will provide conceptual tools that illuminate the partly tension-ridden elements at play
in Kosellecks theorizing of modernity, history, and concepts. For Schmitt, secularization
is inherently related to the question of political conflict, and, correspondingly, he attempts
to discredit Blumenbergs criticism of secularization as an indirectly aggressive, and
thereby hypocritical, attempt to escape the political. To this end, I argue, Schmitt appropri-
ates Blumenbergs concept of reoccupation and uses it alternately in the three distinct
senses of absorption, reappropriation, and revaluation. Schmitts famous thesis of
political concepts as secularized theological concepts contains an unmistakable method-
ological element and a research program. The analysis therefore shows the relevance of
the Blumenberg/Schmitt debate for the mostly tacit dialogue between Blumenberg and
Koselleck. I scrutinize Kosellecks understanding of secularization from his early Schmit-
tian and Lwithian theory of modernity to his later essays on temporalization of history
and concepts. Despite Blumenbergs criticism, Koselleck holds onto the category of secu-
larization throughout, but gradually relativizes it into a research hypothesis among others.
Simultaneously, Koselleck formalizes, alongside other elements, the Schmittian account
of reoccupation into his method of conceptual analysis and uses the term in the same
three sensesthus making reoccupation conceptually compatible with secularization,
despite the former notions initial critical function in Blumenbergs theory. The examina-
tion highlights a Schmittian residue that accounts for Kosellecks reserved attitude toward
Blumenbergs metaphorology, regardless of a significant methodological overlap.
Keywords: secularization, reoccupation, Reinhart Koselleck, Carl Schmitt, Hans Blumen-
berg, conceptual history, political theory, conflict
I. INTRODUCTION
In a global era, when religion and politics repeatedly intertwine, secularization
is bound to remain a matter of contention. In the inherently ambiguous process
of secularization, religion is not simply jettisoned, but rather interacts with the
1. The author would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of History and Theory as
well as Mika Ojakangas and Heta Moustgaard for their helpful comments.
REOCCUPYING SECULARIZATION
215
worldly sphere, whereby some of its transcendental elements are possibly made
immanent. Whether this is a loss or liberation depends on the observers initial
normative valuations. Further, such an abstract and multilayered process as
secularization is never unequivocally over, but rather is open to various evalu-
ations regarding its state and success. We are thus faced with a double ambiva-
lence. If religion is positively valued, secularization appears either as a loss of
the original content and subjective meaning or as a partly successful restorative
act of absorption in which these meanings are confined to secular structures. If,
however, religion is negatively valued, secularization appears either as emancipa-
tion and liberation from the original theological straitjacket or, alternatively, as
a shortcoming of the same procedure and therefore, possibly, an ongoing task.
No wonder secularization has been debated not only with regard to the historical
status and mechanisms of this process, but also to its normative tones, ideological
imprints, and the explanatory force of the notion itself.
2
Rather than reflecting on the theme of secularization at large or sketching
a further summary of the career of this fundamentally contested concept,
3
I
will provide a political-theoretical commentary on its destiny in the twentieth-
century German intellectual milieu. I will focus on three major thinkers: Hans
Blumenberg (19201996), Carl Schmitt (18881985), and Reinhart Koselleck
(19232006). I will show that the category of secularization has a central posi-
tion in their respective systems of thought and captures the logic of their theories
regarding modernity, history, and politics. The argument proceeds cumulatively,
rather than in a merely chronological or fixed teleological fashion, from the con-
sideration of Blumenberg and Schmitt to the analysis of Kosellecks theorizing.
Ultimately, I will attempt to provide conceptual tools that illuminate the partly
tension-ridden elements at play in Kosellecks work.
The wider motivation of the article is to contribute to the future possibilities
of combining Koselleckian and Blumenbergian perspectives by scrutinizing the
political-theoretical aspect of the matter. In this context, however, I will proceed
in a negative fashion and focus merely on removing a central theoretical obstacle
by clarifying the disagreement regarding secularization. Only after we acknowl-
edge the contingency of this disagreement and thus relativize the accompanying
sup posed ideological implications is it possible to fully utilize the wide theoreti-
cal and methodological overlap between conceptual history and metaphorology.
4
2. The range of participants, particularly in the German context, is impressive: from Hegel and
Marx to Weber and Troeltsch to Lwith and Blumenberg, to name only a few. See Hermann Lbbe,
Skularisierung: Geschichte eines ideenpolitischen Begriffs, 3
rd
ed. [1965] (Freiburg: Alber, 2003);
Jean-Claude Monod, La querelle de la scularisation de Hegel Blumenberg (Paris: Vrin, 2002). For
a contemporary reassessment of secularization, see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2007).
3. For the conceptual history of secularization in Germany, see Hermann Zabel and Hans-
Wolfgang Strtz, Skularisation, Skularisierung, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches
Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and
Reinhart Koselleck [hereafter GG], Band 5: Pro-Soz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), 789-829; G.
Marramao, Skularisierung, in Historisches Wrterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter and
Karlfried Grnder, Band 8: R-Sc (Basel: Schwabe, 1992), 1133-1161.
4. For a primarily methodological assessment of the prospects of combining the history of con-
cepts with metaphorology, see Frank Beck Lassen, Metaphorically Speaking: Begriffsgeschichte
and Hans Blumenbergs Metaphorologie, in Eine Typologie der Formen der Begriffsgeschichte,
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
216
The essay consists of two main parts. I will first revisit a well-known but
seldom fully understood and conceptually analyzed debate between Blumen-
berg and Schmitt regarding secularization and political theology.
5
Blumenberg
attempted to pinpoint Schmitts political position by projecting onto him his-
torical categories that did not quite match Schmitts actual arguments. Schmitt
switched to the political register and forced Blumenbergs more general concerns
into replies regarding the possibility of escaping the conflict potential inherent
in confessionsreligious and secular alike. Due to largely incompatible points
of departure and aims, the dispute turned into a tour de force of mutual misap-
prehension and conceptual manipulation. This, however, does not undermine, but
rather underlines the importance of this debate: the unfruitfulness of the dialogue
highlights how much is in play. I will analyze the central points of the quarrel
with regard to their significance for the basic structures of Schmitts theory. In
particular, my reading emphasizes the dimensions of religious and political con-
flict, on the one hand, and the political-cum-methodological aspects of Schmitts
theory of concepts, on the other.
Secularization is a point where philosophical, ideological, and methodological
considerations meet. Schmitts political theology is crystallized in the thesis all
cogent concepts of modern state theory are secularized theological conceptsa
claim that contains an unmistakable guideline for conceptual-historical analysis.
In the second part, I will therefore show the rele vance of the Blumenberg/Schmitt
ed. Riccardo Pozzo and Marco Sgarbi (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2010), 53-70; for a more theoreti-
cal approach, see Elas Jos Palti, From Ideas to Concepts to Metaphors: The German Tradition of
Intellectual History and the Complex Fabric of Language, History and Theory 49 (2010), 192-211;
Cf. Gottfried Gabriel, Kategoriale Unterscheidungen und absolute Metaphern: Zur systematischen
Bedeutung von Begriffsgeschichte und Metaphorologie, in Metaphorologie: Zur Praxis von Theorie,
ed. Anselm Haverkamp and Dirk Mende (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009), 65-84.
5. For critical reactions in German, see Religionstheorie und Politische Theologie, Band 1: Der
Frst dieser Welt: Carl Schmitt und die Folgen, ed. Jacob Taubes, 2nd improved edition [1983]
(Munich: Fink, 1985). A brief but lucid overview of the dispute in English is in Jan-Werner Ml-
ler, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993), 156-168. For a survey of the debate in the larger context of a critical, and at points
polemical, examination of Schmitts theological and political motives, see Ruth Groh, Arbeit an der
Heillosigkeit der Welt: Zur politisch-theologischen Mythologie und Anthropologie Carl Schmitts
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998), 156-184. The BlumenbergSchmitt correspondence includes
a wide-ranging, albeit rather opaque afterword by the editors: Alexander Schmitz and Marcel Lep-
per, Nachwort: Logik der Differenzen und Spuren des Gemeinsamen: Hans Blumenberg und Carl
Schmitt, in Hans Blumenberg and Carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel 19711978 und weitere Materialen,
ed. Alexander Schmitz and Marcel Lepper (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007), 253-306. A primar-
ily theological reading of the debate, commenting also in passing on the concept of reoccupation, is
in Peter Hohendahl, Political Theology Revisited: Carl Schmitts Postwar Reassessment, Konturen
1 (2008), http://konturen.uoregon.edu/volume1.html (accessed October 6, 2011); Heinrich Meier
also comments on the debate in a new afterword. See Heinrich Meier, Der Streit um die politische
Theologie: Ein Rckblick, in Die Lehre Carl Schmitts: Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung Politischer
Theologie und Politischer Philosophie, 3
rd
ed. [1994] (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009), 269-300; A recent
article by Pini Ifergan summarizes well the argumentative needs and rhetorical strategies of both
philosophers and suggests that their opposition encourages both to sharpen their own positions. See
Pini Ifergan, Cutting to the Chase: Carl Schmitt and Hans Blumenberg on Political Theology and
Secularization, New German Critique 37 (2010), 149-711. A recent contribution in English attempts
to trace Schmitts philosophy of history. See Celina Mara Bragagnolo, Secularization, History, and
Political Theology: The Hans Blumenberg and Carl Schmitt Debate, Journal of the Philosophy of
History 5 (2011), 84-104.
217
nexus for the mostly tacit dialogue between Blumenberg and Koselleck, the most
prominent theorist of German Begriffsgeschichte. Kosellecks remarkable debt to
Schmitt has been recorded,
6
but the question of secularization remains neglected
in these debates. Koselleck certainly theorized secularization further,
7
yet adopt-
ed key elements from Karl Lwiths reading of modern philosophy of history
as secularized eschatology and Schmitts theorizing of political modernity. As
Blumenbergs attack on the secularization thesis is largely directed against both
Lwith and Schmitt, it is only logical that Blumenberg also decries Kosellecks
dissertation concisely but decisively in this context. Despite the lack of a proper
response, there are clear indications that Koselleck acknowledges the challenge:
in fact, I will show that he counters it with a creative reinterpretation of Blumen-
bergs key categories, identical to that of Schmitt.
So far, this link among the three philosophers remains completely neglected in
scholarship. I will build my analysis upon a close reading of secularization and
reoccupation (Umbesetzung), a concept that has remarkable elucidatory power
for the political aspect of the debate. I will first summarize Blumenbergs theory
of modernity by focusing on the conceptual axis of secularization and reoccupa-
tion. Next I will analyze the significance of the category of secularization for
Schmitt as well as the motivations and maneuvers of his reply by a close reading
of his alternative usages of reoccupation. Finally, I will study the development
of Kosellecks view on secularization and temporalization of concepts and the
way he formalizes, alongside other Schmittian elements, Schmitts reading of
reoccupation into an essential ele ment of his method of conceptual analysis.
II. REOCCUPATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF EPOCHAL CHANGE
Hans Blumenberg is known primarily for four major contributions. First, intel-
lectual historians often encounter Blumenberg as the developer of the approach
of metaphorology, a self-declared subfield or auxiliary resource of conceptual
history. In Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie (1960) Blumenberg introduced
the notion of absolute metaphor to refer to metaphors that cannot be replaced
by literal language, thus emphasizing an irreducible metaphorical element in cul-
tural and scientific concept-formation.
8
In the late 1970s, Blumenberg revisited
6. Timo Pankakoski, Conflict, Context, Concreteness: Koselleck and Schmitt on Concepts,
Political Theory 38 (2010), 749-779; Reinhard Mehring, Begriffsgeschichte mit Carl Schmitt, in
Begriffene Geschichte: Beitrge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks, ed. Hans Joas and Peter Vogt (Frank-
furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011), 138-158; Niklas Olsen, Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck and the
Foundations of History and Politics, History of European Ideas 37 (2011), 197-208; Niklas Olsen,
History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck (New York: Berghahn
Books, 2012), 23-26, 41-100, and passim.
7. The most perceptive treatment of secularization in Koselleck is Hans Joas, Die Kontingenz der
Skularisierung: berlegungen zum Problem der Skularisierung im Werk Reinhart Kosellecks, in
Begriffene Geschichte: Beitrge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks, ed. Hans Joas and Peter Vogt (Frank-
furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011), 319-338. For an earlier exposition of the main lines (in Danish),
see Frank Beck Lassen, Tyveri! Til sekularisieringens semantik, Slagmark 48 (2007), 139-158; A
thought-provoking, but less detailed reading, with additional comments on Schmitt and Blumenberg,
is in Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization
Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 77-102.
8. Hans Blumenberg, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie [1960] (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1999).
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
218
his earlier theory, now giving it a more explicitly anthropological reinterpretation
in the theory of non-conceptuality.
9
In addition to his theoretical and meth-
odological reflections, Blumenberg also provided rich volumes on particular
metaphorical themes, such as the images of the shipwreck, the book, and the
cave as paradigms for reality and knowledge of the world.
10
Second, Blumenberg
is widely known for his anthropological theory of myth as constant work or cul-
tural reinterpretation by the human being in the attempt not only to make sense
of reality but also to be able to live in it without fear.
11
Some of the main lines
of his principal work in this field, Arbeit am Mythos (1979), had already been
anticipated in 1971 in two major essays on myth and rhetoric from the anthropo-
logical perspective.
12
A substantial volume containing Blumenbergs posthumous
anthropological fragments was published in 2006.
13
Third, Blumenberg wrote
extensively on the questions of the history of science, innovatively mapping
the philosophical, theological, and other extra-scientific factors contributing to
what later came to be known as the Copernican revolution.
14
Fourth, much of
the debate on Blumenberg has centered around his theory of modernity and his
contribution to the debate on secularization. His magnum opus with the strik-
ing title Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit first appeared in 1966 and was revised and
republished in four independent volumes in the 1970s and 1980s.
15
The four main areas are deeply interlinked, but in this essay I will concentrate
on Blumenberg as a theorist of modernity and from that vantage point attempt
to map the political aspects of the debate on secularization. Blumenberg neither
provided a systematic political theory nor explicated his own political prefer-
ences. However, his attempt to provide an anthropological basis for rhetoric as an
indirect, cumbersome, and self-purposeful method of human interaction reflects a
commitment to the democratic-parliamentary form of government and to the toil-
some will-formation through persuasion rather than by force.
16
Further, Blumen-
9. Hans Blumenberg, Theorie der Unbegrifflichkeit [1975], ed. Anselm Haverkamp (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007); Hans Blumenberg, Ausblick auf eine Theorie der Unbegrifflichkeit
[1979], in Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer: Paradigma einer Daseinsmetapher (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1997), 85-106.
10. Blumenberg, Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer; Hans Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt [1981]
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, n. d.); Hans Blumenberg, Hhlenausgnge [1989] (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).
11. Hans Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979).
12. Hans Blumenberg, Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Wirkungspotential des Mythos [1971],
in sthetische und metaphorologische Schriften, ed. Anselm Haverkamp (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2001), 327-405; Hans Blumenberg, Anthropologische Annherung an die Aktualitt der
Rhetorik [1971], in sthetische und metaphorologische Schriften, ed. Anselm Haverkamp (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 406-431.
13. Hans Blumenberg, Beschreibung des Menschen: Aus dem Nachla, ed. Manfred Sommer
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006).
14. Hans Blumenberg, Die kopernikanische Wende (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965); Hans
Blumenberg, Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt [1975] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, n. d.).
15. Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966); the four
revised volumes are now published as Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit [1966], revised
edition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).
16. Jean-Claude Monod, A Rhetorical Approach of Politics: Blumenbergs Principle of Insuf-
ficient Reason and its Pascalian Consequences, www.brown.edu/Departments/Humanities_Center/
initiatives/documents/BlumpaperMonod.pdf (accessed August 2, 2012), 8 and 14.
219
bergs thought manifests a consistent opposition to absolutism in all its forms,
be they theological, metaphysical, or political. In particular his quarrel with the
conservative and authoritarian implications of Carl Schmitts pessimistic political
anthropology manifests a striving for a more open-ended interpretation of human
potential. Whereas Schmitt maintained that all genuine political theories presume
the human being to be evil, and consequently favored decision and authority
over norms and the generation of consensus in public discussion, Blumenberg
down the line emphasized indeterminacy, contingency, and the inability to decide
upon what the human being is or to delegate such a decision to any authority
or institution.
17
I believe Jean-Claude Monod is correct in pointing out that this
indeterminacy implies a skeptical attitude toward not only conservative positions
but also toward radically progressive, emancipatory, and utopian theories, such
as those of the Marxist Left.
18
In this regard Blumenbergs approach is not very
far removed from the consistent anti-utopianism of Reinhart Koselleck, another
proponent of contingency, despite their dissimilar points of departure.
Let us first, however, briefly sketch Blumenbergs view of secularization. In
Legitimitt, he attempts an original defense of the modern ways of grasping the
position of the human being in the universe, history, and culture.
19
The themes
of the volume range from the conceptual history of scientific curiosity to the
theological underpinnings of medieval cosmology, the challenge of Gnosticism,
and the questions of epochal thresholds. In four independent parts, Blumenberg
seeks to bolster the forms of modern self-assertion by showing their relative
independence from their alleged religious origins. Rather than secularized deriva-
tives of earlier religious modes, the modern intellectual aspirations have their
own sources of legitimacy and serve distinctively modern purposes. Although
he does not deny the possibility of secularization having actually taken place in
particular historical cases, Blumenberg denies the heuristic force of seculariza-
tion as a historiographical category. Secularization as the original appropriation
of church property by secular authorities connotes illegitimate confiscation, and
Blumenbergs quarrel with the notion derives largely from the need to relativize
the partly hidden metaphorical implication that modernity is an inherently ille-
gitimate epoch. The denial of derivation amounts to an assertion of discontinuity,
and for Blumenberg it is in this discontinuity that modernitys alleged legitimacy
lies. However, Blumenberg also questions the eras preposterous tendency to see
itself as completely independent of previous epochs and denies the possibility of
absolutely fresh starts in history.
20
17. See Brad Tabas, Blumenberg, Politics, Anthropology, Telos 158 (2012), 135-153.
18. Monod, A Rhetorical Approach, 10-12.
19. For a concise summary, see Robert M. Wallace, Translators Introduction, in Hans Blumen-
berg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, transl. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1985), xi-xxxi; for a wider philosophical assessment, consult David Ingram, Reflections on the
Anthropocentric Limits of Scientific Realism: Blumenberg on Myth, Reason, and the Legitimacy
of the Modern Age, in Dialectic and Narrative, ed. Thomas R. Flynn and Dalia Judovitz (Albany:
SUNY Press, 1993), 165-183; cf. Robert B. Pippin, Blumenberg and the Modernity Problem, in
Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
265-285.
20. Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 72; Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1996), 129.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
220
To capture the interplay of continuities and discontinuities in a more sophis-
ticated manner, Blumenberg builds upon a metakinetic model of historical
change that he had already devel oped in other contexts
21
and introduces the key
category of reoccupation (Umbesetzung). Blumenberg argues that the temporal
succession of Christian eschatology by the idea of pro gress and the recurrent
linguistic borrowings from theology are not proof enough for the persis tence of
a common substance and a transposition of Christian eschatology into secular
pro gress.
22
The eschatological understanding of history is based on a transcen-
dental element, dis tinct from the course of history itself, and seeks to provide
a sufficient answer to the question regarding the nature of history as a whole.
The doctrine of progress, in contrast, extrapolates to the future an element that is
immanent to history here and now; genetically, it also rather an swers questions
within this history, for example, by providing means of opposition against the
idea of eternal normative models in the field of aesthetics.
23
Already these principal differences, Blumenberg argues, block any simple sub-
stantial transposition (Umsetzung) between eschatology and progress.
24
The most
radical change of eschatology does not take place when the Stoic cyclical world-
view is reduced to one linear pe riod of expectation, but rather when this vague
teleology that gives world history at large a direction, in the New Testament,
turns into anticipation and fear of immediate end and into an element of personal
life history. The fact that these expectations are constantly disappointed suggests
an allegorical interpretation, and this, in Blumenbergs view, is already a seed for
a secular philosophy of history.
25
Eschatology, thus, becomes historical, and, in
some sense of the word, worldly by an autonomous intrinsic development after
which there is no need to actively secularize it in modernity anymore; the emer-
gence of progress, on the other hand, was independent and largely related to the
birth of the scientific method.
26
Blumenberg notes that the primary secularization
is not a transformation (Transformation), but rather an original emergence
or spontaneous generation (Urzeugung).
27
Likewise, the idea of progress does
not emerge by transforming the eschatological expectations, but rather the notion
originally has a limited but autonomous domain of application that gradually
becomes wider. Thereby progress becomes one possible answer to the question
regarding the nature of history as a wholea question that eschatology made
pertinent but was unable to answer exhaustively.
28
21. See Benjamin Lazier, Overcoming Gnosticism: Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the
Legitimacy of the Natural World, Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), 619-637.
22. The main points had already been expressed in 1962 in a paper that was later expanded into
the first part of Legitimitt. Hans Blumenberg, Skularisation: Kritik einer Kategorie historischer
Illegitimitt [1962], in Die Philosophie und die Frage nach dem Fortschritt, ed. Helmut Kuhn and
Franz Wiedmann (Munich: Pustet, 1964), 240-265.
23. Blumenberg, Skularisation, 243. Cf. Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 23-24; Blumenberg,
Legitimitt (1996), 39-40.
25. Blumenberg, Skularisation, 245-247.
26. Ibid., 247 and 249; Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 33 and 36; Blumenberg, Legitimitt
(1996), 57 and 60.
28. Blumenberg, Skularisation, 248-249; Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 35-36; Blumen-
berg, Legitimitt (1996), 59-60.
221
For Blumenberg, the historical identity implied by the secularization hypoth-
esis is thus an illusion that emerges because of the identity of function, which
can admit quite heterogeneous contents to certain positions [Stellen] in mans
system of interpretation regarding the world and himself.
29
No violence of a
transposition [Transposition] was used in this process.
30
Slightly varying his
vocabulary, Blumenberg notes that we are not dealing here with the trans-
position [Umsetzung (Transposition)] of an authentic theological content in a
secular self-alienation, but with the reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of a posi-
tion [Position] that has become vacant but as such cannot be eliminated.
31
For
Blumenberg, there is, then, some continuity in history, but this does not consist
of the survival of substances, but of the inheritance of problems and adoption
of functions.
32
In the transition between two epochs, carry-over questions often
emerge. Some of them arise as questions only after the old answers have become
untenable, thus leaving an empty functional position and a residual need for the
following era to deal with. Both continuities and discontinuities are thus at play
in Blumenbergs assessment of secularization.
33
In my interpretation the early epochal model and the notion of reoccupation
are closely linked to Blumenbergs attempt to find means for a detailed compre-
hension of recurring phenomena in the history of thought and to develop a method
of close reading that is not only accurate and historically sensitive, but also criti-
cal toward continuities and presumed necessities. Methodologically, his criticism
of secularization entails the need to study language with a keen eye: the stability
of the linguistic level fabricates an illusion of continuity between religious and
secular concerns even if the questions have in fact changed. The exterior similar-
ity of vocabulary is thus the first obstacle for the analyst to bypass: The con-
stancy of language indicates the constancy of the function of consciousness, but
not a genetic nexus of contents.
34
If a reoccupation of functional positions has
taken place, then linguistic constancy, indeed, is to be expected, for constancy is
29. Blumenberg, Skularisation, 249-250; Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 41; Blumenberg,
Legitimitt (1996), 74.
30. Blumenberg, Skularisation, 249.
31. Ibid., 250; Almost identically in Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 42 and Blumenberg, Legiti-
mitt (1996), 75.
32. Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 35; slightly modified in Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1996), 59.
33. In his subsequent work in the history of science and myth theory, Blumenberg develops some
of these elements further and sporadically uses reoccupation in altered senses (see Elas Jos Palti,
In Memoriam: Hans Blumenberg [19201996], An Unended Quest, Journal of the History of Ideas
58 [1997], 520-521; Franz Josef Wetz, Hans Blumenberg zur Einfhrung [Hamburg: Junius, 1993]).
Whereas in Legitimitt the emphasis is on the discontinuity between medieval eschatology and mod-
ern progress, Blumenbergs next monumental work employs a similar approach, but attempts rather
to show that what has been metaphorically conceptualized as the Copernican revolution in fact had
pivotal extra-scientific origins in, and significant continuities with, the medieval theological debates.
Here he still holds onto the figure of reoccupation in a functionally presupposed framework which
remains intact and makes partial changes not only bearable but, above all, plausible (Blumenberg,
Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt, 596). The new emphasis on continuity rather than rupture is
also reflected in the second edition of Legitimitt: The concept of reoccupation designates . . . the
minimum of identity that it must be possible to find, or at least presuppose and look for, in even the
most hectic movement of history (Blumenberg, Legitimitt [1996], 541).
34. Blumenberg, Skularisation, 259; slightly modified in Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 58,
and Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1996), 98.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
222
needed to facilitate the substitution of new content for old in the first placeand
to hide this fact from view.
35
Further, thinkers may consciously uphold rhetorical
consistency to fabricate emotional intensities,
36
to fit their radically new sug-
gestions to the legitimizing traditional framework, or simply to make them com-
prehensible. There is an unmistakable strategic element in secularization: The
sacred sphere of language lives longer than the sacred sphere of things, being
timidly conserved and brought in as a cover precisely where philosophically,
scientifically, or politically new things are being thought.
37
If this is to be called
secularization, then at least the world was actively and intentionally secularized
rather than being drawn abstractly into a process of secularization.
III. SECULARIZATION AND THE TAMING OF CONFLICT
Even if the criticism of secularization was largely directed against Lwith
38
and
others, these are the essential ingredients of Blumenbergs challenge to Schmitts
political theology, too. Carl Schmitt, the constitutional lawyer and radical politi-
cal theorist very much in vogue in the Anglophone world since the 1980s, is best
known for proposing the distinction between friend and enemy as the criterion of
the political in his Der Begriff des Politischen (1927, second edition 1932, third
edition 1933).
39
Rather than a separate field of substance like economy, aesthet-
ics, or ethics, the political for Schmitt leans upon the intensity of the opposi-
tion between friend and enemy. Even if warfare for Schmitt is not the essence
of politics, the eventual possibility of the physical destruction of the enemy in
war or civil war is in his view the theoretical presumption that makes a particular
situation political in the specific sense. The political thus has an intimate link to
conflict. At the same time, however, Schmitt was particularly keen to emphasize
the disruptive potential of domestic political strife. Schmitt was consistently anti-
revolutionary, anti-utopian, antiparliamentary, antipluralist, and antiliberal. In the
Weimar period he argued for the authoritative rule of the president by emergency
powers not only to protect the constitutional order against extra-parliamentary
powers but also against the immanent threat of party splintering, resulting from
the pluralistic and compromising nature of the Weimar constitution itself.
40
As I
will show in detail later, the religious civil wars served as a model for Schmitts
analysis of pluralism. Both the problem and the proposed solution leaned upon
previous theological considerations. Already in his Politische Theologie (1922,
second edition 1934) Schmitt had scrutinized the links between theological and
political structures, vaguely implying that the historical and conceptual parallels
between divine omnipotence and secular sovereignty support his own thesis that a
35. Blumenberg, Skularisation, 257.
36. Ibid., 259.
37. Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 51; Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1996), 87. Emphasis added.
38. Karl Lwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949). For an assessment of the political ramifications, see
Jeffrey Andrew Barash, The Sense of History: On the Political Implications of Karl Lwiths Con-
cept of Secularization, History and Theory 37 (1998), 69-82.
39. Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 7th ed. [1932] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002).
40. Carl Schmitt, Der Hter der Verfassung, 4th ed. [1931] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996).
223
sovereign decision, rather than a norm as the legal positivists argued, is the basis
of a legal order.
41
It is mainly this book that Blumenberg addresses in his criticism nearly half
a century later. He attempts to tackle the close, but ultimately contingent, links
between theological and political absolutism and to show that the derivation of
political conclusions from theological absolutism has been groundless and arti-
ficial ever since theological absolutism became untenable for internal reasons.
After a reoccupation, the early modern state was left with a set of theological ves-
tiges that helped to fabricate an illusion of historical derivation on the linguistic
level and thus to legitimize absolute rule. Further, to invoke theological notions
in contemporary political theory, as Schmitt allegedly does in his decisionism, is
to resort to metaphorical theology as a rhetorical strategy under the selective
aspect of the actual need for background and pathos.
42
This nexus is then nor-
malized and sealed theoretically by the secularization hypothesis, condensed in
the now clich-like thesis that [a]ll cogent concepts of modern state theory are
secularized theological concepts.
43
Unsurprisingly, Schmitt reacted vigorously. In 1970, he published a peculiar
little book entitled Politische Theologie II in which he attempted to defend the
original thesis against a set of contemporary critics, and confronted Blumenberg
explicitly in an afterword.
44
At the time Schmitt was already over eighty and had
been detached from German academia since 1945 due to his entanglement with
the Nazi regime. Even though he was banned from teaching, Schmitt remained
a central inspiration for a large circle of friends and pupils with parallel intel-
lectual aspirations.
45
This outsider position was also manifested in his writing:
the style of Schmitts reply is consciously nonacademic, even esoteric. While
polishing the manuscript in late 1969, Schmitt laments that, beginning with his
openly apologetic Ex Captivitate Salus (1950), he had lost his ability to write
in the scholarly manner of his earlier legal treatises.
46
His interest had now also
shifted to topics that allowed a more speculative approach, such as the questions
of time, world history, and theology. In 1963, Schmitt had published a reissue
of Der Begriff des Politischen with a new preface to restate his categories in the
Cold War context, as well as Theorie des Partisanen, an analysis of the political
figure of the partisan in the era of ideological and revolutionary warfare.
47
He did
not, however, significantly revise his earlier political theory and also remained
mostly silent with regard to questions of constitutional law in the fundamentally
41. Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souvernitt, 8th ed.
[1922/1934] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004).
42. Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1996), 104 and 112.
43. Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 43.
44. Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie II: Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder Politischen Theo-
logie, 4th ed. [1970] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996).
45. See, above all, Dirk van Laak, Gesprche in der Sicherheit des Schweigens: Carl Schmitt in
der politischen Geistesgeschichte der frhen Bundesrepublik (Berlin: Akademia, 2002), and Mller,
Dangerous Mind.
46. Schmitt to Ernst Forsthoff, December 15, 1969, in Ernst Forsthoff Carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel
19261974, ed. Dorothee Mugnug, Reinhard Mugnug, and Angela Reinthal (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 2007), 297.
47. Carl Schmitt, Theorie des Partisanen: Zwischenbemerkung zum Begriff des Politischen, 6th ed.
[1963] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2006).
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
224
altered environment of the Federal Republic. In Politische Theologie II, he rather
attempted to provide the earlier reading with theological foundations.
At the time of the debate, Blumenberg was in the process of becoming an
academic hermit of his own volition. Hardly a photograph remains of the phi-
losopher who since the early 1950s had held positions in Kiel, Hamburg, Gieen,
Bochum, and, finally, Mnster before retiring in 1985. Around the time Legiti-
mitt was published, Blumenberg increasingly withdrew from social activities,
such as the famous Poetik und Hermeneutik group he had co-founded in 1963,
and instead devoted his time to writing thick philosophical volumes, essays, and
literary glosses in a reflective, allusive, and at times opaque style. After reading
Schmitts reaction to his criticism, Blumenberg approached Schmitt with a letter
in 1971, and the two writers in search of a personal language encountered each
other. Pregnant, albeit formally polite and somewhat evasive, correspondence
ensued.
48
Instead of outlining their differences openly, the two focused mostly on
particular themes that fascinated both, such as the biblical figure of the Katechon
and the interpretation of Goethes enigmatic maxim Nemo contra deum nisi deus
ipse. Blumenberg extended his analysis of political theology in the second edition
of Legitimitt but toned down some of his formulations. He returned to political
theology in 1979, now defending his polytheistic interpretation of Goethe against
Schmitts christological reading,
49
but Schmitt did not reply anymore, probably
due to his age.
Rather than summarizing the details of this exchange, I will discuss Schmitts
original bitter reaction in order to elucidate the logic and underlying structures of
his thought. Before examining the strategic and technical maneuvers of the reply,
let us sketch some of Schmitts basic divisions motivating the outburst. What,
exactly, does secularization mean to Schmitt? Why is he so committed to the
category that Blumenbergs criticism forced him to react so strongly?
Schmitts political theory has been read as building upon a systematic theo-
logical foundation.
50
Peter Hohendahl, for instance, proposes that for Schmitt the
notion of secularization is not a neutral term, but must be read as a theological
notion.
51
Although the importance of theology for Schmitt as a source of moti-
vation, affection, and expression is undeniable, it is, however, worthwhile in the
particular case of his reply to Blumenberg to read the connection the other way
around. I believe the intensity of the notion of secularization for Schmitt derives
more prominently from the directly political aspect of the matter than from the
theological. Schmitts aim in Politische Theologie II is to show the continu-
ous relevance and inevitability of theology, from many angles. The form of the
argument, however, is not that by modernization the religious heritage and the
possibility of religious experience has simply been lost. First of all, religious
experience in modernity is possible: even secularized theology, when seen from
the theological point of view, is still theology, for it is a way in which religious
48. Hans Blumenberg and Carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel 19711978 und weitere Materialen, ed.
Alexander Schmitz and Marcel Lepper (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007).
49. Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, 567-604.
50. See, above all, Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts.
51. Hohendahl, Political Theology Revisited, paragraph 17 (no pagination).
225
elements still have contemporary significance for us.
52
Second, the logic of
Schmitts reply remains obscure if we assume a simple loss of religiousness
via secularization, for this is hardly compatible with the point of inevitability of
theology.
Rather, the reasoning is that modern attempts at secularization were not based
on political power and were thus merely apparent and hypocritical seculariza-
tion. The structure of the argument here is similar to the central idea of Schmitts
criticism of parliamentarianism: in their attempt to substitute parliamentary
competition for serious political conflict, modern lib eral democracies end up hid-
ing, rather than escaping, the politicalwhich, for Schmitt, al ways contains
the possibility of physical confrontation of the enemy. This reasoning has an
inherent link to secularization, because for Schmitt religion is not only a source
of meaning but also of conflict. My thesis is that secularization is a focal point
for Schmitts political theory primarily because for him the early modern confes-
sional civil war is a recurring model for political conflict in general. In this para-
digm, religious, political, and military elements coin cide. Schmitts persistent
attempt to avoid nonnegotiable confessional conflicts leads to his peculiar theory
of both the political and the theological as total and inescapable. Conflict, albeit
always only potentially aggravating conflict, is what connects the two spheres,
their inescapable tertium comparationis.
Let us now analyze secularization more closely as a part of Schmitts historical
narrative of the modern state, elaborated in several publications since the 1920s
and, as I will show later, largely shared by the young Koselleck. In its first stage,
secularization for Schmitt was a historical-political necessity: the secularized
absolute state emerged as an inevitable response to incessant religious wars.
Conflicts were successfully suppressed, first, in the domestic realm by a sharp
demarcation between autonomous public politics and private confessional moral-
ity and, second, by securing equal rights to wage external wars to all nations in
the European power constellation, demarcating clearly between political enemies
and criminals, and thus creating room for neutrality.
53
For Schmitt, the modern
state is a a vehicle of secularization [Skularisierung]
54
and the historically
unique product of the overcoming of confessional civil war by neutralization
and secularization [Neutralisierung und Skularisierung] of the confessional
fronts, that is, de-theologization [Enttheologisierung].
55
It is this step from the
medieval political world to the classical Jus Publicum Europaeum that Schmitt
52. Carl Schmitt, Donoso Corts in gesamteuropischer Interpretation: Vier Aufstze, 2nd ed.
[1950] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2009), 10.
53. Carl Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes: Sinn und Fehlschlag
eines politischen Symbols, 3rd ed. [1938] (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2003), 85-94; Carl Schmitt, Die
Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff, 2nd ed. [1938] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1988);
Carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Vlkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Cologne: Greven,
1950), 112-119.
54. Schmitt, Nomos der Erde, 97.
55. Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 19471951, ed. Eberhard Freiherr von
Medem (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), 19 (September 27, 1947); cf. Schmitt, Nomos der Erde,
96, 98, and 112.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
226
praises as the true epochal threshold of modernity and the greatest step of prog-
ress in human history.
56
This pacification was reinforced by an intentional act of secularization of
political terminology. Schmitt describes the early modern jurists withdrawal
from the church as not a withdrawal to a holy mountain but an exodus to the
profane sphere, a journey for which they prepared by smuggling some of the rel-
ics: The state adorned itself with many simulacra of ecclesiastical origin and
the power of worldly princes was elevated by attributes and argumentations of
spiritual descent.
57
Crucially, however, the jurists held onto the concession of
their fathers and remained guardians of a tradition of their own, thus aiming
not at a church robbery but salvage of the valuable goods.
58
Schmitt notes
that the authority of the theologians was secularized (skularisiert), but not
profaned (profaniert) by the early modern jurists; it was only in the liberal
era that the relics first faded into philosophical or historical jewelry and then
got fully profaned by the technical era.
59
With regard to the latter part, Schmitt
had described the gradual process of neutralization from the sixteenth century
to the present technical era in his Zeitalter essay in 1929.
60
For him the initial
secularization, however, was a rescue attempt rather than an unequivocal loss.
The idea of salvage rather than church robbery already relativizes, on the level of
metaphors, the claim of inherent illegitimacy that Blumenberg set out to contest.
Similarly, in a 1965 review, Schmitt criticized the interpretation that Thomas
Hobbes only exteriorly held onto the Christian forms to indirectly support anti-
Christian totalitarianism. For Schmitt, on the contrary, Hobbes was a Christian
author, aiming to found a Christian commonwealth. Hobbes aimed at scientific
objectivity and utilized geometrical vocabulary and thus, perhaps unintentionally,
contributed to the ensuing process of neutralization; but he did not, Schmitt
claims, intend to neutralize confessional quarrels but to contain them by a sover-
eign decision in the spirit of cuius regio eius religio and thus to rescue the unity of
the Christian tradition.
61
We may thus conclude that the original act of pacifica-
tion and strong neutralization of confessional strife, supported by conceptual
secularization, is distinct from the later gradual process of profanation or
neutralization in the weak senseeven if Schmitt himself at points confuses
the terminology and uses secularization and neutralization co-extensively.
For Schmitt, there is continuity in the initial secularization, but it is the conti-
nuity of tradition, succession, legacy, and heritage in the juridical model rather
than a metaphysical principle of historical identity of substances.
62
Blumenbergs
56. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 86.
57. Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus: Erfahrungen der Zeit 1945/47, 2nd ed. [1950] (Berlin:
Duncker & Humblot, 2002), 70
58. Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, 72-73.
59. Ibid., 72-74.
60. Carl Schmitt, Das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen [1929], in Positio-
nen und Begriffe im Kampf mit WeimarGenfVersailles 19231939 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot,
1988), 120-132.
61. Carl Schmitt, Die vollendete Reformation: Bemerkungen und Hinweise zu neuen Leviathan-
Interpretationen, Der Staat 4 (1965), 52, 55-56, and 61-62. Cf. Meier, Lehre, 275.
62. Schmitt to Blumenberg, November 24, 1974, in BlumenbergSchmitt, Briefwechsel, 125.
227
point that analogies are not transformations
63
is trivially true on the level of
terminology, but in the light of textual evidence it does not hit the target. In
fact, Blumenberg is hard put trying to argue that Schmitt posits a substantial
transformation. In his early work, Schmitt describes secularization as a process
in which worldly factors such as humanity, nation, or the individual take the
place of God (sind . . . an die stelle Gottes . . . getreten) and replace (ersetzen)
him,
64
and repeatedly speaks of analogic positions and systematic analo-
gies between religion and politics.
65
As Schmitt consistently also describes the
original act of secularization as active and intentional transfer of arguments, the
accusation of having proposed a substantial or metaphysical continuity must have
seemed unfair to him. There are certainly emotive intensities and argumentative
needs in play in Schmitts decisionism, but Blumenberg fails to pinpoint these
with the distinctions between analogy and transformation or reoccupation and
transposition, respectively. Textually, Schmitt can still uphold his claim that
political theology is a conceptual-historical research hypothesis regarding analo-
gies. To Blumenbergs claim that political theology is metaphorical theology
a strange accusation coming from a metaphorologist who rarely uses the term
metaphorical pejorativelySchmitt could now have simply replied affirma-
tively, but only in the sense of studying such metaphorical mappings rather than
performing them. Schmitt evades the charge that he would be utilizing theologi-
cal elements selectively by projecting also this rhetorical fabrication to the early
modern jurists thoroughly justified initial secularization, something Schmitt then
only observes historically.
IV. NEUTRALIZATION AND THE RETURN OF CONFESSIONAL CONFLICT
If political theology consisted merely of studying structural analogies, Schmitt
could have kept to this. However, Schmitt draws on the latter part of the narrative
in his reply, too. Gradually the order of the state begins to unravel. As Spinoza
radicalizes the original tension between the exterior and the interior, religion is
confined to private, and absolutely free, faith. Secret societies and religious sects
catalyze the gradual rise of the private over the public and the hollowing out of
state sovereignty from within.
66
These politically irresponsible indirect powers,
Schmitt posits, return in the liberal era as political parties, interest groups, and
other societal organizations.
67
Simultaneously, the power balance in international
relations, too, begins to crumble: the sovereign states equal rights to wage wars
are replaced by the moral doctrine of the just enemy. The eventual criminalization
of aggressive warfare leads to a discriminating concept of war where some wars
are just while some are not, which brings in moral categories, forces each party
of the conflict to justify its actions with reference to moral superiority, and thus
63. Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1996), 103.
64. Carl Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 6th ed. [1919/1925] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1998),
18-19.
65. Schmitt, Politische Theologie I, 43.
66. Schmitt, Leviathan, 85-94.
67. Ibid., 116-118.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
228
intensifies the original conflict into total war, global civil war, and a perpetual
intermediate state between war and peace.
68
On domestic and international levels alike, moral categories thus intensify
conflicts. Further, when the suppressed conflict returns, it returns in a secular-
ized form. For Schmitt, modern politics is open or latent global civil war
and the repetition of confessional strife with secularized slogans and in global
dimensions.
69
Schmitt criticizes the value-orientation of the Bonn Republic by
invoking Webers polytheism metaphor for irreconcilable worldviews: ancient
gods arise from their graves and wage their old battle again, but the fact that
they are disenchanted and have become merely valid values makes the battle
ghostly and the combatants hopelessly self-opinionated.
70
These are, naturally,
mere metaphors, but they accurately summarize the inherent problems of
modernity for Schmitt: unregulated conflict potential was released when the
original secularization was replaced by weak neutralizations.
Blumenberg briefly criticizes the framework of crisis orientation and constant
exception in Legitimitt. He questions the supposed equivalence between the
suppression of internal conflict and the projection of enmity to external relations
on the basis that this model is not only inaccurate but also became obsolete once
the scale of the external crises, in the Cold War, surpassed the potential severity
of any internal conflict.
71
Blumenberg thus largely follows Schmitts exposition
of the development, but draws a different conclusion: rather than emerging from
the critical domestic setting after the defeat of the classical state, the current
Cold War crisis indicates the anachronistic nature and historical contingency of
the whole model. Once this framework is abandoned, Blumenberg reasons, it
becomes difficult to uphold the impression that the present moment is a critical
instance when the ultimate decision between good and evil must be made; and
this, further, questions the assumption of the state of exception as the normal
state of the political, as Blumenberg, somewhat controversially, summarizes
Schmitts basic tenets.
72
I believe Blumenberg observes Schmitt as supporting his
theory with eschatological imagery and then assumes that by loosening the con-
nection between eschatology and modern political forms he could rob Schmitts
theory of its underlying temporal framework and undermine the whole edifice.
However, if Blumenbergs own reading is correct and Schmitt only utilizes
religious elements rhetorically and cynically to legitimate absolutist political
positions, then it is logical, corre spondingly, to seek the motivation for Schmitts
anxiety concerning the intensification of conflicts in the secular political realm
rather than the theological. I believe such an element indeed emerges from the
story of secularization, summarized above. Where war and peace, in the absence
of a regulating authority, are not strictly demarcated, the latent civil war may at
any moment actualize and the merely metaphorical battles intensify into physi-
68. Schmitt, Nomos der Erde, 91-96, 132, 233, and 271.
69. Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, 13-14.
70. Carl Schmitt, Die Tyrannei der Werte [1959], in Skularisation und Utopie: Erbracher
Studien (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1967), 54.
71. Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1966), 59-60; Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1996), 99-101.
229
cal killingand for purely secular reasons. Commenting on domestic issues in
Weimar, Schmitt credits the absolute state for putting an end to the cause of all
disorder and civil war, the battle for the normatively right, but notes that in the
liberal era the neutralization of quarrels is replaced by attempts to minimize state
intervention. This allows the rival forces of society to aim to organize themselves
into the totality of the state. In this unstable power constellation, constitutional
unity is replaced by a weak set of contracts between private parties in the spirit
of pacta sunt servanda, which, for Schmitt, equals only a temporary peace treaty
and conceals an ethic of civil war, liable to intensify into latent or acute civil
war.
73
This is the way, I posit, we should understand the temporal structure and
the grim horizon of expectations in Schmitts theorizing.
74
Eschatology, then,
gives a form and description to the immediately experienced risk of intensifica-
tion in the political realm, but it is not the source of this threat.
We may draw a similar critical conclusion regarding the military model of
conflict: it is not evident that the quarrels of the liberal-pluralist state, whether
deriving from values or interests, relate to the early modern religious civil wars
genetically rather than purely rhetorically. The fact that politics can persuasively
be described in military terms does not prove the link between the two realms,
but rather only suggests a dual situation blurred by terminological stability. When
this connection is loosened, the idea of modern democratic politics as the return
of nonnegotiable confessional conflict and civil war is discredited. Although Blu-
menberg never fully applied his approach to political conflict, I believe Schmitt
thought he was faced with this challenge, too. As I will show in the following
analysis, this is clearly visible in Schmitts reply. For Schmitt, secularized theol-
ogy is still theology, and pacified civil war is still civil war.
V. SCHMITTS REACTION: ABSORPTION, REAPPROPRIATION, AND REVALUATION
In his scornful and parodying reply, Schmitt locates the focal point of the quar-
rel quite correctly but intentionally misrepresents it. He describes Blumenbergs
position as consisting of exposing and criticizing all translations [bersetzun-
gen] and reoccupations [Umbe setzungen], all continuing influences [Weiter-
wirkungen] or reoccupations [Umbesetzungen] from the theory of salvation,
and every secularization or reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of old images of the
enemy.
75
But this, of course, is precisely what Blumenberg did not do: he criti-
cized transpositions (Umsetzung), not reoccupations (Umbesetzung), which is the
category that he himself introduced for the purposes of this very criticism.
76
Sec-
73. Schmitt, Hter der Verfassung, 76; Carl Schmitt, Staatsethik und pluralistischer Staat
[1930], in Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit WeimarGenfVersailles 19231939 (Berlin:
Duncker & Humblot, 1988), 145; Carl Schmitt, Hugo Preu: Sein Staatsbegriff und seine Stellung in
der deutschen Staatslehre (Tbingen: Mohr, 1930), 26, n. 1.
74. I have earlier analyzed the temporal deep structure of the particular concept of the intermedi-
ate state between peace and war and the military metaphors supporting this in Schmitts work. See
Timo Pankakoski, Carl Schmitt versus the Intermediate State: International and Domestic Vari-
ants, History of European Ideas 39, no. 2 (2013), 241-266.
75. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 85, 86, and 98.
76. The English translation employs the term transposition throughout and thus obscures the
contrast by fabricating more concurrence between Schmitts and Blumenbergs arguments than the
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
230
ond, Schmitt claims that he was always concerned with the transition from Catho-
lic theology to Jus Publicum Europaeum, which he considers a classical case of
reoccupation [Umbesetzung] by means of specific concepts.
77
At face value, the
two lines of defense appear contradictory: if Blumenberg were criticizing reoc-
cupations, then what good could possibly follow from Schmitt underlining how
he himself was advancing oneand, vice versa, if Schmitt were all the time an
advocate of reoccupation, then why not simply state this instead of attempting
to blur the concept?
The paradox begins to clear up as soon as we discern a multiple usage of
reoccupation in the senses absorption, reappropriation, and revaluation,
respectively. Creative alternation between these usages allows Schmitt to depict
Blumenbergs theory as a self-empowering and foundationless attempt by scien-
tific, fully rationalized modernity to break loose from tradition, theology, and,
ultimately, the possibility of political conflict, by simply renouncing all continu-
ities and hypocritically fabricating its own novelty.
Scholars have so far overlooked the importance of reoccupation in the ser-
vice of this argu ment. In one of the best commentaries, Peter Hohendahl correctly
notes that Schmitt adopts the concept, but claims that for Schmitt it is a term
to describe loss rather than reorientation and rethinking.
78
I find this interpre-
tation slightly simplified. It relies on the assumption that Schmitt also valued
secularization in this way, as was suggested, for instance, by Blumenberg and
Jacob Taubes.
79
But it is essential to note that Schmitt intentionally plays with
the ambivalence of secularization. Because he had already split the process into
secularization proper, on the one hand, and neutralization, on the other, Schmitt
could easily respond to Blumenbergs challenge by focusing only on the inher-
ently positive reoccupation by the absolute state and by remaining silent about the
losses of meaning in the liberal era. Rather than a loss, the initial secularization
was for him a rescue attempt and a process of absorption where earlier theologi-
cal meanings were conveyed into the novel structures of the state.
80
This is how
Schmitt also interprets reoccupation here: as an act of filling, movement with
direction, and a process in which new positions are loaded with the content of the
old by transfer, displacement, and metaphorization. Only by reading the aspect
of continuity and directed movement into the concept, Schmitt is able to present
Blumenberg as criticizing reoccupations.
Schmitt reinforces his argument in this regard by bringing in another usage of
reoccupation. In his earlier exposition of the secularization narrative Schmitt
posits that the early modern jurists marched into the positions [Positionen] that
dispute warrants. See Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political
Theology [1970], translated and introduced by Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge, UK:
Polity, 2008), 117-119 and 128-129.
78. Hohendahl, Political Theology Revisited, paragraph 18.
79. Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul [1993], transl. Dana Hollander, ed. Aleida
Assmann, Jan Assmann, Horst Folkers, Wolf-Daniel Hartwich, and Christoph Schulte (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2004), 66.
80. My reading here concurs with that of Kathleen Davis, who remarks that for Schmitt
secularization refers to the transference of theological forms to the politics of an ostensibly
secular state, in which theology thus becomes immanent (Davis, Periodization, 78).
231
until then had been occupied [besetzt] by theologians.
81
By this he refers to the
jurists habit of making use of earlier arguments of medieval theology regarding,
for instance, the right to resist a tyrant. As the argumentative positions, such as
tyrannum licet occidere, had been occupied before, this in fact is a reoccupation
in a particular sense of the term. Now, this derivation of Umbesetzung clearly
differs from the Blumenbergian technical term that was primarily restricted to
the structural aspects of epochal change. In Blumenbergs theory, a system of
functional positions is filled with new content so that either a whole new con-
cept replaces the former but still has the same function or so that such a shift
takes place despite the permanence of vocabulary and is hidden from view by
this permanence. In the Schmittian variant, by contrast, arguments and concepts
themselves become positions to be occupied. The change of perspective is subtle
but important. Let us reserve the term reappropriation for reoccupation in this
particular sense.
Blumenbergs project, in Schmitts perspective, would be one of criticizing
such reoccupations: for Blumenberg, there is no new scientific political theology
in the sense of reoccupations [Um-Besetzungen] of earlier theological positions
[Positionen].
82
Schmitt reads Blumenbergs theory of modernity rather one-
sidedly as a celebration of novelty and discontinuity from all traditions, and in
this regard even the maintenance of positions would be too much. This is what
Schmitt parodies with the image of a tabula rasa wishing to de-tabulize itself.
83

Such a reading, however, clearly misses the point of the model of functional
positions, condensed in the notion of Umbesetzung that Blumenberg introduced
precisely in order to mediate both continuities and discontinuities.
In harmony with the general orientation of his political theory, Schmitt also
gives reoccupation a significantly more competitive and aggressive tone than
the original. The word besetzen carries, among others, a military connotation
of occupying positions in order to wage battle, which allows the interpreter to
extend Umbesetzung in this direction while simultaneously maintaining full con-
tinuity on the linguistic level. The word for marching to positions in the quote
above, einrcken, also carries a military connotation. In the Weimar Republic,
Schmitt stresses how moral and political concepts are not only weapons in
battles but also the soil on which the battle is fought
84
and argues forcefully
against the liberal attempt to occupy (okkupieren) or confiscate (beschlag-
nahmen) universal concepts like humanity, peace, justice, progress,
or civilization.
85
Similarly, in a state of civil war, each concept becomes an
attack [or encroachment, bergriff] into the enemy camp.
86
I claim that Schmitt
sees Blumenbergs image of occupying positions in the light of the military
81. Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, 70.
83. Ibid., 96-97.
84. Schmitt, Hter der Verfassung, 90.
85. Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (1932), 55; Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 3rd
ed. (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagssanstalt, 1933), 37.
86. Schmitt, Glossarium (October 31, 1947), 36. Also cited in Groh, Arbeit an der Heillosigkeit,
160.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
232
paradigm, as advancement in the theoretical field, containing the promise of
prospective gains.
87
The antagonistic interpretation of reoccupation, I claim, also determines
Schmitts response in Politische Theologie II. Schmitts strategy is to underline
the scientific-positivistic aspect of Blumenbergs attack to imply that, with the-
ology as its content, such an attempt by necessity turns into hypocrisy. Schmitt
replies to the theologian Erik Peterson that there is no Archimedean point from
which the demarcation between theology and politics could be made neutrally: in
the secular age, all parties to the quarrel will accuse the adversary of theologizing
politics or politicizing theology and thus intensify rather than tame the conflict.
88

Similarly, the decision on whether something is nonpolitical or should be depo-
liticized is always already a political decision, and any claim to the contrary is an
attempt to hide the political and thus in itself a political move. Potentially violent
conflicts cannot be tamed by simply postulating peace and renaming bellicose
activities as peaceful measures or progress, as these concepts themselves are
positions in the battle. In making his patently false claim that Blumenberg criti-
cized reoccupations, Schmitt uses the word in the particular sense of reappropria-
tion. To criticize reoccupations would be to criticize the whole idea that concepts
are being aggressively reoccupied. Schmitt is thus trying to reduce Blumenbergs
(alleged) criticism into one more variant of the liberal attempt to dispel conflict
with mere wishful thinking.
Closely connected to this is the third usage: reoccupation as revaluation. In
a full-blown attack on the tyranny of values in the pluralistic Bonn Republic,
where collective interests manifest as irreconcilable conflicts of values, Schmitt
engages in nearly untranslatable wordplay that later, I claim, determines his
response to Blumenbergs Umbesetzung. In the process of neutralizing scien-
tification, the basic categories of theological, philosophical, or juridical exis-
tence turn into values.
89
After a category has been transferred into a system of
statuses (Stellen-Werte), it is characterized by a particular determination and
occupation of a position (Stellen-Setzung und Besetzung), but becomes liable to
revaluations (Umwertungen) by means of rearrangements (Umstellungen) of
the scale of values.
90
The ultimate problem is that the one who sets values also
opposes unvalue, and that setting the values (Setzung) leads to their enforcement
(Durchsetzung).
91
As individuals set values quite arbitrarily, their multiplicity
leads to an eternal battle of values and world-views, an eternal bellum omnium
contra omnes and a repetition of the ancient battle of Webers disenchanted
deities by novel means that are no longer weapons but dreadful means of
destruction.
92
Schmitt here clearly applies to value philosophy the categories of
87. In Politische Theologie II Schmitt goes so far in his rereading of political theology that he
locates conflict and civil war (stasis) even within the Christian trinity, thus adopting a consciously
Gnostic position. See Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 90-93. Schmitt consulted Koselleck about the
conceptual history of stasis. See Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt: Aufstieg und Fall (Munich: Beck,
2009), 550.
88. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 83-84.
89. Schmitt, Tyrannei, 42-43.
90. Ibid., 42 and 55-56.
91. Ibid., 55 and 58.
92. Ibid., 54.
233
his earlier criticism of the just war tradition: bringing in moral categories leads to
intensification of conflict, moral condemnation, and ultimately total annihilation
of the enemy instead of honorable oppositions that would also allow for neutral-
ity. Even if in the case of value philosophy the confrontations are mostly meta-
phorical, the whole doctrine of values, for Schmitt, is characterized by potential
and immanent aggression.
93
Schmitt makes explicit references to this analysis in his response. He sees
Blumenbergs ap praisal of modern curiositas as precisely such an arrogant dec-
laration of independence, a setting of value where the old is unilaterally declared
unworthynot only a self-assertion of the new rational man, but an ultimately
groundless self-empowerment.
94
But, for Schmitt, Blumenbergs argumentation
moves in a circle and suffers from autism: when novelty is set as a value, the
immanent aggression of the unfettered new is doubly intensified by the fact that
revaluation itself, logically, becomes a value, too.
95
I believe Schmitt observed
Blumenbergs basic concepts in this light. In his idiosyncratic, prefix-oriented
treatment, Um-Setzung would be the resetting of the values that have originally
been set in the process of Setzung, and as the values also occupy (besetzen) a
position in the value system, Um-Besetzung can be interpreted as reshuffling and
refilling these positions. The difference between Umsetzung and Umbesetzung
thus fades because for Schmitt both are foundationless, aggressive actions and
parts of the general activity of revaluation (Umwertung). From the perspec-
tive of value philosophy, Blumenbergs basic concepts bear the arrogance of his
grand claim.
In sum, then, Schmitt paints an image of Blumenberg, first, as advocating
hubristic revaluations that are seemingly harmless but indirectly violent: The
new man is aggressive in the sense of incessant progress and incessant re-settings
[Neu-Setzungen].
96
Second, he depicts Blumenberg as criticizing continuous
influences and rejecting any secularization or reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of
old images of the enemy
97
in order to gain the independence needed for the
claim of novelty and to secure the supposed nonaggression. Third, as enmity for
Schmitt cannot be escaped but only adjourned or covered, and thus intensified,
this very attempt turns into one more modern facade behind which aggression
can operate uncurbed. It is thus the permanent task of scientific reflection to
critically observe any reoccupation [Umbesetzung] [of the enemy] from the old
political theology into a supposedly totally new, pure worldliness, and humane
humanity.
98
For Schmitt, there are no human beings as such, but only particular
concrete group ings of humans (potentially) against others, even if the category
of humankind can be invoked to give the opposite impression.
99
Whereas Schmitt
earlier depicted Blumenberg as criticizing reoccupations, here he accuses him of
93. Ibid., 56.
94. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 88-89.
95. Ibid. (translation by Hoelzl and Ward).
96. Ibid., 97.
97. Ibid., 97-98.
98. Ibid., 96.
99. This is fully in line with Schmitts habitual references to Proudhons dictum whoever invokes
humanity wants to deceive (Schmitt, Begriff des Politischen [1932], 55).
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
234
attempting to pull off a reoccupation by confiscating the concept of man, while
Schmitt himself stands guard.
Schmitts conceptual maneuvers are idiosyncratic, even frustrating, but far
from the unim portant esotericism of a jurist in a small, hermetic work of old
age.
100
Rather than trivial, the criticism is short but very dense
101
in the sense
of summarizing his political theory in its late phase. My reading also suggests
a correction to Hohendahls remark that in his engagement with Blumenbergs
concept of reoccupation, Schmitt seems to be uncertain how to use it
102
rather
his misapprehension appears intentional and is in keeping with the revision of
his Weimar theorizing put forward in Politische Theologie II. Schmitt attempts
to neutralize Blumenbergs challenge by appropriating the central concept and
reloading it with a meaning more in harmony with his own theory. This, ironi-
cally, epitomizes what Schmitt understands the concept to be all about: strategic
confiscation of concepts and the act of reading ones own valuations into intel-
lectual categories at hand.
VI. KOSELLECK ON SECULARIZATION AND CONFLICT
As was shown above, the themes of secularization and conflict are internally
linked in Schmitts work, and this connection manifests paradigmatically in his
rebuttal of Blumenberg. In modern politics, when not manifesting in outright
warfare, the hostilities are transposed to the medium of conflictual concepts and
secularized slogans. There is thus an intimate connection between Schmitts
two central theses on concepts, I claim. The idea that all cogent concepts of
modern state theory are secularized theological concepts relates to the successful
imposition of order by the modern state. The equally overstated claim that all
political concepts arise out of a concrete polarity of foreign or domestic politics
and that every political concept is a polemical concept that has a political
enemy in mind
103
rather connects to the latter part of the narrative. Both theses
contain not only a bold historical claim but also a methodological point or a
conceptual-historical research program: they prescribe how political concepts in
modernity should be understood, interpreted, and studied in order to bring out
their political point.
It thus seems only logical that Koselleck integrates these starting points into
his early approach to conceptual conflict. Scholars have recently paid increasing
attention to Kosellecks intellectual debt to Schmitt as well as the ways in which
Koselleck sought to remedy the shortcomings in the theory of his teacher and
colleague.
104
Schmitt unofficially supervised Kosellecks dissertation Kritik und
100. Schmitt to Blumenberg on March 31, 1971, in BlumenbergSchmitt, Briefwechsel, 111. The
roles of the old man and the jurist are parts of his apologetic and strategic self-positioning and
a long chain of self-mythologizing epithets ranging from the last defender of Jus Publicum Euro-
paeum and Beneto Cereno to the Christian Epimetheus. See Groh, Arbeit an der Heillosigkeit,
115-155.
101. Schmitt to Ernst Forsthoff, November 4, 1969, in Forsthoff Schmitt, Briefwechsel, 294.
102. Hohendahl, Political Theology Revisited, paragraph 18.
103. Schmitt, Hugo Preu, 5.
104. Niklas Olsen consistently emphasizes Kosellecks constructive efforts to build an understand-
ing of history and politics that would allow for pluralistic rather than antagonistic settings, and
235
Krise (1954, published 1959). Although his ultimate aims doubtless were cultur-
ally and politically more constructive than Schmitts, Koselleck built his pes-
simistic analysis of the paradoxes of Enlightenment thought in Kritik und Krise
upon a detailed duplication of the Schmittian narrative.
105
This parallel, I posit,
is of critical importance for Kosellecks later understanding of secularization,
reoccupation, and conflict.
After the original neutralization of confessional strife by demarcating poli-
tics and morality, political conflict, Koselleck maintains, returns in disguise:
the moral and universal, and hence presumably politically neutral, argumenta-
tion of enlightened citizens was initially made possible by the states moral
neutrality,
106
but the actions of the new elite groups, such as the Freemasonry,
are indirectly political and challenge this order from within. Moral critiqueso
goes the argumentleads to a moralization of politics, politicization of morality,
constant political crisis, intensification of oppositions, outburst of revolution-
ary energies, and, ultimately, as the oppositions take global dimensions, to the
twentieth-century ideological wars.
In the 1954 original, Koselleck notes explicitly that the dualism of morality
and politics could gain such dimensions only after a double development: after
the political neutralization of ecclesiastical oppositions, on the one hand, and
the intellectual overcoming of the religious points of contention by the devel-
opment of modern philosophy of history, on the other.
107
Here he also demarcates
more analytically two elements in the process: The dominant religions that
earlier restrained the humanist movement were suppressed and, second, the
elements related to the history of salvation in them were absorbed by the tri-
umphant moral self-consciousness via secularization.
108
Koselleck thus holds
onto Schmitts interpretation of the process of secularization as both pacification
and absorption. However, whereas Schmitt labels the former element as secu-
larization and the latter pejoratively as neutralization, Koselleck swaps the
terms and interprets the latter along Lwithian lines as the primary meaning of
secularization. This Lwithian element is, then, projected upon the Schmittian
framework of analysis. In the reworked edition, Koselleck describes the double
process concisely as follows: The neutralization [Neutralisierung] of conscience
by politics promotes the secularization [Verweltlichung] of morality. . . . The
weakening of religiousness based on revelation, which presupposes the state,
becomes the fate of this state as the old themes recurin secularized [skula-
risierte] form.
109
sees Koselleck as depoliticizing Schmittian categories before applying them to historical analysis,
and thus constructing an intellectual project and a normative agenda that ultimately had little to do
with Schmitts writings (Olsen, History in the Plural, 53, 72, and 75). My reading is more critical as
to the intellectual proximity between the two, even if many of Olsens conclusions hold with regard
to the direct ideological implications.
105. For a more detailed comparison, see Pankakoski, Conflict, Context, Concreteness, 756-759.
106. Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der brgerlichen Welt
[1959] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, n.d.), 30.
107. Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise: Eine Untersuchung der politischen Funktion des
dualistischen Weltbildes im 18. Jahrhundert (PhD diss., University of Heidelberg, 1954), 21-22.
108. Koselleck, Kritik und Krise (1954), 21-22. Emphasis added.
109. Koselleck, Kritik und Krise (1959), 31.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
236
What thus returns is the rigidity of confessional conflicts. The worldly powers
are now morally condemned. The ostensibly moral and purely intellectual quali-
ties of the Enlightenment thinkers arguments only serve to hide their political
nature, and this camouflage intensifies the opposition. Further, this intensification
is legitimized, and the consequent crisis hidden, by the philosophy of history.
The fictive and utopian assumption of the unity of the world and the progress
of humankind turns history into an inevitable singular process and thus alienates
Enlightenment thinkers from the understanding of politics as a destiny and a
constant human task.
110
In the light of this postulated progress, concrete political
planning of the future upon the partisan premises rather appears as prognosis and
observation of unfolding objective history. As these political acts derive their
legitimation from the future, a whole new conception of time emerges: future and
past are torn apart.
111
Both the initial political uprising and the consequent novel temporal structure
are supported by secularization of earlier theological elements. The bourgeois
intellectuals take over the heritage of the theological clergy.
112
Leibnizs
theodicy becomes a legitimation of the new man who takes the position of
God.
113
Alongside Gnostic elements in the dualism between good morality and
evil politics, Christian eschatology in its modified form as secular progress
also contributes to the eighteenth-century philosophy of history.
114
The divine
plan of redemption is secularized into rational planning of history,
115
and the
philosophy of history thus carries on the heritage of theology.
116
On this level,
secularization is thus different from, and opposed to, the original neutralization;
and, as they emerge from the analytical framework, both are internally linked
with the question of political conflict. The way Koselleck repeatedly assimilates
the attempts to hide the crisis to its aggravation comes directly from Schmitt;
similarly, the themes of indirect political power, avoidance of the risk of the
political, the ostensible absence versus effective presence, and the latent
and open forms of conflict are essential parts of a recurring figure of thought
in Schmitts work.
117
The emphasis on the philosophy of history, in particular, as
a legitimizing tool derives more prominently from Lwith. However, the idea of
the unity of mankind and history as illusions, and the dangers of concealing real-
world plurality by subsuming partisan political projects under nebulous concepts
like progress, peace, or world are also Schmittian basic themes.
118
Further,
Schmitt also critically observes, for instance, how Marx connected the idea of the
110. Ibid., 2, 6-7, and 9.
111. Ibid., 7.
112. Ibid., 31.
113. Ibid., 109.
114. Ibid., 108.
115. Ibid., 111.
116. Ibid., 108.
117. See Pankakoski, Carl Schmitt Versus the Intermediate State.
118. See, for instance, Carl Schmitt, Die Einheit der Welt [1952], in Staat, Groraum, Nomos:
Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916 bis 1969, ed. Gnter Maschke (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1995),
496-512; Schmitt, Staatsethik, 141-143; Schmitt, Begriff des Politischen (1932), 54-58, 65, and 77.
237
history of mankind as a history of class struggle to a progressive philosophy of
history and thus gave it utmost political effectiveness.
119
For Koselleck, too, the new future of the Enlightenment was a political future
that emerged as a result of contingent strife, but eventually both the future-orien-
tation and the conflicts became permanent elements of modernity. Koselleck var-
ies this basic plot in his essays on the temporalization of history and the histories
of individual concepts from the 1960s onward. Begriffsgeschichte adopts the task
of observing temporal layers and conflict potential inherent in basic concepts.
To note and study these connections is not to dishonor or deny the originality of
Kosellecks work. His brilliant essays published as Vergangene Zukunft in 1979
still serve as a methodological baseline for conceptual history, his contributions
to the massive dictionary of historical basic concepts in Germany (Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe, 19721997) hold an iconic status, and his late essays on temporal
layers have added an important dimension to conceptual analysis. It is rather pre-
cisely because of the importance of Kosellecks contribution that its problematic
genesis merits close attention. I will next scrutinize how reoccupation, in a
formalized methodological sense, emerges in Kosellecks mature scholarship. In
the section after that, I will show how Koselleck similarly relativizes his under-
standing of secularization.
VII. FORMALIZING REOCCUPATION
In a key essay, published originally in a Festschrift for Schmitt, Koselleck
returns to the important shift in the genesis of the modern conception of time
that occurs when earlier religious prophecy turns into political prognosis. Proph-
ecy integrates the religious community only insofar as the eschatological threat
remains unspecified and the expectations of what is already known in principle
are constantly disappointed, while rational and pragmatic political prognosis
unites the political community precisely because it provides means of anticipat-
ing the immediate future that is now perceived as something not yet known.
120

Koselleck emphasizes that the gap between eschatology and the early-modern
political conception of time is narrower than one would expect: although prog-
nosis has opened up the future in a novel way, it still relies on the medieval,
static notion of time, based on natural constants and linear interpolation of past
into future. Koselleck writes: The reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of prophesized
future into predictable future had not yet in principle mutilated the horizon of
Christian anticipation.
121
The usage of reoccupation here is odd: in terms of
content, semantics, and grammar, one would rather expect to find here the word
Umsetzung that better captures the idea of translation or transposition and that
Koselleck did not shy away from in his future work. For instance, in his entry on
progress in the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Koselleck perceives a continu-
ous transposition [kontinuierliche Transposition] of the religious advance into
119. Schmitt, Begriff des Politischen (1933), 55.
120. Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft der frhen Neuzeit [1968], in Vergangene Zuku-
nft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1995), [hereafter VZ], 28-32.
121. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft, 33. Emphasis added.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
238
world-historical progress.
122
As the reader will recall, Transposition and Umset-
zung are synonyms in the Blumenbergian vocabulary. Koselleck apparently uses
Umsetzung and Umbesetzung interchangeably. Just like Schmitt, Koselleck too
fails to account for the distinction between transposition and reoccupation and
uses the latter in the sense of directed movement and absorption. For him it is a
category of historical continuity.
Whereas Schmitt demarcates between secularization and neutralization,
Koselleck defends the category of secularization in the nexus of eschatology
and progress by cutting the process into three: after the original neutralization,
not only secularization, but also temporaliza tion takes place. For Koselleck,
temporalization is a fundamental shift in the relationship between past and
future that marks the epochal threshold of modernity. In the late eighteenth
century, history shed its previous singular usage of indicating only particular
historical narratives and turned into a collective singular, indicating the whole
process of history or history as such.
123
Similarly, the notion of progress, rather
than indicating partial advancements in various fields, became a transhistorical
term and a factor full of temporal potential for legitimizing historical-political
projects.
124
History at large can now be identified with progress. Only in this
distinctively modern usage, history becomes fully temporal, and this opens the
horizon of future expectations that surpasses earlier experiences and makes the
future qualitatively different from the past. The French Revolution epitomizes
this novelty, and philosophy of history seals it theoretically. Further, as history
is proceeding toward better times, acceleration of the process becomes not only
possible but indeed a human task, as argued by Robespierre.
125
The continuities
with the argument in Kritik und Krise are obvious: In the shadows of absolute
politics emergedfirst secretly, then openlya consciousness of time and
future, based on a bold combination of politics and prophecy.
126
Pragmatic
prognosis of possible future turns into expectations that affect actions already in
the present, and history, Koselleck notes, becomes a final instance or judge that
could be evoked to legitimize current political projects.
127
Philosophy of history,
thus, leads to a reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of the future.
128
Again, the usage is atypical, but regains its intelligibility once reoccupa-
tion here is interpreted as reappropriation. Koselleck notes that, in modernity,
progress, democracy, and other concepts of movement become occupiable
(besetzbar) by various political actors and, further, there emerges a necessity to
occupy these general concepts (Besetzungszwang) so that opponents cannot use
them for their own purposes.
129
Since the French Revolution, Koselleck posits,
122. Koselleck, sections I and III-VI in Fortschritt, in GG, Band 2: E-G (Stuttgart: Klett, 1975),
368. Emphasis added.
123. Reinhart Koselleck, Historia Magistra Vitae: ber die Auflsung des Topos im Horizont
neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte [1967], in VZ, 49-50; Reinhart Koselleck, sections I, V, VI and VII
in Geschichte, Historie, in GG, Band 2: E-G (Stuttgart: Klett, 1975), 711.
124. Koselleck, Fortschritt, 388ff.
125. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft, 22.
126. Ibid., 33.
127. Koselleck, Geschichte, 675-677.
128. Ibid., 675.
129. Koselleck, Fortschritt, 414-417; Reinhart Koselleck, Neuzeit: Zur Semantik moderner
Bewegungsbegriffe [1977], in VZ, 346-347.
239
the semantic battle [semantischer Kampf] for the definition of political or social
positions, maintaining or achieving these positions by deploying a given defini-
tion has intensified and changed structurally: rather than simply registering con-
temporary experiences, concepts now reach into the future, and these future posi-
tions must be linguistically prepared so that they can be taken over.
130
Not only
history but concepts, too, are thus temporalized.
131
In modernity, time itselfthat
is, time incorporated into conceptsbecomes a legitimating title, open for occu-
pation from all sides [allseitig besetzbar].
132
In such an antagonistic setting, to
reoccupy the future is to reoccupy the concepts of history and progress and to
present ones own concrete aims as legitimized and necessitated by them. This is
the core of Kosellecks Schmittian-Lwithian critique of ideological utilization.
Begriffsgeschichte is concerned with the conceptual shifts that either reflect
or facilitate occupations, some of them highly partisan. Koselleck formalizes the
earlier critical reading of political utilization of the philosophy of history into
a means of historical observation and reflection on concepts such as history,
progress, or emancipation. Just as Koselleck incorporated the Schmittian
distinction of friend and enemy into his methodological framework in the form
of the asymmetrical counter-concepts, a formal frame that can be occupied
[besetzt] with new names,
133
he also formalizes the medium in which such oppo-
sitions are enacted: conflict-oriented language and conceptual contestation. In
this process, the category of reoccupation is detached from the question of politi-
cal theology and the associated Schmittian normative conclusions. Nevertheless,
it still carries an element of conflict, deriving from the original setting in Kritik
und Krise, where the revolutionaries occupied the state by utilizing moral con-
cepts as dualistic weapons . . . forged in the secret smithies of the philosophy
of history.
134
To reoccupy a concept is to perform a metaphorically violent act.
Further, in this formalized sense, Koselleck still uses reoccupation along
Schmittian lines as absorption, reappropriation, and revaluation, even if he gives
these variants a methodological twist. For instance, the concept of crisis gradu-
ally diffuses into economy, politics, psychology, and history in the seventeenth
century, but, echoing its ancestry in medicine and theology, maintains a double
sense of either an iterative period of culmination, like that of a disease, or a
unique decisive point, similar to the Last Judgment.
135
The concept thus utilizes
the temporal structure of the apocalyptic scheme, and in this respect we witness
a transposition [Transposition] of an eschatological concept into one related
to the philosophy of history.
136
In a later commentary on the topic, Koselleck,
however, reformulates this as a reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of a theological
130. Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte [1972], in VZ, 113.
131. The temporalization of concepts, thus, is one of the four basic hypotheses in Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe, alongside democratization, politicization, and the capability of ideologization.
See Koselleck, Einleitung, XVI-XVIII.
132. Koselleck, Neuzeit, 339.
133. Reinhart Koselleck, Feindbegriffe [1993], in Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik
und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006), [hereaf-
ter Begriffsgeschichten], 277.
134. Koselleck, Kritik und Krise (1959), 112.
135. Reinhart Koselleck, Krise, in GG, Band 3: H-Me (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1982), 626.
136. Koselleck, Krise, 628.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
240
dogma.
137
In the Blumenbergian framework, the two formulations would not
only be contradictory, but the latter would also clash with the whole idea of
secularization. The totality makes sense only if we interpret reoccupation here as
simultaneously connoting both the redemptive continuity of absorption and the
creative moment of reappropriation.
The elements of reappropriation and revaluation also coincide. For instance,
the concept of interest, which is thoroughly formal and occupiable in many
ways [verschieden besetzbar], has since the nineteenth century been a political
touchstone for all parties struggling to strike a balance between the general and
the particular and has thus gone through a process of reoccupation with regard
to content (inhaltliche Neubesetzung).
138
Similarly, the notion of revolution
is occupiable [besetzbar] in politically different, even diametrically opposite
ways.
139
In such partisan utilizations, the concepts are given novel normative
loads, and this analytically separate activity can be expressed with the same word,
only interpreted as revaluation or reloading. Thus, for instance, the National
Socialists turn revolution into a positive battle concept although it was
negatively loaded [negativ besetzt] after the events of 1918.
140
Further, a posi-
tive occupation [Besetzung] of the semantic field of emancipation takes place
in the late eighteenth century when, following Kants dictum of enlightenment as
emerging from self-inflicted maturity, the concept is politicized and temporalized
into a process concept at the disposal of particular groups.
141
As revolution is
singularized into an inevitable course of history that can and must be acceler-
ated, the counter-concept reaction goes through a process of reoccupation or
reloading (Umbesetzung), whereby it loses its earlier openness, becomes pri-
marily negatively loaded [negativ besetzt], and turns into an antithetical battle
con cept [Kampfbegriff]
142
In these examples the appropriation of a category, on
the one hand, and its revaluation or normative reloading, on the other, merge into
a single process. Conceptual history follows such redescriptions both synchronic-
ally and diachronically.
VIII. RELATIVIZING SECULARIZATION
How committed, then, is Koselleck to the category of secularization? Hans Joas
has recently criticized Koselleck for assuming secularization as an unproblematic
premise for his concep tual-historical studies: Koselleck comes close to tacitly
invoking secularization as a historical necessity and a hypostatized historical-
philosophical force of precisely the kind that he was criticiz ing in his encounter
137. Reinhart Koselleck, Einige Fragen an die Begriffsgeschichte von Krise [1985], in Begriffs -
geschichten, 212.
138. Reinhart Koselleck, section VI in Interesse, in GG, Band 3: H-Me (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
1982), 359 and 349.
139. Reinhart Koselleck, sections I and IV-VII in Revolution, Rebellion, Aufruhr, Brgerkrieg,
in GG, Band 5: Pro-Soz (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), 749.
140. Koselleck, Revolution, 785.
141. Karl Martin Grass and Reinhart Koselleck, Emanzipation, in GG, Band 2: E-G (Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1975), 163-166.
142. Koselleck, Revolution, 756, 758, and 760.
241
with utopianism and the philosophy of historyand thus losing the historical
contingency he set out to defend.
143
The young Koselleck, in particular, seems to
treat secularization as an empirical fait accompli rather than a figure of thought
with its own dynamic potential.
144
Further, the links between eschatological
anticipation and the philosophy of history, on the one hand, and between phi-
losophy of history and concrete political-ideological aims, on the other, remain
in Kosellecks work in the 1970s too: this framework underlies the Koselleckian
basic narrative of temporalization of concepts in the Sattelzeit period.
However, when scrutinizing the matter on the level of individual concepts in
Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Koselleck consciously relativizes the seculariza-
tion thesis into one possibility among others. He notes that the philosophy of
history had a feedback effect on political planning and produced several concepts
of expectation; but to what extent this is secularization of religious meanings
is to be studied case by case.
145
When we perceive ideological matters formally
from the point of view of individual concepts, we attain an additional degree of
freedom. Kosellecks adherence to secularization as a historical hypothesis and a
metatheoretical assumption does not preclude occasional opposite developments.
In the Reformation, the concept of Bund (association, league), for instance, goes
through a process of theological reoccupation [theologische Umbesetzung] in
which it is depoliticized and spiritualized, until later secularized again.
146
Simi-
larly, Hellene, although earlier a secular counter-concept to Barbarian, is in
early Christianity theologized into a counter-concept for Christiansome-
thing Koselleck calls the reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of the word.
147
Again,
the notions of secularization and reoccupation are intimately connected; but
for Koselleck, reoccupation as reappropriation is not only compatible with secu-
larization interpreted in terms of continuity, but also with the opposite process of
desecularization or retheologization. On this level, reoccupation for Koselleck
truly is a formal category, utilizable to record historical changes to whichever
direction. The opposition between Christians and heathens and other such lin-
guistic empty positions or empty forms that always necessitate new concrete
occupation [Besetzung]
148
may persist as formal structures of historical experi-
ence and political argumentation beyond their original contextand precisely
because of this formality, Koselleck notes explicitly, no secularization thesis
needs to be assumed.
149
143. Joas, Die Kontingenz der Skularisierung.
144. In Kritik und Krise, Koselleck follows Lwith in accepting as common knowledge the process
of secularization by which eschatology was transposed [transponiert] into a progressive history
(Koselleck, Kritik und Krise [1959], 7). Blumenberg cites this passage among others in his brief
critique of the book (Blumenberg, Legitimitt [1996], 40-41).
145. Reinhart Koselleck, Einleitung, in GG, Band 1: A-D (Stuttgart: Klett, 1972), XIII-XXVII,
XVIII.
146. Reinhart Koselleck, Diesseits des Nationalstaates: Fderale Strukturen der deutschen
Geschichte [1994], in Begriffsgeschichten, 492 and 494.
147. Reinhart Koselleck, Zur Historisch-politischen Semantik asymmetrischer Gegenbegriffe
[1975], In VZ, 233.
148. Koselleck, Zur Historisch-politischen Semantik, 253 and 257.
149. Ibid., 243.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
242
Even in the cases in which secularization is assumed, something else is in play.
Koselleck reflects on whether we can perceive a product of secularization (Sku-
larisat) of eschatological anticipation in Lorenz von Steins optimism regarding
the possibility of historical prognosis, or in Robespierres encouragement to
accelerate the revolution. Steins arguments gain their edge in the social-histor-
ical context of the Prussian constitutional quarrels and the associated concrete
political aims, whereas Robespierres revolutionary motives are soon relativized
by technological development, the population explosion, and other modernand
we may add: autonomous and secularforms of the experience of acceleration
of history.
150
Although initially secularizing the orientations of eschatology, the
modern experience of increased haste thus has two separate, immanent sources,
related to concrete political projects, on the one hand, and industrial and social
developments, on the other.
This is the way Koselleck sees the issue in two late articles on acceleration
and secularization. From Thucydides to modernity, acceleration is, first, con-
nected to political crises, instability, and civil war; second, clocks, railways,
and the telegraph demarcate human time from the time of nature.
151
Rather than
secularization (Verweltlichung), the change brought about by these immanent
factors, Koselleck posits, should be called temporalization (Verzeitlichung.)
152

There is thus, first, a political experience of acceleration, brought about by the
French Revolution, in which the original Christian expectation is first enriched
by utopianism; and, second, a nonpolitical experience, based on accelerated
technological and economical progress.
153
The formal temporal structure remains
intact, and the apocalypse can therefore still serve as a metaphor in the industrial
era.
154
In another context, Koselleck in a parallel fashion notes that theological
and prophetic interpretations of time do not vanish completely with the emer-
gence of the new temporal horizon, and that their further use or metaphorical
reoccupation [metaphorische Umbe setzung] in the industrial and technical era
needs further research.
155
As close as these formulations are to Blumenbergs
language, reoccupation here refers to reappropriation of categories, and the
term does not invoke the Blumenbergian framework of epochal dynamics.
In fact, while making sporadic references to Blumenbergs concept of epochal
threshold,
156
Koselleck still rejects the criticism of secularization in these mature
essays: the reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of the goal-orientation outside history
into one within history, he posits, remains an undeniable process despite Blu-
150. Koselleck, Geschichtliche Prognose in Lorenz v. Steins Schrift zur preuischen Verfassung
[1965], in VZ, 87; Reinhart Koselleck, Historische Kriterien des neuzeitlichen Revolutionsbegriffs
[1969], in VZ, 77.
151. Reinhart Koselleck, Gibt es eine Beschleunigung der Geschichte? [1976], in Zeitschichten:
Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003) [hereafter Zeitschichten], 153-160 and
167.
152. Reinhart Koselleck, Zeitverkrzung und Beschleunigung: Eine Studie zur Skularisation
[1985], in Zeitschichten, 183.
153. Koselleck, Gibt es eine Beschleunigung, 171; Koselleck, Zeitverkrzung, 196-199.
154. Koselleck, Gibt es eine Beschleunigung, 153 and 174.
155. Koselleck, Neuzeit, 338.
156. Ibid., 317.
243
menbergs criticism.
157
Three points merit attention in this perplexing passage.
First, Koselleck denies the critical force of Blumenbergs note on the essential
difference between transcendental and immanent expectations: for him, the dif-
ference does not discredit the notion of secularization, but rather secularization
is a process in which precisely such a change from transcendence to immanence
takes place, as was also argued by Lwith in his reply.
158
Importantly, for a
conceptual historian, this immanentization is primarily reflected in concepts
and takes place by means of them. For instance, the Biblical passages concern-
ing Gods ability to accelerate time are later interpreted as metaphors for mans
ability to accelerate historical progress, and in this sense it is partly justified to
speak of the secularization (Verweltlichung) of Christian goals.
159
Seculariza-
tion is here a historical hypothesis regarding the origins of concepts and formal
analogies such as that between eschatology and the task of accelerating history,
as spelled out by Robespierre.
160
In this relativized sense, secularization is unde-
niable, as far as some concepts and analogies are concerned.
Second, the wording, again, suggests the interpretation of reoccupation as
reappropriation of categories, on the one hand, and as absorption and continu-
ity, on the other. Interpreted in this way, reoccupation is compatible with the
general understanding of secularization as continuous influence and maintenance
of a tradition. The reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of the goal-orientation outside
history into one within history is here, pace Blumenberg, synonymous with the
transformation [Transformation] of immediate apocalyptic expectation into an
accelerated hope of the future.
161
The modern experience of acceleration, how-
ever, is a product of secularization only in the limited sense of taking over the
Christian heritage.
162
Third, like Schmitt, Koselleck also speaks as if Blumenberg had criticized
reoccupationsa telling mistake that Lwith never made. As Blumenberg quite
clearly demarcates reoccupation from transposition and unequivocally
pleads for the interpretive power of the former, it is unlikely that Koselleck could
have simply missed or misunderstood the opposition. Neither is this necessarily
a hostile attempt to counter the supposed ideological-political aggression in Blu-
menbergs thought, as was the case in Schmitts reply. For a thinker as Schmit-
tianin the intellectual, not the pejorative political senseas Koselleck was,
it is simply natural to interpret the category in this way. In Kosellecks usage,
reoccupation and secularization are no longer counter-concepts but compatible
categories. Although ostensibly holding onto the Blumenbergian vocabulary,
Koselleck thus in fact reoccupies the notion of reoccupation and puts it into
the service of the defense of a secularization hypothesis, no matter how partial,
tentative, and formal.
157. Koselleck, Zeitverkrzung, 193, n. 28.
158. Karl Lwith, Besprechung des Buches Die Legitimitt der Neuzeit von Hans Blumenberg
[1968], in Smtliche Schriften 2: Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen: Zur Kritik der Geschichtsphil-
osophie (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1983), 456.
159. Koselleck, Zeitverkrzung, 190.
160. Koselleck, Gibt es eine Beschleunigung, 173.
TIMO PANKAKOSKI
244
IX. CONCLUSION
The category of secularization encapsulates some of the most persistent problems
of the modern understanding of history and politics. Utilizing its elucidatory
force, combined with that of reoccupation, the present article suggests a pri-
marily political-theoretical and conflict-oriented reading of Schmitts response
to Blumenberg. The two philosophers speak largely past each other, but in an
illuminating way. Blumenberg attempts to catch Schmitt assuming substantial
continuities, but instead finds himself faced with the counter-charge of political
hypocrisy. Schmitts answer to Blumenbergs question of whether mere struc-
tural analogies justify the notion of political theology is affirmative.
163
In his
defense of the doctrine, Schmitt seizes Blumenbergs technical term of reoc-
cupation and reinterprets it alternately as absorption, reappropriation, and
revaluation.
Koselleck never employs the term political theology, but he considers the
formal analogy
164
between eschatology and progress enough to justify the
notion of secularization, regardless of Blumenbergs criticism. Koselleck
adheres to the secularization thesis largely under the influence of Lwith and
quite independently of the Schmittian polemics. However, in doing this, he
engages with the particular concept of reoccupation in the manner of Schmitt:
by reinterpreting it as continuous absorption of elements, reappropriation of
categories, and their revaluation or reloading. The analysis of reoccupation
thus highlights a Schmittian residue in Kosellecks thought. Further, the parallel
reading of Schmitts and Kosellecks narratives indicates that the compound of
secularization and reoccupation has a systematic role for both thinkers. Secular-
ization is intimately connected to the original political act of pacification and to
its reversal in modernity as secular conflict potential is unleashed. Secularization
thus has an intrinsic relation to conflict.
In contrast to his early work, where, following Lwith, Koselleck assumes
secularization as common knowledge, he later relativizes it into a more restricted
research hypothesis. In the late essays on secularization, Koselleck primarily
discusses scientific and technical progress and neglects moral, social, and politi-
cal progress that are paradigmatic for the original idea of the temporalization of
history and concepts as it unfolds from the Schmittian narrative. Thereby the
connection between secularization and conflict is loosened. To the extent that
he abandons his early pessimism in the Bundesrepublik, Koselleck can afford to
move beyond the crisis orientation inherent in his understanding of conceptual
contestation. In his theorizing on history and time, he takes the distant observa-
tional position of a historian by engaging with criticism of ideologies and the
formal analysis of temporal structures. Crisis and eschatology become objects
163. Blumenberg, Legitimitt (1996), 105; Schmitt to Blumenberg, October 20, 1974, in Blumen-
bergSchmitt, Briefwechsel, 120.
164. Koselleck, Gibt es eine Beschleunigung, 173.
245
of conceptual research, while conflict, together with the opposition of friend
and enemy, turns into a permanent metahistorical category, purely formal and
structural.
One more such formal means of analysis is the idea of concepts as reoccupi-
able and reloadable carriers for heterogeneous intellectual aims. We should not,
however, too quickly assume that by formalizing Schmittian categories Koselleck
gains distance from his early Schmittianism: several of Schmitts categories were
self-declaredly formal to begin with, and even formalized Schmittianism is still
Schmittianism, as long as the term is understood as describing an intellectual posi-
tion and mode of analysis rather than as a reproach regarding supposedly political
implications. I believe the Schmittian residue in Kosellecks reading of secular-
ization and reoccupation effectively prevents him from adopting Blumenbergs
model of the reoccupation of functional positions that, after all, would fit accu-
rately with Kosellecks basic intention of showing the significant originality of
the modern experience of time and politics. This implicit tension is a remarkable
potential factor behind Kosellecks reserved attitude toward Blumenbergs proj-
ects despite a significant overlap between conceptual history and metaphorology.
University of Helsinki, Finland

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Reoccupying Secularization, Schmitt and Koselleck On Blumenberg's Challenge - Timo Pankakoski

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History and Theory 52 (May 2013), 214-245 Wesleyan University 2013 ISSN: 0018-2656

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