4 (2011) 511-530]
doi:10.1558/poth.vl2i4.511
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins 1
Graduate Department of History
Fayerweather Hall 413
1180 Amsterdam Ave.
Mail Code 2527
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027-7039
USA
dsj2110@columbia.edu
ABSTRACT
This paper focuses in part on Jan Assmann's interpretation and refutation
of Carl Schmitt's very well-known secularization theory that all significant
modern concepts of the state are secularized theological notions. It will be
demonstrated that Assmann attempts to counter Schmitt's conception of
modern secularization by suggesting that Mosaic monotheism inaugurated a
revolution by theologizing the political. By briefly exploring Assmann's interpretation of Egyptian religion, it will be argued that a conception of the political as distinct from the theological characterized the political form of ancient
Egypt. This leads to a discussion of Assmann's argument that Schmitt's conception of the friend/enemy distinction should be understood as an aberration
of the political form of ancient Egypt and therefore viewed as a category of
political illegitimacy. In order to illustrate this, attention will first be drawn to
Assmann's distinction between primary and secondary religion. This is followed by a discussion of Assmann's notion of the structural transform of the
political by theology, which then moves specifically into his argument for the
intellectual origins of Schmitt's concept of the political. It will be attempted
throughout this paper to bring conceptual clarification to Assmann's notion
of theologization by relating it to the question of political theology currently
taking place in France and the English-speaking world. Towards the end I
offer a number of criticisms of Assmann's notion of theologization.
Keywords: Jan Assmann; monotheism; Mosaic distinction; Carl Schmitt;
secularization; theologization.
1. Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins is a Richard Hofstadter faculty fellow in the history
department at Columbia University in the City of New York. He focuses on modern European intellectual history, and is specifically interested in the history of political philosophy
in Germany and France during the twentieth century.
Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, S3 8AF.
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Political Theology
Assmann believes that this view of God, which forms the basis of Schmitt's
secularization thesis, is the product of the biblical conception of mosaic
monotheism, or what he describes as the Mosaic distinction. In order to
understand the revolutionary political significance of the Mosaic distinction it is first necessary to grasp that Ancient Egypt established a political
order entirely this-worldly, immanent, and legitimated through visible
religious representations. The Mosaic distinction initiated a political
revolution by associating such representations with idolatry. The biblical
figure of Moses inaugurates a new conception of the political by rooting
the legitimacy of political order onto a non-worldly, transcendent, and
non-representable reality. Assmann describes the shift from political order
being secured by worldly representations in Egypt to political legitimacy
being derived from a monotheistic God that refuses all representations as
theologization. Assmann states this thesis as follows:
It will be shown, that the process of secularization also has an opposite
direction. I call this process theologization and would like to demonstrate it by
means of the theological becoming central political concepts, just like Carl
4. Jan Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil. Politische Theologie in Altgypten, Israel und Europe
(Mnchen: Fischer Verlag, 2000). Herrschaft and Heil in this instance designates politics
(Herrschaft) and theology (Heil).
5. Gyrgy Gerby, "Political Theology versus Theological Politics: Erik Peterson and
Carl Schmitt," New German Critique 35, no. 10 (Fall 2008): 12.
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Political Theology
514
nations' and, as such, echoes anti-Semitic conceptions of a German Volk." See Christian J.
Emden, "How to Fall into Carl Schmitt's Trap," -Net Reviews, July 2009. http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24782.
10. Gerby, "Political Theology versus Theological Politics," 12.
11. "Theologisierung des Politischen hat die damalige welt, ebenso fundamental revolutionert wie in der Neuzeit die Skularisierung des Theologischen." Assmann, Herrschaft
und Heil, 30. Assmann's thought on the theologization of the political are reminiscent of
Marcel Gauchet's The Disenchantment of the World, which suggests that the emergence of
monotheism generated the initial first stage of religion's decay.
12. "Wir mssen also unterscheiden zwischen Religion, die zu den Grundbedingungen des menschlichen Daseins gehrt, und Theologie, die als eine reflexiv gewordene
und sich ber andere Religionen kritisch erhebende Form der wahren Gottesverehrung in
Israel und anderswo entsteht. Theologie in diesem Sinne ist das Kennzeichen sekundrer
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two separate realms but rather they are chiasmatically intertwined. What
appears as politics is an extraction and therefore quasi-representation of
the social imaginary. Politics should be understood as a simulacra of the
political form that engenders it.
This brief foray into Lefort's conception of the political and politics
clarifies Assmann's understanding of invisible and visible religion. In
particular Assmann associates invisible religion with what the Egyptians
described as maat.
Maat signifies the principle of a universal harmony that manifests itself in
cosmos as order and in the world of human beings as justice. Such concepts
exist also in other cultures to describe the totality of meaningful order on
the highest plane of abstraction. Examples are the Greek concept kosmos, the
Indian dharma, and the Chinese tao}9
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Political Theology
In Moses the Egyptian Assmann argues that cosmotheism not only ordered
society down to the lowest sum of its parts, but also allowed for the
"ecumen" of interconnected nations. This affirms that not the names
or shapes of deities, but their similar functions allowed for their translation between disparate cultures. "Thus they functioned as a means of
intercultural translatability. The gods were international because they
were cosmic. The different people worshiped different gods, but nobody
contested the reality of foreign gods and the legitimacy of foreign forms of
worship."27 Translation is made possible by a commensurability of function that allows for an overlapping consensus amongst the gods. The basic
premises of this commensurability are guaranteed by cosmotheism. This
would suggest that ancient Egyptian religion interestingly possessed much
in common with John Rawls's political liberalism. Rawls's notion of an
overlapping consensus is made possible by "certain fundamental intuitive ideas implicit in the political culture of a democratic society."28 This
is to affirm that contained within the various comprehensive doctrines
of democratic societies are functional equivalents than can be translated
into a public conception of reason allowing for an overlapping consensus. An overlapping consensus is derived from divergent comprehensive
doctrines operating within the restraints of a democratic culture. Vis--vis
Assmann, if translation in primary religion is guaranteed by the premises
of cosmotheism then translation in the Rawlsian sense is guaranteed by the
premises of a democratic culture allowing for an overlapping consensus.
Functional equivalents, translation and even the idea of a romantic polytheism are all notions that contemporary political theorists have espoused
that share a deep affinity with the tenor of Assmann's project.29
The Mosaic distinction derives its semantics from the rejection of Egypt.
By juxtaposing Egypt with true religion it "cut the umbilical cord which
connected [Moses'] people and his religious ideas to their cultural and
natural context."30 Assmann describes this as semantic relocation by which
the concepts and rhetoric of loyalty were transferred from the political to
zu den Gauen und der Gaue zur Residenz und definiert auf diese Weise die politische Identitt des Landes und aller seiner Untergliedergungen bis hinab zum einzelnen Brger."
Assmann, "Monotheismus," 124.
27. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 3.
28. John Rawls, "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus," New York
University Law Review 64, no. 2 (May 1989): 240.
29. For an example of romantic polytheism see Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism as Romantic Polytheism," in The Rival ofPragmatism, ed. Morris Dickstein (Durham, N C : Duke University Press, 1998), 27.
30. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 209.
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This passage suggests that at the heart of semantic relocation is the emergence of political theology. The carrying out of this relocation is most
clearly seen in the prohibition of images. Representations establish conduits for the divine by which political and religious authority is legitimated.
In this sense idols are sacraments which secure the gods real presence on
earth. As such, "the state's most important task is to ensure divine presence under the condition of divine absence, and thereby to maintain a
symbiotic relationship between man, society and cosmos."32 Therefore,
the prohibition against idols must be construed as a counter-politic that
sets itself directly against the very core of Egyptian political authority. As
such, Egypt offers not a false religion but a false politics.
The parallels between Israel as possessing a true politics versus Egypt as
possessing a false politics demonstrates strong affinities with the explicit
language of a certain strand of American post-liberal political theology.
Exemplary of this is the theologian Stanley Hauerwas who portrays liberalism as offering a seductive "false politics" of the world that the true
politics of the church must set itself against.33 Furthermore, Assmann's
reading of the Exodus brings him very close to liberation theologians when
he argues that freedom for Israel could only mean freedom from political
oppression through divine deliverance: "Monotheism appears as a political
movement of liberation from pharaonic oppression and as the foundation
of an alternative way of life, where humans are not ruled by a state, but
freely consent to enter an alliance with God and adopt the stipulations of
divine law."34 From this angle, political authority is no longer represented,
but rather is grounded by entering into a covenant with an unrepresentable
31. Jan Assmann, "Axial Breakthroughs and Semantic Relocations in Ancient Egypt
and Israel," in Religion and Politics: Cultural Perspectives, ed. Bernhard Giesen (London: Brill
Academic, 2005), 44, 45.
32. Ibid., 47.
33. See, in particular, Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (South
Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1997).
34. Assmann, "Axial Breakthroughs," 48.
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35. "The political meaning of monotheism in its early stage does not deny the existence of other gods. On the contrary, without the existence of other gods the request to stay
faithful to the lord would be pointless." Assmann, "Axial Breakthroughs," 50. They are false
not because they are non-existent but rather because they signify an oppressive political
alternative. Of course this conception of the political is inseparable from a sharp distinction
between God and the world. In Mosaische Unterscheidung, Assmann makes the interesting
argument that Karl Barth's dialectic theology and its radical transcendence vis--vis the liberal Protestant culture of its day is analogous to the Mosaic distinction and Egyptian culture
and religion. Mosaische Unterscheidung, 53.
36. "Gibt es einen Zusammenhang zwischen der Unterscheidung von wahr und
falsch und derjenigen zwischen Freund and Feind? Dieser Zusammenhang liegt auf der
Hand und verbindet sich mit dem Bilderverbot. Das Bilderverbot wendet die theologische
Unterscheidung zwischen Wahrheit und Unwahrheit, Gott und Gtzen, ins Politische und
interpretiert sie im Sinne von Freund und Feind. Sie definiert, wer die Feinde Gottes sind
und wo sie stehen. Beim Bilderverbot handelt es sich um eine Feindbestimmung im Licht
der Unterscheidung von wahr und falsh." Assmann, "Monotheismus," 131.
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memory that nevertheless does not remain beyond the threshold of remembrance. What
separates Assmann from the New Perspective on Paul is the ambitiousness of his project
that sees the fate of the West as something like the tragic consequence of the biblical representation of Moses the Hebrew. What unites them is their attempt to uncover forgotten or
overlooked traditions that call into question the narrowness of received tradition that have
engendered anti-Semitism. It should be noted that Assmann does not describe his project
as the "new perspective on Moses."
43. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian ,211.
44. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 28. Assmann discusses the notion of the
"theologizing of culture memory" in the same book. See ibid., 37-42.
45. Quoted in Jan-Werner Mller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European
Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 159.
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Political Theology
A Blumenbergian position would also reject the notion that the original
political substance of Egyptian society can come back to light as soon as the
superimposed elements of political derivation are cleared away. Nevertheless, it is clear that Assmann's conception of political legitimacy, and his
call to remember an alternative political memory that still remains with
us, espouses just this very notion. As he remarks in Moses the Egyptian:
A counter-religion can be compared to a palimpsest, a reused papyrus or
parchment. The old text is erased, and the new text is written on the cleaned
surface. The more care has been taken to clean the surface, the less of the
old text is available. But some faint trace of the told text usually remains.
It is viewed with hatred and abomination. This is the old paradigm. The
new paradigm focuses on the old text, which is still visible under the new
49
inscription.
Asad would argue that the difficulty with Assmann's conception of religion is that once it is posited in universal terms it establishes a measuring
stick that places all religions outside its narrative and in the position of
never being able to advance to that standard. Asad maintains that
ethnographers and others ought to limit themselves to description, reserving critique to those who participate firsthand in the language and culture
under discussion: that is, people who offer their criticism on the basis of
shared values and are prepared to engage in a sustained conversation of giveand-take. 51
This would mean that the very bifurcations Assmann hopes to overcome
appear inherently necessary to the alternative political form he seeks to
remind us.
It could also be said that Assmann's negative rendering of theism
appears reminiscent of a particular formulation of secularism that marginalizes or attempts to privatize comprehensive religious doctrines in
the name of securing political and social equality. As such, Assmann's
conception of the political seems out of touch with the recent turn
in political theory to a post-secular conception of the theological and
the political.52 From this angle, the theological and the political are no
longer viewed as incommensurable spheres of discourse, but instead as
potentially overlapping discursive frameworks that possess the semantic
50. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and
Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 29.
51. Quoted from Bruce Lincoln, Review of Genealogies ofReligion: Discipline and Reasons
ofPower in Christianity and Islam," History of Religions 35, no. 1 (August 1995): 83-86 (85).
52. See, in particular, William E. Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Jrgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion:
Philosophical Essays (New York: Polity, 2008); John Caputo, On Religion (London: Routledge,
2001).
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Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Sundermeier, Theo. Was ist Religion. Mnchen: Chr. Kaiser/Gtersloher, 1999.
Taylor, Charles. Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Tillich, Paul. Mysticism and Guilt-Consciousness in Schelling's Philosophical Development, trans.
Victor Nuovo. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1974.
Werbik, Jrgen. "Absolutistsicher Eingottglaube? Befreiende Vielfalt des Polytheismus." In
ht der Glaube Feind der Freiheit?: Die neue Debatte um den Monotheismus, ed. Thomas
Sding, 142-75. Breisgau: Herder, 2003.
^,
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