Influenced by the backdrop of the contemporary issues facing Christianity and a trend toward ''political theology'', Christopher Barnett explores Kierkegaard''s relation to politics and the modern state. By tracing the birth and development of the modern secular state, he argues that Soren Kierkegaard''s repudiation of "politics" in the nineteenth century should be read as early resistance to the totalizing claims of the nation-state. For Kierkegaard, a modern preoccupation with politics is a symptom of the deification of the state: the more the state grows, the less God matters - a problem that would lead to the demoralization of Western culture. Barnett places Kierkegaard''s analysis in dialogue with authors such as Jacques Ellul, Eric Voeglin, Rene Girard, and Wendell Berry, to explore how politics in the modern state is not marked by liberation but by bureaucracy, propaganda, technocracy, and disenchantment. Kierkegaard''s critiques of state power are startlingly relevant to contemporary debates in political theology. Kierkegaard, Statecraft and the Question of Political Theology allows Kierkegaard''s political thought to speak for itself, pulling out overlaps with twentieth-century thinkers who bear a "family resemblance" to his political philosophy. By applying his thought actively to the challenges facing Christianity today, this book explores the politization of theology in all its complexity.

Autorentext

Christopher B. Barnett is Professor Emeritus of Theology & Religious Studies at Villanova University, USA. He is the author of books including Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence (Bloomsbury, 2023), Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard's Philosophy (2022), Kierkegaard and the Question Concerning Technology (Bloomsbury, 2019), and From Despair to Faith: The Spirituality of Søren Kierkegaard (2014).

Klappentext

Written against the fractured landscape of contemporary Christianity and the increasing popularity of "political theology," Christopher B. Barnett wrestles with the question: what if Søren Kierkegaard's rejection of modern politics was not a form of spiritual quietism, but of Christian resistance?

Tracing the rise of the modern secular state, Barnett argues that Kierkegaard's refusal of "the political" anticipates a crisis now impossible to ignore. For Kierkegaard, obsessive political passion signals a theological inversion: as the state grows in importance, God is displaced. The upshot is not freedom but moral exhaustion-a society saturated with envy, despair, and groupthink.

Barnett contends that Kierkegaard's reflections on politics and the modern state find a receptive audience in a trio of twentieth-century figures: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jacques Ellul, and René Girard. Loosely gathered under the heading of "apostolical radicalism," each of these thinkers demonstrates that the modern state organizes contemporary life through bureaucracy, technique, propaganda, and ritualized antagonism. State politics may promise meaning, identity, and moral clarity, but as the rise of political theology shows, it ultimately absorbs all aspects of life into the sphere of politics.

Kierkegaard, Statecraft and Political Theology unleashes Kierkegaard's political thought as a live provocation, drawing unexpected lines between Christian theology and praxis and our present age of social media, tribalized politics, and permanent war. Ultimately, this book challenges readers to ask whether the modern state leads towards salvation-or the apocalypse.

Inhalt

Preface

1. The Origin and Development of the Modern State: A Survey
2. Kierkegaard's Early Critique of the State and Politics
3. Conservative Radicalism?: Political Dissent in the Wake of Kierkegaard
4. The Danger of Political Theology
   Conclusion: Seeing Through the Political Illusion
   Works Cited