UNIDAD AMBITO CONCEPTUAL Estados de

The definition of the relationship between the political and politics that has been developed here resists every attempt to cement a unity. The people are not presented as a unity, as ‘one’, since the people as ‘empiricized’ is constructed from the ‘many’. It is ‘the people of flesh and blood with its individuals’.29 _{This is the reason why the vital nerve of democracy does not}

lie in consensus but in dissent. Dissent guarantees the freedom of all citizens, i.e. the freedoms of the dissident with respect to the sovereign and of the majority with respect to itself. This democracy is a future democracy in the sense that it contains the promise of taking seriously a realistic view of people as ‘the ensemble of conflicting individuals’ (P. Flores d’Arcais). The democratic challenge consists in this, even if it is threatened constantly with defeat in democratic societies, whenever majorities drown out the voices of minorities. And while current democracies are primarily worried about majorities, the new political theology is concerned with voiceless minorities. Both democracy and monotheism are less about becoming a people than about becoming a subject. If democracy can be defined as the ‘insti- tutionalized form of dealing with uncertainty in the public’,30 _{then biblical}

monotheism cannot be used to master this uncertainty. Exactly the opposite is true! It radicalizes uncertainty. Uncertainty allows for new scopes of

26 _{Cf. Chantal Mouffe, ‘Für eine antagonistische Öffentlichkeit’, Demokratie als unvol-}

lendeter Prozess: Documenta11_Plattform1 (ed. Okwui Enwezor et al.; Ostfildern:

Hatje Cantz, 2002), pp. 101–12 (104).

27 _{Cf. Mouffe, ‘Für eine antagonistische Öffentlichkeit’, p. 104.}

28 _{Cf. also Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (Thinking in Action; Abingdon/New York,}

NY: Routledge, 2005).

29 _{P. Flores d’Arcais, ‘Ist Amerika noch eine Demokratie?’, Die Zeit, 20 January 2005.} 30 _{Helmut Dubiel, Ungewißheit und Politik (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994) p. 9.}

action to arise. Biblical monotheism is in its very nature a call against deadlocks, a call into a productive exile.31 _{Abraham is called by God to}

leave his home and he is told never to return to his origins. Uncertainty is the site of formation of the subject. In democracy, civil society is the place for becoming a subject. It is the site where moral forces are mobilized. Civil society is the genuine motor of democracy: the source of resistance, innovation and change. In other words, it is the place of sub-politics. Sub-politics grounded in the political can be distinguished from politics in that it changes the rules, whereas politics is led by the rules.32

Dissent is the driving force of democracy. The persistence of dissent can lead to the rise of something like an ‘expanded way of thinking’ (I. Kant) and as such, accumulates moral capital.33 _{But it is not only this moral}

capital that binds; there are other phenomenal areas that allow similarities between different people to be recognized and to be felt. At this point, the point of view of the new political theology should be mentioned, the

analogia passionis (P. Rottländer) that is the result of a dual vulnerability:

every person is capable of suffering and is in turn affected by the suffering of the other. To this extent the experience of suffering can be categorized as common, even if in each case it is different.34 _{The concept of analogia}

passionis that is considered here does not consist in ‘remaining with the

perception and the memory of personal suffering’ but in moving out to the perception and the memory of the other’s suffering. The coming together of internal and external perspectives, of witness and empathy, then opens possibilities that tend towards a universal understanding.’35 _{For such}

memory is both well grounded in experience and the ground of experience. Returning now to the previously mentioned nihilistic tendencies, this ability for analogia passionis seems to be lost. Why?

Reflecting on this question from a social-phenomenological point of view developed by the psychoanalyst Ronald D. Laing, we recognize that in the sharing of our experiences we are confronted with a paradox. On the one hand we have to notice, that what we experience is to us of highest evidence. While on the other hand ‘we can see other people’s behaviour, but not their experience.’36 _{That is: ‘Our experiences are invisible to one}

31 _{Jürgen Manemann, Rettende Erinnerung an die Zukunft: Essay über die christliche}

Verschärfung (Mainz: Grünewald, 2005).

32 _{Cf. Ulrich Beck, Die Erfindung des Politischen: Zu einer Theorie reflexiver}

Modernisierung (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1993) p. 207.

33 _{Cf. Dubiel, Ungewißheit und Politik, p. 116.}

34 _{Cf. Peter Rottländer, ‘Alterität versus anamnetische Ethik?’, Demokratiefähigkeit}

(ed. Jürgen Manemann; Jahrbuch Politische Theologie, 1; Münster: LIT, 1995), pp. 238–49 (248).

35 _{Rottländer, ‘Alterität versus anamnetische Ethik?’, p. 248.}

36 _{Ronald D. Laing, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (repr.,}

another.’ Experience is the invisibility of the one for the other and at the same time it is connected with highest evidence. Yes, experience is the only evidence that we have.

But how do we really know something about the experience of the other? What is experience about? Your experience is not evident to me, as it is not and never can be an experience of mine. The only thing we are able to do is to experience ourselves as experiencing. All of which entails that we don’t not know each other so well when we attempt at hearing the other from the basis of what we think we have experienced. The way we make experience is expressed to others in the way we behave. Our behaviour is a function of our experience. If our experience is destroyed, our behaviour is destructive. In turn, from such destroyed experience, one not only loses one’s self but participates in such loss by crossing out one’s self. And if we face the challenges of nihilistic tendencies from these social- phenomenological insights we may start to get a hint about new potentials, as Laing correctly states: ‘What we think (theory) is less than what we know (evidence by experience): what we know is less than what we love: what we love is so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are.’37 _{Experience deserves its name only}

if it transports us beyond what we think constitutes our nature, if it makes us aware that we are so much less than what we think we are. As such, experience is connected with the idea of infinity.

Religions – to the extent that they are receptive to suffering experiences – can be a source of experience or, more precisely, of counter-experience and therefore a source of the sort of politics that can change rules. If the God of the Bible is concerned with the suffering of the stranger, and if it is simultaneously clear on the grounds of belief in the God of the Bible that there is no suffering in the world that does not concern us (P. Rottländer), then the result of this sensibility is a potential for change, which compels not only religions but also democratic societies to go beyond themselves. This is a dissolving of boundaries that makes it difficult for democratic societies to remain indifferent to the claims of the stranger in their midst. This claim for justice is demanded even in the face of the enemy. By this it is meant that the other can always be discovered in the enemy, ‘for whom there is a co-responsibility even in the excess of collective enmity, which cannot be renounced’.38 _{From this point of view,}

a politics of enmity that is based on a dualistic rhetoric calls not for an intensification of the political but for its liquidation. The realm of the political is abandoned whenever somebody’s right to exist is annihilated.39

37 _{Laing, The Politics of Experience, p. 26.}

38 _{Burkhard Liebsch, Gastlichkeit und Freiheit: Polemische Konturen europäischer}

Kultur (Weilerswist: Velbruck, 2005) p. 167.

Advocates of a dualistic politics of friend and foe are walking the path into the anti-political for this very reason.40

b. Doing Justice to the Concrete Other

Democratic societies would do well to note the potential for change that is contained in biblical traditions, for the political debate must constantly reflect on the boundaries of justice.41 _{Biblical monotheism constantly de -}

mands this kind of self-reflection, in that the biblical traditions remind us that morality does not originate in equality but in the service that is given to the poor, the orphan and the widow. An imperative is therefore generated of recognizing the suffering of the other, and through this imperative the theory and practice of justice as equality in liberal society is constantly questioned in respect to real human beings in their infinite dignity. In turn there is a demand to take into account the individual’s unique perspective. A liberal democracy that understands justice as equality must be founded upon a responsibility oriented towards the other, for this is what drives justice. The problem, therefore, of liberal democracy bridging together justice and equality is that its very medium of doing so is unjust.42 _Thus,

from the perspective of biblical monotheism, the theory and practice of justice as equality in liberal democracy is put under challenge in the light of the question of the non-identical. The audibility of the cries of individuals in reaction to any established practice of equality is what drives self-reflection.43 _{The egalitarian attitude of the members of democratically}

constituted states is completed by doing justice to the concrete other. ‘Here, doing justice to the individual means reacting with the other against that which causes the other to suffer and to lament.’44 _{The idea of morality that}

is expressed here is to be found in proximity. Contrary to that, the longing for order as part of polemical politics is an ideology which seeks to justify the hatred of human beings. This hatred of other human beings is nothing other than a rejection of responsibility and not an expression that rejects multiplicity.45

The word ‘democracy’ is actually not to be found in biblical traditions, but Israel’s understanding of the right of the other in his or her ‘otherness’

40 _{Cf. also Manemann, Über Freunde und Feinde.}

41 _{Cf. Christoph Menke, ‘Grenzen der Gleichheit: Neutralität und Politik im Politischen}

Liberalismus’, Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 50/6 (2002), pp. 897–906.

42 _{Cf. Axel Honneth, ‘Das Andere der Gerechtigkeit’, Freiheit oder Gerechtigkeit:}

Perspektiven Politischer Philosophie (ed. Peter Fischer; Leipzig: Reclam, 1995),

pp. 194–240.

43 _{Cf. Christoph Menke, Spiegelungen der Gleichheit (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000)}

p. 35.

44 _{Menke, Spiegelungen der Gleichheit, p. 38.} 45 _{Finkielkraut, The Wisdom of Love, p. 177.}

(E. Levinas), has constantly taken into account the very thing that is demanded by democracy: namely a profound sensibility that protects the right of the individual.

The churches can contribute to combating social fragmentation by giving encouragement so that the suffering experienced by the individual in society is not reduced to individual suffering but is correlated with the whole of society. This will affect society in two ways: first, the one who suffers can assume that nobody else wants to experience such pain and suffering, and would reject it; secondly, the resultant change affects the whole in that it gives a new orientation to the whole. Only then can talk of ‘genuine politics’ (S. Žižek) begin. Opposed to this is the current dominance of what Žižek calls ‘post-politics’: a politics that mobilizes the entire apparatus of experts, social workers etc. in order to reduce the collective demands of a minority group to minority relevance.46 _{Yet, is it possible for a new orien-}

tation of the whole to find a foundation in liberal-secular societies? c. The Political and the Symbolic

The basis of the political is neither the economy nor the common good, whether understood substantially or as guaranteed by tradition. Every definitive closure is incompatible with the political.47 _{And this is how}

democratic societies, rooted in the political, establish themselves: through an institutionalized questioning.48 _{Society, which is based on dissent that}

cannot be solved by consensus and transformed into a unity, depends on the symbol. The political, as the space in-between, does not destroy society; it shapes society, through giving meaning to social relations and through staging them.49 _{Giving meaning is based on structuring distinctions of}

generative principles (just – unjust etc.), such as justice and human rights, for example, which prolong the conflict. The way that society takes shape cannot however be reduced to the social, but rather contains a whole complex of phenomena, including religious ones.50 _{Society, without this}

religious dimension, is in danger of losing a difference that does not lie

46 _{Cf. Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology}

(Wo es war; London/New York, NY: Verso, pb edn, 2000). See also: Polednitschek,

Diagnose Politikmüdigkeit.

47 _{Cf. Oliver Marchart, ‘Demonstrationen des Unvollendbaren: Politische Theorie}

und radikaldemokratischer Aktivismus’, Demokratie als unvollendeter Prozess:

Documenta11_Platform1 (ed. Okwui Enwezor et al.; Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz,

2002), pp. 291–306.

48 _{Cf. Dubiel, Ungewißheit und Politik, pp. 9 and 47.}

49 _{Cf. Claude Lefort, Fortdauer des Theologisch-Politischen (Vienna: Passagen, 1999)}

p. 39.

within the power of disposal of human beings.51 _{Both the political and the}

religious spheres are connected with the symbolic and open up access to the world.52 _{The ‘secret of democracy’ (C. Lefort) is the symbolic way in which}

society forms itself, in which a unity is produced that is open and that guarantees diversity.53 _{This openness is made possible through the distance}

between the symbolic and the real, between the political and politics. The political remains, however, only one form of symbolization (shaping, giving meaning, representation).54 _{Religion offers another. Religion, unlike}

the political, does not give a form to society. Religion is the link with the whole; it breaks through borders in the way that it, as a giving of world, constitutes the world as world by remembering another world. This other world is not to be regarded in a dualistic manner. It does not involve any devaluation of this world but actually challenges this world to become world.

This rupture of the world by the polarization between a world that is willed by God and a world as human order, thus shows that the sacred pole in modern society can no longer be filled substantially – for instance through a king appointed by the grace of God or through a Hobbesian sovereign – and hence, must remain empty. This emptiness of the actual place of power allows for the members of civil society both participation and self-determination, and becomes the condition for the possibility of a non-totalitarian society, in that it resists identical symbolizations.55

While the political can be understood as the symbolic formation of a society,56 _{religion contains a symbolization that radically ruptures bound-}

aries – and therefore it locates the way the political forms the society by locating it into a space opened for the whole: ‘That human society can only open onto itself by being held in an opening it did not create, is exactly what every religion says, each in its own way, just like philosophy, but religion said it first, albeit in terms that philosophy cannot make its own.’57

The political and religion as dimensions of the other are entangled in a way which cannot be unravelled. Politics and the political need religion, because without religion, both would be limited to the preservation of the given order, living in the illusion of a pure immanence.58 _{What is needed is}

a permanence of the theological-political in modern democracy, which is indicated through the empty place of power, in order to withstand a resto-

51 _{Cf. Lefort, Fortdauer des Theologisch-Politischen, p. 45.} 52 _{Cf. Lefort, Fortdauer des Theologisch-Politischen, p. 44.} 53 _{Cf. Lefort, Fortdauer des Theologisch-Politischen, p. 49.} 54 _{Cf. also. Manemann, Über Freunde und Feinde.} 55 _{Lefort, Fortdauer des Theologisch-Politischen, p. 50.} 56 _{Lefort, Fortdauer des Theologisch-Politischen, p. 49.} 57 _{Lefort, Fortdauer des Theologisch-Politischen, p. 45.} 58 _{Lefort, Fortdauer des Theologisch-Politischen, p. 47.}

ration of the political-theological in the form of a political religion. The new political theology votes therefore for a de-corporation of power, which is essential for modern societies.

d. Doing Politics Facing the Memory of the Other’s Suffering

What is necessary is a new way to link politics and morality. This does not mean falling back ‘into the political canonization of a certain system of morality’; nor is the intent ‘a “totalitarian” clash of political and ethical practice’. The demand is rather for ‘the mobilization of spiritual and moral forces through a radical democratization on the basis of society, a resto- ration of freedom and of efficient responsibility from below’.59 _{In this way,}

the ‘subversion of political imagination and of political action into the pure business of planning’ can be resisted.60 _{‘Political imagination will not be}

ultimately sucked up by technological [and economic, J.M.] pressures, so long as it retains that moral-religious imagination and force for resistance that grows out of memory of accumulated suffering in history.’61 _{The new}

political theology therefore pleads for a political consciousness ex memoria

passionis.62 _{Only then will we be able to talk about ‘real politics’ (S. Žižek),}

one which works for a change in parameters characterized as ‘possible’ and ‘real’, while actually representing the art of the impossible, i.e. a messianic politics.

On the basis of these clarifications, the task of a new political theology could be seen as involving the repolitization of the private sphere and the renormativization of the public sphere, in confronting personal morality with public problems and the public with questions of private morality.63

e. The Task of Christians

In order to be able to fulfil this task, theology would have to be reworked once again as a helping tool which gives a voice to the voiceless. Theology will not be able to reach the ‘sources of the self’ (C. Taylor) by using systemic philosophies, but by addressing everyday suffering, which is often hidden or dismissed as banal. Its political task would initially consist in helping people to articulate their thoughts and feelings, in such a way that would oppose manipulating opinions by merely surveying them or by working to make suffering visible when the sufferer believes that he or she is without importance for others or when he or she is not conscious

59 _{Metz, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, p. 90.} 60 _{Metz, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, p. 91.} 61 _{Metz, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, pp. 91 and 92.} 62 _{Metz, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, p. 92.}

of their own suffering or simply forgets to share it.64 _{This task could help}

to break through ‘democratic melancholy’ (P. Bruckner). It would not only be a step towards the democratization of democracy but also towards the

democratization of theology.

f. An Incomplete Democracy

If the question – from the perspective of Christian theology – is that of defining the relationship between religion and politics, then this question should not be understood in the usual sense of the relationship between religion and state order. Democracy actually forms not a state, but a form of life, a way of being that is the result of bitter experiences. It is not an abstract sovereignty of the people that is foregrounded in democratic society but the recognition of the other in his or her otherness. This recog-