°The theologicopolitical and juridico-commercial
An extract from BC Hutchens’ “Philosophy as Juris-Fiction: Jean-Luc Nancy and the “Philosophy of Right”, courtesy of Ravi:
According to Nancy, contemporary politics is regulated by the standards of the modern liberal middle-class state, which includes an emphasis upon the “rights” of the individual subject or citizen. In being so, it is modeled on the paradigms of what Nancy designates with the awkward neologisms “theologicopolitics” and “juridico-commerciality”. […]
“Theologicopolitics”, a term conjured with Carl Schmitt in mind, refers to the presence of religious values in the delineation of the State’s nature, powers and protocols. Insofar as secularization presumes that rights are guaranteed in the light of such values (“one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”, the controversial US “Pledge of Allegiance” declares), the modern bourgeois state itself is but the substantiation of theological concepts. The very same “State” that was the culmination of the Hegelian dialectic is also discretely traced as the crucial presupposition of dialectical philosophy itself. Nancy insists that such a view is untenable on the grounds that the “metaphysics of our age” is one that requires the “deconstruction of the essence, and of existence qua sense” (Nancy 1997, p. 92). That is to say, the very philosophical requirements that a “theologicopolitics” as secularization of theological concepts implies are no longer defensible.
They include:
(a) A view of human beings as possessing an essence exercised in the very historical operations of the state. Such an essence is re-established by philosophical protocols and predetermined by the values of the state.
(b) All social relationships are facilitated by the mediation of “rules of law” established by reason and jurisprudence. If it can be said that “God” and “the State” provide sovereignty to citizens, that is because the singular human being is understood solely in terms of the essence, and thereby the existence, that the state determines to be its historical destiny. Hence, the philosophy of right both establishes the kind of subjective entity a “citizen” is and the kinds of relations into which such an entity might commit itself.
(c) Society is a network of relationships amongst “atomically” predetermined citizens whose public space provides the forum wherein they can relate. It is a “social body” consisting of such atomic individuals whose relations are mediated by the values of the state (god, rules of law, rights to liberty, etc.). Generally speaking, then, the “theologicopolitics” of the modern state is one in which there are individuals, social relations, and communities designated as such through the deployment of the formal values of a state mindful of its own historical destiny. In a sense, all of Nancy’s work on freedom, community, religion and politics is an effort to deconstruct this prevailing paradigm. Yet, by way of shortcut, one might note that both jurisprudence and the reason that purportedly promulgates it are fictions that supervene the “real” exercises of a self-surprising freedom (and its concomitant sharings in community) that Nancy regards to be among the most intriguing conceptual possibilities at our disposal today.
In other words, Nancy challenges “theologicopolitics” on several intercalated registers of thought: against the “individual” (citizen), he interposes the thought of the “singular being”; against liberty as a “right” guaranteed by law and reason, he proposes a freedom that is an irreducible and surprising existence; against mediated social relations, he advocates sharings of incommensurate self-knowledge and surprising existence constitutive of community; and against the notion of a “substantial” community of atomic individuals whose relations are mediated by symbolic figures, he presents a view of open and inoperative communities.
The “juridico-commercial” model refers to the peculiar manner in which the “theologicopolitics” of the state creates the viable possibility of a dominant “market democracy”. Democracy seemingly consists of the prodigious capacity of mediated social relations amongst predetermined individuals qua citizens.
If anyone would like a copy of the essay and didn’t get a chance before it was taken down, drop a comment in here. (And there’s also some reading of Nancy along similar lines here.)
I’m not sure about Hutchens’ gloss at the start of the second paragraph. The sense of the theologico-political is not so much Schmittian as it is, so to speak, Spinozian - i.e., what is the proper relation between “religious” and “political” values in a given state. I understand political theology to have a much more basic, but also much more broad, meaning - one that isn’t as a matter of course tied up to any particular positive expression of the theological. Certainly, “Western” politics (or, perhaps, the “Western” political) is caught within the hold of Christianity, but Christianity isn’t the exclusive meaning of the theological! To push a line I’ve been pushing a lot lately (yet again), I think it is necessary to understand the theologico- part of it referring to an “Other-determination” and the process of carving up the world into sacred and profane.
Craig [October 14, 2006 @ 1:49 am]
Actually, I think Hutchens is running the concept of the theologicopolitical into that of the juridico-commercial. [These neologisms are remarkably Germanic, for Nancy, this tacking together of long words, but anyway … ] In the sense that Hutchens is interested in talking about the emergence of a particular form of right.
Nancy, I think, is proceeding in some dialogue with Hamacher, particularly this.
By the by, I’ll hazard that Spinoza is very much of the juridico-commercial.
And I’m not sure I agree with the concept of ‘other-determination’ as a way to work through this - I think we went over this before, somewhere, but I think the causa sui actually theologises the sui, a form of auto-legitimation.
s0metim3s [October 14, 2006 @ 2:01 pm]
I should likely read his paper before criticizing him! I’m sure these are issues we’ll repeatedly revisit in the future as I put together this chapter on the symbolic.
Craig [October 14, 2006 @ 2:13 pm]
I’m sure it’s criticisable, but I think mostly on the grounds that what purports to take the form of a secondary text (a presentation of Nancy) is better read as Hutchens’ essay. That doesn’t make it any less of a work, but it makes it different.
Flicking through, the only overt discussion of Schmitt that I easily find in Nancy (or the books of his I have) is in The Sense of the World, “Politics I”. And the emphasis there is on the mourning of the theologicopolitical, the sacrificial, etc (not rights as such). I guess that’s what I mean about Hutchens’ essay being his essay.
s0metim3s [October 14, 2006 @ 2:37 pm]
A certain co-blogger (of sorts) of ours has a hidden, ongoing feud with Hutchens regarding disparaging remarks said about his (Hutchens, that is) on his (our co-blogger, of sorts) site. For what it is worth, at any rate.
I find Nancy’s prose difficult at times, but Hutchens even more so. I’m not sure I’m getting his point, being halfway through his paper. I’m not a Nancy expert by any stretch of the imagination, but Schmitt isn’t an overt interlocutor. Certainly, as someone who once ran a research center on “the political,” Nancy must have given a great deal of consideration on Schmitt. I’m not sure how direct the engagement is, though. At least in terms of what we have in English.
(I only own copies of B-S-P and The Inoperative Community, for what it is worth.)
Craig [October 14, 2006 @ 2:44 pm]
For instance, on page 125 Hutchens quotes Nancy, commenting, “…, Nancy avers.” C’mon. The primary source in this guy’s paper is a thesaurus!
Craig [October 14, 2006 @ 2:52 pm]
You don’t use a thesaurus?
Anyway, I doubt anyone is an expert on Nancy, and I think it takes some confidence to not claim that one is. Hutchens’ essay suffers from offering itself as a presentation of Nancy’s work; others want to prop up their own argument/position by similarly claiming that Nancy authorises their argument. These are the hallmarks of academic competition, as far as I can tell - and not a very interesting thing to be concerned with.
That said, I think Hutchens’ essay is interesting - and his arguments on rights are much closer to Nancy’s than are, say, Adam’s attempts to put forward a Christian Nancy(TM). I just don’t think he needs to suggest that what he wants to say is what Nancy says. He could just as easily - and better - have talked about taking Nancy’s work as a point of departure. That way, the argument would be over the substantive, not the Proper Name, the Master, etc.
Nancy’s engagement with Schmitt isn’t always overt, true. Heidegger figures much more prominently throughout. I think Schmitt is sometimes dealt with by way of Heidegger, notably on the discussion of decision.
s0metim3s [October 14, 2006 @ 3:06 pm]
Well, that’s Agamben’s point about Nancy on Schmitt, at least. But I think it is correct - even if the essays (I’m thinking of the one on the ban and the other on the “decision of existence”) are hopelessly obscure to someone, such as myself, who doesn’t have a particularly strong education in Heidegger.
I can’t say that I regularly use a thesaurus.
Craig [October 14, 2006 @ 3:37 pm]
But it’s sometimes difficult - though not impossible - to disentangle Heidegger from Schmitt. I’m thinking here of Nancy’s discussion on ‘humanity’. If I recall right, there’s an essay, in the same edition and same journal as the Hutchens piece, that does Nancy and Schmitt. I’ll see if I can lay my hands on that - why isn’t this journal on Ingenta, Muse or Jstor?
s0metim3s [October 14, 2006 @ 4:00 pm]