Political Theology and Populism

Abstract

Some of our significant political concepts are secularized theological ones. Not all of them. Some major religious-political concepts are theologized profane ones. What is crucial is that nontheological concepts like territory and population can also be theologized, as in "sacred homeland" or "the People." Such is the main effort of political theology: the preservation and imposition of concepts and figures of thought in political theory, inherited from monotheism, however transformed. It can only be countered by the further secularization and disenchantment of political concepts, the preservation or the reestablishment of their secular and rational character. Why we should engage in this secularizing effort is the topic of this paper.