Theological Origins of Modernity

360 notes to pages 287–291
in language. Building on Heidegger’s notion of the radical alterity of Being, and
the work of Levinas and Benjamin, this transcendent element was conceived
as the Real (Lacan), the Impossible (Derrida), and the Sublime (Z ˇ izˇek), to take
only three examples. Post-structuralists in this way found their way back to something
like the Christian or Jewish notion of transcendence, back to a hidden God.
Th is hidden God was the basis for their political theology, which draws heavily on
Carl Schmitt and is essentially Gnostic.
Within the symbolic realm of language and social structures, everything is determined
by its diff erence from something else. Th e transcendent itself, however,
is not subject to contradiction and division. As Lacan argued, it is not diff erentiated,
or, as Derrida put it, it is infi nite justice. It is “knowable,” however, only by
means of revelation. Humans cannot discover, intuit, or deduce it, but only wait
on its arrival. In this way, almost all post-structuralists accept Heidegger’s claim
that only a “god” can save us. It is their task to fi nd the magical word that can
conjure up this “god.” Th us Lacan hoped that his texts would give the reader a
mystical experience that would open up a way to experience of the transcendent.
Z ˇ izˇek similarly hopes that his work will call the sublime forth into the symbolic
realm and thus provide the basis for a transformation of the existing totalitarian
social order. Th e Gnostic impulse at work here is clear.
Whenever the transcendent appears within the symbolic realm, however, it is
subject to the laws of binary opposition that govern this realm. In this context,
Schmitt’s notion of the necessity of opposition and the role of the enemy is crucial.
For Z ˇ izˇek, for example, a new leader who will be able to transform the existing order
can only come to be in opposition to a new “Jew” (or the structural equivalent)
who remains the inimical other that must be repressed. Th e political theology of
post-structuralism in this way becomes not merely Gnostic but Manichean. In
this way the current opposition of liberalism and postmodernism recapitulates
the opposition of Pelagianism and Manicheanism that we saw fi rst in Erasmus
and Luther and that has remained salient at the heart of modernity. For a brief
introduction to the development of post-structuralism, see Mark Lilla, “Th e Politics
of Jacques Derrida,” Th e New York Review of Books, June 25, 1998, 36–41. For a
more extensive account see François Dosse, History of Structuralism, trans. Deborah
Glassman, 2 vols. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). See also
Claudia Breger, “Th e Leader’s Two Bodies: Slavoj Z ˇ izˇek’s Postmodern Political
Th eology,” Diacritics 31, no. 1 (2001): 73–90.
48. Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach.”
epilogue
1. On Ghazali, see Ebrahim Moosa, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (Islamic
Civilization and Muslim Networks) (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2005).
2. Th e Mu’tazilite view was defended most prominently by perhaps the best-known
and most infl uential member of this school, Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–98). His