Order, Crisis, and Redemption

<p><b>A critical reflection on the limitations of Carl Schmitt's political theology, reconsidered in light of the current crisis of the liberal democratic order.</b></p><p>Recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, the rise of right-wing populism, the growing economic inequality and political instability, and the climate emergency, are indicative of the decomposition of the global liberal democratic order. <i>Order, Crisis, and Redemption</i> is a critical reflection on the limitations of Carl Schmitt's political theology, an attempt to think, <i>with</i> and <i>beyond</i> Schmitt, about the parameters of this crisis. Through a sustained critical engagement, ranging over Schmittian texts, including the lesser known, from the 1920s to the 1970s, the book elaborates three main themes that preoccupied Schmitt: <i>order</i>, <i>crisis</i>, and <i>redemption</i>. In times of crisis, as with the one we are currently experiencing, we are faced with the dilemma of either shoring up the current political and legal order-through ever more authoritarian measures-or radically transforming it. Redemption, in the full theological sense of the word, thus implies the possibility of a new understanding of ethics and politics, aimed at creating a more just world.</p>