That Mortal God: Deifying the Political in Early Modern Politics

This seminar will chart the genealogical roots that led to the making of the Leviathan, the modern sovereign body politic. Political Theology seeks to provide an irresistible answer to the quandaries of political legitimacy - the source of authority of the supreme authority. The seventeenth-century classics of political thinking - Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan and Baruch Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise will play an axial role in our discussion. These works draw upon long traditions from antiquity on the one hand, and on contemporary legitimation crisis on the other. Understanding the political imaginaire they hope to forge and the theology they invest in doing so, the configuration of a subject capable of sovereignty, is our task. Seminar is open to both grads and undergrads.