Sekulariseringens teologier. Om Carl Schmitts katolska politiska teologi och en protestantisk postsekularitet

Abstract

In this article the question of secularity is addressed by means of a comparison between the contemporary debate and older debates. The discussion takes departure in Charles Taylor’s influential work, A Secular Age, which is slightly criticised for not being enough concerned with philosophers that have dealt with the theme before, such as Carl Schmitt, Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg. Hjalmar Falk’s recent dissertation on Carl Schmitt’s concept of secularity is introduced in order to illustrate how a richer notion of secularity is present in the older discussion and how it contains a confessional dimension. Political theology, which is a notion in very close contact with the notion of secularity, thus becomes confessional in a mediated way. This confessional dimension is not emphasised in the contemporary discussion and it is suggested that a more developed protestant idea of secularity can be envisioned in light of Schmitt’s catholic secularity, as presented in Falk’s dissertation.