Martirio e sovranità. La figura del martire nel dibattito novecentesco sulla teologia politica (1922-1987)

Martyrdom and Sovereignty. The Martyr’s Figure in the Twentieth Century Debate over Political Theology (1922-1987)AbstractIn my thesis I have investigated the presence of the figure of the martyr and the topic of martyrdom in the Twentieth Century German debate over political theology. I structured my work in five different chapters. After having spent the first chapter on Kierkegaard’s existential interpretation of martyrdom, I argued that a particular German translation of Kierkegaard’s texts brought to a ‘political’ reception of his works among many German authors involved in the so-called Kierkegaard Renaissance. Starting from this argument, I tried then to show in the following chapters how different authors were influenced by these translations, presenting a polarized discussion about the religious figure of the martyr as a political or impolitical ‘witness to the truth’. Central to the debate is the relation among martyrdom, political sovereignty, religious liberty, the concept of the ‘political’ and the discussion between Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson over political theology. Affirming that earthly power should be strictly distinct from the spiritual, Peterson presents a critical approach to Schmitt’s political theology. In this radical disjunction, early Christian martyrs played a fundamental role. Their non-violent act of resistance to the political order of Rome, proved a subversive separation between the reign of Christ and his “witnesses” and that of the Roman Emperors. In this regard his critics of political theology, as legitimization of the political power through theological authority, is not only linked to his argument on the orthodox Trinitarian doctrine, but also on his analysis of martyrdom as a testimony of truth. Having this definition in mind, I then addressed Benjamin’s different use of the historic categories of ‘political theology’ and ‘secularization’ to describe the nature of modern sovereignity. The figure of the tyrant/martyr, as a theatrical description of the baroque absolute sovereign plays a central role in this discussion. The well-known debate between Benjamin and Schmitt is centered on the one hand on the representation of the mortality and death sentence of the king and on the other on the drama of his indecision. That's why I also addressed my attention in this chapter to the historical debate, discussing the two takes of Adolf Von Harnack and Ernst Kantorowicz on the topic of martyrdom. In the same chapter I then bring all those points together leading them to some statements in Jacob Taubes’ last lectures held in Heidelberg in 1987, where martyrdom is presented – referring to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche – as an ambivalent political act of subversive (in)subordination. In the fifth and last chapter I brought all those points together referring  to Foucault’s last lessons on the practices of parrhesia, where he speaks about Christian martyrdom as an act of testimony of truth.