Reoccupying Secularization, Schmitt and Koselleck on Blumenberg's Challenge_Timo Pankakoski

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History and Theory 52 (May 2013), 214-245 © Wesleyan University 2013 ISSN: 0018-2656 REOCCUPYING SECULARIZATION: SCHMITT AND KOSELLECK ON BLUMENBERG’S CHALLENGE TIMO PANKAKOSKI 1 ABSTRACT This article analyzes the compound of the categories of secularization and reoccupation in its variations from Hans Blumenberg’s philosophy to Carl Schmitt’s political theory and, ultimately, to Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history. By revisiting the debate between Blumenberg and Schmitt on secularization and political theology with regard to the polit- ical-theoretical aspects of secularization and the methodological aspects of reoccupation, I will provide conceptual tools that illuminate the partly tension-ridden elements at play in Koselleck’s theorizing of modernity, history, and concepts. For Schmitt, secularization is inherently related to the question of political conflict, and, correspondingly, he attempts to discredit Blumenberg’s criticism of secularization as an indirectly aggressive, and thereby hypocritical, attempt to escape the political. To this end, I argue, Schmitt appropri- ates Blumenberg’s concept of “reoccupation” and uses it alternately in the three distinct senses of “absorption,” “reappropriation,” and “revaluation.” Schmitt’s famous thesis of political concepts as secularized theological concepts contains an unmistakable method- ological element and a research program. The analysis therefore shows the relevance of the Blumenberg/Schmitt debate for the mostly tacit dialogue between Blumenberg and Koselleck. I scrutinize Koselleck’s understanding of secularization from his early Schmit- tian and Löwithian theory of modernity to his later essays on temporalization of history and concepts. Despite Blumenberg’s criticism, Koselleck holds onto the category of secu- larization throughout, but gradually relativizes it into a research hypothesis among others. Simultaneously, Koselleck formalizes, alongside other elements, the Schmittian account of reoccupation into his method of conceptual analysis and uses the term in the same three senses—thus making “reoccupation” conceptually compatible with “secularization,” despite the former notion’s initial critical function in Blumenberg’s theory. The examina- tion highlights a Schmittian residue that accounts for Koselleck’s reserved attitude toward Blumenberg’s metaphorology, regardless of a significant methodological overlap. Keywords: secularization, reoccupation, Reinhart Koselleck, Carl Schmitt, Hans Blumen- berg, conceptual history, political theory, conflict I. INTRODUCTION In a global era, when religion and politics repeatedly intertwine, secularization is bound to remain a matter of contention. In the inherently ambiguous process of secularization, religion is not simply jettisoned, but rather interacts with the 1. The author would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of History and Theory as well as Mika Ojakangas and Heta Moustgaard for their helpful comments.

Transcript of Reoccupying Secularization, Schmitt and Koselleck on Blumenberg's Challenge_Timo Pankakoski

Page 1: Reoccupying Secularization, Schmitt and Koselleck on Blumenberg's Challenge_Timo Pankakoski

History and Theory 52 (May 2013), 214-245 © Wesleyan University 2013 ISSN: 0018-2656

ReoccUpyINg SecUlaRIzatIoN: SchMItt aNd KoSellecK oN BlUMeNBeRg’S challeNge

tIMo paNKaKoSKI1

aBStRact

this article analyzes the compound of the categories of secularization and reoccupation in its variations from hans Blumenberg’s philosophy to carl Schmitt’s political theory and, ultimately, to Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history. By revisiting the debate between Blumenberg and Schmitt on secularization and political theology with regard to the polit-ical-theoretical aspects of secularization and the methodological aspects of reoccupation, I will provide conceptual tools that illuminate the partly tension-ridden elements at play in Koselleck’s theorizing of modernity, history, and concepts. For Schmitt, secularization is inherently related to the question of political conflict, and, correspondingly, he attempts to discredit Blumenberg’s criticism of secularization as an indirectly aggressive, and thereby hypocritical, attempt to escape the political. to this end, I argue, Schmitt appropri-ates Blumenberg’s concept of “reoccupation” and uses it alternately in the three distinct senses of “absorption,” “reappropriation,” and “revaluation.” Schmitt’s famous thesis of political concepts as secularized theological concepts contains an unmistakable method-ological element and a research program. the analysis therefore shows the relevance of the Blumenberg/Schmitt debate for the mostly tacit dialogue between Blumenberg and Koselleck. I scrutinize Koselleck’s understanding of secularization from his early Schmit-tian and löwithian theory of modernity to his later essays on temporalization of history and concepts. despite Blumenberg’s criticism, Koselleck holds onto the category of secu-larization throughout, but gradually relativizes it into a research hypothesis among others. Simultaneously, Koselleck formalizes, alongside other elements, the Schmittian account of reoccupation into his method of conceptual analysis and uses the term in the same three senses—thus making “reoccupation” conceptually compatible with “secularization,” despite the former notion’s initial critical function in Blumenberg’s theory. the examina-tion highlights a Schmittian residue that accounts for Koselleck’s reserved attitude toward Blumenberg’s metaphorology, regardless of a significant methodological overlap.

Keywords: secularization, reoccupation, Reinhart Koselleck, carl Schmitt, hans Blumen-berg, conceptual history, political theory, conflict

I. INtRodUctIoN

In a global era, when religion and politics repeatedly intertwine, secularization is bound to remain a matter of contention. In the inherently ambiguous process of secularization, religion is not simply jettisoned, but rather interacts with the

1. the author would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of History and Theory as well as Mika ojakangas and heta Moustgaard for their helpful comments.

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worldly sphere, whereby some of its transcendental elements are possibly made immanent. Whether this is a loss or liberation depends on the observer’s initial normative valuations. Further, such an abstract and multilayered process as secularization is never unequivocally over, but rather is open to various evalu-ations regarding its state and success. We are thus faced with a double ambiva-lence. If religion is positively valued, secularization appears either as a loss of the original content and subjective meaning or as a partly successful restorative act of absorption in which these meanings are confined to secular structures. If, however, religion is negatively valued, secularization appears either as emancipa-tion and liberation from the original theological straitjacket or, alternatively, as a shortcoming of the same procedure and therefore, possibly, an ongoing task. No wonder secularization has been debated not only with regard to the historical status and mechanisms of this process, but also to its normative tones, ideological imprints, and the explanatory force of the notion itself. 2

Rather than reflecting on the theme of secularization at large or sketching a further summary of the career of this fundamentally contested concept,3 I will provide a political-theoretical commentary on its destiny in the twentieth-century german intellectual milieu. I will focus on three major thinkers: hans Blumenberg (1920–1996), carl Schmitt (1888–1985), and Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006). I will show that the category of secularization has a central posi-tion in their respective systems of thought and captures the logic of their theories regarding modernity, history, and politics. the argument proceeds cumulatively, rather than in a merely chronological or fixed teleological fashion, from the con-sideration of Blumenberg and Schmitt to the analysis of Koselleck’s theorizing. Ultimately, I will attempt to provide conceptual tools that illuminate the partly tension-ridden elements at play in Koselleck’s work.

the wider motivation of the article is to contribute to the future possibilities of combining Koselleckian and Blumenbergian perspectives by scrutinizing the political-theoretical aspect of the matter. In this context, however, I will proceed in a negative fashion and focus merely on removing a central theoretical obstacle by clarifying the disagreement regarding secularization. only after we acknowl-edge the contingency of this disagreement and thus relativize the accompanying sup posed ideological implications is it possible to fully utilize the wide theoreti-cal and methodological overlap between conceptual history and metaphorology.4

2. the range of participants, particularly in the german context, is impressive: from hegel and Marx to Weber and troeltsch to löwith and Blumenberg, to name only a few. See hermann lübbe, Säkularisierung: Geschichte eines ideenpolitischen Begriffs, 3rd ed. [1965] (Freiburg: alber, 2003); Jean-claude Monod, La querelle de la sécularisation de Hegel à Blumenberg (paris: Vrin, 2002). For a contemporary reassessment of secularization, see charles taylor, A Secular Age (cambridge, Ma: harvard University press, 2007).

3. For the conceptual history of “secularization” in germany, see hermann zabel and hans-Wolfgang Strätz, “Säkularisation, Säkularisierung,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. otto Brunner, Werner conze, and Reinhart Koselleck [hereafter GG], Band 5: pro-Soz (Stuttgart: Klett-cotta, 1984), 789-829; g. Marramao, “Säkularisierung,” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried gründer, Band 8: R-Sc (Basel: Schwabe, 1992), 1133-1161.

4. For a primarily methodological assessment of the prospects of combining the history of con-cepts with metaphorology, see Frank Beck lassen, “‘Metaphorically Speaking’: Begriffsgeschichte and hans Blumenberg’s Metaphorologie,” in Eine Typologie der Formen der Begriffsgeschichte,

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the essay consists of two main parts. I will first revisit a well-known but seldom fully understood and conceptually analyzed debate between Blumen-berg and Schmitt regarding secularization and political theology.5 Blumenberg attempted to pinpoint Schmitt’s political position by projecting onto him his-torical categories that did not quite match Schmitt’s actual arguments. Schmitt switched to the political register and forced Blumenberg’s more general concerns into replies regarding the possibility of escaping the conflict potential inherent in confessions—religious and secular alike. due to largely incompatible points of departure and aims, the dispute turned into a tour de force of mutual misap-prehension and conceptual manipulation. this, however, does not undermine, but rather underlines the importance of this debate: the unfruitfulness of the dialogue highlights how much is in play. I will analyze the central points of the quarrel with regard to their significance for the basic structures of Schmitt’s theory. In particular, my reading emphasizes the dimensions of religious and political con-flict, on the one hand, and the political-cum-methodological aspects of Schmitt’s theory of concepts, on the other.

Secularization is a point where philosophical, ideological, and methodological considerations meet. Schmitt’s political theology is crystallized in the thesis “all cogent concepts of modern state theory are secularized theological concepts”—a claim that contains an unmistakable guideline for conceptual-historical analysis. In the second part, I will therefore show the rele vance of the Blumenberg/Schmitt

ed. Riccardo pozzo and Marco Sgarbi (hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2010), 53-70; for a more theoreti-cal approach, see elías José palti, “From Ideas to concepts to Metaphors: the german tradition of Intellectual history and the complex Fabric of language,” History and Theory 49 (2010), 192-211; cf. gottfried gabriel, “Kategoriale Unterscheidungen und ‘absolute Metaphern’: zur systematischen Bedeutung von Begriffsgeschichte und Metaphorologie,” in Metaphorologie: Zur Praxis von Theorie, ed. anselm haverkamp and dirk Mende (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009), 65-84.

5. For critical reactions in german, see Religionstheorie und Politische Theologie, Band 1: Der Fürst dieser Welt: Carl Schmitt und die Folgen, ed. Jacob taubes, 2nd improved edition [1983] (Munich: Fink, 1985). a brief but lucid overview of the dispute in english is in Jan-Werner Mül-ler, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New haven: yale University press, 1993), 156-168. For a survey of the debate in the larger context of a critical, and at points polemical, examination of Schmitt’s theological and political motives, see Ruth groh, Arbeit an der Heillosigkeit der Welt: Zur politisch-theologischen Mythologie und Anthropologie Carl Schmitts (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998), 156-184. the Blumenberg–Schmitt correspondence includes a wide-ranging, albeit rather opaque afterword by the editors: alexander Schmitz and Marcel lep-per, “Nachwort: logik der differenzen und Spuren des gemeinsamen: hans Blumenberg und carl Schmitt,” in hans Blumenberg and carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel 1971–1978 und weitere Materialen, ed. alexander Schmitz and Marcel lepper (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007), 253-306. a primar-ily theological reading of the debate, commenting also in passing on the concept of “reoccupation,” is in peter hohendahl, “political theology Revisited: carl Schmitt’s postwar Reassessment,” Konturen 1 (2008), http://konturen.uoregon.edu/volume1.html (accessed october 6, 2011); heinrich Meier also comments on the debate in a new afterword. See heinrich Meier, “der Streit um die politische theologie: ein Rückblick,” in Die Lehre Carl Schmitts: Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung Politischer Theologie und Politischer Philosophie, 3rd ed. [1994] (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2009), 269-300; a recent article by pini Ifergan summarizes well the argumentative needs and rhetorical strategies of both philosophers and suggests that their opposition encourages both to sharpen their own positions. See pini Ifergan, “cutting to the chase: carl Schmitt and hans Blumenberg on political theology and Secularization,” New German Critique 37 (2010), 149-711. a recent contribution in english attempts to trace Schmitt’s philosophy of history. See celina María Bragagnolo, “Secularization, history, and political theology: the hans Blumenberg and carl Schmitt debate,” Journal of the Philosophy of History 5 (2011), 84-104.

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nexus for the mostly tacit dialogue between Blumenberg and Koselleck, the most prominent theorist of german Begriffsgeschichte. Koselleck’s remarkable debt to Schmitt has been recorded,6 but the question of secularization remains neglected in these debates. Koselleck certainly theorized secularization further,7 yet adopt-ed key elements from Karl löwith’s reading of modern philosophy of history as secularized eschatology and Schmitt’s theorizing of political modernity. as Blumenberg’s attack on the secularization thesis is largely directed against both löwith and Schmitt, it is only logical that Blumenberg also decries Koselleck’s dissertation concisely but decisively in this context. despite the lack of a proper response, there are clear indications that Koselleck acknowledges the challenge: in fact, I will show that he counters it with a creative reinterpretation of Blumen-berg’s key categories, identical to that of Schmitt.

So far, this link among the three philosophers remains completely neglected in scholarship. I will build my analysis upon a close reading of secularization and “reoccupation” (Umbesetzung), a concept that has remarkable elucidatory power for the political aspect of the debate. I will first summarize Blumenberg’s theory of modernity by focusing on the conceptual axis of secularization and reoccupa-tion. Next I will analyze the significance of the category of secularization for Schmitt as well as the motivations and maneuvers of his reply by a close reading of his alternative usages of “reoccupation.” Finally, I will study the development of Koselleck’s view on secularization and temporalization of concepts and the way he formalizes, alongside other Schmittian elements, Schmitt’s reading of “reoccupation” into an essential ele ment of his method of conceptual analysis.

II. ReoccUpatIoN aNd the dyNaMIcS oF epochal chaNge

hans Blumenberg is known primarily for four major contributions. First, intel-lectual historians often encounter Blumenberg as the developer of the approach of “metaphorology,” a self-declared subfield or auxiliary resource of conceptual history. In Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie (1960) Blumenberg introduced the notion of “absolute metaphor” to refer to metaphors that cannot be replaced by literal language, thus emphasizing an irreducible metaphorical element in cul-tural and scientific concept-formation.8 In the late 1970s, Blumenberg revisited

6. timo pankakoski, “conflict, context, concreteness: Koselleck and Schmitt on concepts,” Political Theory 38 (2010), 749-779; Reinhard Mehring, “Begriffsgeschichte mit carl Schmitt,” in Begriffene Geschichte: Beiträge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks, ed. hans Joas and peter Vogt (Frank-furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011), 138-158; Niklas olsen, “carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck and the Foundations of history and politics,” History of European Ideas 37 (2011), 197-208; Niklas olsen, History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck (New york: Berghahn Books, 2012), 23-26, 41-100, and passim.

7. the most perceptive treatment of secularization in Koselleck is hans Joas, “die Kontingenz der Säkularisierung: Überlegungen zum problem der Säkularisierung im Werk Reinhart Kosellecks,” in Begriffene Geschichte: Beiträge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks, ed. hans Joas and peter Vogt (Frank-furt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2011), 319-338. For an earlier exposition of the main lines (in danish), see Frank Beck lassen, “tyveri! til sekularisieringens semantik,” Slagmark 48 (2007), 139-158; a thought-provoking, but less detailed reading, with additional comments on Schmitt and Blumenberg, is in Kathleen davis, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (philadelphia: University of pennsylvania press, 2008), 77-102.

8. hans Blumenberg, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie [1960] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999).

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his earlier theory, now giving it a more explicitly anthropological reinterpretation in the theory of “non-conceptuality.”9 In addition to his theoretical and meth-odological reflections, Blumenberg also provided rich volumes on particular metaphorical themes, such as the images of the shipwreck, the book, and the cave as paradigms for reality and knowledge of the world.10 Second, Blumenberg is widely known for his anthropological theory of myth as constant work or cul-tural reinterpretation by the human being in the attempt not only to make sense of reality but also to be able to live in it without fear.11 Some of the main lines of his principal work in this field, Arbeit am Mythos (1979), had already been anticipated in 1971 in two major essays on myth and rhetoric from the anthropo-logical perspective.12 a substantial volume containing Blumenberg’s posthumous anthropological fragments was published in 2006.13 third, Blumenberg wrote extensively on the questions of the history of science, innovatively mapping the philosophical, theological, and other extra-scientific factors contributing to what later came to be known as the copernican revolution.14 Fourth, much of the debate on Blumenberg has centered around his theory of modernity and his contribution to the debate on secularization. his magnum opus with the strik-ing title Die Legitimität der Neuzeit first appeared in 1966 and was revised and republished in four independent volumes in the 1970s and 1980s.15

the four main areas are deeply interlinked, but in this essay I will concentrate on Blumenberg as a theorist of modernity and from that vantage point attempt to map the political aspects of the debate on secularization. Blumenberg neither provided a systematic political theory nor explicated his own political prefer-ences. however, his attempt to provide an anthropological basis for rhetoric as an indirect, cumbersome, and self-purposeful method of human interaction reflects a commitment to the democratic-parliamentary form of government and to the toil-some will-formation through persuasion rather than by force.16 Further, Blumen-

9. hans Blumenberg, Theorie der Unbegrifflichkeit [1975], ed. anselm haverkamp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007); hans Blumenberg, “ausblick auf eine theorie der Unbegrifflichkeit” [1979], in Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer: Paradigma einer Daseinsmetapher (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 85-106.

10. Blumenberg, Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer; hans Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt [1981] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, n. d.); hans Blumenberg, Höhlenausgänge [1989] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).

11. hans Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979).12. hans Blumenberg, “Wirklichkeitsbegriff und Wirkungspotential des Mythos” [1971],

in Ästhetische und metaphorologische Schriften, ed. anselm haverkamp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 327-405; hans Blumenberg, “anthropologische annäherung an die aktualität der Rhetorik” [1971], in Ästhetische und metaphorologische Schriften, ed. anselm haverkamp (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 406-431.

13. hans Blumenberg, Beschreibung des Menschen: Aus dem Nachlaß, ed. Manfred Sommer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006).

14. hans Blumenberg, Die kopernikanische Wende (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965); hans Blumenberg, Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt [1975] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, n. d.).

15. hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966); the four revised volumes are now published as hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit [1966], revised edition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996).

16. Jean-claude Monod, “a Rhetorical approach of politics: Blumenberg’s principle of Insuf-ficient Reason and its pascalian consequences,” www.brown.edu/departments/humanities_center/initiatives/documents/BlumpaperMonod.pdf (accessed august 2, 2012), 8 and 14.

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berg’s thought manifests a consistent opposition to absolutism in all its forms, be they theological, metaphysical, or political. In particular his quarrel with the conservative and authoritarian implications of carl Schmitt’s pessimistic political anthropology manifests a striving for a more open-ended interpretation of human potential. Whereas Schmitt maintained that all genuine political theories presume the human being to be evil, and consequently favored decision and authority over norms and the generation of consensus in public discussion, Blumenberg down the line emphasized indeterminacy, contingency, and the inability to decide upon what the human being is or to delegate such a decision to any authority or institution.17 I believe Jean-claude Monod is correct in pointing out that this indeterminacy implies a skeptical attitude toward not only conservative positions but also toward radically progressive, emancipatory, and utopian theories, such as those of the Marxist left.18 In this regard Blumenberg’s approach is not very far removed from the consistent anti-utopianism of Reinhart Koselleck, another proponent of contingency, despite their dissimilar points of departure.

let us first, however, briefly sketch Blumenberg’s view of secularization. In Legitimität, he attempts an original defense of the modern ways of grasping the position of the human being in the universe, history, and culture.19 the themes of the volume range from the conceptual history of scientific curiosity to the theological underpinnings of medieval cosmology, the challenge of gnosticism, and the questions of epochal thresholds. In four independent parts, Blumenberg seeks to bolster the forms of modern “self-assertion” by showing their relative independence from their alleged religious origins. Rather than secularized deriva-tives of earlier religious modes, the modern intellectual aspirations have their own sources of legitimacy and serve distinctively modern purposes. although he does not deny the possibility of secularization having actually taken place in particular historical cases, Blumenberg denies the heuristic force of seculariza-tion as a historiographical category. Secularization as the original appropriation of church property by secular authorities connotes illegitimate confiscation, and Blumenberg’s quarrel with the notion derives largely from the need to relativize the partly hidden metaphorical implication that modernity is an inherently ille-gitimate epoch. the denial of derivation amounts to an assertion of discontinuity, and for Blumenberg it is in this discontinuity that modernity’s alleged legitimacy lies. however, Blumenberg also questions the era’s preposterous tendency to see itself as completely independent of previous epochs and denies the possibility of absolutely fresh starts in history.20

17. See Brad tabas, ”Blumenberg, politics, anthropology,” Telos 158 (2012), 135-153.18. Monod, “a Rhetorical approach,” 10-12.19. For a concise summary, see Robert M. Wallace, “translator’s Introduction,” in hans Blumen-

berg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, transl. Robert M. Wallace (cambridge, Ma: MIt press, 1985), xi-xxxi; for a wider philosophical assessment, consult david Ingram, “Reflections on the anthropocentric limits of Scientific Realism: Blumenberg on Myth, Reason, and the legitimacy of the Modern age,” in Dialectic and Narrative, ed. thomas R. Flynn and dalia Judovitz (albany: SUNy press, 1993), 165-183; cf. Robert B. pippin, “Blumenberg and the Modernity problem,” in Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (cambridge, UK: cambridge University press, 1997), 265-285.

20. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 72; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 129.

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to capture the interplay of continuities and discontinuities in a more sophis-ticated manner, Blumenberg builds upon a “metakinetic” model of historical change that he had already devel oped in other contexts21 and introduces the key category of “reoccupation” (Umbesetzung). Blumenberg argues that the temporal succession of christian eschatology by the idea of pro gress and the recurrent linguistic borrowings from theology are not proof enough for the persis tence of a common substance and a transposition of christian eschatology into secular pro gress.22 the eschatological understanding of history is based on a transcen-dental element, dis tinct from the course of history itself, and seeks to provide a sufficient answer to the question regarding the nature of history as a whole. the doctrine of progress, in contrast, extrapolates to the future an element that is immanent to history here and now; genetically, it also rather an swers questions within this history, for example, by providing means of opposition against the idea of eternal normative models in the field of aesthetics.23

already these principal differences, Blumenberg argues, block any simple sub-stantial transposition (Umsetzung) between eschatology and progress.24 the most radical change of eschatology does not take place when the Stoic cyclical world-view is reduced to one linear pe riod of expectation, but rather when this vague teleology that gives world history at large a direction, in the New testament, turns into anticipation and fear of immediate end and into an element of personal life history. the fact that these expectations are constantly disappointed suggests an allegorical interpretation, and this, in Blumenberg’s view, is already a seed for a secular philosophy of history.25 eschatology, thus, becomes historical, and, in some sense of the word, “worldly” by an autonomous intrinsic development after which there is no need to actively secularize it in modernity anymore; the emer-gence of progress, on the other hand, was independent and largely related to the birth of the scientific method.26 Blumenberg notes that the primary secularization is not a “transformation” (Transformation), but rather an “original emergence” or “spontaneous generation” (Urzeugung).27 likewise, the idea of progress does not emerge by transforming the eschatological expectations, but rather the notion originally has a limited but autonomous domain of application that gradually becomes wider. thereby progress becomes one possible answer to the question regarding the nature of history as a whole—a question that eschatology made pertinent but was unable to answer exhaustively.28

21. See Benjamin lazier, “overcoming gnosticism: hans Jonas, hans Blumenberg, and the legitimacy of the Natural World,” Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), 619-637.

22. the main points had already been expressed in 1962 in a paper that was later expanded into the first part of Legitimität. hans Blumenberg, “‘Säkularisation’: Kritik einer Kategorie historischer Illegitimität” [1962], in Die Philosophie und die Frage nach dem Fortschritt, ed. helmut Kuhn and Franz Wiedmann (Munich: pustet, 1964), 240-265.

23. Blumenberg, “‘Säkularisation’,” 243. cf. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 23-24; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 39-40.

24. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 23; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 39.25. Blumenberg, “‘Säkularisation’,” 245-247.26. Ibid., 247 and 249; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 33 and 36; Blumenberg, Legitimität

(1996), 57 and 60.27. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 43; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 76.28. Blumenberg, “‘Säkularisation’,” 248-249; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 35-36; Blumen-

berg, Legitimität (1996), 59-60.

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For Blumenberg, the historical identity implied by the secularization hypoth-esis is thus an illusion that emerges because of “the identity of function, which can admit quite heterogeneous contents to certain positions [Stellen] in man’s system of interpretation regarding the world and himself.”29 No “violence of a transposition [Transposition]” was used in this process.30 Slightly varying his vocabulary, Blumenberg notes that we are not dealing here with “the trans-position [Umsetzung (transposition)] of an authentic theological content in a secular self-alienation,” but with “the reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of a posi-tion [Position] that has become vacant but as such cannot be eliminated.”31 For Blumenberg, there is, then, some continuity in history, but this does not consist of the survival of substances, but of the inheritance of problems and adoption of functions.32 In the transition between two epochs, carry-over questions often emerge. Some of them arise as questions only after the old answers have become untenable, thus leaving an empty functional position and a “residual need” for the following era to deal with. Both continuities and discontinuities are thus at play in Blumenberg’s assessment of secularization.33

In my interpretation the early epochal model and the notion of “reoccupation” are closely linked to Blumenberg’s attempt to find means for a detailed compre-hension of recurring phenomena in the history of thought and to develop a method of close reading that is not only accurate and historically sensitive, but also criti-cal toward continuities and presumed necessities. Methodologically, his criticism of secularization entails the need to study language with a keen eye: the stability of the linguistic level fabricates an illusion of continuity between religious and secular concerns even if the questions have in fact changed. the exterior similar-ity of vocabulary is thus the first obstacle for the analyst to bypass: “the con-stancy of language indicates the constancy of the function of consciousness, but not a genetic nexus of contents.”34 If a reoccupation of functional positions has taken place, then linguistic constancy, indeed, is to be expected, for constancy is

29. Blumenberg, “‘Säkularisation’,” 249-250; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 41; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 74.

30. Blumenberg, “‘Säkularisation’,” 249.31. Ibid., 250; almost identically in Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 42 and Blumenberg, Legiti-

mität (1996), 75.32. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 35; slightly modified in Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 59.33. In his subsequent work in the history of science and myth theory, Blumenberg develops some

of these elements further and sporadically uses “reoccupation” in altered senses (see elías José palti, “In Memoriam: hans Blumenberg [1920–1996], an Unended Quest,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58 [1997], 520-521; Franz Josef Wetz, Hans Blumenberg zur Einführung [hamburg: Junius, 1993]). Whereas in Legitimität the emphasis is on the discontinuity between medieval eschatology and mod-ern progress, Blumenberg’s next monumental work employs a similar approach, but attempts rather to show that what has been metaphorically conceptualized as the copernican revolution in fact had pivotal extra-scientific origins in, and significant continuities with, the medieval theological debates. here he still holds onto the figure of “reoccupation” in a “functionally presupposed framework which remains intact and makes partial changes not only bearable but, above all, plausible” (Blumenberg, Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt, 596). the new emphasis on continuity rather than rupture is also reflected in the second edition of Legitimität: “the concept of ‘reoccupation’ designates . . . the minimum of identity that it must be possible to find, or at least presuppose and look for, in even the most hectic movement of history” (Blumenberg, Legitimität [1996], 541).

34. Blumenberg, “‘Säkularisation’,” 259; slightly modified in Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 58, and Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 98.

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needed to facilitate the substitution of new content for old in the first place—and to hide this fact from view.35 Further, thinkers may consciously uphold rhetorical consistency to fabricate “emotional intensities,”36 to fit their radically new sug-gestions to the legitimizing traditional framework, or simply to make them com-prehensible. there is an unmistakable strategic element in secularization: “the sacred sphere of language lives longer than the sacred sphere of things, being timidly conserved and brought in as a cover precisely where philosophically, scientifically, or politically new things are being thought.”37 If this is to be called “secularization,” then at least the world was actively and intentionally secularized rather than being drawn abstractly into a process of secularization.

III. SecUlaRIzatIoN aNd the taMINg oF coNFlIct

even if the criticism of secularization was largely directed against löwith38 and others, these are the essential ingredients of Blumenberg’s challenge to Schmitt’s political theology, too. carl Schmitt, the constitutional lawyer and radical politi-cal theorist very much in vogue in the anglophone world since the 1980s, is best known for proposing the distinction between friend and enemy as the criterion of “the political” in his Der Begriff des Politischen (1927, second edition 1932, third edition 1933).39 Rather than a separate field of substance like economy, aesthet-ics, or ethics, “the political” for Schmitt leans upon the intensity of the opposi-tion between friend and enemy. even if warfare for Schmitt is not the essence of politics, the eventual possibility of the physical destruction of the enemy in war or civil war is in his view the theoretical presumption that makes a particular situation political in the specific sense. “the political” thus has an intimate link to conflict. at the same time, however, Schmitt was particularly keen to emphasize the disruptive potential of domestic political strife. Schmitt was consistently anti-revolutionary, anti-utopian, antiparliamentary, antipluralist, and antiliberal. In the Weimar period he argued for the authoritative rule of the president by emergency powers not only to protect the constitutional order against extra-parliamentary powers but also against the immanent threat of party splintering, resulting from the pluralistic and compromising nature of the Weimar constitution itself.40 as I will show in detail later, the religious civil wars served as a model for Schmitt’s analysis of pluralism. Both the problem and the proposed solution leaned upon previous theological considerations. already in his Politische Theologie (1922, second edition 1934) Schmitt had scrutinized the links between theological and political structures, vaguely implying that the historical and conceptual parallels between divine omnipotence and secular sovereignty support his own thesis that a

35. Blumenberg, “‘Säkularisation’,” 257.36. Ibid., 259.37. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 51; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 87. emphasis added.38. Karl löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History

(chicago: University of chicago press, 1949). For an assessment of the political ramifications, see Jeffrey andrew Barash, “the Sense of history: on the political Implications of Karl löwith’s con-cept of Secularization,” History and Theory 37 (1998), 69-82.

39. carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 7th ed. [1932] (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 2002).40. carl Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung, 4th ed. [1931] (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 1996).

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sovereign decision, rather than a norm as the legal positivists argued, is the basis of a legal order.41

It is mainly this book that Blumenberg addresses in his criticism nearly half a century later. he attempts to tackle the close, but ultimately contingent, links between theological and political absolutism and to show that the derivation of political conclusions from theological absolutism has been groundless and arti-ficial ever since theological absolutism became untenable for internal reasons. after a reoccupation, the early modern state was left with a set of theological ves-tiges that helped to fabricate an illusion of historical derivation on the linguistic level and thus to legitimize absolute rule. Further, to invoke theological notions in contemporary political theory, as Schmitt allegedly does in his decisionism, is to resort to “metaphorical theology” as a rhetorical strategy “under the selective aspect of the actual need for background and pathos.”42 this nexus is then nor-malized and sealed theoretically by the secularization hypothesis, condensed in the now cliché-like thesis that “[a]ll cogent concepts of modern state theory are secularized theological concepts.”43

Unsurprisingly, Schmitt reacted vigorously. In 1970, he published a peculiar little book entitled Politische Theologie II in which he attempted to defend the original thesis against a set of contemporary critics, and confronted Blumenberg explicitly in an afterword.44 at the time Schmitt was already over eighty and had been detached from german academia since 1945 due to his entanglement with the Nazi regime. even though he was banned from teaching, Schmitt remained a central inspiration for a large circle of friends and pupils with parallel intel-lectual aspirations.45 this outsider position was also manifested in his writing: the style of Schmitt’s reply is consciously nonacademic, even esoteric. While polishing the manuscript in late 1969, Schmitt laments that, beginning with his openly apologetic Ex Captivitate Salus (1950), he had lost his ability to write in the scholarly manner of his earlier legal treatises.46 his interest had now also shifted to topics that allowed a more speculative approach, such as the questions of time, world history, and theology. In 1963, Schmitt had published a reissue of Der Begriff des Politischen with a new preface to restate his categories in the cold War context, as well as Theorie des Partisanen, an analysis of the political figure of the partisan in the era of ideological and revolutionary warfare.47 he did not, however, significantly revise his earlier political theory and also remained mostly silent with regard to questions of constitutional law in the fundamentally

41. carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität, 8th ed. [1922/1934] (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 2004).

42. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 104 and 112.43. Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 43.44. carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie II: Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder Politischen Theo-

logie, 4th ed. [1970] (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 1996).45. See, above all, dirk van laak, Gespräche in der Sicherheit des Schweigens: Carl Schmitt in

der politischen Geistesgeschichte der frühen Bundesrepublik (Berlin: akademia, 2002), and Müller, Dangerous Mind.

46. Schmitt to ernst Forsthoff, december 15, 1969, in Ernst Forsthoff –Carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel 1926–1974, ed. dorothee Mußgnug, Reinhard Mußgnug, and angela Reinthal (Berlin: akademie Verlag, 2007), 297.

47. carl Schmitt, Theorie des Partisanen: Zwischenbemerkung zum Begriff des Politischen, 6th ed. [1963] (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 2006).

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altered environment of the Federal Republic. In Politische Theologie II, he rather attempted to provide the earlier reading with theological foundations.

at the time of the debate, Blumenberg was in the process of becoming an academic hermit of his own volition. hardly a photograph remains of the phi-losopher who since the early 1950s had held positions in Kiel, hamburg, gießen, Bochum, and, finally, Münster before retiring in 1985. around the time Legiti-mität was published, Blumenberg increasingly withdrew from social activities, such as the famous Poetik und Hermeneutik group he had co-founded in 1963, and instead devoted his time to writing thick philosophical volumes, essays, and literary glosses in a reflective, allusive, and at times opaque style. after reading Schmitt’s reaction to his criticism, Blumenberg approached Schmitt with a letter in 1971, and the two writers in search of a personal language encountered each other. pregnant, albeit formally polite and somewhat evasive, correspondence ensued.48 Instead of outlining their differences openly, the two focused mostly on particular themes that fascinated both, such as the biblical figure of the Katechon and the interpretation of goethe’s enigmatic maxim Nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse. Blumenberg extended his analysis of political theology in the second edition of Legitimität but toned down some of his formulations. he returned to political theology in 1979, now defending his polytheistic interpretation of goethe against Schmitt’s christological reading,49 but Schmitt did not reply anymore, probably due to his age.

Rather than summarizing the details of this exchange, I will discuss Schmitt’s original bitter reaction in order to elucidate the logic and underlying structures of his thought. Before examining the strategic and technical maneuvers of the reply, let us sketch some of Schmitt’s basic divisions motivating the outburst. What, exactly, does “secularization” mean to Schmitt? Why is he so committed to the category that Blumenberg’s criticism forced him to react so strongly?

Schmitt’s political theory has been read as building upon a systematic theo-logical foundation.50 peter hohendahl, for instance, proposes that for Schmitt the notion of secularization is not “a neutral term,” but must be read “as a theological notion.”51 although the importance of theology for Schmitt as a source of moti-vation, affection, and expression is undeniable, it is, however, worthwhile in the particular case of his reply to Blumenberg to read the connection the other way around. I believe the intensity of the notion of secularization for Schmitt derives more prominently from the directly political aspect of the matter than from the theological. Schmitt’s aim in Politische Theologie II is to show the continu-ous relevance and inevitability of theology, from many angles. the form of the argument, however, is not that by modernization the religious heritage and the possibility of religious experience has simply been lost. First of all, religious experience in modernity is possible: even secularized theology, when seen from the theological point of view, is still theology, for it is a way in which religious

48. hans Blumenberg and carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel 1971–1978 und weitere Materialen, ed. alexander Schmitz and Marcel lepper (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007).

49. Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, 567-604.50. See, above all, Meier, Die Lehre Carl Schmitts.51. hohendahl, “political theology Revisited,” paragraph 17 (no pagination).

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elements still have “contemporary significance” for us.52 Second, the logic of Schmitt’s reply remains obscure if we assume a simple loss of religiousness via secularization, for this is hardly compatible with the point of inevitability of theology.

Rather, the reasoning is that modern attempts at secularization were not based on political power and were thus merely apparent and hypocritical seculariza-tion. the structure of the argument here is similar to the central idea of Schmitt’s criticism of parliamentarianism: in their attempt to substitute parliamentary competition for serious political conflict, modern lib eral democracies end up hid-ing, rather than escaping, “the political”—which, for Schmitt, al ways contains the possibility of physical confrontation of the enemy. this reasoning has an inherent link to secularization, because for Schmitt religion is not only a source of meaning but also of conflict. My thesis is that secularization is a focal point for Schmitt’s political theory primarily because for him the early modern confes-sional civil war is a recurring model for political conflict in general. In this para-digm, religious, political, and military elements coin cide. Schmitt’s persistent attempt to avoid nonnegotiable confessional conflicts leads to his peculiar theory of both the political and the theological as total and inescapable. conflict, albeit always only potentially aggravating conflict, is what connects the two spheres, their inescapable tertium comparationis.

let us now analyze secularization more closely as a part of Schmitt’s historical narrative of the modern state, elaborated in several publications since the 1920s and, as I will show later, largely shared by the young Koselleck. In its first stage, secularization for Schmitt was a historical-political necessity: the secularized absolute state emerged as an inevitable response to incessant religious wars. conflicts were successfully suppressed, first, in the domestic realm by a sharp demarcation between autonomous public politics and private confessional moral-ity and, second, by securing equal rights to wage external wars to all nations in the european power constellation, demarcating clearly between political enemies and criminals, and thus creating room for neutrality.53 For Schmitt, the modern state is a “a vehicle of secularization [Säkularisierung]”54 and the historically unique product of the overcoming of confessional civil war by “neutralization and secularization [Neutralisierung und Säkularisierung] of the confessional fronts, that is, de-theologization [Enttheologisierung].”55 It is this step from the medieval political world to the classical Jus Publicum Europaeum that Schmitt

52. carl Schmitt, Donoso Cortés in gesamteuropäischer Interpretation: Vier Aufsätze, 2nd ed. [1950] (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 2009), 10.

53. carl Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes: Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols, 3rd ed. [1938] (Stuttgart: Klett-cotta, 2003), 85-94; carl Schmitt, Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff, 2nd ed. [1938] (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 1988); carl Schmitt, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (cologne: greven, 1950), 112-119.

54. Schmitt, Nomos der Erde, 97.55. carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947–1951, ed. eberhard Freiherr von

Medem (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 1991), 19 (September 27, 1947); cf. Schmitt, Nomos der Erde, 96, 98, and 112.

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praises as the true epochal threshold of modernity and the greatest step of prog-ress in human history.56

this pacification was reinforced by an intentional act of secularization of political terminology. Schmitt describes the early modern jurists’ withdrawal from the church as not a withdrawal to a holy mountain but an exodus to the profane sphere, a journey for which they prepared by smuggling some of the rel-ics: “the state adorned itself with many simulacra of ecclesiastical origin” and “the power of worldly princes was elevated by attributes and argumentations of spiritual descent.”57 crucially, however, the jurists “held onto the concession of their fathers” and remained “guardians of a tradition of their own,” thus aiming not at a “church robbery” but “salvage of the valuable goods.”58 Schmitt notes that the authority of the theologians was “secularized” (säkularisiert), but not “profaned” (profaniert) by the early modern jurists; it was only in the liberal era that the relics first “faded into philosophical or historical jewelry” and then got fully profaned by the technical era.59 With regard to the latter part, Schmitt had described the gradual process of neutralization from the sixteenth century to the present technical era in his Zeitalter essay in 1929.60 For him the initial secularization, however, was a rescue attempt rather than an unequivocal loss. the idea of salvage rather than church robbery already relativizes, on the level of metaphors, the claim of inherent illegitimacy that Blumenberg set out to contest.

Similarly, in a 1965 review, Schmitt criticized the interpretation that thomas hobbes only exteriorly held onto the christian forms to indirectly support anti-christian totalitarianism. For Schmitt, on the contrary, hobbes was a christian author, aiming to found a christian commonwealth. hobbes aimed at scientific objectivity and utilized geometrical vocabulary and thus, perhaps unintentionally, contributed to the ensuing process of “neutralization”; but he did not, Schmitt claims, intend to neutralize confessional quarrels but to contain them by a sover-eign decision in the spirit of cuius regio eius religio and thus to rescue the unity of the christian tradition.61 We may thus conclude that the original act of “pacifica-tion” and strong “neutralization” of confessional strife, supported by conceptual “secularization,” is distinct from the later gradual process of “profanation” or “neutralization” in the weak sense—even if Schmitt himself at points confuses the terminology and uses “secularization” and “neutralization” co-extensively.

For Schmitt, there is continuity in the initial secularization, but it is the conti-nuity of tradition, succession, legacy, and heritage in the juridical model rather than a metaphysical principle of historical identity of substances.62 Blumenberg’s

56. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 86.57. carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus: Erfahrungen der Zeit 1945/47, 2nd ed. [1950] (Berlin:

duncker & humblot, 2002), 7058. Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, 72-73.59. Ibid., 72-74.60. carl Schmitt, “das zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und entpolitisierungen” [1929], in Positio-

nen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar–Genf–Versailles 1923–1939 (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 1988), 120-132.

61. carl Schmitt, “die vollendete Reformation: Bemerkungen und hinweise zu neuen leviathan-Interpretationen,” Der Staat 4 (1965), 52, 55-56, and 61-62. cf. Meier, Lehre, 275.

62. Schmitt to Blumenberg, November 24, 1974, in Blumenberg–Schmitt, Briefwechsel, 125.

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point that analogies are not transformations63 is trivially true on the level of terminology, but in the light of textual evidence it does not hit the target. In fact, Blumenberg is hard put trying to argue that Schmitt posits a substantial transformation. In his early work, Schmitt describes secularization as a process in which worldly factors such as humanity, nation, or the individual “take the place of god” (sind . . . an die stelle Gottes . . . getreten) and “replace” (ersetzen) him,64 and repeatedly speaks of “analogic positions” and “systematic analo-gies” between religion and politics.65 as Schmitt consistently also describes the original act of secularization as active and intentional transfer of arguments, the accusation of having proposed a substantial or metaphysical continuity must have seemed unfair to him. there are certainly emotive intensities and argumentative needs in play in Schmitt’s decisionism, but Blumenberg fails to pinpoint these with the distinctions between analogy and transformation or reoccupation and transposition, respectively. textually, Schmitt can still uphold his claim that political theology is a conceptual-historical research hypothesis regarding analo-gies. to Blumenberg’s claim that political theology is “metaphorical theology”—a strange accusation coming from a metaphorologist who rarely uses the term “metaphorical” pejoratively—Schmitt could now have simply replied affirma-tively, but only in the sense of studying such metaphorical mappings rather than performing them. Schmitt evades the charge that he would be utilizing theologi-cal elements selectively by projecting also this rhetorical fabrication to the early modern jurists’ thoroughly justified initial secularization, something Schmitt then only observes historically.

IV. NeUtRalIzatIoN aNd the RetURN oF coNFeSSIoNal coNFlIct

If political theology consisted merely of studying structural analogies, Schmitt could have kept to this. however, Schmitt draws on the latter part of the narrative in his reply, too. gradually the order of the state begins to unravel. as Spinoza radicalizes the original tension between the exterior and the interior, religion is confined to private, and absolutely free, faith. Secret societies and religious sects catalyze the gradual rise of the private over the public and the hollowing out of state sovereignty from within.66 these politically irresponsible “indirect powers,” Schmitt posits, return in the liberal era as political parties, interest groups, and other societal organizations.67 Simultaneously, the power balance in international relations, too, begins to crumble: the sovereign states’ equal rights to wage wars are replaced by the moral doctrine of the just enemy. the eventual criminalization of aggressive warfare leads to a discriminating concept of war where some wars are just while some are not, which brings in moral categories, forces each party of the conflict to justify its actions with reference to moral superiority, and thus

63. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 103.64. carl Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 6th ed. [1919/1925] (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 1998),

18-19.65. Schmitt, Politische Theologie I, 43.66. Schmitt, Leviathan, 85-94.67. Ibid., 116-118.

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intensifies the original conflict into total war, “global civil war,” and a perpetual “intermediate state” between war and peace.68

on domestic and international levels alike, moral categories thus intensify conflicts. Further, when the suppressed conflict returns, it returns in a secular-ized form. For Schmitt, modern politics is “open or latent global civil war” and the repetition of confessional strife “with secularized slogans and in global dimensions.”69 Schmitt criticizes the value-orientation of the Bonn Republic by invoking Weber’s polytheism metaphor for irreconcilable worldviews: ancient gods “arise from their graves and wage their old battle again,” but the fact that they are “disenchanted and have become merely valid values makes the battle ghostly and the combatants hopelessly self-opinionated.”70 these are, naturally, “mere” metaphors, but they accurately summarize the inherent problems of modernity for Schmitt: unregulated conflict potential was released when the original secularization was replaced by weak neutralizations.

Blumenberg briefly criticizes the framework of crisis orientation and constant exception in Legitimität. he questions the supposed equivalence between the suppression of internal conflict and the projection of enmity to external relations on the basis that this model is not only inaccurate but also became obsolete once the scale of the external crises, in the cold War, surpassed the potential severity of any internal conflict.71 Blumenberg thus largely follows Schmitt’s exposition of the development, but draws a different conclusion: rather than emerging from the critical domestic setting after the defeat of the classical state, the current cold War crisis indicates the anachronistic nature and historical contingency of the whole model. once this framework is abandoned, Blumenberg reasons, it becomes difficult to uphold the impression that the present moment is a critical instance when the ultimate decision between good and evil must be made; and this, further, questions the assumption of the state of exception as “the normal state of the political,” as Blumenberg, somewhat controversially, summarizes Schmitt’s basic tenets.72 I believe Blumenberg observes Schmitt as supporting his theory with eschatological imagery and then assumes that by loosening the con-nection between eschatology and modern political forms he could rob Schmitt’s theory of its underlying temporal framework and undermine the whole edifice.

however, if Blumenberg’s own reading is correct and Schmitt only utilizes religious elements rhetorically and cynically to legitimate absolutist political positions, then it is logical, corre spondingly, to seek the motivation for Schmitt’s anxiety concerning the intensification of conflicts in the secular political realm rather than the theological. I believe such an element indeed emerges from the story of secularization, summarized above. Where war and peace, in the absence of a regulating authority, are not strictly demarcated, the latent civil war may at any moment actualize and the merely metaphorical battles intensify into physi-

68. Schmitt, Nomos der Erde, 91-96, 132, 233, and 271.69. Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, 13-14.70. carl Schmitt, “die tyrannei der Werte” [1959], in Säkularisation und Utopie: Erbracher

Studien (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1967), 54.71. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 59-60; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 99-101.72. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1966), 60; Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 101.

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cal killing—and for purely secular reasons. commenting on domestic issues in Weimar, Schmitt credits the absolute state for putting an end “to the cause of all disorder and civil war, the battle for the normatively right,” but notes that in the liberal era the neutralization of quarrels is replaced by attempts to minimize state intervention. this allows the rival forces of society to aim to organize themselves into the totality of the state. In this unstable power constellation, constitutional unity is replaced by a weak set of contracts between private parties in the spirit of pacta sunt servanda, which, for Schmitt, equals only a temporary peace treaty and conceals “an ethic of civil war,” liable to intensify into “latent or acute civil war.”73 this is the way, I posit, we should understand the temporal structure and the grim horizon of expectations in Schmitt’s theorizing.74 eschatology, then, gives a form and description to the immediately experienced risk of intensifica-tion in the political realm, but it is not the source of this threat.

We may draw a similar critical conclusion regarding the military model of conflict: it is not evident that the quarrels of the liberal-pluralist state, whether deriving from values or interests, relate to the early modern religious civil wars genetically rather than purely rhetorically. the fact that politics can persuasively be described in military terms does not prove the link between the two realms, but rather only suggests a dual situation blurred by terminological stability. When this connection is loosened, the idea of modern democratic politics as the return of nonnegotiable confessional conflict and civil war is discredited. although Blu-menberg never fully applied his approach to political conflict, I believe Schmitt thought he was faced with this challenge, too. as I will show in the following analysis, this is clearly visible in Schmitt’s reply. For Schmitt, secularized theol-ogy is still theology, and pacified civil war is still civil war.

V. SchMItt’S ReactIoN: aBSoRptIoN, ReappRopRIatIoN, aNd ReValUatIoN

In his scornful and parodying reply, Schmitt locates the focal point of the quar-rel quite correctly but intentionally misrepresents it. he describes Blumenberg’s position as consisting of exposing and criticizing all “translations [Übersetzun-gen] and reoccupations [Umbe setzungen],” all “continuing influences [Weiter-wirkungen] or reoccupations [Umbesetzungen] from the theory of salvation,” and every “secularization or reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of old images of the enemy.”75 But this, of course, is precisely what Blumenberg did not do: he criti-cized transpositions (Umsetzung), not reoccupations (Umbesetzung), which is the category that he himself introduced for the purposes of this very criticism.76 Sec-

73. Schmitt, Hüter der Verfassung, 76; carl Schmitt, “Staatsethik und pluralistischer Staat” [1930], in Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar–Genf–Versailles 1923–1939 (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 1988), 145; carl Schmitt, Hugo Preuß: Sein Staatsbegriff und seine Stellung in der deutschen Staatslehre (tübingen: Mohr, 1930), 26, n. 1.

74. I have earlier analyzed the temporal deep structure of the particular concept of the “intermedi-ate state between peace and war” and the military metaphors supporting this in Schmitt’s work. See timo pankakoski, “carl Schmitt versus the ‘Intermediate State’: International and domestic Vari-ants,” History of European Ideas 39, no. 2 (2013), 241-266.

75. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 85, 86, and 98.76. the english translation employs the term “transposition” throughout and thus obscures the

contrast by fabricating more concurrence between Schmitt’s and Blumenberg’s arguments than the

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ond, Schmitt claims that he was always concerned with the transition from catho-lic theology to Jus Publicum Europaeum, which he considers a “classical case of reoccupation [Umbesetzung] by means of specific concepts.”77 at face value, the two lines of defense appear contradictory: if Blumenberg were criticizing “reoc-cupations,” then what good could possibly follow from Schmitt underlining how he himself was advancing one—and, vice versa, if Schmitt were all the time an advocate of “reoccupation,” then why not simply state this instead of attempting to blur the concept?

the paradox begins to clear up as soon as we discern a multiple usage of “reoccupation” in the senses “absorption,” “reappropriation,” and “revaluation,” respectively. creative alternation between these usages allows Schmitt to depict Blumenberg’s theory as a self-empowering and foundationless attempt by scien-tific, fully rationalized modernity to break loose from tradition, theology, and, ultimately, the possibility of political conflict, by simply renouncing all continu-ities and hypocritically fabricating its own novelty.

Scholars have so far overlooked the importance of “reoccupation” in the ser-vice of this argu ment. In one of the best commentaries, peter hohendahl correctly notes that Schmitt adopts the concept, but claims that for Schmitt it is a “term to describe loss rather than reorientation and rethinking.”78 I find this interpre-tation slightly simplified. It relies on the assumption that Schmitt also valued secularization in this way, as was suggested, for instance, by Blumenberg and Jacob taubes.79 But it is essential to note that Schmitt intentionally plays with the ambivalence of secularization. Because he had already split the process into secularization proper, on the one hand, and neutralization, on the other, Schmitt could easily respond to Blumenberg’s challenge by focusing only on the inher-ently positive reoccupation by the absolute state and by remaining silent about the losses of meaning in the liberal era. Rather than a loss, the initial secularization was for him a rescue attempt and a process of absorption where earlier theologi-cal meanings were conveyed into the novel structures of the state.80 this is how Schmitt also interprets “reoccupation” here: as an act of filling, movement with direction, and a process in which new positions are loaded with the content of the old by transfer, displacement, and metaphorization. only by reading the aspect of continuity and directed movement into the concept, Schmitt is able to present Blumenberg as criticizing reoccupations.

Schmitt reinforces his argument in this regard by bringing in another usage of “reoccupation.” In his earlier exposition of the secularization narrative Schmitt posits that the early modern jurists “marched into the positions [Positionen] that

dispute warrants. See carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology [1970], translated and introduced by Michael hoelzl and graham Ward (cambridge, UK: polity, 2008), 117-119 and 128-129.

77. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 86. 78. hohendahl, “political theology Revisited,” paragraph 18.79. Jacob taubes, The Political Theology of Paul [1993], transl. dana hollander, ed. aleida

assmann, Jan assmann, horst Folkers, Wolf-daniel hartwich, and christoph Schulte (Stanford: Stanford University press, 2004), 66.

80. My reading here concurs with that of Kathleen davis, who remarks that for Schmitt “secularization” refers “to the transference of theological forms to the politics of an ostensibly ‘secular’ state, in which theology thus becomes immanent” (davis, Periodization, 78).

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until then had been occupied [besetzt] by theologians.”81 By this he refers to the jurists’ habit of making use of earlier arguments of medieval theology regarding, for instance, the right to resist a tyrant. as the argumentative positions, such as tyrannum licet occidere, had been occupied before, this in fact is a reoccupation in a particular sense of the term. Now, this derivation of Umbesetzung clearly differs from the Blumenbergian technical term that was primarily restricted to the structural aspects of epochal change. In Blumenberg’s theory, a system of functional positions is filled with new content so that either a whole new con-cept replaces the former but still has the same function or so that such a shift takes place despite the permanence of vocabulary and is hidden from view by this permanence. In the Schmittian variant, by contrast, arguments and concepts themselves become positions to be occupied. the change of perspective is subtle but important. let us reserve the term reappropriation for reoccupation in this particular sense.

Blumenberg’s project, in Schmitt’s perspective, would be one of criticizing such reoccupations: for Blumenberg, there is “no new scientific political theology in the sense of reoccupations [Um-Besetzungen] of earlier theological positions [Positionen].”82 Schmitt reads Blumenberg’s theory of modernity rather one-sidedly as a celebration of novelty and discontinuity from all traditions, and in this regard even the maintenance of “positions” would be too much. this is what Schmitt parodies with the image of a tabula rasa wishing to “de-tabulize” itself.83 Such a reading, however, clearly misses the point of the model of functional positions, condensed in the notion of Umbesetzung that Blumenberg introduced precisely in order to mediate both continuities and discontinuities.

In harmony with the general orientation of his political theory, Schmitt also gives “reoccupation” a significantly more competitive and aggressive tone than the original. the word besetzen carries, among others, a military connotation of occupying positions in order to wage battle, which allows the interpreter to extend Umbesetzung in this direction while simultaneously maintaining full con-tinuity on the linguistic level. the word for “marching” to positions in the quote above, einrücken, also carries a military connotation. In the Weimar Republic, Schmitt stresses how moral and political concepts are not only “weapons” in “battles” but also the “soil” on which the battle is fought84 and argues forcefully against the liberal attempt to “occupy” (okkupieren) or “confiscate” (beschlag-nahmen) universal concepts like “humanity,” “peace,” “justice,” “progress,” or “civilization.”85 Similarly, in a state of civil war, each concept becomes “an attack [or encroachment, Übergriff] into the enemy camp.”86 I claim that Schmitt sees Blumenberg’s image of “occupying positions” in the light of the military

81. Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, 70.82. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 96.83. Ibid., 96-97. 84. Schmitt, Hüter der Verfassung, 90.85. Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (1932), 55; carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 3rd

ed. (hamburg: hanseatische Verlagssanstalt, 1933), 37.86. Schmitt, Glossarium (october 31, 1947), 36. also cited in groh, Arbeit an der Heillosigkeit,

160.

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paradigm, as advancement in the theoretical field, containing the promise of prospective gains.87

the antagonistic interpretation of “reoccupation,” I claim, also determines Schmitt’s response in Politische Theologie II. Schmitt’s strategy is to underline the scientific-positivistic aspect of Blumenberg’s attack to imply that, with the-ology as its content, such an attempt by necessity turns into hypocrisy. Schmitt replies to the theologian erik peterson that there is no archimedean point from which the demarcation between theology and politics could be made neutrally: in the secular age, all parties to the quarrel will accuse the adversary of theologizing politics or politicizing theology and thus intensify rather than tame the conflict.88 Similarly, the decision on whether something is nonpolitical or should be depo-liticized is always already a political decision, and any claim to the contrary is an attempt to hide the political and thus in itself a political move. potentially violent conflicts cannot be tamed by simply postulating peace and renaming bellicose activities as “peaceful measures” or “progress,” as these concepts themselves are positions in the battle. In making his patently false claim that Blumenberg criti-cized reoccupations, Schmitt uses the word in the particular sense of reappropria-tion. to criticize reoccupations would be to criticize the whole idea that concepts are being aggressively reoccupied. Schmitt is thus trying to reduce Blumenberg’s (alleged) criticism into one more variant of the liberal attempt to dispel conflict with mere wishful thinking.

closely connected to this is the third usage: reoccupation as revaluation. In a full-blown attack on the “tyranny of values” in the pluralistic Bonn Republic, where collective interests manifest as irreconcilable conflicts of values, Schmitt engages in nearly untranslatable wordplay that later, I claim, determines his response to Blumenberg’s Umbesetzung. In the process of “neutralizing scien-tification,” the basic categories of theological, philosophical, or juridical exis-tence turn into values.89 after a category has been transferred into a system of “statuses” (Stellen-Werte), it is characterized by a particular “determination and occupation of a position” (Stellen-Setzung und Besetzung), but becomes liable to “revaluations” (Umwertungen) by means of “rearrangements” (Umstellungen) of the scale of values.90 the ultimate problem is that the one who sets values also opposes unvalue, and that setting the values (Setzung) leads to their enforcement (Durchsetzung).91 as individuals set values quite arbitrarily, their multiplicity leads to “an eternal battle of values and world-views, an eternal bellum omnium contra omnes” and a repetition of the ancient battle of Weber’s disenchanted deities by novel means that “are no longer weapons but dreadful means of destruction.”92 Schmitt here clearly applies to value philosophy the categories of

87. In Politische Theologie II Schmitt goes so far in his rereading of political theology that he locates conflict and civil war (stasis) even within the christian trinity, thus adopting a consciously gnostic position. See Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 90-93. Schmitt consulted Koselleck about the conceptual history of stasis. See Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt: Aufstieg und Fall (Munich: Beck, 2009), 550.

88. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 83-84.89. Schmitt, “tyrannei,” 42-43.90. Ibid., 42 and 55-56.91. Ibid., 55 and 58.92. Ibid., 54.

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his earlier criticism of the just war tradition: bringing in moral categories leads to intensification of conflict, moral condemnation, and ultimately total annihilation of the enemy instead of honorable oppositions that would also allow for neutral-ity. even if in the case of value philosophy the confrontations are mostly meta-phorical, the whole doctrine of values, for Schmitt, is characterized by “potential” and “immanent aggression.”93

Schmitt makes explicit references to this analysis in his response. he sees Blumenberg’s ap praisal of modern curiositas as precisely such an arrogant dec-laration of independence, a setting of value where the old is unilaterally declared unworthy—not only a self-assertion of the new rational man, but an ultimately groundless self-empowerment.94 But, for Schmitt, Blumenberg’s argumentation moves in a circle and suffers from “autism”: when novelty is set as a value, “the immanent aggression of the unfettered new” is doubly intensified by the fact that revaluation itself, logically, becomes a value, too.95 I believe Schmitt observed Blumenberg’s basic concepts in this light. In his idiosyncratic, prefix-oriented treatment, Um-Setzung would be the resetting of the values that have originally been set in the process of Setzung, and as the values also occupy (besetzen) a position in the value system, Um-Besetzung can be interpreted as reshuffling and refilling these positions. the difference between Umsetzung and Umbesetzung thus fades because for Schmitt both are foundationless, aggressive actions and parts of the general activity of “revaluation” (Umwertung). From the perspec-tive of value philosophy, Blumenberg’s basic concepts bear the arrogance of his grand claim.

In sum, then, Schmitt paints an image of Blumenberg, first, as advocating hubristic revaluations that are seemingly harmless but indirectly violent: “the new man is aggressive in the sense of incessant progress and incessant re-settings [Neu-Setzungen].”96 Second, he depicts Blumenberg as criticizing continuous influences and rejecting “any secularization or reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of old images of the enemy”97 in order to gain the independence needed for the claim of novelty and to secure the supposed nonaggression. third, as enmity for Schmitt cannot be escaped but only adjourned or covered, and thus intensified, this very attempt turns into one more modern facade behind which aggression can operate uncurbed. It is thus the permanent task of scientific reflection to critically observe any “reoccupation [Umbesetzung] [of the enemy] from the old political theology into a supposedly totally new, pure worldliness, and humane humanity.”98 For Schmitt, there are no human beings as such, but only particular concrete group ings of humans (potentially) against others, even if the category of humankind can be invoked to give the opposite impression.99 Whereas Schmitt earlier depicted Blumenberg as criticizing reoccupations, here he accuses him of

93. Ibid., 56.94. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II, 88-89.95. Ibid. (translation by hoelzl and Ward).96. Ibid., 97.97. Ibid., 97-98.98. Ibid., 96.99. this is fully in line with Schmitt’s habitual references to proudhon’s dictum “whoever invokes

humanity wants to deceive” (Schmitt, Begriff des Politischen [1932], 55).

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attempting to pull off a reoccupation by confiscating the concept of man, while Schmitt himself stands guard.

Schmitt’s conceptual maneuvers are idiosyncratic, even frustrating, but far from the unim portant esotericism of a jurist in a “small, hermetic work of old age.”100 Rather than trivial, the criticism is “short but very dense”101 in the sense of summarizing his political theory in its late phase. My reading also suggests a correction to hohendahl’s remark that in his engagement with Blumenberg’s concept of reoccupation, Schmitt “seems to be uncertain how to use it”102 —rather his misapprehension appears intentional and is in keeping with the revision of his Weimar theorizing put forward in Politische Theologie II. Schmitt attempts to neutralize Blumenberg’s challenge by appropriating the central concept and reloading it with a meaning more in harmony with his own theory. this, ironi-cally, epitomizes what Schmitt understands the concept to be all about: strategic confiscation of concepts and the act of reading one’s own valuations into intel-lectual categories at hand.

VI. KoSellecK oN SecUlaRIzatIoN aNd coNFlIct

as was shown above, the themes of secularization and conflict are internally linked in Schmitt’s work, and this connection manifests paradigmatically in his rebuttal of Blumenberg. In modern politics, when not manifesting in outright warfare, the hostilities are transposed to the medium of conflictual concepts and “secularized slogans.” there is thus an intimate connection between Schmitt’s two central theses on concepts, I claim. the idea that “all cogent concepts of modern state theory are secularized theological concepts” relates to the successful imposition of order by the modern state. the equally overstated claim that “all political concepts arise out of a concrete polarity of foreign or domestic politics” and that “every political concept is a polemical concept” that “has a political enemy in mind”103 rather connects to the latter part of the narrative. Both theses contain not only a bold historical claim but also a methodological point or a conceptual-historical research program: they prescribe how political concepts in modernity should be understood, interpreted, and studied in order to bring out their political point.

It thus seems only logical that Koselleck integrates these starting points into his early approach to conceptual conflict. Scholars have recently paid increasing attention to Koselleck’s intellectual debt to Schmitt as well as the ways in which Koselleck sought to remedy the shortcomings in the theory of his teacher and colleague.104 Schmitt unofficially supervised Koselleck’s dissertation Kritik und

100. Schmitt to Blumenberg on March 31, 1971, in Blumenberg–Schmitt, Briefwechsel, 111. the roles of the “old man” and the “jurist” are parts of his apologetic and strategic self-positioning and a long chain of self-mythologizing epithets ranging from “the last defender of Jus Publicum Euro-paeum” and “Beneto cereno” to the “christian epimetheus.” See groh, Arbeit an der Heillosigkeit, 115-155.

101. Schmitt to ernst Forsthoff, November 4, 1969, in Forsthoff –Schmitt, Briefwechsel, 294.102. hohendahl, “political theology Revisited,” paragraph 18.103. Schmitt, Hugo Preuß, 5.104. Niklas olsen consistently emphasizes Koselleck’s constructive efforts to build an understand-

ing of history and politics that would allow for “pluralistic” rather than “antagonistic” settings, and

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Krise (1954, published 1959). although his ultimate aims doubtless were cultur-ally and politically more constructive than Schmitt’s, Koselleck built his pes-simistic analysis of the paradoxes of enlightenment thought in Kritik und Krise upon a detailed duplication of the Schmittian narrative.105 this parallel, I posit, is of critical importance for Koselleck’s later understanding of secularization, reoccupation, and conflict.

after the original neutralization of confessional strife by demarcating poli-tics and morality, political conflict, Koselleck maintains, returns in disguise: the moral and universal, and hence presumably politically neutral, argumenta-tion of enlightened citizens was initially made possible by the state’s “moral neutrality,”106 but the actions of the new elite groups, such as the Freemasonry, are “indirectly political” and challenge this order from within. Moral critique—so goes the argument—leads to a moralization of politics, politicization of morality, constant political crisis, intensification of oppositions, outburst of revolution-ary energies, and, ultimately, as the oppositions take global dimensions, to the twentieth-century ideological wars.

In the 1954 original, Koselleck notes explicitly that the dualism of morality and politics could gain such dimensions only after a double development: after the “political neutralization of ecclesiastical oppositions,” on the one hand, and the “intellectual overcoming of the religious points of contention” by the devel-opment of modern philosophy of history, on the other.107 here he also demarcates more analytically two elements in the process: “the dominant religions that earlier restrained the humanist movement were suppressed” and, second, “the elements related to the history of salvation in them” were “absorbed by the tri-umphant moral self-consciousness via ‘secularization.’”108 Koselleck thus holds onto Schmitt’s interpretation of the process of secularization as both pacification and absorption. however, whereas Schmitt labels the former element as “secu-larization” and the latter pejoratively as “neutralization,” Koselleck swaps the terms and interprets the latter along löwithian lines as the primary meaning of “secularization.” this löwithian element is, then, projected upon the Schmittian framework of analysis. In the reworked edition, Koselleck describes the double process concisely as follows: “the neutralization [Neutralisierung] of conscience by politics promotes the secularization [Verweltlichung] of morality. . . . the weakening of religiousness based on revelation, which presupposes the state, becomes the fate of this state as the old themes recur—in secularized [säkula-risierte] form.”109

sees Koselleck as “depoliticizing” Schmittian categories before applying them to historical analysis, and thus constructing “an intellectual project and a normative agenda that ultimately had little to do with Schmitt’s writings” (olsen, History in the Plural, 53, 72, and 75). My reading is more critical as to the intellectual proximity between the two, even if many of olsen’s conclusions hold with regard to the direct ideological implications.

105. For a more detailed comparison, see pankakoski, “conflict, context, concreteness,” 756-759. 106. Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt

[1959] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, n.d.), 30.107. Reinhart Koselleck, “Kritik und Krise: eine Untersuchung der politischen Funktion des

dualistischen Weltbildes im 18. Jahrhundert” (phd diss., University of heidelberg, 1954), 21-22.108. Koselleck, “Kritik und Krise” (1954), 21-22. emphasis added.109. Koselleck, Kritik und Krise (1959), 31.

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What thus returns is the rigidity of confessional conflicts. the worldly powers are now morally condemned. the ostensibly moral and purely intellectual quali-ties of the enlightenment thinkers’ arguments only serve to hide their political nature, and this camouflage intensifies the opposition. Further, this intensification is legitimized, and the consequent crisis hidden, by the philosophy of history. the fictive and utopian assumption of the unity of the world and the progress of humankind turns history into an inevitable singular process and thus alienates enlightenment thinkers from the understanding of politics as a destiny and a constant human task.110 In the light of this postulated progress, concrete political planning of the future upon the partisan premises rather appears as prognosis and observation of unfolding objective history. as these political acts derive their legitimation from the future, a whole new conception of time emerges: future and past are “torn apart.”111

Both the initial political uprising and the consequent novel temporal structure are supported by secularization of earlier theological elements. the bourgeois intellectuals take over “the heritage of the theological clergy.”112 leibniz’s theodicy becomes a “legitimation of the new man” who takes “the position of god.”113 alongside gnostic elements in the dualism between good morality and evil politics, christian eschatology “in its modified form as secular progress” also contributes to the eighteenth-century philosophy of history.114 the divine plan of redemption is “secularized into rational planning of history,”115 and the philosophy of history thus carries on “the heritage of theology.”116 on this level, secularization is thus different from, and opposed to, the original neutralization; and, as they emerge from the analytical framework, both are internally linked with the question of political conflict. the way Koselleck repeatedly assimilates the attempts to hide the crisis to its aggravation comes directly from Schmitt; similarly, the themes of “indirect political power,” avoidance of the “risk of the political,” the ostensible “absence” versus effective “presence,” and the “latent” and “open” forms of conflict are essential parts of a recurring figure of thought in Schmitt’s work.117 the emphasis on the philosophy of history, in particular, as a legitimizing tool derives more prominently from löwith. however, the idea of the unity of mankind and history as illusions, and the dangers of concealing real-world plurality by subsuming partisan political projects under nebulous concepts like “progress,” “peace,” or “world” are also Schmittian basic themes.118 Further, Schmitt also critically observes, for instance, how Marx connected the idea of the

110. Ibid., 2, 6-7, and 9. 111. Ibid., 7.112. Ibid., 31.113. Ibid., 109.114. Ibid., 108.115. Ibid., 111.116. Ibid., 108.117. See pankakoski, “carl Schmitt Versus the ‘Intermediate State.’”118. See, for instance, carl Schmitt, “die einheit der Welt” [1952], in Staat, Großraum, Nomos:

Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1916 bis 1969, ed. günter Maschke (Berlin: duncker & humblot, 1995), 496-512; Schmitt, “Staatsethik,” 141-143; Schmitt, Begriff des Politischen (1932), 54-58, 65, and 77.

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history of mankind as a history of class struggle to a progressive philosophy of history and thus gave it “utmost political effectiveness.”119

For Koselleck, too, the new future of the enlightenment was a political future that emerged as a result of contingent strife, but eventually both the future-orien-tation and the conflicts became permanent elements of modernity. Koselleck var-ies this basic plot in his essays on the temporalization of history and the histories of individual concepts from the 1960s onward. Begriffsgeschichte adopts the task of observing temporal layers and conflict potential inherent in basic concepts. to note and study these connections is not to dishonor or deny the originality of Koselleck’s work. his brilliant essays published as Vergangene Zukunft in 1979 still serve as a methodological baseline for conceptual history, his contributions to the massive dictionary of historical basic concepts in germany (Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 1972–1997) hold an iconic status, and his late essays on temporal layers have added an important dimension to conceptual analysis. It is rather pre-cisely because of the importance of Koselleck’s contribution that its problematic genesis merits close attention. I will next scrutinize how “reoccupation,” in a formalized methodological sense, emerges in Koselleck’s mature scholarship. In the section after that, I will show how Koselleck similarly relativizes his under-standing of secularization.

VII. FoRMalIzINg ReoccUpatIoN

In a key essay, published originally in a Festschrift for Schmitt, Koselleck returns to the important shift in the genesis of the modern conception of time that occurs when earlier religious prophecy turns into political prognosis. proph-ecy integrates the religious community only insofar as the eschatological threat remains unspecified and the expectations of what is already known in principle are constantly disappointed, while rational and pragmatic political prognosis unites the political community precisely because it provides means of anticipat-ing the immediate future that is now perceived as something not yet known.120 Koselleck emphasizes that the gap between eschatology and the early-modern political conception of time is narrower than one would expect: although prog-nosis has opened up the future in a novel way, it still relies on the medieval, static notion of time, based on natural constants and linear interpolation of past into future. Koselleck writes: “the reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of prophesized future into predictable future had not yet in principle mutilated the horizon of christian anticipation.”121 the usage of “reoccupation” here is odd: in terms of content, semantics, and grammar, one would rather expect to find here the word Umsetzung that better captures the idea of translation or transposition and that Koselleck did not shy away from in his future work. For instance, in his entry on “progress” in the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Koselleck perceives “a continu-ous transposition [kontinuierliche Transposition] of the religious advance into

119. Schmitt, Begriff des Politischen (1933), 55.120. Reinhart Koselleck, “Vergangene zukunft der frühen Neuzeit” [1968], in Vergangene Zuku-

nft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1995), [hereafter VZ], 28-32.121. Koselleck, “Vergangene zukunft,” 33. emphasis added.

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world-historical progress.”122 as the reader will recall, Transposition and Umset-zung are synonyms in the Blumenbergian vocabulary. Koselleck apparently uses Umsetzung and Umbesetzung interchangeably. Just like Schmitt, Koselleck too fails to account for the distinction between transposition and reoccupation and uses the latter in the sense of directed movement and absorption. For him it is a category of historical continuity.

Whereas Schmitt demarcates between “secularization” and “neutralization,” Koselleck defends the category of secularization in the nexus of eschatology and progress by cutting the process into three: after the original “neutralization,” not only “secularization,” but also “temporaliza tion” takes place. For Koselleck, “temporalization” is a fundamental shift in the relationship between past and future that marks the epochal threshold of modernity. In the late eighteenth century, “history” shed its previous singular usage of indicating only particular historical narratives and turned into a “collective singular,” indicating the whole process of history or “history as such.”123 Similarly, the notion of progress, rather than indicating partial advancements in various fields, became a transhistorical term and a factor full of temporal potential for legitimizing historical-political projects.124 history at large can now be identified with progress. only in this distinctively modern usage, history becomes fully temporal, and this opens the horizon of future expectations that surpasses earlier experiences and makes the future qualitatively different from the past. the French Revolution epitomizes this novelty, and philosophy of history seals it theoretically. Further, as history is proceeding toward better times, acceleration of the process becomes not only possible but indeed a human task, as argued by Robespierre.125 the continuities with the argument in Kritik und Krise are obvious: “In the shadows of absolute politics emerged—first secretly, then openly—a consciousness of time and future, based on a bold combination of politics and prophecy.”126 pragmatic prognosis of possible future turns into expectations that affect actions already in the present, and history, Koselleck notes, becomes a final instance or judge that could be evoked to legitimize current political projects.127 philosophy of history, thus, leads to a “reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of the future.”128

again, the usage is atypical, but regains its intelligibility once reoccupa-tion here is interpreted as reappropriation. Koselleck notes that, in modernity, progress, democracy, and other concepts of movement become “occupiable” (besetzbar) by various political actors and, further, there emerges a “necessity to occupy” these general concepts (Besetzungszwang) so that opponents cannot use them for their own purposes.129 Since the French Revolution, Koselleck posits,

122. Koselleck, sections I and III-VI in “Fortschritt,” in GG, Band 2: e-g (Stuttgart: Klett, 1975), 368. emphasis added.

123. Reinhart Koselleck, “historia Magistra Vitae: Über die auflösung des topos im horizont neuzeitlich bewegter geschichte” [1967], in VZ, 49-50; Reinhart Koselleck, sections I, V, VI and VII in “geschichte, historie,” in GG, Band 2: e-g (Stuttgart: Klett, 1975), 711.

124. Koselleck, “Fortschritt,” 388ff.125. Koselleck, “Vergangene zukunft,” 22.126. Ibid., 33.127. Koselleck, “geschichte,” 675-677.128. Ibid., 675.129. Koselleck, “Fortschritt,” 414-417; Reinhart Koselleck, “’Neuzeit’: zur Semantik moderner

Bewegungsbegriffe” [1977], in VZ, 346-347.

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“the semantic battle [semantischer Kampf] for the definition of political or social positions, maintaining or achieving these positions by deploying a given defini-tion” has intensified and changed structurally: rather than simply registering con-temporary experiences, concepts now reach into the future, and these future posi-tions must be linguistically prepared so that they can be taken over.130 Not only history but concepts, too, are thus temporalized.131 In modernity, time itself—that is, time incorporated into concepts—becomes “a legitimating title, open for occu-pation from all sides [allseitig besetzbar].”132 In such an antagonistic setting, to reoccupy the future is to reoccupy the concepts of history and progress and to present one’s own concrete aims as legitimized and necessitated by them. this is the core of Koselleck’s Schmittian-löwithian critique of ideological utilization.

Begriffsgeschichte is concerned with the conceptual shifts that either reflect or facilitate occupations, some of them highly partisan. Koselleck formalizes the earlier critical reading of political utilization of the philosophy of history into a means of historical observation and reflection on concepts such as “history,” “progress,” or “emancipation.” Just as Koselleck incorporated the Schmittian distinction of friend and enemy into his methodological framework in the form of the asymmetrical counter-concepts, a formal frame that can be “occupied [besetzt] with new names,”133 he also formalizes the medium in which such oppo-sitions are enacted: conflict-oriented language and conceptual contestation. In this process, the category of reoccupation is detached from the question of politi-cal theology and the associated Schmittian normative conclusions. Nevertheless, it still carries an element of conflict, deriving from the original setting in Kritik und Krise, where the revolutionaries “occupied” the state by utilizing moral con-cepts as “dualistic weapons . . . forged in the secret smithies of the philosophy of history.”134 to reoccupy a concept is to perform a metaphorically violent act.

Further, in this formalized sense, Koselleck still uses “reoccupation” along Schmittian lines as absorption, reappropriation, and revaluation, even if he gives these variants a methodological twist. For instance, the concept of “crisis” gradu-ally diffuses into economy, politics, psychology, and history in the seventeenth century, but, echoing its ancestry in medicine and theology, maintains a double sense of either an iterative period of culmination, like that of a disease, or a unique decisive point, similar to the last Judgment.135 the concept thus utilizes the temporal structure of the apocalyptic scheme, and in this respect we witness a “transposition [Transposition] of an eschatological concept into one related to the philosophy of history.”136 In a later commentary on the topic, Koselleck, however, reformulates this as a “reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of a theological

130. Koselleck, “Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte” [1972], in VZ, 113.131. the temporalization of concepts, thus, is one of the four basic hypotheses in Geschichtliche

Grundbegriffe, alongside “democratization,” “politicization,” and “the capability of ideologization.” See Koselleck, “einleitung,” XVI-XVIII.

132. Koselleck, “’Neuzeit’,” 339.133. Reinhart Koselleck, “Feindbegriffe” [1993], in Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik

und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006), [hereaf-ter Begriffsgeschichten], 277.

134. Koselleck, Kritik und Krise (1959), 112.135. Reinhart Koselleck, “Krise,” in GG, Band 3: h-Me (Stuttgart: Klett-cotta, 1982), 626.136. Koselleck, “Krise,” 628.

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dogma.”137 In the Blumenbergian framework, the two formulations would not only be contradictory, but the latter would also clash with the whole idea of secularization. the totality makes sense only if we interpret reoccupation here as simultaneously connoting both the redemptive continuity of absorption and the creative moment of reappropriation.

the elements of reappropriation and revaluation also coincide. For instance, the concept of “interest,” which is “thoroughly formal” and “occupiable in many ways [verschieden besetzbar],” has since the nineteenth century been a political touchstone for all parties struggling to strike a balance between the general and the particular and has thus gone through a process of “reoccupation with regard to content” (inhaltliche Neubesetzung).138 Similarly, the notion of “revolution” is “occupiable [besetzbar] in politically different, even diametrically opposite ways.”139 In such partisan utilizations, the concepts are given novel normative loads, and this analytically separate activity can be expressed with the same word, only interpreted as revaluation or reloading. thus, for instance, the National Socialists turn “revolution” into “a positive battle concept” although it was “negatively loaded [negativ besetzt]” after the events of 1918.140 Further, “a posi-tive occupation [Besetzung]” of the semantic field of “emancipation” takes place in the late eighteenth century when, following Kant’s dictum of enlightenment as emerging from self-inflicted maturity, the concept is politicized and temporalized into a process concept at the disposal of particular groups.141 as “revolution” is singularized into an inevitable course of history that can and must be acceler-ated, the counter-concept “reaction” goes through a process of “reoccupation” or “reloading” (Umbesetzung), whereby it loses its earlier openness, becomes pri-marily “negatively loaded [negativ besetzt],” and turns into “an antithetical battle con cept [Kampfbegriff]”142 In these examples the appropriation of a category, on the one hand, and its revaluation or normative reloading, on the other, merge into a single process. conceptual history follows such redescriptions both synchronic-ally and diachronically.

VIII. RelatIVIzINg SecUlaRIzatIoN

how committed, then, is Koselleck to the category of secularization? hans Joas has recently criticized Koselleck for assuming secularization as an unproblematic premise for his concep tual-historical studies: Koselleck comes close to tacitly invoking secularization as a historical necessity and a hypostatized historical-philosophical force of precisely the kind that he was criticiz ing in his encounter

137. Reinhart Koselleck, “einige Fragen an die Begriffsgeschichte von ‘Krise’” [1985], in Begriffs -geschichten, 212.

138. Reinhart Koselleck, section VI in “Interesse,” in GG, Band 3: h-Me (Stuttgart: Klett-cotta, 1982), 359 and 349.

139. Reinhart Koselleck, sections I and IV-VII in “Revolution, Rebellion, aufruhr, Bürgerkrieg,” in GG, Band 5: pro-Soz (Stuttgart: Klett-cotta, 1984), 749.

140. Koselleck, “Revolution,” 785.141. Karl Martin grass and Reinhart Koselleck, “emanzipation,” in GG, Band 2: e-g (Stuttgart:

Klett-cotta, 1975), 163-166.142. Koselleck, “Revolution,” 756, 758, and 760.

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with utopianism and the philosophy of history—and thus losing the historical contingency he set out to defend.143 the young Koselleck, in particular, seems to treat secularization as an empirical fait accompli rather than a figure of thought with its own dynamic potential.144 Further, the links between eschatological anticipation and the philosophy of history, on the one hand, and between phi-losophy of history and concrete political-ideological aims, on the other, remain in Koselleck’s work in the 1970s too: this framework underlies the Koselleckian basic narrative of temporalization of concepts in the Sattelzeit period.

however, when scrutinizing the matter on the level of individual concepts in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Koselleck consciously relativizes the seculariza-tion thesis into one possibility among others. he notes that the philosophy of history had a feedback effect on political planning and produced several concepts of expectation; but to what extent this is “secularization” of religious meanings is to be studied case by case.145 When we perceive ideological matters formally from the point of view of individual concepts, we attain an additional degree of freedom. Koselleck’s adherence to secularization as a historical hypothesis and a metatheoretical assumption does not preclude occasional opposite developments. In the Reformation, the concept of Bund (association, league), for instance, goes through a process of “theological reoccupation [theologische Umbesetzung]” in which it is depoliticized and spiritualized, until later secularized again.146 Simi-larly, “hellene,” although earlier a secular counter-concept to “Barbarian,” is in early christianity “theologized” into a counter-concept for “christian”—some-thing Koselleck calls the “reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of the word.”147 again, the notions of “secularization” and “reoccupation” are intimately connected; but for Koselleck, reoccupation as reappropriation is not only compatible with secu-larization interpreted in terms of continuity, but also with the opposite process of desecularization or retheologization. on this level, “reoccupation” for Koselleck truly is a formal category, utilizable to record historical changes to whichever direction. the opposition between christians and heathens and other such “lin-guistic empty positions” or “empty forms that always necessitate new concrete occupation [Besetzung]”148 may persist as formal structures of historical experi-ence and political argumentation beyond their original context—and precisely because of this formality, Koselleck notes explicitly, no “secularization thesis” needs to be assumed.149

143. Joas, “die Kontingenz der Säkularisierung.”144. In Kritik und Krise, Koselleck follows löwith in accepting as common knowledge the process

of secularization “by which eschatology was transposed [transponiert] into a progressive history” (Koselleck, Kritik und Krise [1959], 7). Blumenberg cites this passage among others in his brief critique of the book (Blumenberg, Legitimität [1996], 40-41).

145. Reinhart Koselleck, “einleitung,” in GG, Band 1: a-d (Stuttgart: Klett, 1972), XIII-XXVII, XVIII.

146. Reinhart Koselleck, “diesseits des Nationalstaates: Föderale Strukturen der deutschen geschichte” [1994], in Begriffsgeschichten, 492 and 494.

147. Reinhart Koselleck, “zur historisch-politischen Semantik asymmetrischer gegenbegriffe” [1975], In VZ, 233.

148. Koselleck, “zur historisch-politischen Semantik,” 253 and 257.149. Ibid., 243.

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even in the cases in which secularization is assumed, something else is in play. Koselleck reflects on whether we can perceive a product of secularization (Säku-larisat) of eschatological anticipation in lorenz von Stein’s optimism regarding the possibility of historical prognosis, or in Robespierre’s encouragement to accelerate the revolution. Stein’s arguments gain their edge in the social-histor-ical context of the prussian constitutional quarrels and the associated concrete political aims, whereas Robespierre’s revolutionary motives are soon relativized by technological development, the population explosion, and other modern—and we may add: autonomous and secular—forms of the experience of acceleration of history.150 although initially secularizing the orientations of eschatology, the modern experience of increased haste thus has two separate, immanent sources, related to concrete political projects, on the one hand, and industrial and social developments, on the other.

this is the way Koselleck sees the issue in two late articles on acceleration and secularization. From thucydides to modernity, acceleration is, first, con-nected to political crises, instability, and civil war; second, clocks, railways, and the telegraph demarcate human time from the time of nature.151 Rather than “secularization” (Verweltlichung), the change brought about by these immanent factors, Koselleck posits, should be called “temporalization” (Verzeitlichung.)152 there is thus, first, a political experience of acceleration, brought about by the French Revolution, in which the original christian expectation is first “enriched by utopianism”; and, second, a nonpolitical experience, based on accelerated technological and economical progress.153 the formal temporal structure remains intact, and the apocalypse can therefore still serve as a metaphor in the industrial era.154 In another context, Koselleck in a parallel fashion notes that theological and prophetic interpretations of time do not vanish completely with the emer-gence of the new temporal horizon, and that their “further use or metaphorical reoccupation [metaphorische Umbe setzung] in the industrial and technical era needs further research.”155 as close as these formulations are to Blumenberg’s language, “reoccupation” here refers to reappropriation of categories, and the term does not invoke the Blumenbergian framework of epochal dynamics.

In fact, while making sporadic references to Blumenberg’s concept of “epochal threshold,”156 Koselleck still rejects the criticism of secularization in these mature essays: the “reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of the goal-orientation outside history into one within history,” he posits, remains “an undeniable process” despite Blu-

150. Koselleck, “geschichtliche prognose in lorenz v. Steins Schrift zur preußischen Verfassung” [1965], in VZ, 87; Reinhart Koselleck, “historische Kriterien des neuzeitlichen Revolutionsbegriffs” [1969], in VZ, 77.

151. Reinhart Koselleck, “gibt es eine Beschleunigung der geschichte?” [1976], in Zeitschichten: Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003) [hereafter Zeitschichten], 153-160 and 167.

152. Reinhart Koselleck, “zeitverkürzung und Beschleunigung: eine Studie zur Säkularisation” [1985], in Zeitschichten, 183.

153. Koselleck, “gibt es eine Beschleunigung,” 171; Koselleck, “zeitverkürzung,” 196-199.154. Koselleck, “gibt es eine Beschleunigung,” 153 and 174.155. Koselleck, “’Neuzeit’,” 338.156. Ibid., 317.

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menberg’s criticism.157 three points merit attention in this perplexing passage. First, Koselleck denies the critical force of Blumenberg’s note on the essential difference between transcendental and immanent expectations: for him, the dif-ference does not discredit the notion of secularization, but rather secularization is a process in which precisely such a change from transcendence to immanence takes place, as was also argued by löwith in his reply.158 Importantly, for a conceptual historian, this immanentization is primarily reflected in concepts and takes place by means of them. For instance, the Biblical passages concern-ing god’s ability to accelerate time are later interpreted as metaphors for man’s ability to accelerate historical progress, and in this sense it is “partly justified” to speak of the “secularization” (Verweltlichung) of christian goals.159 Seculariza-tion is here a historical hypothesis regarding the origins of concepts and “formal analogies” such as that between eschatology and the task of accelerating history, as spelled out by Robespierre.160 In this relativized sense, secularization is unde-niable, as far as some concepts and analogies are concerned.

Second, the wording, again, suggests the interpretation of reoccupation as reappropriation of categories, on the one hand, and as absorption and continu-ity, on the other. Interpreted in this way, “reoccupation” is compatible with the general understanding of secularization as continuous influence and maintenance of a tradition. the “reoccupation [Umbesetzung] of the goal-orientation outside history into one within history” is here, pace Blumenberg, synonymous with the “transformation [Transformation] of immediate apocalyptic expectation into an accelerated hope of the future.”161 the modern experience of acceleration, how-ever, is a product of secularization only in the limited sense of “taking over the christian heritage.”162

third, like Schmitt, Koselleck also speaks as if Blumenberg had criticized reoccupations—a telling mistake that löwith never made. as Blumenberg quite clearly demarcates “reoccupation” from “transposition” and unequivocally pleads for the interpretive power of the former, it is unlikely that Koselleck could have simply missed or misunderstood the opposition. Neither is this necessarily a hostile attempt to counter the supposed ideological-political aggression in Blu-menberg’s thought, as was the case in Schmitt’s reply. For a thinker as Schmit-tian—in the intellectual, not the pejorative political sense—as Koselleck was, it is simply natural to interpret the category in this way. In Koselleck’s usage, reoccupation and secularization are no longer counter-concepts but compatible categories. although ostensibly holding onto the Blumenbergian vocabulary, Koselleck thus in fact “reoccupies” the notion of reoccupation and puts it into the service of the defense of a secularization hypothesis, no matter how partial, tentative, and formal.

157. Koselleck, “zeitverkürzung,” 193, n. 28.158. Karl löwith, “Besprechung des Buches Die Legitimität der Neuzeit von hans Blumenberg”

[1968], in Sämtliche Schriften 2: Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen: Zur Kritik der Geschichtsphil-osophie (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1983), 456.

159. Koselleck, “zeitverkürzung,” 190.160. Koselleck, “gibt es eine Beschleunigung,” 173.161. Koselleck, “zeitverkürzung,” 190.162. Koselleck, “zeitverkürzung,” 195.

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IX. coNclUSIoN

the category of secularization encapsulates some of the most persistent problems of the modern understanding of history and politics. Utilizing its elucidatory force, combined with that of “reoccupation,” the present article suggests a pri-marily political-theoretical and conflict-oriented reading of Schmitt’s response to Blumenberg. the two philosophers speak largely past each other, but in an illuminating way. Blumenberg attempts to catch Schmitt assuming substantial continuities, but instead finds himself faced with the counter-charge of political hypocrisy. Schmitt’s answer to Blumenberg’s question of whether mere struc-tural analogies justify the notion of “political theology” is affirmative.163 In his defense of the doctrine, Schmitt seizes Blumenberg’s technical term of “reoc-cupation” and reinterprets it alternately as “absorption,” “reappropriation,” and “revaluation.”

Koselleck never employs the term “political theology,” but he considers the “formal analogy”164 between eschatology and progress enough to justify the notion of “secularization,” regardless of Blumenberg’s criticism. Koselleck adheres to the secularization thesis largely under the influence of löwith and quite independently of the Schmittian polemics. however, in doing this, he engages with the particular concept of reoccupation in the manner of Schmitt: by reinterpreting it as continuous “absorption” of elements, “reappropriation” of categories, and their “revaluation” or “reloading.” the analysis of “reoccupation” thus highlights a Schmittian residue in Koselleck’s thought. Further, the parallel reading of Schmitt’s and Koselleck’s narratives indicates that the compound of secularization and reoccupation has a systematic role for both thinkers. Secular-ization is intimately connected to the original political act of pacification and to its reversal in modernity as secular conflict potential is unleashed. Secularization thus has an intrinsic relation to conflict.

In contrast to his early work, where, following löwith, Koselleck assumes secularization as common knowledge, he later relativizes it into a more restricted research hypothesis. In the late essays on secularization, Koselleck primarily discusses scientific and technical progress and neglects moral, social, and politi-cal progress that are paradigmatic for the original idea of the temporalization of history and concepts as it unfolds from the Schmittian narrative. thereby the connection between secularization and conflict is loosened. to the extent that he abandons his early pessimism in the Bundesrepublik, Koselleck can afford to move beyond the crisis orientation inherent in his understanding of conceptual contestation. In his theorizing on history and time, he takes the distant observa-tional position of a historian by engaging with criticism of ideologies and the formal analysis of temporal structures. crisis and eschatology become objects

163. Blumenberg, Legitimität (1996), 105; Schmitt to Blumenberg, october 20, 1974, in Blumen-berg–Schmitt, Briefwechsel, 120.

164. Koselleck, “gibt es eine Beschleunigung,” 173.

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of conceptual research, while conflict, together with the opposition of friend and enemy, turns into a permanent metahistorical category, purely formal and structural.

one more such formal means of analysis is the idea of concepts as reoccupi-able and reloadable carriers for heterogeneous intellectual aims. We should not, however, too quickly assume that by formalizing Schmittian categories Koselleck gains distance from his early Schmittianism: several of Schmitt’s categories were self-declaredly formal to begin with, and even formalized Schmittianism is still Schmittianism, as long as the term is understood as describing an intellectual posi-tion and mode of analysis rather than as a reproach regarding supposedly political implications. I believe the Schmittian residue in Koselleck’s reading of secular-ization and reoccupation effectively prevents him from adopting Blumenberg’s model of the reoccupation of functional positions that, after all, would fit accu-rately with Koselleck’s basic intention of showing the significant originality of the modern experience of time and politics. this implicit tension is a remarkable potential factor behind Koselleck’s reserved attitude toward Blumenberg’s proj-ects despite a significant overlap between conceptual history and metaphorology.

University of Helsinki, Finland

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