ABSTRACT
The separation of work and speech excludes a large part of humanity from the politics and poetics of suffering and resistance that are more enduring than its ideological misadventures. This chapter argues that Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative must be read in terms of the political theology of The Sermon on the Mount. Ethical reason without enabling civic institutions grounded in a non- sacrificial logic is soon starved of any goodness in this world. Whilst Kant’s rejection of ‘particular duties’ cuts us off from natural determinism, it does so at the price of lifting our anchor in the life-world. The Law’s law is its sovereign power over bare life exercised in death and exile. Crime and willed evil are rare, even rarer perhaps than good deeds; according to Jesus which plays no role whatsoever in life on earth, and the Last Judgment is not characterized by forgiveness but by just retribution.
