ABSTRACT

The deficit of direct political excess is believed to be counterbalanced by a moral excess that also encompasses the legal, creating a veritable short-circuit between the sacralisation of the economic and the ethicalisation of regulations. If political theology replaces the “theological” with the “political”, legal theology replaces the “political” with the “moralised legal”. In this moralisation, humanitarianism plays a decisive role. Great political visions are also fed by pre-political contents and general visions filtered through philosophy, art, and the religious cultures themselves. Political theology today appears as a simulacrum. It does not provide political answers, but surrogates of verticality and security. The political theology of symbolic representation and of the katechon which persisted under the radar have now re-emerged in terms of challenges and needs, but these are unproductive, generating symptoms, compensations, and ghosts, but not new order.