Description
Recent explorations of the political theology of the international have largely unfolded at the level of the history of ideas (Molloy 2017; Bain 2020). To the extent that this focus reinforces the reductive notion of religion and theology as pertaining to the level of belief, it fails to fully capture how modern secular international political thought and practice is intertwined with its purported, religious other. This paper explores the thought of a key critic of political theology, Hans Blumenberg, whose secularization narrative has been central to political theological discussions beyond IR. Blumenberg is an important figure for this paper because he is a critic who, interestingly, recognizes the importance of attention to the level of embodiment rather than simply to the ideational level. The paper flags the important, albeit recessed, theme of “residual needs” in Hans Blumenberg’s thought while also highlighting the problems arising from his acknowledgment of the non-cognitive dimension. A better understanding of the merits and limits of Blumenberg’s account serves to identify a direction which the political theological conversation in IR would be wise to follow, one which might also entail the recovery and adaptation of certain long-downplayed themes in the thought of certain past IR figures.
