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The ‘Theological Nihilism’ of Friedrich Gogarten. On a Context in Karl Löwith’s Critique of Carl Schmitt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Hjalmar Falk*
Affiliation:
Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, Faculty of Arts, University of Gothenburg, PO Box 200, SE 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden. E-mail: hjalmar.falk@lir.gu.se

Abstract

This essay discusses the philosopher Karl Löwith’s critique of the jurist Carl Schmitt and the theologian Friedrich Gogarten. My aim is twofold: first, I want to reconstruct Löwith’s thesis in his 1935 article on Schmitt’s ‘occasional decisionism’ (updated to include a critique of Gogarten in 1960), together with a reading of some central texts by Schmitt and Gogarten; second, I want to raise some critical points regarding Löwith’s claims through these readings. While I agree with Löwith that aspects of Schmitt’s and Gogarten’s thought helped hastening the nihilistic tendencies they themselves claimed to counter, I believe that his diagnosis of their decisionism as nihilism misses important nuances in their work, nuances crucial to the problematization, historicization and philosophical analysis of nihilism. Ultimately, I find that the main point of contestation between Löwith and Schmitt/Gogarten is not whether the latter two affirm modern meaninglessness, but rather whether history can and should be invested with meaning in the first place.

Type
Focus: Nihilism
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2014 

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References

References and Notes

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