Jan Assmann and the Theologization of the Political

doi:10.1558/poth.vl2i4.511 Political Theology (online) ISSN 1473-1719

JAN ASSMANN AND THE THEOLOGIZATION OF THE POLITICAL

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins1 Graduate Department of History

Fayerweather Hall 413 1180 Amsterdam Ave. Mail Code 2527 Columbia University New York, NY 10027-7039 USA dsj2110@columbia.edu ABSTRACT

This paper focuses in part on Jan Assmann's interpretation and refutation of Carl Schmitt's very well-known secularization theory that all significant modern concepts of the state are secularized theological notions. It will be demonstrated that Assmann attempts to counter Schmitt's conception of modern secularization by suggesting that Mosaic monotheism inaugurated a revolution by theologizing the political. By briefly exploring Assmann's inter-pretation of Egyptian religion, it will be argued that a conception of the politi-cal as distinct from the theologipoliti-cal characterized the politipoliti-cal form of ancient Egypt. This leads to a discussion of Assmann's argument that Schmitt's con-ception of the friend/enemy distinction should be understood as an aberration of the political form of ancient Egypt and therefore viewed as a category of political illegitimacy. In order to illustrate this, attention will first be drawn to Assmann's distinction between primary and secondary religion. This is fol-lowed by a discussion of Assmann's notion of the structural transform of the political by theology, which then moves specifically into his argument for the intellectual origins of Schmitt's concept of the political. It will be attempted throughout this paper to bring conceptual clarification to Assmann's notion of theologization by relating it to the question of political theology currently taking place in France and the English-speaking world. Towards the end I offer a number of criticisms of Assmann's notion of theologization.

Keywords: Jan Assmann; monotheism; Mosaic distinction; Carl Schmitt;

secularization; theologization.

1. Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins is a Richard Hofstadter faculty fellow in the history department at Columbia University in the City of N e w York. He focuses on modern Euro-pean intellectual history, and is specifically interested in the history of political philosophy in Germany and France during the twentieth century.

Jan Assmann is certainly one of the most wide-ranging and ambitious theorists of religion writing today. Assmann's groundbreaking work on the history of Egyptian religion, his understanding of biblical monotheism as the defining psycho-historical event of the West, and his call for a new perspective on Moses have all contributed to pushing him into the center of much scholarly debate and inquiry.2 Assmann has played a significant role in reviving interest in Freud's Moses and Monotheism and he is perhaps best known in the States for his writings on cultural memory. Though his work has made him famous in Europe, his American reception has lagged behind as his works continue to be translated in English.3

This paper focuses in part on Assmann's interpretation and refutation of Carl Schmitt's very well-known secularization theory that all significant modern concepts of the state are secularized theological notions. Assmann attempts to counter Schmitt's conception of modern secularization by suggesting that Mosaic monotheism inaugurated a revolution by theolo-gizing the political.

By briefly exploring Assmann's interpretation of Egyptian religion, it will be argued that a conception of the political as distinct from the theological characterized the political form of ancient Egypt. This leads to a discussion of Assmann's argument that Schmitt's conception of the friend/enemy distinction should be understood as an aberration of the political form of ancient Egypt and therefore viewed as a category of politi-cal illegitimacy. In order to illustrate this, attention will first be drawn to Assmann's distinction between primary and secondary religion. This is followed by a discussion of Assmann's notion of the structural transform of the political by theology, which then moves specifically into his argu-ment for the intellectual origins of Schmitt's concept of the political. It will be attempted throughout this paper to bring conceptual clarification to Assmann's notion of theologization by relating it to contemporary 2. This debate has primarily taken place in Germany where his book Moses the

Egyp-tian was met with fierce criticism, especially by German theologians. For reactions to the

book see Politsche Theologie, ed. Jürgen Manemann, Band 4 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2002); Klaus Muller, "Gewalt und Wahrheit: Zu Jan Assmanns Monotheismuskritik," in Das Gewalt

Potential des Monotheismus und der dreieine Gott, ed. Peter Walter (Freiberg: Herder, 2005),

74-83; Peter Schäfer, "Das jüdische Monopol. Jan Assmann und der Monotheismus,"

Süd-deutsche Zeitung, August 8,2004; Jan Assmann, Die Mosaische Unterscheidung. Oder der Preis des Monotheismus (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003), 145-273.

3. The follow-up book to Assmann's Moses the Egyptian entitled in German, Die

Mosaische Unterscheidung: Oder der Preis des Monotheismus (The Mosaic Distinction: Or the

Price of Monotheism) has recently appeared in English translation and basically constitutes a response to the German critical reception of Moses the Egyptian, which interestingly first appeared in English before its German publication. See Jan Assmann, The Price of

Monothe-ism, trans. Robert Savage (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

discussions in political theology and philosophy currently taking place in France and the English-speaking world. This paper concludes by putting forward a number of criticisms of theologization.

Assmann's book on political theology in Ancient Egypt, Israel and Europe, entitled Herrschaft und Heil, was published in the year 2000.4 That it remains without English translation is indeed unfortunate since it contains some of the most original and creative work written on the subject of political theology in the last decade. Its introduction provides a brief and useful his-torical overview of political theology from Marcus Varrò to Claude Lefort. This is followed by Assmann's objective to accomplish nothing less than the undoing of Carl Schmitt's famous dictum that all significant concepts of modern state theory are secularized theological concepts. What did Schmitt specifically mean by this assertion? Schmitt understood the political to be structured according to a monotheistic and omnipotent conception of God. As the Schmitt scholar György Geréby explains:

The political is structured analogically to theology, especially to monothe-ism. The decision about the law is analogous to the creatio ex nihilo. The lawgiver is analogous to the omnipotent deity. The state of emergency, the exceptional case, corresponds to the concept of the miracle.5

Assmann believes that this view of God, which forms the basis of Schmitt's secularization thesis, is the product of the biblical conception of mosaic monotheism, or what he describes as the Mosaic distinction. In order to understand the revolutionary political significance of the Mosaic distinc-tion it is first necessary to grasp that Ancient Egypt established a political order entirely this-worldly, immanent, and legitimated through visible religious representations. The Mosaic distinction initiated a political revolution by associating such representations with idolatry. The biblical figure of Moses inaugurates a new conception of the political by rooting the legitimacy of political order onto a non-worldly, transcendent, and non-representable reality. Assmann describes the shift from political order being secured by worldly representations in Egypt to political legitimacy being derived from a monotheistic God that refuses all representations as theologization. Assmann states this thesis as follows:

It will be shown, that the process of secularization also has an opposite direction. I call this process theologization and would like to demonstrate it by means of the theological becoming central political concepts, just like Carl

4. Jan Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil. Politische Theologie in Altägypten, Israel und Europe (München: Fischer Verlag, 2000). Herrschaft and Heil in this instance designates politics (Herrschaft) and theology (Heil).

5. György Geréby, "Political Theology versus Theological Politics: Erik Peterson and Carl Schmitt," New German Critique 35, no. 10 (Fall 2008): 12.

Schmitt wanted to demonstrate the process of secularization by means of the political becoming central theological concepts. One could also rewrite the Schmittian project of political theology: The birth of the political or better state theory—out of the spirit of theology. I will turn the tables and deal with the birth of religion out of the spirit of the political.6

In something of a polemic manner, Assmann, arguing in the vein of Schmitt but with cross-purposes, is suggesting that theologization means in principle that there are no legitimate theological-political concepts. Alois Halbmayr, one of Assmann's German critics, remarks that this actu-ally entails that theological concepts "before they became theological con-cepts were political concon-cepts and even as theological concon-cepts they are still political."7 It is in this manner that Assmann attempts to counter Schmitt not by appealing to the legitimacy of modernity,8 but the illegitimacy of political theology by using Schmitt against himself.9

6. "Es soll gezeigt werden, daß der Prozeß der Säkularisierung auch eine Gegen-Richtung hat. Diesen Prozeß nenne ich »Theologisierung« und möchte ihn anhand des Theologischwerdens zentraler politischer Begriffe nachweisen, genauso wie Carl Schmitt den Prozeß der Säkularisierung anhand des Politischwerdens zentraler theologischer Beg-riffe. Das Schmittsche Projekt der PolitsichenTheologie könnte man auch überschreiben: »Die Geburt desPolitischen—oder besser: des Staatsrechts—aus dem Geist der Theologie«. Ich werde den Spieß umdrehen und von der »Geburt der Religion aus dem Geist des Poli-tischen« handeln." Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 29. All translations are mine unless other-wise noted.

7. "Bevor sie also theologische Begriffe wurden, waren sie politische Begriffe, und selbst als theologische Begriffe sind sie immer noch politisch." Alois Halbmayr, "Mono-theismus als theologisch-politisches Problem: Kommentare," Politsche Theologie, ed. Jürgen Manemann Band 4 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2002), 135.

8. This of course is a reference to Hans Blumenberg, who nevertheless argues that Schmitt's political theology was itself a product of a secularized eschatology carried out as the ancient Church became more institutionalized. See Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy

of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 37-51.

9. Clearly Assmann's acceptance of Schmitt's conception of modernity is inseparable from his critique of biblical monotheism. The connection of Schmitt to the Mosaic dis-tinction is confirmed by Assmann's acknowledged acceptance of Heinrich Meier's thesis of Schmitt being a political theologian, especially with the revelation of Schmitt's

Glos-sarium. In his book on Carl Schmitt and the "Jewish Question," Raphael Gross singles out

Assmann's acceptance of Schmitt's appraisal of political modernity as entirely problem-atic. Gross condemns Assmann's transfer "of an entire spectrum of Schmittian positions intertwined with the jurist's Nazi and anti-Semitic engagement." See Raphael Gross, Carl

Schmitt and the Jews: The "Jewish Question, " the Holocaust, and German Legal Theory, trans. Joel

Golb (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 240. As Christian J. Emden in his review of Gross's book explains, "This remark refers in particular to Assmann's theory of cultural memory, which to a considerable extent rests on the notion that social groups seek to construct such cultural memory in order to stabilize their own identity. For Gross, however, this argument ultimately supports the notion of the 'homogeneity of cultures and

As Geréby explains, Schmitt's conception of secularization leaves itself vulnerable to this specific type of argument:

Schmitt has elaborated a "theology" of the secular world, conceiving of poli-tics as an immanentist theology in its own right. His argument, however, can cut two ways: from the idea that politics is a consequence of the imma-nentist theology of the secular, immanent political order, it follows that it might not be theology that changes into politics but politics that forms the-ology and makes it conform to its own shape. Modern politics may be an heir to theology, but this might be only an instance of theology bluntly dis-playing its derivation from politics.10

Nevertheless, on Assmann's own terms, what does it mean to say that theological concepts are really political concepts? The answer to this question is inseparable from Assmann's theory of religion and politics in ancient Egypt.

Understanding Assmann's rigorous conception of religion and politics in ancient Egypt is essential to accessing his notion of theologization. To reiterate, Assmann believes that the "theologization of the political had just as fundamentally revolutionized the world of its time, as the secularization of the theological had in the modern age."11 This suggests that Assmann understands the concept of the political in ancient Egypt to be a category that in some way is separable from the question of religion. Assmann uses a number of terms to describe this contrast, but conceptually it is most easily grasped through the notions of primary and secondary religion:

We must distinguish between religion, which belongs to the basic condi-tions of human existence, and theology, which came into being as a reflex-ive and emerging critical form of true worship in Israel and elsewhere over other religions. Theology in this sense is the hallmark of secondary religion. The concept, "emergence of theology" does not refer to the emergence of religion in general, but instead to the emergence oí secondary [emphasis his] reflexive and exclusive religion.12

nations' and, as such, echoes anti-Semitic conceptions of a German Volk." See Christian J. Emden, "How to Fall into Carl Schmitt's Trap," Η-Net Reviews, July 2009.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24782.

10. Geréby, "Political Theology versus Theological Politics," 12.

11. "»Theologisierung« des Politischen hat die damalige welt, ebenso fundamental rev-olutionert wie in der Neuzeit die Säkularisierung des Theologischen." Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 30. Assmann's thought on the theologization of the political are reminiscent of Marcel Gauchet's The Disenchantment of the World, which suggests that the emergence of monotheism generated the initial first stage of religion's decay.

12. "Wir müssen also unterscheiden zwischen Religion, die zu den Grundbedin-gungen des menschlichen Daseins gehört, und Theologie, die als eine reflexiv gewordene und sich über andere Religionen kritisch erhebende Form der wahren Gottesverehrung in Israel und anderswo entsteht. Theologie in diesem Sinne ist das Kennzeichen sekundärer

A Heideggarian tone is quite apparent in Assmann's distinction between primary and secondary religion. For Assmann, primary religion is a non-reflexive and first-order category that defines the basic presuppositions of everyday existence. It speaks of the day-to-day conditions by which life is lived and the normalities and regularities of existence that are simply assumed as reliable. Secondary religion emerges in the place where the distinction established between true and false is introduced in the context of religion. It questions the rules and norms that primary religion takes for granted.

Based on the distinction between primary and secondary religion, how did the Mosaic distinction carry out a political revolution that defines the current political form of the West? What is clear is that Assmann's exegetical analysis of Egyptian texts has led him to the conclusion that Ancient Egypt possessed, to a qualified degree, a secular conception of political order. Assmann's argument for this is based on a subtle distinction he makes between a broad and narrow conception of religion in Egypt. According to Assmann, the broad conception of religion in Egypt encompassed society at large. Assmann, reworking terminology developed by the German soci-ologist of religion Thomas Luckmann, describes the broad conception of religion as invisible religion. "Invisible religion is responsible for a view of the world as a whole and is not capable of being institutionalized... invisible religion determines the relationship of the individual to society and the world."13 This is contrasted with visible religion, which speaks of the institutionalization of religious life and practices. Invisible religion "articulates a space-time schema overrarching and exceeding the empirical space-time coordinates in which concrete activities and events occur."14 Visible religions speak of empirically analyzable religious activities and practices such as festivals and ceremonies.

For the sake of conceptual clarification it will be useful to observe that Assmann's distinction between visible and invisible religion structurally

Religion." Jan Assmann, "Monotheismus," Politische Theologie 4 (2002): 123-24. It is inter-esting that in Herrschaft und Heil Assmann does not use the term theology to distinguish secondary from primarily religion but simply to contrast one form of religion with another. Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 30-31. Assmann acknowledges the German theologian Theo Sundermeier for this distinction. In Was ist Religion, however, Sundermeier seems to reserve primary religions only for small traditional societies: Theo Sundermeier, Was ist Religion (München: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher, 1999).

13. Jan Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 33. For the idea of invisible religion see Thomas Luckman, The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society (New York: Mac-millan, 1967).

14. Fred Dallmayr, "Postmetaphysics and Democracy," Political Theory 21, no. 1 (Feb-ruary 1993): 112.

parallels what the contemporary French political theorist Claude Lefort describes as the difference between the political (le politique) versus poli-tics (la politique).15 The political for Lefort is analogous to what Assmann

describes as invisible religion. It speaks of the overarching symbolic framework that characterizes the form and shape of a given society. As Charles Taylor notes, "Within this outlook, what constitutes a society as such is the metaphysical order it embodies. People act within a framework which is there prior to and independent of their action."16 Taylor speaks of this as the social imaginary that forms the background conditions for how a society perceives of its day-to-day existence. According to Lefort, the political is concerned with how the appearances behind the classifica-tions of politics come to appear. Assmann's conception of visible religion parallels Lefort's conception of politics. Lefort associates "politics" with the social sciences, namely such disciplines as political science or politi-cal sociology. In this sense politics, like Assmann's conception of visible religion, is understood as secondary discourse in contrast to the political which is seen as society's grounding dimension.

Following Merleau-Ponty, the distinction between the political and politics speaks of the relationship between figure and ground. Politics arise from a differentiation within the political form of society. As Marcel Gauchet, a former student of Lefort's, explains, "the political constitutes the most encompassing level of the organization [of society], not a subterranean level, but veiled in the visible."17 What is veiled in the visible is the very condition that gives rise to its possibility, namely the invisible or political form that generates it. Put differently, politics should be understood as an objective expression or quasi-representation of the primal dimensionality of the social imaginary, to use Taylor's language. As Lefort remarks, "Political science emerges from a desire to objectify, and forgets that no elements, no elementary structures, no entities (classes or segments of classes), no economic or technical determinations, and no dimensions of social space exist until they have been given a form."18 This means that politics and the political are not

15. For an analysis of this distinction in the work of Lefort and as it relates to the ques-tion of political theology, see my "Claude Lefort and the Illegitimacy of Modernity, "Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 10, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 102-17.

16. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 192.

17. Quoted in Warren Breckman, "Democracy between Disenchantment and Politi-cal Theology: French Post-Marxism and the Return of Religion," New German Critique 94 (Winter 2005): 87.

18. Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Minnesota, M N : University of Min-nesota Press, 1989), 11.

two separate realms but rather they are chiasmatically intertwined. What appears as politics is an extraction and therefore quasi-representation of the social imaginary. Politics should be understood as a simulacra of the political form that engenders it.

This brief foray into Lefort's conception of the political and politics clarifies Assmann's understanding of invisible and visible religion. In particular Assmann associates invisible religion with what the Egyptians described as maat.

Maat signifies the principle of a universal harmony that manifests itself in

cosmos as order and in the world of human beings as justice. Such concepts exist also in other cultures to describe the totality of meaningful order on the highest plane of abstraction. Examples are the Greek concept kosmos, the Indian dharma, and the Chinese tao}9

Maat (abstract principle of universal harmony) on earth is facilitated and

manifested into two opposing culture realms of law and religion. Paradoxi-cally, "these are the spheres in which maat—which is otherwise a higher, invisible form and as such is not capable of being institutionalized—is made visible."20 Maat veiled in the visible (the domestic) divides itself into

the spheres of religion and law that facilitate order. Visible religion in Egypt involves engagement in worship, sacrifices, offering and the observance of festivals. This is religion narrowly defined and must be contrasted with the domestic sphere of social and legal order which is also instantiated by maat yet is distinct from religious practices. The social and legal order involves adhering to the law, administering justice and providing welfare for the poor. In other words, maat accounts for and legitimates both legal and religious activities, but these spheres do not institutionally overlap and reside in two distinct jurisdictions. This leads to Assmann's interest-ing conclusion that a form of secularism was present in Egyptian religion and politics:

The "moral and political cosmos" is contrasted with the "religious cosmos" as something else, something that is not religion in the narrower sense. This sphere too has a religious foundation, but it has nothing to do with placating the gods, with cults, theology, and the priesthood. Instead it forms its own "sub-universe of meaning"... This, incidentally teaches us that in Egypt the law was not a sacred institution, as it was in Israel, nor was it a medium to "satisfy the gods." On the contrary, the law was kept outside the sphere of religion

proper [italics mine], which was exclusively concerned with communicating

with the divine.21

19. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 33. 20. Ibid., 34.

21. Jan Assmann, Of God and gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism (Madison, CT: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 11.

With the conceptual framework in mind, an attempt can be made to give a proper account of Assmann's understanding of theologization. It specifically takes place when the distinction between the spheres of law and religions are merged into one. When this occurs a secondary religion arises that pushes back the visible basis for political order into the invisible in which justice is now assimilated into a relationship with the divine. Theologization takes place "when concepts that had previously belonged in the sphere of justice are now inscribed theologically in this process of de-differentiation."22 Out of the inscription of the political within the theological emerges the birth of a lawgiving deity.23

What is important here to grasp is that the semantic universe of sec-ondary religion comes into existence by a stark break with the primary religion.24 In this sense secondary religion is understood by Assmann as a counter-religion that defines itself in opposition against the primary reli-gion it rejects. The tenor of Egyptian relireli-gion is inclusivity, integration, compatibility, reciprocity and plurality. These notions are the product of a cosmotheistic25 worldview by which the divine does not stand in opposi-tion between the world, human beings or society, but instead constitutes a principle that permeates and arranges them. This is a world of continually developing synergistic processes. The sources of legitimacy that facilitate these processes are the pantheon of deities that represent and maintain political and religious order in the world. As Assmann states:

In the political-religious dimension, a polytheistic world structured the political arrangement of society. It determined the membership of each to a city, festival and religious community. It decided the relationship of settle-ments to states, states to districts and districts to residency and defined in this manner the political identity of the land and all of its subdivisions down to the individual citizen.26

22. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 36.

23. "[Monotheism] had made justice for the first time into a direct concern of God's. The world until this point had not known a lawgiving God." "er hat sie erstmals zur unmit-telbaren Sache Gottes gemacht. Einen gesetzgebenden Gott hatte die Welt bis dahin nicht gekannt." Assmann, Mosaische Unterscheidung, 75.

24. Assmann's multiple dualistic pairings can lead to confusion. It appears that all pri-mary and secondary religions are visible but not all visible religions are secondary religions. A secondary religion is defined as a counter-religion.

25. For a philosophical engagement with Assmann's notion of cosmotheism see Jürgen Werbik, "Absolutistsicher Eingottglaube? Befreiende Vielfalt des Polytheismus," in Ist der Glaube Feind der Freiheit?: Die neue Debatte um den Monotheismus, ed. Thomas Söding

(Breisgau: Herder, 2003), 142-75.

26. "In der politisch-kultischen Dimension strukturiert eine Götterwelt die politische Struktur der Gesellschaft,bestimmt die Zugehörigkeit eines jeden zu einer Stadt-, Fest-und Kult-gemeinschaft, bestimmt das Verhälnis der Siedlungen zu den Städten, der Städte

In Moses the Egyptian Assmann argues that cosmotheism not only ordered society down to the lowest sum of its parts, but also allowed for the "ecumen" of interconnected nations. This affirms that not the names or shapes of deities, but their similar functions allowed for their trans-lation between disparate cultures. "Thus they functioned as a means of intercultural translatability. The gods were international because they were cosmic. The different people worshiped different gods, but nobody contested the reality of foreign gods and the legitimacy of foreign forms of worship."27 Translation is made possible by a commensurability of func-tion that allows for an overlapping consensus amongst the gods. The basic premises of this commensurability are guaranteed by cosmotheism. This would suggest that ancient Egyptian religion interestingly possessed much in common with John Rawls's political liberalism. Rawls's notion of an overlapping consensus is made possible by "certain fundamental intui-tive ideas implicit in the political culture of a democratic society."28 This is to affirm that contained within the various comprehensive doctrines of democratic societies are functional equivalents than can be translated into a public conception of reason allowing for an overlapping consen-sus. An overlapping consensus is derived from divergent comprehensive doctrines operating within the restraints of a democratic culture. Vis-à-vis Assmann, if translation in primary religion is guaranteed by the premises of cosmotheism then translation in the Rawlsian sense is guaranteed by the premises of a democratic culture allowing for an overlapping consensus. Functional equivalents, translation and even the idea of a romantic poly-theism are all notions that contemporary political theorists have espoused that share a deep affinity with the tenor of Assmann's project.29

The Mosaic distinction derives its semantics from the rejection of Egypt. By juxtaposing Egypt with true religion it "cut the umbilical cord which connected [Moses'] people and his religious ideas to their cultural and natural context."30 Assmann describes this as semantic relocation by which the concepts and rhetoric of loyalty were transferred from the political to

zu den Gauen und der Gaue zur Residenz und definiert auf diese Weise die politische Iden-tität des Landes und aller seiner Untergliedergungen bis hinab zum einzelnen Bürger." Assmann, "Monotheismus," 124.

27. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 3.

28. John Rawls, "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus," New York

University Law Review 64, no. 2 (May 1989): 240.

29. For an example of romantic polytheism see Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism as Roman-tic Polytheism," in The Rival of Pragmatism, ed. Morris Dickstein (Durham, N C : Duke Uni-versity Press, 1998), 27.

30. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 209.

the divine sphere, where they acted as models between the relationship of god and man:

Relocation means that something is withdrawn from one sphere and trans-ferred to another. Thus, protection was no longer sought on the "mundane" plane, from kings and patrons, but on the divine plane, from a deity... It means the transfer of the political institutions of alliance, treaty and vas-seldom from the mundane sphere of politics to the transcendental sphere of religion. In Israel we are dealing with the "semiological divinization" or theologization of Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian, and especially Assyrian for-eign politics.31

This passage suggests that at the heart of semantic relocation is the emer-gence of political theology. The carrying out of this relocation is most clearly seen in the prohibition of images. Representations establish con-duits for the divine by which political and religious authority is legitimated. In this sense idols are sacraments which secure the gods real presence on earth. As such, "the state's most important task is to ensure divine pres-ence under the condition of divine abspres-ence, and thereby to maintain a symbiotic relationship between man, society and cosmos."32 Therefore, the prohibition against idols must be construed as a counter-politic that sets itself directly against the very core of Egyptian political authority. As such, Egypt offers not a false religion but a false politics.

The parallels between Israel as possessing a true politics versus Egypt as possessing a false politics demonstrates strong affinities with the explicit language of a certain strand of American post-liberal political theology. Exemplary of this is the theologian Stanley Hauerwas who portrays lib-eralism as offering a seductive "false politics" of the world that the true politics of the church must set itself against.33 Furthermore, Assmann's reading of the Exodus brings him very close to liberation theologians when he argues that freedom for Israel could only mean freedom from political oppression through divine deliverance: "Monotheism appears as a political movement of liberation from pharaonic oppression and as the foundation of an alternative way of life, where humans are not ruled by a state, but freely consent to enter an alliance with God and adopt the stipulations of divine law."34 From this angle, political authority is no longer represented, but rather is grounded by entering into a covenant with an unrepresentable

31. Jan Assmann, "Axial Breakthroughs and Semantic Relocations in Ancient Egypt and Israel," in Religion and Politics: Cultural Perspectives, ed. Bernhard Giesen (London: Brill Academic, 2005), 44, 45.

32. Ibid., 47.

33. See, in particular, Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1997).

and transcendent God. The result is a world made strange by an inversion in which the discourse of incommensurability now becomes essential-ized in the concept of the political on account of theology. On this basis Assmann is able to argue that as a result of the prohibition against idols the discourse between true and false religion first emerges since loyalty to the one true God affirms not denying the existence of other deities, but denying loyalty and allegiance to a false politic.35

In an article entitled, "Monotheismus," Assmann asks the question what this distinction has meant for the history of political theology. This question is raised in light of Assmann's assertion that semantic reloca-tion is sufficient but does not necessitate the potential for violence. The propensity towards violence arises not from the idea of the One God nor with distinction between truth and untruth. It instead is linked with the persecution of untruth when the distinction between true and false is conflated between "us" and "them" and thus construed in terms of friends and enemies. It is at this juncture that he suggests Carl Schmitt's conception of friends and enemies can be accounted for within the semantic field of the Mosaic distinction, and specifically the ban on images:

Is there a correlation between the distinction of true and false and that between friends and enemies? This relationship is obvious and connected with the prohibition of images. The prohibition of images directed the theo-logical distinction between truth and untruth, god and gods, into the politi-cal and interpreted it in the sense of friends and enemies. It defines who God's enemies are and where they stand. With the banning of images it is a matter of defining an enemy in light of the distinction between true and false.36

35. "The political meaning of monotheism in its early stage does not deny the exis-tence of other gods. On the contrary, without the exisexis-tence of other gods the request to stay faithful to the lord would be pointless." Assmann, "Axial Breakthroughs," 50. They are false not because they are non-existent but rather because they signify an oppressive political alternative. Of course this conception of the political is inseparable from a sharp distinction between God and the world. In Mosaische Unterscheidung, Assmann makes the interesting argument that Karl Barth's dialectic theology and its radical transcendence vis-à-vis the lib-eral Protestant culture of its day is analogous to the Mosaic distinction and Egyptian culture and religion. Mosaische Unterscheidung, 53.

36. "Gibt es einen Zusammenhang zwischen der Unterscheidung von wahr und falsch und derjenigen zwischen Freund and Feind? Dieser Zusammenhang liegt auf der Hand und verbindet sich mit dem Bilderverbot. Das Bilderverbot wendet die theologische Unterscheidung zwischen Wahrheit und Unwahrheit, Gott und Götzen, ins Politische und interpretiert sie im Sinne von Freund und Feind. Sie definiert, wer die Feinde Gottes sind und wo sie stehen. Beim Bilderverbot handelt es sich um eine Feindbestimmung im Licht der Unterscheidung von wahr und falsh." Assmann, "Monotheismus," 131.

What might present itself at this moment is one particular charge against Assmann suggesting that his argument is potentially anti-Semitic.37 From this angle the levelling of anti-Semitism at Assmann involves the claim that Judaism is ultimately responsible for establishing a turn not for the better, but for the worst by abolishing the golden age of primary religion. It seems Assmann has responded to this charge in a variety of ways. The following interaction focuses on two of his responses to this criticism.

Foremost, Assmann argues that of the three Abrahamitic religions, "Judaism is the only one that has never turned the implications of vio-lence and intolerance into historical reality precisely because it has rele-gated the final universalizing of truth to eschatology and not to history."38 In light of this statement, it should be asked how Assmann views the modern state of Israel. It is interesting that in Herrschaft und Heil Ass-mann suggests that the very identity of ancient Israel was predicated as being against the Egyptian state in a manner analogous to Pierre Clastres' notions of Société contre l'État?9 This could suggest that Assmann makes a direct link between the monotheistic revolution and a rejection of the state. Assmann further remarks that, though Judaism constitutes a cul-ture established fundamentally on difference historically, this distinction has not been predicated on a division between friends and enemies. Juda-ism draws and maintains this boundary in the form of self-exclusion. Self-exclusion necessitates no violence and is to be contrasted with Islam and Christianity that historically have not recognized a boundary of this nature. This leads to Assmann's conclusion regarding the specific link between counter-religion and Schmitt's political theology:

God is truth; the gods of others are lies. That is the theological basis of the distinction between friend and enemy. Only on this ground and in this semantic context has political theology actually become dangerous. The political theology of Carl Schmitt also stands in this tradition of revelational theology's propensity towards violence. Here lies, in my opinion, the actual "political problem" of monotheism.40

37. For Assmann's reaction to this charge, see Mosaische Unterscheidung, 25-26. 38. Assmann, God and gods, 111.

39. See Herrschaft und Heil, 49.

40. "Gott ist die Wahrheit, die Götter der anderen sind Lüge. Das ist die theolo-gische Basis der Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind. Erst auf diesem Boden und in diesem semantischen Rahmen ist die politische Theologie der Gewalt wirklich gefahrlich geworden. In dieser Tradition offenbarungstheologischer Gewaltbereitschaft steht auch noch die politische Theologie Carl Schmitts. Hier liegt m.E. das eigentlich »politische Problem« des Monotheismus." Monotheismus, 132. Assmann has responded in a number of other ways to this charge as well by suggesting that he interprets Moses not as a figure of history, whose existence is questionable, but rather as a figure of memory. Constructing how Moses is remembered is part of Assmann's project of mnemohistory, which "analyzes

Furthermore, Assmann suggests that one primary purpose of Moses the

Egyptian was its ecumenical intent.41 By interpreting Moses as an Egyptian, Assmann hoped to accomplish something like what the second temple Judaism scholar E. P. Sanders achieved by emphasizing the Jewishness of Saint Paul, namely the mitigation of traditional theological distinctions.42

the importance which a present ascribes to the past... The task of mnemohistory consists in analyzing the mythical elements in tradition and discovering their hidden agenda." Ass-mann, Moses the Egyptian, 11.

41. This is perhaps what separates the tone of Assmann's project from that of Regina Schwartz and Jonathen Kirsch's works on the connection between monotheism and vio-lence; see Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Case of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Jonathen Kirsch, God against the Gods: The History of War

between Monotheism and Polytheism (London: Penguin Press, 2005). The recent work of Peter

Sloterdijk on monotheism can also be read in this context: God's Zeal: The Battle of the Three

Monotheisms (New York: Polity Press, 2009). For the so-called "new debate" on religion and

monotheism that has arisen in Germany see the edited volume: Fragen nach dem einen Gott, ed. Gesine Palmer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). Assmann's Moses the Egyptian pro-vides a historiography of this debate starting from the seventeenth century up until his own work, with major consideration of Freud's Moses and Monotheism. See Moses the Egyptian, 55-167.

42. The similarities between Assmann and E. R Sanders' motivational concerns and comparative textual analysis are striking. Published in 1977, E. R Sanders' Paul and

Palestin-ian Judaism remains the pivotal event in post-World War II Pauline studies. Sander's book in

part initiated what the N e w Testament theologian James D. G. Dunn later described as the N e w Perspective on Paul. Undeniably, the N e w Perspective, as represented by Sanders, was motivated by the attempt to mitigate traditional binary interpretations of Paul, which made significant salvific distinctions between faith and works, law and grace, etc. that historically gave rise to anti-Semitism. At a level of scholarship that perhaps remains almost unrivaled in the English-speaking world today, Sanders' comparison of Palestinian literature from 200 BCE to 200 CE with Pauline literature concluded that election and salvation in Judaism is based on God's mercy and is not a human achievement. Sanders' argument is more com-plex than space allows, but the ultimate implication is that Paul understood in the context of the Judaism of his time actually embodies what is common to both Judaism and Christian-ity. The N e w Perspective on Paul is now directed at a variety of agendas, but what must be stressed here is its original concern with traditional Pauline scholarship's semantic potential for anti-Semitism and thus the need to reconsider it on exegetical grounds. It is in this light that Jan Assmann's call for a new perspective on Moses must be seen. In particular Assmann suggests that understanding Moses as an Egyptian parallels the N e w Perspective's emphasis on Paul as a Jew: "Paul the Jew embodies what is common to Judaism and Christianity. In the same way, Moses the Egyptian embodies what is imagined to be common to Ancient Egypt and Israel. Whereas Moses the Hebrew is the personification of confrontation and antagonism—between Israel = truth and Egypt = falsehood—Moses the Egyptian bridges this opposition... He personifies the positive importance of Egypt in the history of human-kind." Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 11. Assmann, in a manner similar to Sanders, provides detailed textual analysis of ancient Egyptian texts that suggests a form of monotheism that mitigates against untranslatable truth claims thus providing an alternative to a tragically lost

Assmann states that "monotheism derives its crucial semantic elements from a construction of the rejected other.. .it depends on the preservation of what it opposes for its own definition."43 It appears that the resources of primary religion are made available but veiled in secondary religion. Assmann's new perspective on Moses is an attempt to recall a cultural memory and thus an alternative tradition that remains present but in a theologized form. This "simultaneity makes it possible to identify with the forms of expression of a past going back thousands of years."44 This would suggest that Assmann appears to be advancing not simply a remembrance but rather a possible recovery of political legitimacy. By invoking an alter-native memory of the past, Assmann is attempting to revive an alteralter-native political tradition.

There are a number of difficulties with Assmann's conception of the theologization of the political. Foremost, Assmann's wholesale accep-tance of Schmitt's conception of political theology is problematic. In particular, by embracing Schmitt's conception of secularization he sets himself up for the very same charges that the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg levelled at Carl Schmitt's conception of history. In the Legitimacy of Modernity Blumenberg argued that "there were no real transformations of religious into worldly concepts in the areas where advocates of the secularization thesis saw them."45 His main argument suggested that the transposition of theological categories into secular ones was philosophically untenable. This is a consequence of secular-ization thesis's inability to produce in any satisfactory manner a dem-onstration of transformation in a substantialistic sense. Both Schmitt and Assmann's understanding of historical change posits an underlying substance that provides continuity in the underlying content of chang-ing ideas. This is most clearly represented in Assmann when he sug-gests that monotheism depends on the preservation of what it opposes for its own definition. This means that secondary religion is

indissolu-memory that nevertheless does not remain beyond the threshold of remembrance. What separates Assmann from the N e w Perspective on Paul is the ambitiousness of his project that sees the fate of the West as something like the tragic consequence of the biblical repre-sentation of Moses the Hebrew. What unites them is their attempt to uncover forgotten or overlooked traditions that call into question the narrowness of received tradition that have engendered anti-Semitism. It should be noted that Assmann does not describe his project as the "new perspective on Moses."

43. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian , 2 1 1 .

44. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 28. Assmann discusses the notion of the "theologizing of culture memory" in the same book. See ibid., 37-42.

45. Quoted in Jan-Werner Müller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European

bly bound up with primary religion.46 As such, Blumenberg's remarks concerning Schmitt's secularization theory apply to theologization as well: "the genuine substance that was secularized is wrapped up in what thus became worldly, and remains wrapped up in it."47

Unlike with Schmitt, however, this criticism of Assmann is the conse-quence of his imbibing the philosophical holism of the phenomenologi-cal tradition that does not allow him to make an ontologiphenomenologi-cal distinction between visible and invisible religion. Using the language of Merleau-Ponty, visible and invisible religion are not two separate realms but rather they are chiasmatically intertwined. As such, Assmann's understanding of theologization lends itself to conceiving of history as a totality of sub-stances and is entirely absent of a conception of alterity In this regards Blumenberg's critique of Schmitt is again valid for Blumenberg:

The world is not a constant whose reliability guarantees that in the historical process an original constitutive substance must come back to light, undis-guised, as soon as the superimposed elements of theological derivation and specificity are cleared away.48

A Blumenbergian position would also reject the notion that the original political substance of Egyptian society can come back to light as soon as the superimposed elements of political derivation are cleared away. Neverthe-less, it is clear that Assmann's conception of political legitimacy, and his call to remember an alternative political memory that still remains with us, espouses just this very notion. As he remarks in Moses the Egyptian:

A counter-religion can be compared to a palimpsest, a reused papyrus or parchment. The old text is erased, and the new text is written on the cleaned surface. The more care has been taken to clean the surface, the less of the old text is available. But some faint trace of the told text usually remains. It is viewed with hatred and abomination. This is the old paradigm. The new paradigm focuses on the old text, which is still visible under the new

49

inscription.

These observations led to the conclusion that Assmann's understanding of theologization can be reduced to a Left Hegelian projection theory of religion. This is most clearly apparent in Assmann's notion of semantic relocation by which the concepts and rhetoric of loyalty are projected from the "mundane" sphere of kings and patrons to the transcendental sphere of an Almighty God. In this context, the constructive aspect of

46. For the interaction between primary and secondary religion, see Sundermeier, Was

ist Religion, 37.

47. Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of Modernity, 17. 48. Ibid., 8.

49. Assmann, Moses the Egyptian, 209.

Assmann's work presents itself as nothing more than the modern attempt to de-theologize the political.

Viewed in this light, Assmann seems entirely unaware of contempo-rary critiques of the concept of religion, which demonstrate that universal definitions of religion, such as Assmann's, are problematic. Talal Asad specifically argues that "religion" must be seen within

the context of Christian attempts to achieve a coherence in doctrines and practices... [and that as a result] there cannot be a universal definition of religion, not only because of its constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is itself the historical prod-uct of discursive processes.50

Asad would argue that the difficulty with Assmann's conception of reli-gion is that once it is posited in universal terms it establishes a measuring stick that places all religions outside its narrative and in the position of never being able to advance to that standard. Asad maintains that

ethnographers and others ought to limit themselves to description, reserv-ing critique to those who participate firsthand in the language and culture under discussion: that is, people who offer their criticism on the basis of shared values and are prepared to engage in a sustained conversation of give-and-take.51

This would mean that the very bifurcations Assmann hopes to overcome appear inherently necessary to the alternative political form he seeks to remind us.

It could also be said that Assmann's negative rendering of theism appears reminiscent of a particular formulation of secularism that mar-ginalizes or attempts to privatize comprehensive religious doctrines in the name of securing political and social equality. As such, Assmann's conception of the political seems out of touch with the recent turn in political theory to a post-secular conception of the theological and the political.52 From this angle, the theological and the political are no longer viewed as incommensurable spheres of discourse, but instead as potentially overlapping discursive frameworks that possess the semantic

50. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and

Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 29.

51. Quoted from Bruce Lincoln, Review of Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons

of Power in Christianity and Islam," History of Religions 35, no. 1 (August 1995): 83-86 (85). 52. See, in particular, William E. Connolly, Why I am not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Jürgen Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays (New York: Polity, 2008); John Caputo, On Religion (London: Routledge, 2001).

possibility for the securing of a democratic society. From a post-secular perspective, the fact that Assmann can so easily reverse the Schmittian narrative implies a common jointure that enables a solidarity to exist between them. The opposition between the political and the theological "can be asserted only as long as both parts are compelled to be in one and the same place.. .the greatest antithesis is possible only where the greatest identity is present."53 This parallels the recent claim of Giorgio Agamben, who argues that this site of convergence "constitutes the secret point of contact where theology and politics communicate unceasingly and exchange roles."54 In the end Assmann remains prisoner to a narrative that prevents him from seeing that the very place where the theological and political appear locked into a relation of antagonism also consti-tutes a mutual site of engagement between them. In this sense both the political and the theological should be understood as rival categories of legitimacy in their mutual and often overlapping attempt to articulate a vision of society.

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