Phenomenology of religion as a historical problem. The theological-political approach

Qua « regional ontology » directed toward an essential content or objective correlate, or qua discipline founded upon an a priori, phenomenology of religion appears to be characterized by a theoretical approach which is, in basic principle, ahistorical. This aspect has been subjected to a critique by Carl Schmitt. By contrast, « political theology » is an approach which emerged and asserted itself within the context of a confrontation with the historical model of « secularization ». In its more recent developments political theology has tended to abandon a linear reading of this latter model and to adopt a more neutral approach based on the history of ideas. In this way, the current theological-political paradigm is apt to be understood as itself a specific, and more radical, form of phenomenology of religion. This is the thesis we aim to defend in this paper. Contemporary political theology now appears to be succeeding, to a greater and better extent than did the classic authors of the phenomenology of religion, in accounting for a paradox : a definition of the phenomenon : « religion » presents itself as at once incircumventible and impossible.