Social Research: An International Quarterly

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i greatly admire my colleague simon critchley. i think he is one of the most original, creative, and thought-provoking contemporary thinkers. I especially admire his imagination, creativity, and intellectual daring. The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology is stunning—filled with fresh interpretations of Rousseau, Heidegger, St. Paul, and medieval mysticism. Critchley is never afraid to take risks and to engage in what Hannah Arendt once called "thinking without banisters." And because he has the rare ability to write about difficult and complex issues with great lucidity, the "presupposition strain" in his experiments in political theology emerges with dramatic sharpness. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am neglecting much that is well worth discussing in his rich and varied discussions, such as his reflections on love. I am focusing exclusively on the "presupposition strain" in his thinking about faith of the faithless. [End Page 53]

In a section of his book entitled "Why Politics Is Not Practicable without Religion and Why This Is Problematic," Critchley raises the question "Is politics conceivable without religion?" "The answer," he writes, "is obviously affirmative, as the evidence of various secular political theories testifies." But this is not what Critchley takes to be the interesting or central question. He goes on to ask:

But is politics practicable without religion? That is the question. … Can politics become effective as a way of shaping, motivating, and mobilizing a people or peoples without some sort of dimension—if not foundation—that is religious, without some sort of appeal to transcendence, to externality, to what we called above, with Charles Taylor, "fullness," however substantive or otherwise that appeal might be? I do not think so.

(Critchley 2012, 24; emphasis in original)

Critchley claims that this is precisely the question that Rousseau's thinking about politics faces.

The exemplarity of Rousseau, to my mind, consists in the fact that he gives us the definitive expression of the modern conception of politics: that is, politics is the break with any conception of nature and natural law and has to be based in the concepts of popular sovereignty, free association, rigorous equality, and collective autonomy understood as the self-determination of a people. And yet, in order for this modern conception of politics to become effective it has to have a religious dimension, a moment of what the Romans used to call theologia civilis, civil theology. (emphasis added)

(Critchley 2012, 24)

These are strong and controversial claims. They are not incidental to Critchley's project: they are central. Initially, the claim that politics requires political theology, that if politics is to become effective it [End Page 54] must have a religious dimension, appears to sound more like Schmitt than any radical political thinker—especially one who champions anarchism. But Critchley retorts: "It seems to me that the left has all too easily ceded the religious ground to the right and it is this ground that needs to be regained in a coherent, long-term, and tenacious war of position, as Gramsci would say" (2012, 25). In short, without an appeal to religion, faith, transcendence and the sacred, politics today—a radical leftist politics—is not "practicable."²

To properly appreciate what Critchley is saying and doing, I want to make two preliminary comments. The first deals with what I take to be his primary concern, worry, and anxiety. It is a deep concern with the possibility of politics in the face of the "motivational deficit" that is so pervasive and stifling in liberal democratic societies. This motivational deficit leaves us with two completely unsatisfactory alternatives: passive and active nihilism. The passive nihilist looks at the world and finds it meaningless. He concludes that humans are simply rapacious animals, and he advocates that we should cultivate our own personal projects and try to achieve a type of calm, superior contemplation rather than trying to change the world—we should be "political realists." The active nihilist believes that much of the modem world of capitalism, liberal democracy, and secular humanism is meaningless and that "the only way to remake meaning is through acts of spectacular destruction" (Critchley 2008, 5).

Critchley not only strongly resists both forms of nihilism; he understands philosophical activity—"the free movement of thought and critical reflection" (2008, 2)—to be defined by its militant resistance to nihilism. In his earlier book, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance, Critchley focused on current political disappointment rather than religious disappointment, although he acknowledged that these forms of disappointment are closely related. But he has come to realize that these two forms of disappointment are even more intimately related than he previously suggested—that his ethics of commitment and politics of resistance require a confrontation with the religious dimension of politics and a proper political [End Page 55] theology. One of the deepest reasons Critchley turns to political theology is because he is convinced that faith—the faith of the faithless—is absolutely necessary if one is to honestly face the question of what can "motivate a subject to act in concert with others." "Rationality alone is insufficient" (2012, 19).

My second comment is that if we are to grasp what Critchley is saying and doing, we have to fully appreciate how deeply paradoxical his stance is—and he is fully self-conscious about this. This is, of course, reflected in the very title "the faith of the faithless." Although Critchley constantly appeals to religious categories, he deeply questions the very possibility of religion. Throughout, Critchley speaks of a "series of décalages—displacements, moments of tension, ambiguity or seeming contradiction" (2012, 9).³ What Critchley means by décalages is quite close to what Derrida calls "aporias": conditions that are at once necessary and impossible. Consequently, although Critchley is constantly drawing upon religious and theological concepts, especially from Christian sources, he is also undermining these concepts. He refuses the standard either/or—either secularism or theism. We will see that Critchley's political theology turns out to be a theory of fictions.

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before pursuing critchley's argument for the necessity of a new political theology, I want to turn back to Schmitt. When Schmitt claims that all significant concepts of the state (and politics) are theological, he is not merely making a "historical" point but a systematic one. There is no escape from political theology. This is just as true of the modern constitutional state that is based on deism, which banished "the miracle from the world," as it is true of anarchism, which defines itself as opposing the state and all political theology. In the final chapter of Political Theology, he rehearses a grand contest—a great battle between the counterrevolutionary philosophy of de Maistre, Bonard, and Donoso Cortés and the champions of anarchism including Proudhon, Kropotkin, and especially Bakunin, "the greatest anarchist of the nineteenth century" (1985, 66). Schmitt tells us that [End Page 56] the true significance of the counterrevolutionary philosophers of the state lies in the consistency with which they decide—the consistency with which they do not evade the "exacting moral decision" that is the core of the political idea. Donoso Cortés demands a political dictatorship, a pure decision that is not based on reason and discussion but "an absolute decision created out of nothingness" (Schmitt 1985, 66). The last great battle is between authority and anarchism. Ironically, there is common ground between dictatorship and anarchism, for both agree that every government is necessarily absolute. But the counterrevolutionaries argue that dictatorship is the only way to confront the radical evil of human beings, whereas the anarchists assume that man is essentially good and therefore all government—the source of evil—is to be opposed.

Schmitt concludes his Political Theology with a grand rhetorical flourish:

Every claim of a decision must be evil for the anarchist, because the right emerges by itself if the immanence of life is not disturbed by such claims. This radical antithesis forces him of course to decide against the decision; and this results in the odd paradox whereby Bakunin, the greatest anarchist of the nineteenth century, had to become in theory the theologian of the antitheological and in practice the dictator of an antidictatorship.

(1985, 66)

There is little doubt about where Schmitt stands in this grand battle. When he describes Donoso Cortés's belief that "the moral vanished with the theological, the political idea with the moral, and all moral and political decisions are thus paralyzed in a paradisiacal worldliness of immediate natural life and unproblematic concreteness" (1985, 65), he is revealing his own deepest convictions.⁴

The point that Schmitt is making here corresponds to one that is also central to The Concept of the Political when he asserts that "all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil" (1996, 61). [End Page 57] There is an intimate connection between (genuine) political theories and the theological dogma of original sin. "A theologian ceases to be a theologian when he no longer considers man to be sinful" (64). Schmitt's animus toward liberalism as well as anarchism is based on his firm conviction that these doctrines do not really grasp the depth of original sin and the evilness of human beings. They presuppose a naive (and ultimately unpolitical) optimism that man is essentially "good."

Now what is striking about Critchley's experiments with political theology is that he basically accepts the Schmittian framework—the Schmittian way of posing the fundamental issue. Here are his words: "If human beings are defined by original sin, then politics becomes the means of protecting human beings from themselves, something that justifies the forms of dictatorship and state authoritarianism defended by Schmitt" (2012, 11). And Critchley does think that updated versions of the concept of original sin are still very much alive—and frequently take the form of a "political realism" that maintains a deep pessimism about human nature and ends up in a version of passive nihilism. Critchley takes up Schmitt's challenge and wants to defend what Schmitt categorically denies: that original sin can be overcome in what, following Norman Cohn, Critchley calls "mystical anarchism." In short, Critchley basically accepts Schmitt's (and Donoso Cortés's) either/or: either political dictatorship or anarchy. And furthermore he accepts Schmitt's claim that a consistent anarchism is itself based on a political theology, albeit an antitheological political theology. This is the faith of the faithless. This is what I meant when I suggested earlier that Schmitt and Critchley share a common framework even though they, of course, take up antithetical stances. To put it a bit glibly, they are mirror images of each other.

Let's explore in greater depth some of the key concepts that Critchley weaves together into his version of political theology: faith, the sacred, and original sin. When Critchley speaks of "décalages, displacements, moments of tension or seeming contradiction" (2012, 9), he is not exclusively referring to the texts of Rousseau, but to his own [End Page 58] thinking. Faith, as Critchley understands it, is not the "abstraction of a metaphysical belief in God, but rather the lived subjective commitment to an infinite demand. Faith is understood here as a declarative act, as an enactment of the self, as a performative that proclaims itself into existence in a situation of crisis where what is called for is a decisive political intervention" (2012, 13).

There is a great deal packed into this claim, and Critchley has sought to develop in detail how he understands this "lived subjective commitment to an infinite demand" and why it is necessary for "decisive political intervention." But note that this characterization of faith does not specify anything about the content or object of this faith. It seems equally applicable to those passionately committed to the most nefarious political causes as well as those committed to positive utopian ideals. Both may accept that the demand on them is an infinite one. Furthermore, there is deep tension between this subjective strain in this conception of faith and the political or communal strain. When Critchley stresses that faith is the "enactment of self," this is an existential condition that makes sense in regard to a subject who is responsive to an infinite calling. But politics—certainly the politics that Critchley favors—involves collective action. There is a gap here between the personal faith of an individual subject and the shared communal motivation that is required for political intervention. Although Critchley's politics is antithetical to Schmitt's, there is nevertheless a Schmittian element in the call for existential decisiveness in his characterization of faith.

Critchley's characterization of faith seems to be at once too narrow and too broad. It is too narrow because it is only applicable to those who experience "the lived subjective commitment to an infinite demand." This would certainly exclude most of those who profess religious faith. But it is too broad because it is difficult to see what is the difference that makes a difference between "faith" and a passionate commitment to a cause or ideal to which one is willing to dedicate oneself—perhaps even die for. The concept of faith is in danger of being banalized if it is used to encompass all forms of passionate [End Page 59] commitment to an ideal that one knows cannot be fully realized—a banalization similar to the way in which Paul Tillich came close to identifying religion with any "ultimate commitment." Why do we need political theology to explain or account for this fundamental existential experience that is a defining trait of many dedicated activists, social reformers, and revolutionaries?

We find similar problems—décalages—in his analysis of "the metamorphoses of sacralization." Serious students of religion have illuminated how the historical understanding of any of the great religions shows that they have undergone metamorphoses of sacralization. This is a dominant theme in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. But Critchley is not primarily concerned with the sacred in traditional religious contexts. He states that "the history of political forms can best be viewed as a series of metamorphoses of sacralization" (2012, 10; emphasis in original). We can grasp what Critchley means by examining one of his examples.

In his book, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, Edmund Morgan explores in fine historical detail how the "fiction of the divine right of kings gave way to the sovereignty of the people." Morgan writes:

The sovereignty of the people was not a repudiation of the sovereignty of God. God remained the ultimate source of all governmental authority, but attention now centered on the immediate source, the people. Though God authorized government, He did it through the people, and in doing so He set them above their governors.

(quoted in Critchley 2012, 83)

This shift from the divine right of kings to the sovereignty of the people is a metamorphosis of the sacred. But note how Critchley characterizes this development: one fiction historically succeeds another fiction. Here we touch upon a décalage that stands at the very center of Critchley's apologia for political theology and at the same [End Page 60] time threatens to explode it. The history of political forms can be approached by the category of fictions. "Fiction" is not a negative term in Critchley's vocabulary; it is not contrasted with fact. Indeed, fiction can be the highest expression of imaginative creativity. The appeal to political fictions is intended to be a diagnostic tool for demythologizing those political fictions that obscure the rottenness of political realities. But Critchley also wants to make a strong speculative claim when he advances his idea of a "supreme fiction." Borrowing from Wallace Stevens, Critchley defines a supreme fiction in politics as a "fiction that we know to be a fiction, but in which we nevertheless believe" (2012, 91).⁵ This supreme fiction allegedly enables us "to approach the problem of political legitimacy through poetic categories."

Critchley's speculative hypothesis about supreme fictions opens a Pandora's box of paradoxes—and I think he knows this. Suppose, for the moment, we grant Critchley's claims that "in the realms of politics, law and religion there are only fictions" (2012, 91; emphasis in original). The really hard question—the political question—becomes: How is one to evaluate competing supreme fictions? Fictions, as Critchley understands them, have real-life consequences—frequently disastrous, violent consequences. Whether we are dealing with a diagnosis of the succession of political fictions or proposing some new supreme fiction, the crucial issue becomes why we should adopt one fiction rather than another. This is not an abstract issue. Hannah Arendt emphasized that the "success" of totalitarianism is in part due to the fictional world that it creates. But if we are to critique totalitarianism or any other political fiction, then we must ask: What is the basis for such a critique? How are we to distinguish, evaluate, and judge "good" supreme fictions from nefarious supreme fictions? Critchley comes dangerously close to Schmittian decisionism—deciding for or against a supreme fiction is ultimately groundless—it is "an absolute decision created out of nothingness."

I want to make it clear that I am not calling into question Critchley's project of demythologizing political fictions. This is what he takes to be a primary task of the philosopher concerned with real [End Page 61] politics. But I am questioning the grounds, if any, for choosing among fictions. It is not sufficient to tell us that this involves a poetic task of creative imagination. For this is just as true of the political fictions that Critchley condemns. If demythologizing is a form of critique, then one can always ask: Critique in the name of what? And if one is proposing an alternative political fiction to one that is well entrenched, then it must be defended and supported by arguments—not simply passionately affirmed.

There is an even more serious problem with Critchley's apologia for an antitheistic political theology. We can discern this in his analysis of Rousseau, but it is equally applicable to Critchley's own stance. Critchley tells us that "Rousseau's thinking enacts a series of contradictions that any serious thinking of politics is obliged to confront." Here is how Critchley states the problem:

If the only law that I can follow is the law that I give myself—a law that is the expression of the general will, a law that is consistent with my autonomy yet binding on all members of the social group—then by virtue of what does this law have authority? The obvious answer is that if law is nothing else but the act of the general will, then authority becomes self-authorship. That is, there can be no higher court of legal authority than autonomy. Yet, if authority becomes self-authorship, then doesn't a legitimate polity end up as a collective narcissus? Despite the immanentist logic of Rousseau's argument, isn't there a need for a moment of transcendent authority in law in order to bind subjects to the law, a moment of radical externality or heteronomy, like the function of the monarch in Hobbes? If that is the case, if Rousseau also seems to need a mortal god to animate his politics, then is such an authority conceivable without religion?

(2012, 60)

[End Page 62]

The questions that Critchley raises at the end of this passage are not merely "rhetorical." Leaving aside—bracketing—his interpretation of Rousseau, Critchley does think there is a need for the fiction of a transcendent authority and that such authority is inconceivable without religion. I think that Critchley puts his finger on a problem that stands at the heart of modern political thinking: how to account for the way in which a people can create an authority that binds themselves and future subjects to the law. This problem is at the heart of explaining the creation of modern constitutions, explaining the pouvoir constituant of a people. For the creation of a constitution is intended to bind future subjects to its law.

But I am skeptical of the claim that we need a political theology to confront the paradox of sovereignty. And my reason for being skeptical is itself based on Critchley's own reasoning. If we take seriously his sketch of a theory of political fictions, then we must realize that it is "we" human beings who write poetry and create fictions—including political fictions. It is "we" human beings who create our gods and postulate a transcendent source for legitimation. Fictions do not write or invent themselves; "we" create them. Presumably Critchley's appeal to religion and political theology is to find a motivating source of political legitimation and authority. But what he is actually showing is that this legitimation and authority is created by human beings. This is not political theology but rather its antithesis. I can easily imagine Carl Schmitt claiming that when we demythologize what Critchley means by political theology, it turns out to be a version of the humanism that Schmitt ridiculed and despised.

One of the reasons for the current seductive fascination with Carl Schmitt is the sharpness with which he draws his dichotomies. Even his severest critics have to admire his rhetorical ability in condemning anything that tries to escape these either/ors. The most famous dichotomy is the friend/enemy distinction, which he claims is "the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced" (1996, 26). This dichotomy is shaped by Schmitt's views on original sin and his belief that all state and political [End Page 63] ideas can be tested by whether "they consciously or unconsciously presuppose man to be by nature evil or by nature good." Schmitt's stance is even stronger because he claims "all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil" (1996, 61). Consequently, any political theory that presupposes human beings to be good is not a "genuine political theory"—and this includes both liberalism and anarchism. Furthermore, this dichotomy between competing anthropologies is closely related to the antagonism between authoritarian and anarchist theories. Strictly speaking, there is no liberal politics, only a liberal critique of politics.

Critchley basically accepts these Schmittian dichotomies. His animus against existing liberal democracies—although coming from the left—is as strong as Schmitt's. Critchley wants to turn the tables on Schmitt. Secularized or naturalized doctrines of original sin are still very much with us. John Gray, for example, represents a contemporary version of original sin—the conviction that human beings are "homo rapienes, rapacious animals." Because human beings are "killer apes with metaphysical longing" (Critchley 2012, 109), Gray advocates a conservative "political realism" that is intended to avoid the pitfalls of liberal humanism, utopianism, and millennialism. But Critchley argues that Gray's conservative "political realism" leads straight to passive nihilism: "John Gray is the Schopenhauerian European Buddhist of our age" (2012, 115).

Critchley's response to both Schmitt's authoritarianism and Gray's conservative "political realism" is staunchly to defend what both of them totally reject—what Critchley calls "an ethical neo-anarchism where anarchist practices of political organization are coupled with an infinitely demanding subjective ethics of responsibility." He makes it clear that what he means by infinitely demanding "is the ethical disposition of being open and attentive to what exceeds the finite situation in which we find ourselves" (2012, 244). I will turn to his politics shortly. But here I want to emphasize that Critchley accepts the basic Schmittian dichotomy that there are two and only two competing anthropologies: that man is either fundamentally evil or [End Page 64] good—or, more precisely, that "original sin" can be overcome. Critchley, in a fascinating chapter, explores what he considers the most radical anarchism ever conceived—"mystical anarchism"—an anarchism that claims that our thinking about politics and community is transformed "once the fact of original sin has been overcome" (2012, 117).⁶

But I want to question the rigid dichotomy that underlies this entire discussion, an anthropology that presupposes only two possibilities: human beings are basically evil or good. Haven't we learned from experience and (Freudian) theory that there is something desperately wrong with this dichotomy? Haven't the genocides of the last two centuries taught us that human beings can be more rapacious than our wildest fantasies ever imagined? But haven't we also learned, as Primo Levi and other witnesses have taught us, that even in the most extreme circumstances there are acts of human decency and ethical responsibility? I am reminded here of the story of Anton Schmitt that Arendt relates in Eichmann in Jerusalem. Anton Schmitt was a German soldier who secretly helped Jewish partisans in Poland by supplying them with forged papers and trucks. He was apprehended by the Germans and executed. When the story of Anton Schmitt was told in the Jerusalem court, it was as if those present observed a two-minute silence. Arendt's comment beautifully captures its significance.

And in those two minutes, which were like a sudden burst of light in the midst of impenetrable, unfathomable darkness, a single thought stood out clearly, irrefutable, beyond question—how utterly different everything would be today in this courtroom, in Israel, in Germany, in all of Europe, and perhaps in all countries of the world, if only more such stories could have been told.

(1965, 231)

In citing Arendt, I do not want to make a sentimental point, but a theoretical one. And Freud is our best guide. Those basic human tendencies [End Page 65] that political theologians call evil and good are so inextricably related to each other that they cannot be separated. Because they are deeply rooted in our unconscious psyches, they are ineradicable and ineliminable. This is what Freud taught us. Any political thinking that fails to acknowledge this fundamental psychic ambivalence is inadequate (on this point, see my discussion of Freudian ambivalence in Bernstein 2002, 138–39). The dichotomy between an anthropology based on original sin or one based on the naive assumption that men are by nature good is a false dichotomy. This does not mean giving into the temptation of passive or active nihilism. I fail to see that we need political theology to grasp the significance of this fundamental psychic ambivalence of human beings. And although it is clearly empirically true that there have been crucial moments in history when religious convictions have inspired radical political action, it does not follow that politics is not "practicable" without religion.

This becomes clear when we turn to Critchley's actual discussion of the politics that he favors. In his final chapter, he defends his ethical nonviolent anarchism against the criticisms and misunderstandings of Slavoj Žižek. In my opinion, Critchley's critique of Žižek is deliciously devastating. He exposes what he calls Žižek's "crypto-Bismarckian authoritarianism" (2012, 232), which certainly has a Schmittian aura. But I want to focus on Critchley's own understanding of anarchistic politics. He tells us that politics for him "is about the movement between no power and state power and it takes place through the creation of what I call 'interstitial distance' within the state." These spaces are not given; they are created through political articulation. They require "forging a common front, imagining and enacting a new social bond that opens a space of resistance and opposition to government" (2012, 233). To illustrate what he means, Critchley refers to the indigenous rights movements in Mexico and Argentina, the actions around the san papier and the sans abri in France, the movement of antiglobalization, and even antiwar movements. He also adds the struggles around immigration in North America and Europe. Even if one does not entirely endorse Critchley's infinitely [End Page 66] demanding ethics of commitment, one can certainly support the political movements and interventions that he favors.

But to put it bluntly, I fail to see what any of this has to do with religion or political theology. Of course, those who participate in such activities may be highly motivated by a sense of moral, political, or economic injury, a sense of injustice, a deep sense of being treated unfairly. Some may be motivated by "religious" concerns. Where is the evidence that this type of radical politics is not "practicable" without (or must presuppose) religion and political theology? On the contrary, when Critchley actually analyzes such instances of political action as the Mexican or Australian indigenous movements, there is no mention of religion in understanding their motivation or strategic action. Once again, we must beware of the surreptitious slippage that claims that genuine motivating passionate commitment to an ideal or a just cause is merely another version of religious faith—even the faith of the faithless.

Schmitt is famous for the way in which he ridicules and caricatures discussion, deliberation, and judgment that he takes to be characteristic of liberalism. His most famous "put-down" of deliberation is when he tells us that for Donoso Cortés liberalism "answers the question 'Christ or Barabbas?' with a proposal to adjourn or appoint a commission of investigation" (1985, 62). More basically, the very way in which Schmitt structures his discussion of "the political" leaves us with only two possibilities: either we falsely think that law and politics can be based on norms, or we recognize the primacy of the event of decision. Remember that Schmitt speaks of "a pure decision not based on reason and discussion and not justifying itself, that is, to an absolute decision created out of nothingness" (1985, 66). This is what my student Santiago Rey has labeled "the Myth of the Presuppositionless Decision." What gets excluded here is any serious consideration of the type of deliberation and judgment required for making political decisions. [End Page 67]

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norm or decision! i think this dichotomy, this either/or—rational justification or decision—haunts a good deal of contemporary philosophy and politics, including those who think of themselves as opposed to Schmitt. They are suspicious and deeply skeptical of any account of decision that would seek to circumscribe it. There can be no rational principles that determine our decisions. Of course this is true if it is taken to mean that a decision "follows" automatically from a rule. There is always a gap between any principles that we may profess and the political decisions that we make. Decisions do not simply follow from any norm, principle, or rule. Furthermore, there is always an element of risk, uncertainly, and unpredictability in making a decision. But what is neglected or excluded in this dichotomy of "rational justification or decision" is the type of judgment or deliberation that informs and guides decisions. This type of judgment is not thematized in Critchley's experiments in political theology, although, ironically, he comes close to appreciating its importance in his interpretation of what Walter Benjamin means by Divine Violence. Critchley, like Judith Butler, stresses that the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is not like the mythical violence that Benjamin condemns but rather serves as a guideline (Richtschnur) that does not dictate our actions. It is a guideline with which we must struggle—a guideline that in concrete situations may even be violated (Critchley 2012, 217–21; see also Butler 2006, 201–19).

I suggest that if this struggle is a serious one, then it demands careful—even painful—deliberation, not simply decisiveness. I do not think it makes sense to talk about real political decisions without referring to the political judgments, good and bad, that inform (but certainly do not determine) decision and action. Political decisions do not spring out of nothingness or pure fictions. What I have in mind is what Hannah Arendt sought to clarify in her politicized interpretation of Kant's notion of reflective judgment. This is a form of judgment that must always be sensitive to particulars—to the complexities of a situation that one is confronting. It is a mode of thinking that does not subsume particulars under general rules but ascends [End Page 68] from the particular to what is more general. Forming such judgment is a thinking process in the sense that it involves weighing reasons pro and con about what is to be done. And if it is genuinely political, then it involves not only imagination but also the give and take with one's peers.

At one point in his analysis of Rousseau, Critchley declares that "the essence of politics or the being of the political consists in an act whereby a people becomes a people, an original covenant that presupposes that there has been at one time unanimity" (2012, 38). In this respect he seems to agree with Schmitt's insistence on the identity and homogeneity of a people. But here I think that the Arendtian emphasis on plurality is far more appropriate for the type of politics that Critchley advocates: a plurality that recognizes our singularity. Each of us has a different perspective on the world. And because we have plural perspectives, the space of political life is one in which there is (or ought to be) a contest of different opinions. Becoming a people does not require unanimity or homogeneity, but rather the possibility of agreement, an agreement that results from the agonistic conflict of opinions of a plurality of human beings. "This enlarged way of thinking, which as judgment knows how to transcend its own individual limitations … cannot function in strict isolation or solitude; it needs the presence of others 'in whose place' it must think, whose perspectives it must take into consideration, and without whom it never has the opportunity to operate at all. Judgment, to be valid, depends on the presence of others" (Arendt 2006, 217).

It strikes me that the type of deliberation and formation of judgment that I am emphasizing is in fact integral to the very type of politics of resistance that Critchley favors. Of course there are no algorithms for making such judgments, and we have to face the possibility that our best judgments may lead to disastrous consequences. Critchley is extremely sensitive to the type of judgment that I am sketching even though he does not thematize its centrality. As I have already indicated, this is especially clear where he speaks of nonviolence as a guiding principle but one that can never completely rule [End Page 69] out those exceptional circumstances in which violence is demanded. My concern is that Critchley (like Schmitt) fails to elucidate the type of political judgment that is needed to make sense of our political decisions—and that he fails to show us how religion or political theology is required for understanding and making political judgments. And like many thinkers today who have become fascinated with the "Event," Critchley succumbs to the temptation to focus almost exclusively on the event of decision rather than how we judgmentally reach our decisions.

Introducing the theme of political judgment also has consequences for Critchley's understanding of faith and fiction. I certainly want to affirm that a politics of resistance requires a refusal to submit to the seductions of a "political realism." Critique demands that we emphasize the gap between the ugly political realities we confront and the ideals that we seek to realize or approximate. This is the tension that is required to keep open the space for effective political action. And this requires a faith in a defensible ideal of justice, equality, and freedom that stands opposed to what presently exists and that can provide a motivating force for political action. This conception of faith is close to what William James described when he argued that such a faith that goes beyond the facts plays a vital role in bringing about a new reality. But this type of faith—the passionate commitment to ideals that guide our political action—does not require a belief in the fiction of something transcendent, something "external" that legitimizes and authorizes our action.

This even provides for an alternative way of understanding what Critchley means by political fictions—ideals that are imaginative constructions of actual human beings—fictions that express our political dreams and hopes. These fictions may be exorbitant in the sense that they can never be completely realized. We must remain "open and attentive to what exceeds the finite situation in which we find ourselves" (2012, 244). But these fictions themselves do not escape judgment. If they do, they become potentially dangerous. We need to argue for and justify the imaginary constructions that we [End Page 70] cherish and that animate our political activity. And I am fully aware that frequently the most contentious issue that we debate is what precisely constitutes a good argument for the position that we favor. Critchley claims that politics—radical politics—isn't "practicable" without religion and political theology, but I think that it isn't "practicable" without imaginative political judgment. And I fail to see that real political judgment depends upon or presupposes religion or political theology.

I want to touch upon one final either/or that I believe ought to be rejected. Philosophers have been obsessed with the very idea of rational justification, where this is understood as some sort of knockdown or transcendental deduction that is based upon incorrigible foundations. Some sort of foundationalism keeps creeping back into philosophy. There is the anxiety that if we give up on foundationalism we are left in the abyss of arbitrary relativism. I have long argued that this either/or, which I once called the "Cartesian Anxiety," needs to be deconstructed and rejected. Critchley and Schmitt are deeply suspicious of any form of rationalism that claims that political decisions and actions can be adequately justified by an appeal to basic norms. I agree with them. But this does not mean or entail abandoning deliberation, argument, and political judgment.

"Justification" of what Critchley calls "fictions" is a complex process that weaves together diverse elements. It involves imagination, thought experiments, satire, humor, telling likely stories, and using rhetorical devices to make a "fiction" as motivationally attractive as possible—but it also involves argumentation and judgment. And this is what Critchley really practices. I sometimes dream of the day when philosophers are no longer obsessed with the Cartesian Anxiety, learn the lessons that Nietzsche tried to teach us, and honestly face up to the bricolage of what we actually do when we seek to "justify" our most cherished and central convictions and commitments.

One final comment. In the preface to his classic, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason, Yirmiyahu Yovel declares, "Above [End Page 71] all [Spinoza] put forward a radically new philosophical principle that I call the philosophy of immanence. It views this-worldly existence as all there is, as the only actual being and the sole source of ethical value" (1989, ix). Yovel seeks to show how the philosophy of immanence is developed and deepened in Goethe, Heine, Marx, and Freud. And, of course, one can add many other thinkers committed to this philosophy of immanence, including Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. But we are living in a time when this philosophy of immanence is under attack by political theology—a political theology that argues that immanence is not enough, that we must appeal to transcendence. And this "transcendence" is not a horizontal transcendence whereby we strive to transcend what is given in order to realize our ideals, but a vertical, "exterior" transcendence that presumably grounds our immanence—our "this-worldly existence."

Where does Critchley stand in the opposition between a philosophy of immanence and political theology of transcendence? I suspect he might say that he rejects this dichotomy or that, in a paradoxical sense, he stands on both sides. The faith of the faithless is the faith of "this-worldly existence as all there is, as the only actual being and the sole source of ethical value." Yet he also wants to maintain that the faith of the faithless must believe in the supreme fiction of a transcendent realm that is "exterior" to our immanence. I do not believe that he has justified this central thesis. I actually believe that—despite his explicit intentions—his political theology really amounts to a sophisticated defense of a robust philosophy of immanence. And for this he is to be praised.