Politics, Anthropology and Religion

Abstract

Here I consider the relationship between politics and religion in Simon Critchley’s ‘Mystical Anarchism’. I begin by considering the role a theological anthropology could play in conceptions of politics. In my view such conceptions are too particularistic. A specific theological and cultural background becomes a condition of significance for such a politics, excluding those that cannot affirm it. I offset this concern by turning to a consideration of traditional secular discourse on tolerance, as presented in John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration. This is similarly religiously circumscribed. Thus religious particularism is a problem for political thought generally, this is not merely the problem that religious reasons might underwrite a political position, it also leads to a conceptual problem: that our conception of ‘religion’ and the ‘purpose’ proper to it is structured by a particular experience with a specific religion. From here I turn to the mystical theology found in ‘Mystical Anarchism’. Being mystical, such a theology is not for the many but for the few. I argue that the mystical thought of Porete, on Critchley’s reading, is hostile to embodied life, to materiality in general, not motivated by communistic concerns and tainted by the elitism that haunts mystical discourse. This questions the possible significance ‘Mystical Anarchism’ can have within an anarchist politics.