HENT DE VRIESwhich applies to a different sociological or cultural group: namely, the priests, the poets,
and the philosophers.^81
After Varro, the termpolitical theologydisappears, even though its idea continues to
work subterraneanly throughout a long history of political thinking, as reconstructed by
Ernst H. Kantorowicz in his classicThe King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political
Theology.^82 Between Varro and the medieval jurists studied by Kantorowicz lies an influ-
ential scholastic tradition inspired by Francisco Sua ́rez and others.^83 The term resurfaces
in the title of a treatise by Daniel Georg Morhof,Theologiae gentium politicae dissertatio
prima de Divinitate Principium, published in Rostock in 1662, in the title of Simon van
Heenvliedt’sTheologico-politica Dissertatio, of the same year, and in Spinoza’sTractatus
Theologico-Politicus, published anonymously in 1670. In Spinoza’s oeuvre the term is a
hapax legomenon, however, and his unfinishedTractatus Politicusavoids the term.^84
As Jacqueline Lagre ́e suggestively notes in her discussion of the historical context
and reception of theTractatus Theologico-Politicus, the precise meaning of the composite
expressionthe theologico-politicalremains a matter of debate. Referring to the tradition
leading up to Spinoza, she asks:
how should one understand the coordination of the two adjectivestheologicaland
political? As a conjunction or as a distinction? As a subordination—and in which
sense—or as interdependence? Five positions are logically possible, without taking
into account the nature of the possible link—analytical or synthetic, contingent or
necessary:- conjunction by simple juxtaposition (Plato?)
- strict separation (epicureanism)
- subordination of the political to the theological (Jewish theocracy or strict
Calvinism) - subordination of the theological to the political (Hobbes)
- interdependence (between natural religion and a democracy favorable to the
freedom of thought).^85
But the complexity of the relationship between the two terms goes deeper. Are they
distinct, interchangeable, alternative, parallel, polar, complementary, or supplementary?
The genealogical and structural correspondences between these apparently at least con-
ceptually or terminologically separable domains requires extended analysis, to which the
essays in this volume, as well as this introduction, are merely modest contributions,
scratching the surface of a vast but far from homogeneous ‘‘social space,’’ open on all
sides yet characterized by multidimensional ‘‘curvatures’’ where the question of ‘‘religion’’
as a relation to the other/Other but also to all other others opens up before all knowledge
and freedom, initiative and deliberation (as Levinas suggestively showed).
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