Jan Assmann and the Theologization of the Political

8/9/2019 Jan Assmann and the Theologization of the Political

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[PT 12.4 (2011) 511-530] Political Theology (print) ISSN 1462-317Xdoi: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

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses in part on Jan Assmann's interpretat ion and refutation

of Carl Schmitt's very well-known secularization theory that all significantmodern 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 polit i

cal as distinct from the theological characterized the political 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

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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512 Political Theology

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 thefriend/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 clarificationto 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.


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Steinmetz-Jenkins Jan Assmann & the Theologization of the Political 51

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 Schmittspecifically 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


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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 anddeal 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 concepts and even as theological concepts they are still

political."7 It is in this manner that Assmann attempts to counter Schmittnot 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 thatSchmitt'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


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As Geréby explains, Schmitt's conception of secularization leaves itself

vulnerable to this specific type of argument:

Schmi tt has elaborated a "theology" of the secular wor ld, conceiving of politics 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 thisquestion 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 jus t

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 categorythat 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 ofreligion 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," ΗNet 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

http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24782http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24782http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24782http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24782


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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 viewof 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).


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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 Assmanndescribes 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 desireto 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 wor k 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),


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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 andmanifested 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 intothe 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 orderinvolves adhering to the law, administering justice and providing welfare

for the poor. In other words, maat accounts for and legitimates both legaland 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


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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 religionarises 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 primaryreligion.

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 religion 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 facilitatethese 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.

Th e 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 pr i

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


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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 muchin 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-visAssmann, 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 whichconnected [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 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 3.


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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 transferred 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 mostclearly 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 absence, 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. Assuch, 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 whenhe 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


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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 existence 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


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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 thebetter, 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 themodern state of Israel. It is interesting that in Herrschaft und Heil Assmann 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 makesa 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. Judaism 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 Göt ter 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


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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 New Testament theologian James D. G. Dunn later described as the

New Perspective on Paul. Undeniably, the New 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 from200 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 New 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 New 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


15/21


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 alternative

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 whereadvocates 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 suggests 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 New 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


16/21


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 ontological 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 thesuperimposed 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 new49

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


17/21


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'sconception 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 Universi ty Press, 1993), 29.51. Quoted from Bruce Lincoln, Review of Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons


18/21


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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Jan Assmann and the Theologization of the Political