世俗化テーゼと政治神学

【カール・レーヴィットとカール・シュミットの対決】

抄録

  The purpose of this paper is to examine the uniqueness of Karl Löwith’s contribution to the controversy over the secularization in the 1950s.

  Löwith asserts in his Meaning in History （1949） that all sorts of modern philosophy of history result from the secularization of Christian eschatology. Carl Schmitt deeply impressed with its “secularization thesis” in his review recognizes that it has some affinity with his own politico-theological schema where the modern political or secular predicament should be explained from the eschatological viewpoint.

  However, in spite of all his high estimation of Löwith’s, Schmitt, at the same time, doubts that Erik Peterson, a Roman Catholic theologian who is known as a severe critic of political theology may exert some influence upon it. In fact, Löwith, following after not only Peterson but the Evangelical, rejects all kinds of political monotheism or political eschatology connecting “the history of world” and “the history of salvation.” Because he appreciates the rigid distinction between these types of histories should be the original crux of Christianity. For Löwith, “secularization thesis” suggests that there is some contradiction in regarding the modern philosophy of history as the secularized history of salvation. While for Schmitt it is not any guarantee for political theology, but rather a threat against it.

  However, at the same time, we have to pay due attention to the fact that Löwith never accepts the faith in the Christian dogma of the salvation nor he receives the separation of the spiritual from the secular supported by the dogma itself. As his philosophical argumentation clearly shows, all of the meaningful understandings in the ordinary life are pre-oriented by the comprehensive preconception, while they can change the holistic preconception itself （It goes without saying that the above philosophical argumentation is nothing but the hermeneutic circle itself）. Indeed, the faith is one form of these preconceptions, but it never permits that it is changeable.

  After close examination at once his relationships to Schmitt and that to the believers in that separation, this paper concludes that in the controversy over the secularization in the 1950s Löwith adds a valuable contribution through his own hermeneutical philosophy without joining the camp of Schmitt or the sepalationalists.