Preface

For some 20 years now there has been a growing recognition by social theorists that philosophy and social thought generally cannot afford to ignore theology and religion. The fact that such secular thinkers as Badiou, Žižek, Agamben, to name just some of the most conspicuous, along with Derrida and Taubes, have dealt so explicitly with religious themes, or that theological excavations of writings by such other patently secular thinkers as Deleuze or Foucault are occurring is symptomatic of the growing importance of what has come to be called theo-politics. In this respect social theorists have simply been catching up with what thinkers who had emerged from the penumbra of the First World War, such as Franz Rosenzweig, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin (who, with Schmitt, has become hugely influential in social thought today), had already demonstrated in their own analyses of the crises surrounding them. The recognition that social thought must be cognizant of the religious and theological roots of our social and political institutions stands in the closest relationship to the recognition of the historicity of human existence. Interestingly, while there are theologians who cast their net over history, and theologically-informed historians (I would mention amongst those of an earlier generation the efforts of such wide-ranging Catholic historians as Hilaire Belloc and Christopher Dawson), I think it fair to say that the discipline of history has not been as deeply touched by theo-politics as social theory has been. This collection, then, wishes to make a contribution to the recognition of the importance of theo-politics, by bringing together essays on some of the more insightful, if not always well known, theo-philosophical reflections upon history in the last hundred or so years, from figures as disparate as Rosenstock-Huessy, Eric Voegelin, Hans Blumenberg and Jan Patočka, to more theologically familiar figures such as Ernst Troeltsch, Rudolf Bultmann and Bernard Lonergan. This will provide valuable additions to social theory and political thought, which in turn we hope will also carry over into the field of history itself.

This collection has its origin in a small conference held at the University of Hong Kong in 2010, organized by my friend and the former Head of the School of Modern Language and Cultures at the University of Hong Kong, Heung-wah Wong. I would also like to thank Eduardo De La Fuente, who responded so positively about this project when I informed him of it whilst on sabbatical at the School of Sciences at Flinders University South Australia, Peter Murphy and the rest of the collective of Thesis 11 for enabling this collection to see the light of day.