Political Demonology

The structural core problem of the Gnostic dualism between the god of creation and the god of redemption governs not only every religion of salvation and redemption. It is immanently given in every world in need of change and renewal, inescapably and ineradicably. The lord of a world in need of change, that is, a misconceived world and the liberator, the creator of a transformed, new world cannot be good friends. They are, so to speak, enemies by definition. Whether Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, or Erich Auerbach and Hans Blumenberg, Ernst Bloch and Jacob Taubes, or Carl Schmitt (cited above)--all of them have been more or less fascinated or awed by the dualistic theology of St. Paul's disciple Marcion, and have as prominently and as differently referred to him. Already Adolf von Harnack, author of the Marcion monograph that even today sets the standard, was aware of the timeliness of his research object, in view of a modern Marcionism, right after the First World War. Richard Faber's book on Political Demonology is a classic account of modern Marcionism within the German philosophical heritage of Auerbach, Bloch, Schmitt, and others that manages to both deal with the issues in depth but also to make them comprehensible. This is not an easy task in political theology and this version, a translation by Therese Feiler and Michael Mayo, casts light into the darkness of demonology. --Peter Thompson, Research Associate at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London Richard Faber is Senior Lecturer (Privatdozent) and Honorary Professor of Sociology, especially the Sociology of (Literary) Religion, at the Freie Universitat Berlin. He has published widely on the occidental movement, humanism, political theology, atheism, fascism, and the 1968 cultural revolution.