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hello, Peter.
Thank you for doing this.
Hello, Tyler.
Now, the title of this conversation is political theology.
That was a phrase I think first used by the russian anarchist Bakunin to mock the italian nationalist Mazzini.
German legal theorist Carl Schmitt then picked it up and said, it's something that everyone needs.
They all need a political theology.
What does the term mean to you?
Well, it's a bit of a fuzzy, broad concept, but maybe sort of to motivate it as a contrast, I think that in late modernity, we're often living in this world of hyper specialization where you can't think about the big picture.
And it's sort of like, I don't know, it's like Adam Smith's pin factory on steroids is sort of our world.
And I think there is some way that we have to try to integrate all these different facets of our life to try to make progress.
What political philosophy does, that's what political theology does.
The reasons these sorts of things were abandoned, you know, I think maybe it's already was like the enlightenment sort of abandoned it from, you know, and one type of reason it was abandoned was because it's too hard to figure this stuff out, or it's just a sort of fool's errand.
I'm inclined to think the other reason was it was often seen as too dangerous, too divisive.
You're not supposed to have debates about religion.
We settled that in 1648 of the Treaty of Westphalia.
Going to forget about it and not talk about these things.
And I think that might have been a reasonable compromise in the 18th century.