By David Pan · Friday, March 19, 2021 Telos 194 (Spring 2021): Political Theology Today is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.
 What does political theology mean today? At the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference from which many of the essays in this issue originated, a primary goal was to discuss the crisis of secular liberalism and “how faith is reshaping culture and politics today.” But even this project perhaps limits too much the scope of political theology, implying that we have a choice between reason and faith, or that political theology is a commitment to faith rather than an analysis of the element of faith that underlies all of our endeavors. The idea of political theology begins with the premise that every existing human order is built upon some understanding of ultimate meaning. The task would then be to analyze the kind of meaning that each existing order embodies and determine the kinds of decisions about meaning that are made and need to be made at various points in its history. Even secular liberalism, to the extent that it constitutes an existing order, presumes some answer to this question of meaning, and a closer look at the political theology of the United States reveals a mythic dimension that underlies its liberal democratic processes. The essays in this issue examine the political theological underpinnings of economy, politics, technology, and religion, laying out the ways in which these areas of human life develop not as autonomous spheres but as the result of struggles over a set of political theological choices.
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By Telos Press · Thursday, March 18, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with F. Cartwright Weiland about his article “Reflections of a Rapporteur,” one of a group of essays from Telos 192 (Fall 2020) on the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. An excerpt of the article appears here. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Purchase a print copy of Telos 192 in our online store.
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By Russell A. Berman · Monday, March 8, 2021 To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.
 A distinctive feature of public debate in Germany involves prominent literary authors, especially novelists, expounding on current political matters in major newspapers. Thomas Brussig’s essay “Risk More Dictatorship,” translated here, belongs to this genre. Known especially for his satire of East Germany, Heroes Like Us, Brussig chose a provocative title that seems to echo and respond to Chancellor Willy Brandt’s appeal more than fifty years ago to “risk more democracy.” Brandt was speaking in 1969 at a pivotal moment in the history of West Germany, indeed of the whole world, in the face of the protests during the previous year; Brussig in contrast appeals for “more dictatorship” in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, which he depicts as a potentially similar turning moment, with an accelerated “learning process,” that calls old certainties into question. These include the “end of history” claim that liberal democracy is inevitable; Brussig suggests that the “impotence” of democracies in the face of the pandemic raises the question as to whether other forms of government might be superior. The Chinese model of dictatorship casts a shadow across the essay.
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By Telos Press · Thursday, February 18, 2021 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with Ruth Starkman about her article “Making Human Rights Readable: The Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights,” one of a group of essays from Telos 192 (Fall 2020) on the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. An excerpt of the article appears here. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Purchase a print copy of Telos 192 in our online store.
Listen to the podcast here.
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By Telos Press · Friday, February 12, 2021 In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, Camelia Raghinaru talks with David Pan about his article “Unalienable Rights, the 1619 Project, and Nation-State Sovereignty,” one of a group of essays from Telos 192 (Fall 2020) on the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. An excerpt of the article appears here. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Purchase a print copy of Telos 192 in our online store.
Listen to the podcast here.
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By Russell A. Berman · Thursday, February 11, 2021 Both sides of the transatlantic alliance, America and Europe, pride themselves on their commitment to freedom. And rightly so: these political communities emerged out of histories of extended emancipation struggles, laying claim to rights against pre-democratic authoritarian states, just as they have done battle with modern, totalitarian dictatorships. The fundamental assumption that individuals have a right to freedom against the state as part of their catalogue of human rights defines the political self-understanding of this Western community, and this assumption has spread around the globe far beyond the geographical West. It has however not spread everywhere to be sure: neither Putinist Russia nor Xi’s China embraces freedom, although in both countries there are brave regime critics who risk their lives in freedom’s pursuit. They deserve our support.
Yet although liberty is so central to the Atlantic community, we have seen it suddenly and strictly curtailed in the current state of emergency response to the spread of the coronavirus. German philosopher Otfried Höffe examines this alacrity with which liberty has been abandoned here and subjects it to perceptive criticism. Of course public health measures to limit the spread of the virus are necessary, but Höffe points to the disturbing eagerness with which policies have been imposed, which may go beyond appropriate measures. One might dwell on the particular policy failings everywhere—Höffe naturally focuses on Germany and the EU—but his analysis points to several conceptual points that apply broadly and to the United States especially.
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