Political theology and ethics

Abstract

In this article I show the relationship between political theology and ethics on the example of three twentieth-century texts of German thinkers: Carl Schmitt, Johann Baptist Metz and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. When discussing the concept of each of them I’m trying to provide a definition of political theology, which is present (explicitly or implicitly) in the selected works and consider how the ethical component is enclosed in them. Since the history of ideas methodology was used during work on the essay, the text also points out the elements of the environment and intellectual climate of thinkers contemporary to the main protagonists, who may have influenced their thoughts and works. The most important - and most widely discussed – is the concept of the deutsche Sonderweg (based on idea of translation Imperii, described by Jacques le Goff, which was the base of belief of the special role which Germany plays in the history and of its responsibility for the fate of the world) and the specific German ”confessionalization”, strongly binding structures of the ecclesiastical and State authorities.