Abstract

Michael Wladika:
Religion and State
Distinguishing, Transcending, Establishing Context
(FKTh 2023-1, p. 39–57)

States are community forms that are both ordered and good, they arrive with structure and should, claim, demand. This implies that their principles of order are free from arbitrariness. This in turn makes it necessary that these reach back to what is causally first. And this is religiously present: Men think themselves in their connection with their first origin. Without religion therefore there are no relevant human communities, neither factually nor normatively. In order to understand these connections soundly and in a way that is rationally immune against criticism, it is first necessary to distinguish religion and state radically. It is then only that all the subordinate, worldly, political things can be understood, now from above. This only is their true understanding, making stable judgements possible. As criticism of ideology belongs with the exoteric side of philosophy, there is also an exterior to the whole of this: the corresponding placing of the odd secular projects of late modern times.