The 'Theological Nihilism' of Friedrich Gogarten. On a Context in Karl Lowith's Critique of Carl Schmitt

摘要

This essay discusses the philosopher Karl Lowith's critique of the jurist Carl Schmitt and the theologian Friedrich Gogarten. My aim is twofold: first, I want to reconstruct Lowith's thesis in his 1935 article on Schmitt's 'occasional decisionism' (updated to include a critique of Gogarten in 1960), together with a reading of some central texts by Schmitt and Gogarten; second, I want to raise some critical points regarding Lowith's claims through these readings. While I agree with Lowith that aspects of Schmitt's and Gogarten's thought helped hastening the nihilistic tendencies they themselves claimed to counter, I believe that his diagnosis of their decisionism as nihilism misses important nuances in their work, nuances crucial to the pro-blematization, historicization and philosophical analysis of nihilism. Ultimately, I find that the main point of contestation between Lowith and Schmitt/Gogarten is not whether the latter two affirm modern meaninglessness, but rather whether history can and should be invested with meaning in the first place.