Abstract

Starting from observing the prevailing confusion about the meaning of "political theology", this paper individuates three main meanings for the concept, then showing how each of them is "impossible" in the specific sense of contradicting the validity claims it would itself raise. The main argument proceeds by reprising Augustine's philosophical critique of the first meaning of political theology, then showing how and in what sense the other two are also subject to it. The conclusion is that "political theology" may be useful as a sociological/descriptive concept, but it is not an appropriate object of philosophy, not even as a polemical foil, except than to demonstrate its impossibility.