Democracy and the Divine

Advancing the thesis that a contract between the political members of a community must lead to the highest form of social inclusion, Thomas Hobbes's 1651 Leviathan has provided the groundwork for democracies around the world. Yet, Hobbes also states that this contract can only be upheld by a strong sovereign whose authority is derived from God. How can a democracy be defined as truly inclusive when it essentially grows out of a theocracy that thinks about human beings in terms of "reduction"? In this study, Alexandra Aidler argues that despite modern democracy's problematic heritage, one should not abandon its claims to religion. Articulating a democracy that is based on the religious principle of giving oneself to another, Aidler develops a political theology of democracy that is built upon two traditions in political thought that have rarely been examined thus far in combination for their contributions to this field: the German Romanticism of the first half of the nineteenth century, as exemplified by Franz von Baader and Friedrich Schlegel, and the "theological turn" in French philosophy, as represented by Jacques Derrida and Jacques Ranciere.