What God can do and what the monarch can do: two ways of theological-political reconstruction of Descartes' political philosophy

Abstract

In contrast to most of the writers of his time, René Descartes was only marginally concerned with politics. This paper attempts two ways of theological-political reconstruction of Cartesian political philosophy based on Carl Schmitt's work on political theology. Two different ways of thinking about political theology can be derived from them. Proceeding from the first of these ways, set out in 1922, Descartes ends up placed among the defenders of absolutism: his eventual political thought appearing very close to that of Thomas Hobbes; however, the nuances of the 1922 theses on political theology that the jurist carries out after almost five decades invite us to think of a Cartesian politics that restricts the absolute power of the king.