Poietics of the Second Early Modernity: Political Ontology of the Christianities of Northern Europe (1630-1789)
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In this paper I reflect on the political ontology configuration of early modernity in northern Europe in order to examine the production of reality and subjectivity involved in this process. We will analyze the theoretical and historical revision that Dussel proposes on the topic of the Christianities of northern Europe between 1630 and 1789. Indeed, in this post-Hispanic scenario, in which the incidence of the community as “consensus of the communities” becomes more and more distant, the influence of late feudalism persists in continental Europe, together with the growing importance of Dutch and British mercantilism. The instrumental need for political institutionalization is thus insurmountable according to the legitimacy of the nascent modern state and state rationality. Therefore, the pre-industrial mercantile bourgeoisie pushes ever harder for the unification of political and military power, around the sovereignty of the king, in order to organize an ever larger and more significant market for its unrestricted cravings for wealth and economic accumulation. However, behind the dominant economic liberalism and its formalistic, fetishistic (narcotic) political ontology, a potential of exteriority can be seen in hiding around the republican common and the idea of popular sovereignty that would be important to consider, through a political, critical and strategic translation, in the transmodern context present in our contemporary historical-political horizon.