This introduction assesses a range of popular and scholarly attitudes toward the current state of American democracy, identifying in them a dominant theme of modern democratic theory, namely, an aversion to conflict. Just as John Rawls believed democratic societies to be perennially threatened by a “mortal conflict” between comprehensive doctrines and their “transcendent elements not admitting of compromise,” and so proposed a theory of liberal order aimed at preempting, containing, and resolving these conflicts, so contemporary critics perceive the intractable disagreements and polarizations of American political culture to be only corrosive and destabilizing. They propose strategies for achieving social cohesion grounded in a sense of national unity, shared history, or common identity more fundamental to difference. Many religious persons and traditions exhibit a similar aversion to conflict, believing it to indicate some form of sin, injustice, or moral error. I question this presumption that conflict is inherently vicious, ruinous, or violent, and begin to sketch an alternative view of conflict as basic to human creaturehood and potentially generative for social life.

The book looks to the creative potential of experiences of failure, haunting, estrangement, impasse, or dream in Shakespeare. The focus is not just on what the plays represent but on what they do and how they inspire and unsettle the political imaginations of their audiences. The Introduction sets out the intellectual heritage underpinning this approach, including the tradition of negative theology and subsequent philosophies of the negative (Hegel, Kierkegaard, Benjamin, Adorno, Derrida, Badiou). It thereby establishes a negative political theology that challenges the official (or positive) political theology that sacralises power. By outlining “the disruptive spirit of negativity”, it shifts critical focus from the mimetic to the affective and opens new and more nuanced readings. The approach builds on the work of critics such as Annabel Patterson, Andrew Hadfield, and Chris Fitter, who have highlighted the anti-monarchical or popular political forces at play during the period. In the via negativia, however, it explores a very different origin and mode of egalitarianism. It focuses on the way negativity and unsettlement imaginatively transform political thought and relations. Shakespeare’s drama opens up visions of something other, including radical experiences of the “perhaps” or “what if”, that deepen the audience’s political thought.

Constitutional theory in democratic countries has traditionally postulated the existence of a sovereign people endowed with the authority to enact a constitution. An influential view going back to Sieyès claims that the constituent power of the people is legally unlimited. The ability of the people to enact a constitution is supposed to be fully disconnected from positive law. This notion, however, is seriously flawed. The idea that a legally omnipotent people, working its will at the constitutional stage, is the fountain of positive law makes no sense. Although the idea can be used rhetorically in some justificatory contexts to support valuable institutional arrangements, it also raises a number of pragmatic concerns. All things considered, our theoretical and political discussions would be more fruitful if we certified the death of that concept.

The fact of religious pluralism is one of the most challenging questions for contemporary liberal democracies. Political theorists variously argue that religious belief and practice can be a support for prosocial morality, can cause social division, may prevent citizens from adopting important civic norms, or should simply be an area of civic competence. All of these positions carry significant consequences for democratic education. This chapter surveys a range of positions present in political theory and democratic education literature, drawing on historical and contemporary examples from Western democracies, particularly the American context. The chapter concludes by exploring the possibility that modern liberal democratic regimes are properly considered religious themselves, and by considering the implications of this notion for debates regarding democratic education.

Recent scholars have argued that the American founding represents a decisive departure from the classical Christian natural-law tradition. In contrast, the thematic chapters in this volume argue that the background assumptions of American public life during the founding were derived from and compatible with the classical Christian natural-law tradition that developed from the long engagement of Christianity with classical political philosophy, hitting its highwater mark in medeival scholasticisim and retaining its influence through the dominant theological traditions in the North American colonies.

In The King’s Two Bodies, Ernest Kantorowicz explores the fusion of corporate office with the private person occupying this office, considering the historical and legal issues within this topic. Kantorowicz, however, was also to fuse his ongoing study of the past with his own office as professor in his refusal to sign the oath of loyalty requested by the University of California regents, 1949. Kantorowicz’s intellectual life as a medieval historian informed his decision not to sign the oath – in contrast to his Berkeley colleague, the Renaissance scholar, Leonardo Olschki. This example shows not only how one fashions one’s scholarly work, but how one is, perhaps on the deepest level, fashioned by the working out of one’s mental life. This chapter also considers how Kantorowicz incorporated pivotal concepts from his past, in this case, the notion of sovereignty from Carl Schmitt.