From public/private spheres to tout autre est tout autre: christianity and politics in Carl Schmitt\u27s The concept of the political and Jacques Derrida\u27s The gift of death

This essay argues that Carl Schmitt\u27s political theory in The Concept of the Political functions as a site for exploring the relationship between Christianity and politics in Western history. The author suggests that Schmitt\u27s theory is both informed by and yet inconsistent to orthodox Catholicism through an analysis of the terms public and private as used in Schmitt\u27s writings and in St. Augustine\u27s The City of God. Drawing on Jacques Derrida\u27s consideration in The Gift of Death of the concept of responsibility, the author also posits that Schmitt\u27s political definition, here representative of realist politics, is not only opposed to Christianity but to the history of the ethico-political in the Western. This essay concludes by suggesting renewed critical discussion of the intersection of religion and politics