It was 11:00 a.m. on Nov. 6, 2024. I was standing in Moynihan Train Hall, in the heart of New York City, waiting to depart for New Haven, Connecticut. Despite a good night’s sleep, I felt an overwhelming weariness — not of the body, but of the mind. I glanced at my wallet and counted $4. A small blessing, just enough for a print copy of the day’s New York Times. Without a second thought, I handed over the money, barely glancing at the paper. When I finally turned to the front page, it became clear that this edition was printed before the morning’s most consequential news: Donald Trump had done it. He had won the U.S. presidential election.
I had to shift my focus, for an interview that I had been thinking about for three years. I would soon be sitting across from Paul Kahn, Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and Humanities at Yale University, whose book “Political Theology” I translated into Arabic two years ago. The seismic U.S. presidential election had left little room for preparation, but my deep passion for liberalism and its critiques, along with my immersion in Kahn’s work — from his analysis of American politics to his commentary on Trump’s return to power — gave me confidence that we would have plenty to talk about.
I first encountered Paul Kahn’s work in 2015. At the time, I was deeply engrossed in exploring liberalism, critically examining its promises and limitations. Decades earlier, Francis Fukuyama had famously declared liberalism the “end of history” — humanity’s ultimate resolution of the age-old quest for a political and social system that could deliver justice and freedom. This triumphant American narrative, however, did not fully resonate in the Arab world until the aftermath of 9/11.
Many Arab intellectuals began reassessing their ideological positions following pivotal events such as the loss of the 1967 war with Israel, the Soviet Union’s collapse, the 1991 Gulf War and the Oslo Accords. Yet liberalism remained, for the most part, a dormant force in the region. It was not until U.S. pressure for political reform began to mount that liberalism surfaced more visibly. In Egypt, for example, the liberal Al-Ghad (“Tomorrow”) Party was established by Ayman Nour, while in 2009 the business owner Naguib Sawiris launched ON TV, often described as a liberal voice in the Egyptian media landscape.
Liberalism became ubiquitous, raising questions for Arab youth caught between the rise of political Islam and Western liberal rhetoric. In this context, I immersed myself in liberalism’s classics, from Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government” and “A Letter Concerning Toleration” to works by Mill, Hayek and Rawls. I initially grasped little and missed much. Over time, I realized that understanding liberalism required more than a cursory dive into philosophy and theory. It demanded a deeper engagement with history.
It was through this broader pursuit that I encountered Kahn — not as a champion of liberalism, but as one of its sharpest critics. The critique of liberalism captivated me more than its foundational texts, for two reasons. The first reason was polemical, as it resonated with the Islamic-secular tension I experienced. The second reason was intellectual. I had come to understand that critiquing a theory often proves more illuminating than merely defending or explaining it.
Critiquing a theory means dissecting it, tracing its historical evolution and exposing its internal contradictions — the very flaws that undermine its coherence and lead to inconsistencies in practice. This deeper, more rigorous analysis allows for a comprehensive understanding, moving beyond simplistic, polished narratives that reveal as much as they conceal. This intellectual approach, I believe, drew Arab intellectuals to Carl Schmitt, the German jurist whose work made him one of the most incisive critics of liberal legal theory.
In 2015, my research into the concepts of sovereignty and legitimacy led me to Schmitt’s writings on political theory. In the course of this investigation, I encountered a book with an almost identical title to one of his seminal works — Kahn’s “Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty.” Intrigued, I explored Kahn’s writings further, eventually discovering “Putting Liberalism in Its Place,” a work that captivated me.
As the title suggests, Kahn’s aim was to examine liberalism’s boundaries rather than dismantle its foundations. His critique is reminiscent of Kant’s approach to pure reason: Just as Kant did not seek to refute pure reason entirely but rather to delineate its scope, revealing the a priori conditions that ground it, Kahn aimed to define the contours of liberalism’s proper domain. He argued that liberalism operates effectively within its own world — a world of individuals bound together by contracts and governed by law, where reason reigns supreme and people appear as universal subjects.
Beyond this reason-based framework, however, lies another realm: that of individuality and existential meaning. Here, the rational mind gives way to the will — the search for meaning beyond reason. At the heart of the modern state, Kahn posits, we find not the rational social contract that liberalism celebrates but, rather, love. This idea, he suggests, is the only way to comprehend acts of self-sacrifice on behalf of the political community. Such sacrifices cannot be explained through rational calculation alone; they arise from a free will fueled by love.
Seven years passed before I revisited Kahn’s work. It was prompted by a conversation with Mohamed Tolba, a personal friend and well-known writer, about major works of political theory that had not been translated into Arabic. The conversation led to a call with Nawwaf Alqudaimi, owner and director of the Arab Network for Research and Publishing. He presented me with three English titles for potential Arabic translation. Among these was Kahn’s “Political Theology.” I selected it without hesitation, realizing that this translation would be more than just a linguistic exercise — it would be an intellectual journey.
What is political theology? The term might seem to describe an interdisciplinary field focused on studying political trends rooted in theological foundations. For Schmitt, however, it was an examination of the conceptual parallels between the structure of the modern Western state and the overarching framework of monotheistic theological thought. In the well-known introduction to the third chapter of his “Political Theology,” Schmitt declares: “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.” For instance, the foundational concept of sovereignty — the right to rule and issue laws over a certain territory — emerges, according to Schmitt, from the Christian conception of God as the absolute sovereign over humanity.
Schmitt does not draw parallels between the modern state and a theological framework merely for theoretical reasons. Instead, he is critiquing the liberal understanding of law and the state, which, he argues, overlooks the centrality of sovereignty in the latter’s construction and constitutionality. Focusing on sovereignty is essential for understanding the state’s political behavior, both in maintaining internal stability and in defending itself against external threats. Liberalism, however, prioritizes the principle of legitimacy, which holds that a state’s authority derives from its demonstrated ability to govern according to law.
In his “Political Theology,” Kahn traces Schmitt’s theory, considering it at face value and separately from the historical context of Germany’s interwar constitutional debates, in which Schmitt argued for the necessity of strong presidential authority, becoming an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi regime after 1933. Rather than aligning with Schmitt or his critics, Kahn seeks to uncover the fundamental theoretical insights that underlie Schmitt’s ideological concerns.
Kahn’s analysis ultimately establishes a new foundation for a form of political and legal existentialism — a philosophy of the state and the law recognizing that human existence transcends rational boundaries, emphasizing instead the primacy of emotion in decision-making. In other words, human will cannot be fully captured by rational analysis. For instance, one might choose to play basketball simply out of desire, not because it is an important skill, enjoyable or good for physical fitness. Rational analysis may inform the will, but the will retains an inexplicable element that exists beyond reason.
When Kahn and I discussed the reception of his book in Arab contexts, he raised an essential point: how political theology might be understood outside the Judeo-Christian theological tradition. In response, I highlighted the significant parallels between Islamic, Christian and Jewish theological frameworks, noting the Islamic Asharite theory of “kasb” (acquisition) — in which divine intervention, similar to the role of miracles in other traditions, is crucial for reconciling moral responsibility with God’s omnipotence.
The concept of miracles, Kahn suggests, illustrates divine love and mercy. In performing a miracle, God suspends natural law to offer salvation and forgiveness. Likewise, sovereign states are not founded solely on laws and contracts but on a love that manifests in both a sense of belonging and the willingness to make ultimate sacrifices. The sacred is not vanished but transformed, passing from the realm of heaven to the realm of the state.
Exceptions to the law, seen through legal frameworks, might appear as corruption rather than mercy. Yet the medieval British monarchy provided a different model. According to Ernst Kantorowicz’s classic study “The King’s Two Bodies,” the king possessed his natural body and a political body, representing the state. The king, as head of the judicial system, presided over courts of equity, which offered legal remedies in cases where common law fell short. Equity, like miracles, considers the particularity of each case and rejects blind universal rules that lack discretion and customization.
This understanding of law, will and exception challenges positivist legal theory. Hans Kelsen, the German jurist who founded legal positivism, began his “Pure Theory of Law” by invoking David Hume’s famous distinction between “is” and “ought,” asserting that no normative statement can ever be logically derived from a purely descriptive one. Consider the moral principle of respecting one’s elders: The mere existence of two individuals, one older and one younger, does not logically lead to the conclusion that the younger must respect the elder. This reveals an unbridgeable gap between “what is” and “what ought to be” that reason alone cannot cross. Kelsen proposes that law derives its legitimacy from a hierarchical system of norms, where each legal rule is validated by a higher one, culminating in a basic norm, or “Grundnorm.” This foundational norm is a presupposition; it is not derived from any empirical or sovereign authority but exists as a necessary assumption to ground the legal system.
Legal realism stands in stark opposition to Kelsen’s positivism. Realists view law not as a system of norms but as an epiphenomenon rooted in practice. One could argue that realists overemphasize the role of the judge who applies the law. However, realism encounters a similar problem: It underestimates the centrality of the rule. By downplaying the importance of legal norms and focusing instead on the contextual and personal factors influencing judicial rulings, realism overlooks the distinction between the legal act and illegal act — or, in theological terms, between God’s free will and chaos.
From positivism, Kahn accepts that the sovereign is the one who acts according to the rule, but he refutes the idea that he is obliged to do so. Instead, Kahn agrees with realism that the ruler’s will goes beyond the rule. However, he believes that the ruler, in transcending the rule, is still acknowledging the norm and treating his decision as an exception.
Between the rule and the sovereign’s decision, Kahn, unlike Schmitt, does not defend a political attitude that undermines liberal democracy. Instead, he seeks to provide us with a more comprehensive vision that does not overlook the general structure of the modern state, which is determined by the concept of sovereignty. Through sovereignty alone, he argues, the state acquires its full authority over citizens. This perspective directs our attention to two seemingly contradictory but necessary ideas: first, that political entities require ongoing confirmation of popular sovereignty to justify sacrifice for the collective good; and second, that sovereign power must always be kept in check to protect individual rights and law.
The decision to travel to the United States came suddenly — just two days before my departure. Once the choice was made, meeting Kahn became my top priority. I emailed him without expecting a prompt response. He replied swiftly during my translation work, but this was a busy period. To my surprise, he again responded quickly, agreeing to meet me. The appointment was set for the evening of Nov. 6, one day after the U.S. presidential election.
That day, I stood before Yale University’s towering Gothic architecture, a masterpiece from the early 18th century. Outside the historic Sterling Building, home to Yale Law School, I encountered Kahn unexpectedly. We had both arrived 30 minutes early for our appointment. As we walked up together, I was struck by his remarkable humility.
When asked about his approach, he said:
I don’t see law as a mere collection of rules adopted by a country. Instead, it’s a particular lens through which we view the social and political. We often ask, “Is this legal?” rather than “Is this good?” Legal frameworks shape our understanding of societal norms. The cultural approach aims to uncover the conceptual conditions underpinning this perspective. In simpler terms, it examines how law influences our perception of time, space and the self.
To consider this point, imagine you’re walking down the street holding a tissue. You hesitate before littering. This simple moment invokes multiple implicit concepts: the idea of a “society” and your responsibility to it, the laws regarding littering and fines and the role of government in providing services like trash bins. These underlying concepts — society, law and government — form the basis of your reasoning, though you rarely question them explicitly. This unconscious framework is the social imaginary at work.
Legal ideas shape this imaginary. For instance, the idea of a constitution instills the view that the ruler is a public servant bound by law, rather than a benefactor. Similarly, our understanding of law reinforces the belief that individual freedom is protected unless one violates legal norms.
Kahn contrasts cultural approaches to law with traditional legal studies, which primarily focus on the content of law. These studies examine statutes, case law and regulations to address specific legal challenges. “I’ve been accused of saying that legal scholars who study the content of law aren’t truly studying law — they’re practicing it,” he quipped. “Thus, they themselves become subjects of my research.”
He likens this distinction to the divide between theology and religious studies. While law schools often resemble theology departments, focused on normative questions, there is no equivalent to religious studies — no department solely devoted to the study of law as a concept. Political scientists may study law from an external perspective, but according to Kahn, they focus on power dynamics, neglecting law’s role in shaping the social imaginary.
His philosophical leanings are clear: “Before joining law school, I earned a PhD in philosophy, driven by the question, ‘How do we think?’ — a central inquiry of philosophy, especially since Kant.” He draws inspiration from thinkers like Michel Foucault, who explored the interplay between institutions and self-perception, and Charles Taylor, whose notion of social imaginaries profoundly influenced him. The third figure he highlights is the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who attempted “to answer the question, how is the world constructed?”
The cultural approach to law, as articulated by Kahn, diverges from traditional sociology of law, which examines the interplay between legal systems and society. Instead, Kahn proposes a “sociology of legal concepts,” asserting that legal ideas neither emerge as mere byproducts of sociological forces nor exert a straightforward influence on society. He rejects two foundational sociological paradigms: the Marxist materialist perspective, which posits that economic realities shape ideas, and the Weberian culturalist perspective, which claims that ideas drive the material development of society. These are, of course, simplified characterizations of more nuanced theories, but they can serve as useful points of comparison.
When analyzing a network of concepts, Kahn argues for an approach that examines them in their own right, rather than treating them as derivatives of preceding ideas or reflections of societal conditions. This approach involves two complementary dimensions: genealogical and architectural (or analogical).
The genealogical dimension involves tracing a concept’s historical evolution — not to reduce it to earlier concepts but to uncover residual meanings that persist within it. For example, the concept of “state” in the phrase “the Abbasid state” differs significantly from our understanding of the “modern state.” However, investigating the Abbasid conception of statehood can illuminate aspects of the modern concept that might otherwise go unnoticed. Genealogy, therefore, does not assume a linear derivation but reveals how earlier meanings intersect with and inform newer ones, leaving traces that shape their evolution.
The architectural (or analogical) dimension focuses on studying a concept within the broader network of related concepts that form a theoretical structure. Consider how the notion of “freedom” cannot be fully grasped without exploring its connections to other ideas such as “state,” “law,” “individual,” “private property” and “proletarian labor.” Without this relational analysis, our understanding risks remaining superficial — lexical rather than theoretical. Recognizing these interconnections enables a deeper comprehension of a concept’s role within its structural and theoretical context.
The architectural dimension sheds light on the challenges faced by Arab societies grappling with so-called “modern” concepts, such as freedom, equality and law. These concepts have evolved in a European context, separate from Arab society and its traditional culture. When transplanted into Arab cultural spaces, these concepts lose their structural connections with each other and become words stripped of their original context and significance. Take the notion of the “state,” for example: In Arab discourse, it is often conflated with dynasty or specific government institutions, overlooking its complex relationships with concepts like “law” or “freedom.” But the modern state cannot be equated to a dynasty, so it is fundamentally different from, say, the Umayyad or Abbasid dynasties.
In the months preceding the U.S. elections, Kahn had authored several articles analyzing the political and legal dilemmas dominating the American landscape, chief among them the trials involving Trump. In December 2023, a Colorado state court declared him ineligible to run for the presidency.
In response, Kahn urged the Supreme Court to uphold Colorado’s decision, not out of a desire to eliminate Trump from the race but out of concern for a looming constitutional crisis. Such a crisis could arise if Trump were to be convicted in an ongoing Georgia case over his alleged attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The charges, which are likely to result in a conviction, carry penalties that include imprisonment. Kahn cautioned at the time that U.S. law provided no immunity from prosecution or punishment for sitting presidents facing criminal offenses. Consequently, a conviction leading to a prison sentence during a president’s tenure would plunge the nation into uncharted constitutional waters.
Despite Kahn’s warnings, the Supreme Court overturned Colorado’s ruling last March, clearing the path for Trump’s name to appear on the state’s ballot. The Georgia trial, meanwhile, remains pending, with many predicting it will be deferred until the conclusion of Trump’s current term in office.
In our conversation, Kahn did not conceal his opposition to Trump:
Donald Trump has no understanding of law. He’s completely transactional, and he’s completely narcissistic. He doesn’t think the rules apply to him. He isn’t responsive at all to the idea that he’s responsible for law, or that law is not detached from his political power, you know?
Donald Trump is the only president in my experience, and the only person I can imagine, who would speak of the judges he appointed as ‘my judges.’ The whole idea of the law is that they’re not your judges. He expects them to rule for him because they’re his judges, as we saw, and some of them are. We saw this with the judge in Florida in the [classified] documents case. Ridiculous ruling, but he ruled for him. This means there’s going to be one legal crisis after another because he doesn’t care about the law.
There’ll be lawsuits brought about everything. If he tries to deport 11 million people, there’s going to be so many lawsuits about this. And, you know, it’ll be constant if he tries to engage in prosecutions against his enemy. There’ll be lawsuits. If he tries to use the army, there’ll be lawsuits. So it’ll be one after another, just like his first term. Constant lawsuits.
Kahn was clearly concerned that some judges may yield to Trump’s pressure. Yet he also returned to his assertion that federal law does not ensure immunity from criminal prosecution for a sitting president, leaving the Supreme Court with no recourse to shield him except through the unprecedented creation of laws tailored specifically for his protection. With a tone of lament, Kahn concluded that the situation “will be a legal zoo.”
Political theology, however, offers deeper insights into Trump’s victory and the broader ascent of the right. As Kahn explained:
This is my critique of liberal theory. For me, it’s critical to understand that the state is not a sectarian institution, but it generates its own ideas of the sacred, of the transcendent, of ultimate meaning. It makes a claim on the individual that has to be understood in the same order of meaning as religious claims.
In my view, the state is the successor to monotheism in the West. It steps right into the place of a monotheistic tradition such that we could say that, around the end of the 19th century, God died, but this popular sovereign took its place. It was just a transition, so to speak. And that means one has to be sensitive to and try to understand the place of the ultimate binding nature of the community, which means you have to understand it as a kind of erotic phenomenon, and you have to understand that the nature of the political claim is located ultimately in sacrifice.
Kahn does not see this feature of the state as a positive development but as “a very dangerous phenomenon.”
All of this is the reason why modern states have such a claim upon us, and that makes it an extremely dangerous phenomenon. The history of modernity is the history of bloodletting. Just think about the French Revolution. The 20th century killed millions and millions of people in the name of the state. It’s insane. And reflecting on the history in which I grew up, the whole world is under a continuous threat of destruction from politics. How could it possibly be worth nuclear holocaust, whatever we believe in politics? It seems crazy that we would threaten to destroy the world for the sake of, as I used to say, the question of who owns the means of production. Who cares who owns the means of production?
The most important question I had for Kahn was how to protect the idea of political theology — the respect for popular sovereignty and the centrality of decision, love and sacrifice for the political community — from abuse by the right-wing authoritarian forces that completely disregard the rule of law and individual rights. He responded:
The great burden on people who want to defend the state and not destroy themselves and their children is to understand the state within law, because law is the moderating, constraining influence on this slumbering giant. Sleep the sleeping sovereign. We want to keep him asleep by understanding law as an expression of sovereignty.
Connecting his analysis to U.S. reality, he concluded: “Yesterday’s election here may be understood in those terms. The liberal idea of a state of rules that doesn’t connect sufficiently with people’s sense of the meaning of the possibility of a sacrificial life is pulling apart.”
Kahn believes that the United States has a unique historical experience that links the rule of law to popular sovereignty:
I think this is paradigmatic in the American experience in the relationship between revolution and constitution. Revolution is the appearance of a popular sovereignty. It’s destructive. It’s autonomous. It’s self-creating. It’s a presence and ultimate meaning. It’s sacrificial. The constitution is the set of rules that will govern in a peaceful, secure order.
The claim has to be that the constitution is the product of the people. So we have to look through the constitution and see the popular sovereign. Similarly, I think we have to look through the popular sovereign and see the constitution. So holding these two things has been, to me, the great task of American constitutionalism for 200 years, but I believe that the modern state can always explode.
It was not possible to end the interview without asking Kahn about the Middle East, particularly the war in Gaza. Though he apologized for not being well-informed about the region, his principle was clear: “Decolonization wars never end successfully for the colonial power. Israel has to do a lot of thinking about this.”
Kahn does not deal with law as a culture creator or a culture’s result. Instead, he sees it as one of the cultural manifestations. Prominent law scholars Neil Walker and Marco Goldani observe that Kahn approaches legal scholarship as research in the humanities rather than as social science. He seeks to develop a philosophical anthropology of the relationship between individuals and law. This approach is particularly evident in his idea of love-based sacrifice and its role in shaping the political.
Kahn’s vision of law opens a new horizon for reconsidering our position as citizens of the modern state and our place in a world where law serves as one of its foundations. This is another reason why Kahn’s legal philosophy can be considered a “legal existentialism.” His framework not only creates a space for the will to coexist alongside reason but also motivates us to examine the existential predicament of modern societies. This predicament resonates with Arabs, given our complex relationship with the modern state on one hand and our premodern heritage on the other.
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