On the Idea of Potency

Emanuele Castrucci is Professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of Siena. He taught previously at the Universities of Florence and Genoa. His studies mainly concern the domain of the history of legal and political ideas, which include such areas as the sources and forms of modern European legal thought, the reconstruction of the legal theory of the early 20th century German State and the theological roots of the cultural tradition of Western civilization. He has contributed to the diffusion in Italy of the thought of Carl Schmitt, editing the Italian edition of Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus publicum Europaeum (1991).

• PrefaceI. The Logos of Potency. A theoretical IntroductionII. Logos of ‘Potentia Dei’III. ‘Ordained potency’ vs. ‘Absolute Potency’IV. Political Theology ReconsideredV. Genealogies of Constituent Potency. Schmitt, Nietzsche, SpinozaCorollaries: I. On the Origins of Conventionalist Political Philosophy in the Seventeenth CenturyII. The Problem of a Political TheologyIII. Rhetoric of Ethical Universalism. Jürgen Habermas and the Dissolution of Political RealismBibliographyIndex of names