Resumen

MOLINA, Tomás Felipe. The Westphalian System: An Analysis from the Political Theology of Nicolás Gómez Dávila. Pap.polit. [online]. 2016, vol.21, n.2, pp.411-434. ISSN 0122-4409.  https://doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.papo21-2.swat.

This article analyzes the main characteristics of the Westphalian system through the politicaltheological lens of Textos I by Nicolás Gómez Dávila. It is argued that Westphalian States take divine attributes and seize the role God had in the Middle Ages: they claim to be sovereign and assume the ontological and axiological foundation of the system’s elements. The results of such analysis are several. Firstly, it is shown that the structural anarchy that is born with Westphalia is not a mere political arrangement but the product of a fundamental theological decision: to take from God the ultimate sovereignty and authority that stablished medieval hierarchy and thus creating a situation of equally sovereign States in anarchy. Secondly, the international modern system is nihilist, in the sense that with the death or exclusion of God there is no absolute order of things, but a situation in which the sole will of States decides what has value or not. Thirdly, the interpretative difference between Gómez Dávila and the traditional narratives can be read as an ideological struggle to fill the contents of an empty signifier in the vein of Zizek. Finally, it is argued that Gomez Davila’s posture can be read as an hermeneutics of suspicion that unveils the hidden theological aspects of an apparently purely secular phenomenon such as the modern international system.

Palabras clave : Political theology; Westphalia; Nicolás Gómez Dávila; sovereignty; Modernity; Carl Schmitt; desition; Middle Ages; religion; modern international system; realism; Morgenthau; Leo Gross; Zizek.

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