Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 94 No. 1, 2024.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.53745/bs.94.1.1
The Symbolic in the Political Liturgy of the Democratic Constitutional State: from the Reactualization of the Myth to Hierophania
Hrvoje Špehar
orcid.org/0000-0001-7950-5471
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper explores the concise genealogy of the political liturgy of the contemporary democratic constitutional state, demonstrating how the symbolic and ritual, mythical and hierophanic feature of premodern political forms persists in transformed social and political conditions as a key element of the contemporary political order. Following the research into the political liturgy of Georges Balandier, Claude Rivière and Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg, as well as classical sources on the theory of the myth and ritual, such as the research of Mircea Eliade and Ernst Cassirer, the paper attempts to describe some of the key formative elements of political development, especially the transposition from premodern political forms towards the creation of modern political institutions, and their ritual and mythical foundation. In the paper, this shift and political change is compared with the concept of conversio morum, as a translatio religiae, and their use in a new political context and narrative. The author argues that modern democratic politics is strongly marked by the mythical and the ritualistic, despite the notion that the role of the mythical and the ritual had ended with the establishment of a political order that is legitimized through the rational realization of political goals and which does not seek reasons for its legitimation outside the political context. In doing so, the influence exerted by the Christian liturgy on the formation of the political liturgy of both pre-modern and modern political orders is particularly valued.
Keywords
political liturgy; symbolic; democratic constitutional state; myth; hierophany
Hrčak ID:
316183
URI
Publication date:
17.4.2024.
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