Faculty
Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, University of Westminster, London, Professor Peter Fitzpatrik. Birkbeck College, University of London, Associate Professor Camilla Sløk, Dpt. of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School

Course Coordinator
Associate Professor Camilla Sløk

Students enrolled in a PhD program. The course is aimed at students with a social scientific background and an interest in philosophical approaches to society, theology and the law. Previous to the course’s start, students are expected to produce a short empirical example drawn from their research project, which will form the basis of a group assignment to be completed during the course. Students are expected to participate actively in discussions. Participation in the whole course is a prerequisite for receiving the course diploma

The course analyses how the intertwining of theology, law and politics takes place in modern organizations. One of the more obvious cases of this is the so-called Danish Cartoon Crisis which started in 2005 as a local newspaper’s caricature of the prophet Muhammad in a distant region of Denmark, ending with riots, killing and boycott in the Middle East and Africa. The conflict over the cartoons is still not over. The political consequences of the tackling, or rather, initial lack of tackling of the conflict, had heavy impact on industrial organizations. This is just an example of the fact that the political and legal system do not and perhaps cannot accept theology, and its impact on their very understandind of their function. Theology proposes an embodied ethos of emplacement that often seems to transgress traditional systemic boundaries. We aim at exploring the theoretical, philosophical and applied connections between these systems.

 

This course will look more thorough into the follow questions:

1)     How do we recognize theological remains and reflections in law and politics?

2)     How do organizations operate with the relation (or ignore the relation) between the three systems of theology, law and politics in decision making?

3)     How is present day’s understanding of politics and law stripped off and set in opposition to theological and also ethical dimensions?

4)     Are there any benefits in keeping up sharp distinctions between the three systems, theology, law and politics in decision making?

The course will introduce concepts of law and theology as these appear in organizational life. The approaches to this are interdisciplinary. We will look at hermeneutical interpretations as made within the field of law and politics, as well as politological approaches on the role of theology and law in society and politics. The course will inspire Ph.D. fellows who work within the interdisciplinary field, as well as students who work more specifically with either theology, law or politics

Lecture plan

Time/period	Faculty	Title
Thursday 20.10. 2011
9.00 - 10.00		Introduction
10.00-12.00	Camilla Sløk	The relation between theology and law from a Protestant perspective.
12.00-13.00		Lunch
13.00-14.00		Group work
14.00 - 16.30	Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos	Law and theology in Deleuze and Kierkegaard
Friday 21.10.2011
9.00 - 9.30		Wrap-up previous day & intro to day
9.30-12.00	Peter Fitzpatrick	”What Are the Gods to Us Now?”: Secular Theology and the Modernity of Law
12.00-13.00		Lunch
13.00-14.00		Group work
14.00 - 16.30		Panel with faculty on the theme. Evalutation. Future possibilities

The teaching style of the course is a mixture of lectures, discussion seminars with short presentations, and group work. A large part of the course consists of dialogues in which students are expected to be very active. Students will get a group assignment on the first day of the course and this will be discussed through a presentation on the last day of the course.

Jacques Derrida: The Force of Law. 1989.

Jacques Derrida: The Gift of Death. trans. David Wills, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos: ‘Repetition or the Awnings of Justice’, in O. Ben-Dor (ed.), Law and Art, London: Routledge, 2011

 Mary Bryden (ed.), Deleuze and Religion, London: Routledge, 2000

 Peter Fitzpatrick: ”What Are the Gods to Us Now?”: Secular Theology and the Modernity of Law

Theoretical Inquiries in Law. Volume 8, Number 1 January 2007 Article 8

CRITICAL MODERNITIES: POLITICS AND LAW BEYOND THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION 

Peter Fitzpatrick: Legal Theology: Law, Modernity and the Sacred. Seattle University Law Review, (2009), Vol.32, No.2, 321-41.

Camilla Sløk:"Disorganization as religion: organization in the Danish Evangelical Lutheran National Church". Cybernetics & Human Knowing, Volume 16, No.1-2, 2009

Camilla Sløk: "Here I stand: Lutheran stubbornness in the Danish Prime Minister's office during The Danish Cartoon Crisis" (2009). European Journal of Social Theory 12(2)

 J Burnside God, Justice and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
A Bradney, Law and Faith in a Sceptical Age (London: Routledge Cavendish, 2009)
P Cane, C Evans and Z Robinson (ed) Law and Religion in Historical and Theoretical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)