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Харизма и смерть: о разновидностях одного типа политического господства
The political is intimately bound to death. It is precisely in the horizon of death that the primary need for politics arises, and all the variations of the ways of satisfying this need, from the ancient to the contemporary, may be considered within the same horizon. In particular, there is the question of immortality — not literal physical immortality, but symbolic, attainable or at least approximable by political means. Sociologically, it is less important whether the matter concerns otherworldly salvation, this-worldly salvation, or hybrids thereof. In any case, some form of political soteriology is constructed that, in one way or another, relates domination and salvation. The modern state is a specific form of domination that, in the course of its emergence, increasingly claims to be, if not the sole, then the principal operator of salvation goods and provider of immortality, displacing and ousting competitors through the appropriation and modification of their practices (above all church practices).
Of all the Weberian types of legitimate domination, the charismatic type is most closely linked to the themes of death and immortality. It is salvation — deliverance from all manner of sufferings and calamities, and ultimately eternal life— that the charismatic leader promises to his followers. Although in the second half of the twentieth century the understandings of political charisma and of salvation underwent significant transformations in comparison with the original Weberian formulations, their linkage has, so far, persisted. A temporary, purpose-limited shift into theological discourse allows one to discern a non-obvious window of opportunity for continuing the history of political charisma. At present, political charisma is more readily coupled with political programs and orders oriented toward the production of political evil than with those oriented toward the production of political good (it is precisely theological discourse that allows one to operationalize the notions of good and evil — and, in fact, it alone does). Accordingly, salvation is more easily conceived as the alternative salvation known from that same theological discourse — not in eternal life, but in eternal death, achieved through violence and unfreedom and consisting in them. For the first time, political charisma per se was declared suspect in the second and third quarters of the twentieth century. This was followed by its partial, selective rehabilitation. Now the a priori suspicion has again become warranted — and, arguably, on firmer grounds than before.