Faith as Political Problem: Religion and Philosophy in the Contemporary Age

In this lecture Elettra Stimilli, reflects on the current status of Western Philosophy vis-à-vis the renewed importance of religion in the field of global public politics. The question at its core will be whether philosophy is still able to elaborate a “critical theory,” considering how, under the current global dominance of economic power, the material structure of the economy is still permeated by elements such as faith in the markets.

Elettra Stimilli is a researcher at the Department of Philosophy at the “Sapienza Università di Roma”. Currently she is editor of the series “Filosofia e Politica” and “MaterialiIT” by the publishing house Quodlibet; she is part of the scientific committee of the book series “Political Theologies”, by Bloomsbury and she is part of the editorial board of the journal “Filosofia Politica”. She is author of numerous essays that focus on the relationship between politics and religion, with particular attention to the contemporary thought. In 2011 she published “Il debito del vivente. Ascesi e capitalism”o (which won a major Italian award - “Premio Feronia” 2013 – and which is published in English as: “The Debt of the Living”, Suny Press, New York 2017. She also published the only existing monography on Jacob Taubes: “Jacob Taubes. Sovranità e tempo messianico” (2004). She translated into Italian and edited many works of this author, in particular “Jacob Taubes, Il prezzo del messianesimo. Una revisione critica delle tesi di Gershom Scholem”, Quodlibet, Macerata 2017, of which she has also edited the German edition: “Jacob Taubes, Der Preis des Messianismus: Briefe von Jacob Taubes an Gershom Scholem und andere Materialen”, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006. In 2015 she wrote the book “Debito e colpa” (Ediesse), which is published in English: “Debt and Guilt”, Bloosmbury, London 2018.