Political Sublime and the Daemonological Origin Of Modernity. Saying Adieu to Political Theology and its Modern Epigones

The aim of this paper is to show the demonological origin of modernity, which entails a "sublime" aspect of the political exceeding the words by which we try to capture its nature. As such this paper is an attempt to overcome both the Weberian approach to the disenchanment of modernity, and the Schmitt’s theory of Political Theology, purported in many ways by his contemporary epigones (Agamben, Esposito and others). My paper proceeds analsing the parallel between King James I and Jean Bodin. Both authors developed the modern conceptions of political sovereignty and both were engaged in witch-trials, writing extensive treatises on the matter. This parallel locates the question of heterodoxy/orthodoxy in the very threshold of modernity. My tentative conclusion is the possibility of a link between the politicization of the magic world and the genealogy of modernity, reversing, in a way, the standard approach of political theology in favour of a demonological archeology of modern (and exotic ) European concepts of law and politics.