Resomodernity Café v9: Transcendent Sovereignty
Posted: January 2, 2026 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: agency, debate, philosophy, politics, systems Leave a commentSequel to Resomodernity Café v8: Silicon Advaita
The Descent of Transcendence: Sovereignty Over Time
Have Schmitt host the others in workshop to hammer out a consensus version of the thesis that sovereignty historically mediates transcendence. Write a comic self-referential skit where his own mis-mediated sovereignty almost destroys it.
ChatGPT Prompt
1. Dramatis Personae
- Carl Schmitt — Host, chair, emergency decider.
Obsessed with the exception. Nervous without it. - Eric Voegelin — Mystic diagnostician of derailments.
Speaks calmly while civilizations collapse. - Giorgio Agamben — Archaeologist of abandoned machinery.
Smiles whenever something breaks. - Eric Santner — Analyst of surplus burden and royal remains.
Notices who is quietly suffering. - Charles Taylor — Translator of inwardness for normal humans.
Keeps asking where the weight lands.
2. Opening Scene: The Invitation
Schmitt (gaveling the table):
Gentlemen. Welcome. I have convened this workshop to produce a consensus formulation of the thesis:
Sovereignty is always tied to transcendence— manifest in pre-history, mandated in antiquity, humanized in modernity.
Before we begin, let me be clear: I will not decide the exception today.
(pause)
Unless necessary.
Agamben (already smiling):
It will be necessary.
3. First Round: Suspicious Agreement
Voegelin:
The thesis is sound. It tracks the experience of transcendence and its symbolization. Pre-history lives within the divine; antiquity represents it; modernity absorbs it into man. The danger is not loss, but deformation—what I once called the immanentization of the eschaton.
Taylor:
Yes. Modernity doesn’t abolish transcendence; it relocates the point of appeal inward. The modern self becomes the final court—often unwillingly.
Santner:
And the psychic cost is immense. The surplus once borne by gods, kings, and offices collapses into the subject. Modern anxiety is the afterimage of displaced sovereignty.
Agamben:
What you call mandate in antiquity decays into procedure without presence in modernity. The machine continues even after transcendence withdraws.
Schmitt (pleased):
Excellent. We are aligned.
(Too aligned.)
4. The Tension Appears
Schmitt:
Let us finalize the formulation. I propose:
“Sovereignty names the site of transcendence that authorizes decisive action.”
Taylor:
Carl, that already privileges decisionism.
Voegelin:
And it risks collapsing transcendence into the decider himself.
Santner:
Also, psychologically speaking, that formulation quietly recenters you.
Agamben (deadpan):
We are inside the exception.
(Lights flicker.)
5. Schmitt’s Slip: The Almost-Catastrophe
Schmitt (standing):
Very well. Since clarity is required, I will decide the wording.
(Alarm sounds. A red sign flashes: “EXCEPTION INVOKED.”)
Agamben:
Ah. There it is.
Voegelin (sighing):
Carl, this is exactly the problem. You’ve turned the workshop into a sovereign act.
Santner:
The burden is reattaching itself to a single figure. History is repeating—this time as farce.
Taylor:
This is why moderns are nervous around sovereignty language.
Schmitt (confused):
But someone must decide!
(The table begins to crack under metaphysical weight.)
6. Intervention: De-Sovereignizing the Room
Voegelin (calmly):
Carl, sovereignty is not yours. It is what your theory describes.
Agamben:
You are not the sovereign; you are the archivist of its ruins.
Santner:
If you carry it alone, it will crush you—or everyone else.
Taylor:
Let the formulation emerge. No exception. No decision.
(The alarm stops. The sign dims.)
7. The Consensus Formulation
(They write together. No one signs it.)
Consensus Thesis
Sovereignty always answers to transcendence.
In pre-history, transcendence is manifest, and sovereignty is experienced.
In antiquity, transcendence withdraws, and sovereignty is mandated—mediated through law, representation, and nomos.
In modernity, transcendence is humanized: mankind becomes the final court of appeal, inheriting sovereignty’s burden without its supports.
Modern crises arise not from the loss of sovereignty, but from its misplacement.
(Silence.)
8. Epilogue
Schmitt (quietly):
So the sovereign is… never simply the decider.
Agamben:
Correct. The decider is a symptom.
Voegelin:
Transcendence remains, whether acknowledged or not.
Santner:
Someone always pays the surplus.
Taylor:
The question is whether we notice who.
Schmitt (smiles, resigned):
Very well. Workshop adjourned.
No exceptions.
(Lights out.)
9. Postscript
A note is left on the table:
“This workshop was possible only because no one claimed sovereignty over it.”
Schmitt pockets the note.
He does not decide what it means.
Appendix: “Who Decides?”
Explain why terms like decider and exception are so loaded, and what alternative the skit hints at.
ChatGPT Prompt
A1. Why “the Decider” Is Never Neutral
In modern political theology, especially via Carl Schmitt, the decider is not merely someone who chooses.
The decider is the one who cannot be overruled.
Schmitt’s famous formulation—
“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”
(State of exception)
—binds decision, sovereignty, and transcendence into a single act.
Why this is loaded:
- A decision is ordinary.
- A sovereign decision claims finality.
- Finality always implies an appeal beyond norms, rules, or procedures.
Thus, to name a decider is already to smuggle in:
- transcendence
- suspension of norms
- concentration of answerability
This is why, in the skit, Schmitt’s impulse to “just decide” almost collapses the workshop.
The act reconstitutes sovereignty in him, rather than letting it be examined.
A2. Why the “Exception” Is Dangerous
The exception is not just an edge case.
It is the moment when:
- law suspends itself
- procedure yields to judgment
- order reveals what ultimately grounds it
Historically:
- In antiquity, the exception belonged to the gods and their mandates.
- In modernity, the exception migrates into emergencies, crises, and charismatic leaders.
The danger is not the exception itself, but its normalization.
As Giorgio Agamben shows, modern systems increasingly live in a permanent state of exception, where:
- decisions are made without transcendence
- yet still claim sovereign force
The skit stages this danger comically:
once the exception is invoked, everything destabilizes.
A3. Why “Who Decides?” Is the Wrong Final Question
“Who decides?” assumes:
- sovereignty must be located in an agent
- final authority must be personal
- order depends on command
But that assumption is precisely what the historical arc has rendered unstable.
Across the epochs you’ve traced:
- Pre-history — no one decides; the sacred is manifest.
- Antiquity — no one decides absolutely; mandate mediates transcendence.
- Modernity — everyone is tempted to decide, because mankind has inherited sovereignty.
Thus the question “Who decides?” is already modern—and already anxious.
A4. What the Skit Hints At Instead
Notice what actually produces the consensus in the workshop:
- no exception is invoked
- no final decider asserts authority
- the formulation emerges, rather than being decreed
This hints at an alternative mode of sovereignty:
Sovereignty as articulated recognition, not decisive imposition.
Or more carefully:
- Transcendence is neither denied nor monopolized
- Authority is not abolished, but distributed across intelligibility
- Decision is replaced by answerability to what is disclosed
This is why:
- no one signs the consensus
- no one claims authorship
- sovereignty remains present, but unclaimed
A5. The Implicit Alternative (Named Carefully)
The skit gestures toward what might be called:
- non-decisive sovereignty
- post-exceptional authority
- or simply shared answerability to transcendence
Not rule by procedure.
Not rule by charisma.
Not rule by the self.
But rule by what cannot be decided into existence, only recognized.
A6. Final Compression
- Decider language concentrates sovereignty.
- Exception language destabilizes order.
- The skit suggests a third way:
Sovereignty persists without a sovereign.
That is not a solution.
It is a condition modernity is only beginning to name.
And that is why the final line matters:
“This workshop was possible only because no one claimed sovereignty over it.”
The question is no longer who decides.
It is whether we can still recognize what answers us.
Radical Centrism 