Theology of sanctions
What is the essence of sanctions? Why did the West impose sanctions upon Iran, and why did the Iranian academic community fail to engage with this phenomenon in a proper manner, simultaneously proving unable to produce the requisite logical and scientific discourse about it? The absence of a profound engagement with the question of sanctions has engendered, and continues to engender, unfavorable consequences and damages, of which the atrophy of national self-consciousness represents the most considerable. The normalization of this condition further conduces to a certain lethargy, an absence of effective action, and ultimately, capitulation before it. Consequently, until, on the one hand, the essence of this phenomenon, its historical roots, and its theoretical foundations are elucidated, and, on the other hand, until comprehensive and meticulous social scientific investigations are undertaken concerning it, one cannot correctly appraise its consequences nor effectively combat it. The comprehension of modern phenomena and concepts within the domain of human sciences and relations is attainable through diverse methods; concepts such as liberty, welfare, rationality, development, justice, and others may, at times, be examined via the Socratic dialectical method, at times their semantic evolution throughout history may be revisited, or they may be analyzed from the perspective of moral philosophy with respect to their individual and social consequences, and at times, through a sociological lens and a bottom-up perspective, the conditions for the emergence of these phenomena may be scrutinized. One of the captivating methods for analyzing ideas and concepts consists of investigating the transformation of their meanings within the historical context and revisiting the connections and relations between old and new significations; a method prevalent in 19th- and 20th-century Germany and employed in the works of thinkers such as Max Scheler, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. The phenomenon of sanctions also ranks among those modern concepts that occupy a determinative position within the contemporary international legal and political order, and through the aforementioned method, one may, on the one hand, descend into the depths of its theological foundations, and, on the other hand, utilizing sociological research methods, examine its impact upon the diverse classes and guilds of the target society. Research concerning the theology of sanctions can furthermore furnish a framework for comprehending global politics, its instruments — such as economic punishment — and its objectives. Nevertheless, as an initial step, it appears that one can only employ these models in a formal manner for the theological and historical analysis of the concept of sanctions; for, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no comparable research before regarding “sanctions” is worthy of mention, and to surmount this methodological underdevelopment, in addition to the framework of social analysis and critique of the Iranian academic research system, an attempt shall be made to elucidate the pattern of the West’s adversarial conduct against Iran by utilizing genealogical and analytical frameworks derived from thinkers such as Nietzsche, Schmitt, Foucault, and, briefly, Agamben.
By Amir Farshbaf
Staff writer
In sacred scriptures and the language of divine religions, sanctions possess diverse meanings and synonyms, having experienced varied applications across different contexts.
Within Christian theology, the concept of “Anathema” — signifying curse, excommunication, and ostracism — may be regarded as an instrument for preserving faith and the Church’s power, of which “sanctions” — according to the models that shall be enumerated — are the subsequent and secularized form within the modern moral and political order.
The Old Testament, likewise, owing to the absolute dominance of the discourse of Christian law, is replete with curses, prohibitions, excommunications, and all kinds of punishments and their promises. For example, one may refer to the “Book of Genesis” and the curse of Ham (son of the Prophet Noah), or to the “Book of Deuteronomy,” wherein, according to the testament of Moses (PBUH), six tribes of the descendants of Jacob (PBUH) are to bless the people, while the other six tribes are to direct curses toward the future idolaters and infidels of the community: “Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place.’ And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’ Cursed is anyone who dishonors their father or mother... Cursed is anyone who moves their neighbor’s boundary stone... Cursed is anyone who leads the blind astray on the road... Cursed is anyone who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent person. And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’” (Deuteronomy 27: 15–25)
With this description, according to the frameworks that shall be mentioned, the decree of these prohibitions will also extend to the modern era, and sanctions represent the continuation of the theology of punishment and one of its subsequent forms, which the modern state imposes upon “adversarial” states.
Schmitt and the theology of ‘friend/enemy’
Carl Schmitt does not explicitly address the subject of sanctions in his works; however, through a reconstruction of his argumentation and chosen method, one can deduce sanctions as one of the forms of modern “punishment”. The cornerstone of Schmitt’s analysis is the proposition he advances in his book Political Theology: “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.” According to this framework, punishment, like the concept of “sovereignty” and many new legal and political expressions, is a secularized theological concept.
On this basis, the sovereign, in the capacity of a secularized god, holds the monopoly over “Gericht” (German for judgment), and this judgment culminates in the “state of exception,” which is the secular equivalent of the “miracle”; in other words, just as God suspends the cosmic order during miracles to guarantee the salvation of humanity, the modern sovereign likewise suspends positive laws to rescue the terrestrial order. “Schuld” (German for guilt) is not merely a transgression of a legal norm but is rooted in the “original sin,” which constitutes the innate condition of humankind.
From Schmitt’s perspective, to comprehend the structure of authority in the modern state, one must look to the metaphysical structure that this state has superseded — namely, monotheistic theology. He endeavors to demonstrate that modern politics still acquires meaning within a theological structure.
Another point that ought not to escape attention is the fundamental distinction between “friend” and “enemy,” which directly pertains to the discussion of sanctions. In his book The Concept of the Political, he identifies the inception of politics as the moment when the enemy is determined and defined. Sanctions constitute the contemporary consequence of this distinction: a declaration of enmity without a declaration of war. In this logic, sanctions represent the ritualistic act of excluding the enemy from the sacred community of law.
In Schmitt’s philosophy, political power is inherently theological, for the concept of “exception” — which sanctions here represent — still derives sustenance from a miracle-centered theology. The theology of sanctions in a Schmittian reading signifies the return of God in the guise of the international sovereign: God/State, which can at any moment suspend the rules in order to execute its own justice.
Another point concerning international sanctions from Schmitt’s standpoint is that, in The Concept of the Political, he enumerates four “central domains” that, from the 16th through the 20th centuries, have dominated the spiritual life of the European human: first, the theological domain; second, the metaphysical domain; third, the humanitarian-moral domain; and finally, the economic domain. Rejecting the cliché of the pacifistic nature of economic discourse, he maintains that, in the current situation, an imperialism founded upon pure economic power will naturally endeavor to preserve conditions in the world that enable it to employ its economic instruments without interference from others; instruments such as the repudiation of credits, sanctions on raw materials, and the destruction of others’ currency, et cetera.
In the central economic domain, for the application of such instruments, a new and intrinsically pacific vocabulary is created; war is condemned, but executions, sanctions, punitive expeditions, pacifications, protection of treaties, international police, and measures for the preservation of peace remain. For this reason, the “adversary” is no longer [merely] designated as “enemy,” but rather defined as a disturber of peace and therefore a “hors-la-loi” (French for outlaw) and “hors l’humanité” (French for outside humanity), and the war waged for the purpose of protecting and expanding economic power must, with the aid of propaganda, be transformed into a crusade and the final battle of humanity! Consequently, from Schmitt’s perspective, international sanctions are an instrument of domination for the economic discourse, through which the adversarial power that has targeted this central domain is punished.
Theology of servitude and the ethics of sanctions
One of the principal perspectives in the critique and examination of sanctions is the horizon of moral philosophy. Sanctions may be analyzed, both in terms of their essence and their consequences, from an evaluative standpoint. Anglo-Saxon and analytic moral philosophies predominantly critique and analyze sanctions from the angle of consequence-assessment and their effects, whereas the methodological principles of the Continental tradition necessitate a revisiting of their historical nature and genealogical semantic trajectory.
Friedrich Nietzsche ranks among the earlier thinkers of the Continental tradition who examine the Christian system of valuation from a genealogical perspective. Of course, Nietzsche, like Schmitt, does not offer an extended explicit treatment of the concept of sanctions and their historical roots; here, on the basis of his chosen method, an attempt shall be made to infer certain points in this regard. However, prior to that, concerning the precedence of Schmitt over Nietzsche (despite Nietzsche’s chronological priority), it should be recalled that it is solely on account of Schmitt’s more mature methodological framework in the discussion of political theology and because the general Schmittian spirit dominates this writing that his view was presented first.
In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche initiates a project whose objective is the disclosure of the concealed origin of values; in his conviction, morality is born not of reason or revelation, but of the conflict of social forces — though not in the Marxist sense thereof. According to this genealogy, sanctions arise from a kind of theology of judgment that the weak exercise against the strong.
According to Nietzsche, in the beginning, aristocratic morality was founded upon the affirmation of life, and the concept of “good” was employed to mean powerful, noble, and beautiful. But the “slaves,” who lacked the capacity for “action,” inverted values through a spiritual reaction to oppression; instead of “action,” they created judgment. As a rule, religious sanction — in the sense of prohibition (haram) and exclusion — constitutes the primary instrument of this judgment: the sanctioning of strong actions, the sanctioning of pleasure, the sanctioning of beauty, the sanctioning of pride, et cetera. This inversion, according to Nietzsche, was “one of the most important events in Western history,” for from then on, humanity became its own enemy within itself.
From Nietzsche’s perspective, God and the concept of sin likewise determine these judgments; God is the ultimate judge and absolute sanctioner, transforming the morality of slaves into the law of existence. Consequently, sanctions become the mechanism for the survival of suffering: humanity, in order to endure suffering, finds meaning in sin.
In Nietzschean logic, sanctions possess an intrinsic connection with guilty conscience: sanctions are that inner voice that commands, prohibits, and directs its wrath toward its own subject. Sanctions, in this sense, constitute the internal mechanism of obedience. Consequently, the theology of sanctions from Nietzsche’s perspective signifies the theology of the tormented conscience in a world whose god is preserved through cursing and exclusion. But how, from this point, can one draw a line to politics and modern international relations? Based on what has been stated, one can propose the proposition that political and economic sanctions represent the reproduction of that same mechanism of moral conscience on a collective scale, through which the state or the international community, by imposing sanctions upon others, defines itself.
In other words, sanctions in Nietzschean genealogy — like Schmitt — constitute the secularized form of divine cursing. Nietzsche ironically designates this logic as the incapacity to suffer pain: an order that, instead of creating new values and tolerating the rival order, passes judgment and sanctions adversarial forces. In the theology of sanctions, this judgment transforms into a system of power; yet it remains the case that the same spirit of revenge by the weak against the strong is at work.
Sanctions as an instrument of behavioral control
Another comparable framework through which the discussion of sanctions may be examined is the theoretical model of Michel Foucault. Foucault extends Nietzsche’s genealogy to the level of institutions and bodies. In his works from the earlier phase of his thought — from The Order of Discourse to Discipline and Punish — he demonstrates that modern power operates not through overt command, but through a network of sanctions: the sanctioning of speaking, of seeing, and even of being.
In The Order of Discourse, he maintains that every society constructs a system of prohibitions (taboos) that determines who may speak and about what one may or may not speak. From this perspective, the sanctioning of speech constitutes the constructor of truth: that which cannot be spoken delineates the boundary of knowledge. Consequently, sanctions represent the primary constitutive act of knowledge.
It is worthy of note that Foucault’s formulation bears an interesting resemblance to Wittgenstein’s views, both in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and in the Philosophical Investigations; in the former, he determines the boundaries of the sayable and the unsayable, and in the latter, he determines legitimate linguistic discourses under the theories of language-games and family resemblance. Of course, the point of departure, the telos, and the methodology of Wittgenstein differ from those of Foucault.
In Discipline and Punish, sanctions are transferred from the domain of speech to the “body”. Power no longer tortures the body; rather, it disciplines it. Punishment migrates from public spectacle to closed institutions (the school, the prison, the hospital), and in all these cases, sanctions do not negate but rather systematize: “Sanctions signify conditional permission to live”!
In his subsequent phase, with the concept of “biopower,” Foucault demonstrates that sanctions constitute part of the mechanism for managing populations; modern states exercise control over the life of citizens not through death, but through the management of birth, health, illness, et cetera. Political and especially economic sanctions also follow this logic: the control of the adversary’s behavior through the management of the target society’s life.
At this level — contrary to the preceding negative levels — sanctions represent a kind of positive power; they no longer merely exclude, but rather shape. Foucault considers this the distinguishing feature of modern power as opposed to sovereign power. Sanctions, according to this framework, appear restrictive, but in reality, they are constitutive of a particular type of subject and reality (truth). Consequently, the theology of sanctions from Foucault’s perspective signifies a theology of discipline. God here is not a judge, but an overseer: precisely as modern society, through its “panoptic” gaze, compels individuals toward obedience. Modern sanctions constitute modern penance; a perpetual surveillance of behavior.
But on the international scale, one can state that, according to Foucault’s view, sanctions represent the mechanism for containing forces, organizations, and adversarial states that do not conform to the logic of the international system. Sanctions, within this framework, constitute an instrument of pressure and behavioral modification of the opponent, preceding military warfare — an instrument that, in the view of some, constitutes a prelude to war, and, in the view of others, a factor for avoiding military aggression.
Divine economy and the ontology of sanctions
Another theoretical framework, influenced by Schmitt — or at least following the general spirit of his thought — is the model stated by the phenomenologist Giorgio Agamben. Agamben continues Schmitt’s project with a critical perspective; in his books State of Exception and Homo Sacer, he demonstrates that the foundation of all modern politics is not law, but rather “exception”. Homo sacer is the human who is excluded from the legal order, yet remains within the sphere of its power; “one who may be killed, but not sacrificed.”
Sanctions, from this perspective, reproduce this same condition: a population that is deprived of its right to life and its right to death, yet remains ensnared within the global order. Sanctioned peoples are the modern homines sacri.
In State of Exception, Agamben demonstrates that the exception is no longer a temporary condition; rather, it is the very form of government, and sanctions today are permanent, not transient. Humanity lives in a condition of “institutionalized exception”; consequently, the boundary between war and peace, and between legality and lawlessness, is effaced.
But the most explicit views of Agamben regarding sanctions are to be sought in his book The Kingdom and the Glory. Concerning economic theology, he maintains that modern power, in the form of “oikonomia” (Greek for “government of men”, also the root word for economy), originates from theology, that is, a governance that administers the world through a combination of justice and efficiency. On this basis, economic sanctions can be regarded as one of the secularized forms of “divine economy”: punishment for the sake of salvation, and control for the sake of redemption.
Thus, the theology of sanctions in Agamben’s view is not merely ethical or political, but is fundamentally ontological: a decision concerning life that is livable and death that is unlivable; sanctions signify the definition of who falls within humanity and who falls outside it.
From an international perspective, Agamben’s view similarly resembles Schmitt’s, and according to his perspective, one can state that the dominant international discourse, through the construction of ostensibly pacific meanings, not only excludes rival or adversarial forces from the domain of conventional order, but also from the circle of humanity, in order to legitimize its subsequent conduct, including the deprivation of their right to life. In Agamben’s logic, sanctions constitute the glorious garment of justice in appearance, draped over a kingdom devoid of mercy (grace).
The article first appeared in the
Persian-language newspaper Iran.