Kelsen, Secular Religion, and the Problem of Transcendence

TLDR: Kelsen as discussed by the authors is a posthumous work by Kelsen, which was published by the Hans Kelsen Institut (HKI) after his death in 1973, after much hesitation, consultation and deliberation, after due payment of considerable compensations to the publishing house.

Abstract: The Board of Trustees of the Hans Kelsen Institut (HKI) has decided, after much hesitation, consultation and deliberation, to publish one more posthumous work by Hans Kelsen – a book he himself withdrew from the press several times, the last time in 1964 from the University of California Press, and after due payment of considerable compensations to the publishing house. The present text is pub‐ lished from the galley proofs with Kelsen’s last alterations.1 We do not know exactly why Kelsen withdrew the manuscript at the very last moment. There is some evidence that he eventually left the decision whether to publish it or not after his death, to some of his close friends, most notably Lewis Feuer. His daugh‐ ter Maria has confirmed this to the HKI. But it was Richard Potz (the author of a brief Introduction to the edition) who finally convinced the HKI that the text should be published after new research of both the manuscript and the archives that were meanwhile trusted to the HKI. The main reason for accepting this pro‐ posal was that the trustees believed it to be topical (again), against the backdrop of contemporary developments in science, politics, and religion. These develop‐ ments entail, first and foremost, an alleged ‘return of religion’ to the public domain in the USA and (to a lesser extent) Europe. I will hardly, if at all, go into the history of the book now published, almost forty years after Kelsen’s death in 1973. Nor will I dispute the somewhat remarkable decision by the HKI Trust to have this text published separately from the Hans Kelsen Werke and with a different publisher.2 Also, and most emphatically, I am not about to write a review of Kelsen’s book, the core of which is an elaborated critique of his former student Eric(h) Voegelin’s account of Modernity. My focus will be on the general drift of Kelsen’s argument and its relevance in our time. As I will find Kelsen’s argument wanting in some (though certainly not in all) respects, I will assess the topicality of the book differently from the HKI Trustees. I will first briefly summarize Kelsen’s main argument against what he calls ‘secu‐ lar religion,’ which boils down to the negative thesis that ‘secular transcendence’ is an oxymoron, as is ‘religion without transcendence’ or ‘religion without a God.’