Bonhoeffer: Kierkegaard’s ‘single individual’ in a ‘state of exception'

Petra Brown (Deakin University )

Throughout the 1930s, Bonhoeffer protested the influence of National Socialism on the German church. He also preached pacifism, and established an illegal seminary to train the leaders of the Confessing church to resist the authorities using the Sermon on the Mount. Yet, the same Bonhoeffer became involved in conspiracy only a couple of years after the closure of the seminary, thereby abandoning the pacifism he found in the Sermon on the Mount. He became a double agent in the Abwehr and was killed for this after the failure of the July 20th plot, when papers were found implicating Bonhoeffer as a conspirator. For many Bonhoeffer scholars and admirers, Bonhoeffer’s decision to turn away from pacifism to conspiracy remains intelligible in the context of Christ’s self-sacrifice and the suffering church-community.

I’m going to take as a given that Bonhoeffer’s Christology does indeed provide the continuing thread between pacifism and conspiracy. Christ is the unifying figure in Bonhoeffer’s action, both as a pacifist and as a conspirator. However, I argue that Bonhoeffer’s involvement in conspiracy cannot be understood primarily in the context of self-sacrifice and the suffering Christian church-community. I will do this in three parts. First, I will argue that the relationship of Bonhoeffer’s Christ to the disciple is not mediated through community, but is more direct in a way that is closer to Kierkegaard’s Abraham in Fear and Trembling. Second, through an analysis of Bonhoeffer’s concept of ‘the extraordinary’ in his pacifist text Discipleship, and the concept of the ‘extraordinary situation’ in the conspirator text Ethics, I show that Christ as the unifying figure  may lead to a deity who commands peace in the Sermon on the Mount but remains free to command killing in an ‘extraordinary situation’. Third, through a comparison with Karl Barth’s ‘extreme case’, Grenzsituation, and Schmitt’s ‘state of exception’, Ausnahmezustand, it will become clear that Bonhoeffer’s disciple in the extraordinary situation ‘suspends’ the normal state of affairs, in a way that disturbingly mirrors Schmitt’s argument for dictatorship and the right of the sovereign to suspend the law in a state of exception. I suggest Bonhoeffer’s political involvement from pacifism to conspiracy may be seen as an example of the ‘single individual’ that enacts a suspension of ethics in a Schmittian sense.

Finally, I will draw attention to the intellectual source of Bonhoeffer’s ‘extraordinary situation’ and Schmitt ‘state of exception’: the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard and his concept of the ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’ in Fear and Trembling. Through the engagement with both Kierkegaard and Schmitt, I want to show Bonhoeffer’s involvement in conspiracy is problematic for anyone who wants to interpret his involvement in conspiracy as intelligible in the context of Christ’s self-sacrifice and the suffering church-community.

Petra Brown is a PhD candidate at Deakin University.