In his studies of the thought of Carl Schmitt, Heinrich Meier insists on a distinction he takes to be crucial for understanding the challenge posed by the jurist's ‘lesson’: the difference between political philosophy and political theology. If political philosophy is the study of the political good carried out ‘entirely on the ground of human wisdom’, Meier argues, then political theology is the study of the same from the standpoint of a ‘faith in revelation’. In a trenchantly Straussian fashion, then, Meier understands the difference as far more than simply doctrinal, arguing instead that it ‘concerns the foundation and assertion of an existential position’. As he puts it: ‘What could be less immaterial than the distinction between a thought that wants to move and conceive itself in the obedience of faith and one that is not bound by any authority and spares nothing from its questions?’

In this chapter I want to show that a third term – political ontology – can be set against both these alternatives. We could give a preliminary definition of it as follows: the study of how our ontology – our conception of the world as such – conditions what we take to be the ontic possibilities for human collectives.