Sovereign Time and Messianic Time - On Giorgio Agamben’s Reading of Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin -

Triggered by the state of emergency declared on December 3, 2024, Korean society has seen a growing reflection on the fragility of democracy and the nature of political power that threatens it. This study proceeds from the premise that a critical understanding of the concept of sovereignty is essential for the protection and advancement of democracy. To this end, Section 2 examines Carl Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty, while Section 3 discusses Giorgio Agamben’s reinterpretation of Schmitt’s sovereign theory. Section 4 turns to Walter Benjamin’s conception of messianic politics as a theological dimension of democratic politics resisting the absoluteness of sovereignty. Section 5 then analyzes Agamben’s notion of messianic time, which reconstructs Benjamin’s ideas from the perspective of a democratic politics opposing sovereign rule. Through this discussion, the paper demonstrates that the politicalphilosophical inquiry into the theological dimension of sovereignty and democracy is fundamentally intertwined with the problem of thinking about time.