For Schmitt, the political is threatened by plurality and liberalism, and threatens to undermine the state and create a world whereby “humanitarian” can be used to justify the heinous. The political is necessary for us to understand where divisions are drawn; it is a necessary classification to clear the air of any foggy relativism brought about by the “perhaps” of liberalism.
Schmitt begins by looking at a number of different concepts that have clear, binary categories into which they can be divided. Economic can be divided into profit/loss. Ascetics can be divided into beautiful/ugly. Religious can be divided into good/bad. For Schmitt, “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy” (26).
Going on,
“The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible” (27)
Schmitt has a problem with liberalism:
“Liberalism is one of its typical dilemmas…of intellect and economics has attempted to transform the enemy from the viewpoint of economics into a competitor and from the intellectual point into a debating adversary… The concern here is neither with abstractions nor with normative ideals, but with inherent reality and the real possibility of such a (friend/enemy) distinction” (28).
Liberals do not understand or embrace the friend/enemy distinction, and this is problematic. Liberals would rather engage in economic competition with what should be their enemies. However, when it comes down to the task of making war, a real possibility in the affairs of states, the liberal will be baffled because they do not know who their enemies are. For the liberal, they have only amenable competitors. “War is the external negation of an enemy” (33).
The political friend/enemy distinction makes it clear where one’s loyalties lie:
“Their pluralism consists in denying the sovereignty of the political entity by stressing time and again that the individual lives in numerous different social entities and associations. He is a member of a religious institution, nation, labor union, family, sports club, and many other associations. These control him in differing degrees from case to case, and impose on him a cluster of obligations in such a way that no one of these associations can be said to be decisive and sovereign” (40-1).
The concept of Humanity is problematic for Schmitt. Firstly, “Humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet” (54): it is problematic because it does not allow for the friend/enemy distinction. Schmitt goes on:
“The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in the ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression of Proudhon’s: whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat” (54).
