Schmitt: Political Theology

Schmitt, C. (2005). Political theology : four chapters on the concept of sovereignty. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (5).

The footnote to the above quote highlights the context in which “the exception” is decided upon. It is specifically economic and political situations in which the application of “extraordinary measures” takes place. The sovereign is one who is not constrained by legal structures or mores. This is no Kantian leader.

“...every legal order is based on a decision, and also the concept of the legal order, which is applied as something self-evident, contains within it the contrast of the two distinct elements of the juristic—norm and decision. Like every other order, the legal order rests on a decision and not on a norm” (10). The norm is what creates the milieu in which the law can be achieved, but it takes a decision to institute that law. Decisions are what move history.

In reference to Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution: “This provision corresponds to the development and practice of the liberal constitutional state, which attempts to repress the question of sovereignty by a division and mutual control of competences” (11).

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition” (15).

Politics as Old Theology: “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts” (36).

Schmitt: The Concept of the Political

Schmitt, Carl, & Schmitt, Carl. (2007). The concept of the political (Expanded ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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).