Schmitt-Political Theology I.pdf - Townsend Humanities Lab

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Foreword xv ist, if by that one means simply that choice is necessary and any choice is better than none. 16 What constitutes a “genuine decision” is a complex matter in Schmitt. To understand his position one must realize why politics (or here, “the political”) is not the same for Schmitt as “the state,” 17 even if the most usual framework for the concretization of politics in modern times has been the state. 18 In a book published in 1969 that takes up the themes of PT, Schmitt writes “today one can no longer define politics in terms of the State; on the contrary what we can still call the State today must inversely be defined and understood from the political.” 19 Underlying the state is a community of people—necessarily not universal—a “we” that, as it defines itself necessarily in opposition to that which it is not, presupposes and is defined by conflict. 20 It derives its definition from the friend/enemy distinction. That distinction, however, is an us/them distinction, in which the “us” is of primary and necessary importance. 16. I note here that there seem to be strong elements of Schmitt quietly present in much of Henry Kissinger’s analyses of international politics. See for instance his The Necessity for Choice (New York: Harper, 1961). 17. This is a theme from Schmitt’s earliest work, including his Habilitationsschrift, Der Wert des Staates und die Bedeutung des Einzeln (Tübingen: Hellerau, 1917). See Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt. Zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 2001), 19–21. 18. Cf. Max Weber’s definition of the state: “Nowadays, however, we have to say that the state is the form of human community that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate violence within a given territory ...”Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, 33 (Hackett, 2002). See the discussion of this passage in our introduction to the Weber lectures, xlix. It is important that this is the definition to which the “nowadays” compels us and that Weber here flies directly in the face of those (like the Georgkreis and others) who placed emphasis on the “nation,” on “blood and soil.” 19. Carl Schmitt, Politisches Theologie II (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, [1969] 1996), 21. 20. One thus finds the influence of Schmitt for instance in what might appear to be a far removed locus, e.g. Bertram de Jouvenel, The Pure Theory of Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964).
xvi Tracy B. Strong This claim is at the basis of Schmitt’s rejection of what he calls “liberal normativism”—that is, of the assumption that a state can ultimately rest on a set of mutually agreed-to procedures and rules that trump particular claims and necessities. Pluralism is thus not a condition on which politics, and therefore eventually the state, can be founded. Politics rests rather on the equality of its citizens (in this sense Schmitt is a “democrat”) and thus their collective differentiation from other such groups: this is the “friend/ enemy” distinction, or more accurately the distinction that makes politics possible. It is, one might say, its transcendental presupposition. 21 Politics is thus different from economics, where one has “competitors” rather than friends and enemies, as it is different from debate, where one has Diskussionsgegner (discussion opponents). 22 It is not a private dislike of another individual; rather it is the actual possibility of a “battling totality” (kämpfende Gesamtheit) that finds itself necessarily in opposition to another such entity. “The enemy,” Schmitt notes, “is hostis (enemy) not inimicus (disliked) in the broader sense; polémios (belonging to war) not exthrós (hateful).” 23 These considerations are made in the context of several other 21. This is confirmed explicitly in a letter from Leo Strauss to Schmitt, September 4, 1932. It is printed in Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt, and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 124. Meier’s book is an insightful analysis of the difference between political theology and political philosophy—between Schmitt and Strauss. For an extended critique of Meier’s complex political rapprochement of Strauss and Schmitt, see Robert Howse, “The Use and Abuse of Leo Strauss in the Schmitt Revival on the German Right: The Case of Heinrich Meier” (forthcoming), a draft of which is available online at http://faculty.law.umich.edu/rhowse/Drafts_and_Publications/Meierbookrev.pdf. 22. Carl Schmitt, Das Begriff des Politischen (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, [1932] 2002), 28. The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1996), 28. 23. Schmitt, Das Begriff des Politischen, 29 (English, 28). Translations are mine as Schmitt quotes in Latin and Greek. Schmitt will on the next page of this text read “Love thine enemy as thyself” as referring to inimicus.
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