Schmitt-Political Theology I.pdf - Townsend Humanities Lab

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Foreword xxxi fending Hitler’s actions. 59 Thus it is the reality of taking power and manifesting sovereignty in the use of power that attracted Schmitt: his understanding of law required that he support Hitler. It was not a question of succumbing to the charisma of a prophet, true or false. In my preface to Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political, I raised the question of the reason for his adherence to National Socialism. I rejected there the idea that he was blinded by ambition (though he was ambitious) 60 or that he misunderstood what Nazism was about (as if what it was about in 1933 was only one thing and obvious). 61 I suggested instead that Schmitt thought that the enemies of the regime were in fact (necessarily) enemies of what it meant to be German. I still think this is true, but then the problem with Schmitt is that he allows the notion of enemy to too easily define the notion of friend. Friends are harder to find, and easier to keep. 59. The matter is a bit more complex. Schmitt was identified with some elements of the SA and there is some evidence that he was specifically exempted from the purge by Goering. In a somewhat self-pitying and self-aggrandizing poem he wrote for his sixtieth birthday, “Gesang des Sechzigjährigen,” he notes that he has been “three times in the belly of the fish.” The first is 1934; the second, the attacks on him in 1936 in the Gestapo organ Das schwarze Korps (a moment he identifies to his interrogator in Nuremberg as when he “foreswore the devil”); and the last his interrogation after the war when he appears to believe that he might be hung. See Schmitt, Ex Capitivate Salus, Textes et commentaires, 171. 60. Cf. contra Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 61. 61. This is not to deny that it becomes, or should become, obvious at some time; when and how that happens is extremely important. Additionally, the experience of not having been obvious affects the recognition of the obvious. As an example of the kind of argument that I do not think can be sustained on the question of the reasons for Schmitt’s adherence to Nazism, see Julien Freund, “Préface,” in Carl Schmitt, La notion du politique (Paris: Flammarion, 1992), 10ff, where Freund refers ambiguously to the anti-semitism and makes Schmitt out to be a version of Max Weber. For Freund, the links speak in favor of Schmitt. Jürgen Habermas in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987) makes the same link in condemnation of Schmitt. See Duncan Kelly, The State of the Political Conceptions of Politics and the State in the Thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Franz Neumann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
xxxii Tracy B. Strong In the larger context of Schmitt’s postwar writings there would be much more to be said about the relation of the political to the theological in Carl Schmitt. He notes, as had Hobbes, that there is in Christianity a dangerous tendency to introduce rebellion into the political realm. Hobbes and Hegel in particular try to tame this tendency and make use of it in the political realm, by linking religion to the State. Schmitt’s approval is strong: they are what he calls katechontes, defined by St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians, 2: 6–7 as “those who hold” back the Apocalypse—thus for Schmitt those who slow down the complete neutralization of what is important about religion for the State. 62 The greatest katechon has been the Catholic Church and Schmitt thus finds himself in alliance with the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky. 63 What does it mean to find oneself on the side of the Grand Inquisitor? It is to claim that the Right has gotten the problem of modern politics correct, even if what it has sometimes proposed to do about it (as with Maistre, Bonald, and Cortes) has not always been on target or on the only target. But with this, what now? One can only note in this day and age, as William Scheuerman reminds us, 64 that the United States today has on its books a sufficient number of emergency powers, established sine die, to allow the executive free hand at the rule of all aspects of this country. The present US administration has ruled that certain prisoners in 62. The katechon reappears in the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but not as a being exempt from sin, as he tends to in Schmitt’s work. See the discussion in Wolfgang Palaver, “Collective Security: Opportunities and Problems from the Perspective of Catholic Social Teaching” in Peace in Europe—Peace in the World: Reconciliation, Creation and International Institutions. Hrsg. von Iustitia et Pax—Österreichische Kommission (Iustitia et Pax Dokumentation 4) (Wien: Südwind-Verlag, 2003), 86–102. 63. I am helped in part of this by the work of Wolfgang Palaver, “Carl Schmitt, mythologue politique,” 2002. 64. Scheuerman in Boston Review, 2001.
Page 2: Political Theology
Page 5 and 6: The University of Chicago Press, Ch
Page 7 and 8: VI Contents 3 Political Theology Th
Page 9 and 10: viii Tracy B. Strong Semitic. 1 All
Page 11 and 12: x Tracy B. Strong How was it, the c
Page 13 and 14: xii Tracy B. Strong decides what to
Page 15 and 16: xiv Tracy B. Strong in the Civil wa
Page 17 and 18: xvi Tracy B. Strong This claim is a
Page 19 and 20: xviii Tracy B. Strong to set onesel
Page 21 and 22: xx Tracy B. Strong “not of the or
Page 23 and 24: xxii Tracy B. Strong of rules on hu
Page 25 and 26: xxiv Tracy B. Strong West shows a c
Page 27 and 28: xxvi Tracy B. Strong who would argu
Page 29 and 30: xxviii Tracy B. Strong dictatorship
Page 31: xxx Tracy B. Strong the future or i
Page 35 and 36: xxxiv Tracy B. Strong Selected Engl
Page 38 and 39: Introduction George Schwab Carl Sch
Page 40 and 41: XXXlX Introduction the role of the
Page 42 and 43: xli Introduction There are a number
Page 44 and 45: xliii Introduction tinguishable fro
Page 46 and 47: xlv Introduction will show, he ackn
Page 48 and 49: xlvii Introduction forces." The sec
Page 50 and 51: xlix Introduction "value-free" and
Page 52 and 53: Ii Introduction challenge the state
Page 54 and 55: Preface to the Second Edition (1934
Page 56 and 57: 3 Preface to the Second Edition and
Page 58: 1 Definition of Sovereignty Soverei
Page 61 and 62: 8 Definition of Sovereignty phraseo
Page 63 and 64: 10 Definition of Sovereignty reaucr
Page 65 and 66: 12 Definition of Sovereignty 48 is
Page 67 and 68: 14 Definition of Sovereignty eighte
Page 69 and 70: 2 The Problem of Sovereignty as the
Page 71 and 72: 18 The Problem of Sovereignty holds
Page 73 and 74: 20 The Problem of Sovereignty ing t
Page 75 and 76: 22 The Problem of Sovereignty order
Page 77 and 78: 24 The Problem of Sovereignty inter
Page 79 and 80: 26 The Problem of Sovereignty self-
Page 81 and 82: 28 The Problem of Sovereignty Form
Page 83 and 84:
30 The Problem of Sovereignty autho
Page 85 and 86:
32 The Problem of Sovereignty decis
Page 87 and 88:
34 The Problem of Sovereignty Comma
Page 89:
3 Political Theology All significan
Page 92 and 93:
39 Political Theology with the char
Page 94 and 95:
41 Political Theology work on the s
Page 96 and 97:
43 Political Theology a clear antit
Page 98 and 99:
45 Political Theology possible to v
Page 100 and 101:
47 Political Theology characteristi
Page 102 and 103:
49 Political Theology interests and
Page 104 and 105:
51 Political Theology this tendency
Page 106 and 107:
4 On the Counterrevolutionary Philo
Page 108 and 109:
55 On the Counterrevolutionary Phil
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Index "Age of Neutralization and De
Page 122:
69 Index restoration critique of, 5
show all

Schmitt-Political Theology I.pdf - Townsend Humanities Lab

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?