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At Least Not on This Planet
[This is a post by Adam Kotsko, who quite often posts at The Weblog.]
In The Concept of the Political, we find the following paragraph:
Humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet. The concept of humanity excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human being--and hence there is no specific differentiation in that concept. That wars are waged in the name of humanity is not a contradiction of this simple truth; quite the contrary, it has an especially intensive political meaning. When a state fights its political enemy in the name of humanity, it is not a war for the sake of humanity, but a war wherein a particular state seeks to usurp a universal concept against its military opponent. At the expense of its opponent, it tries to identify itself with humanity in the same way as one can misuse peace, justice, progress, and civilization in order to claim these as one's own and to deny the same to the enemy (pg. 54 of the University of Chicago edition).
Of course, a lot of this paragraph seems to be really right. What really stands out to me, however, is not the explicit conceptual apparatus brought to bear here so much as the strange little aside in the first paragraph: "at least not on this planet."
To some degree, it's a throw-away line. The logic is fairly transparent: If there were some alien empire out there who decided to wage war on humanity -- at least this is how the story normally seems to go in science fiction stories -- humanity "as such" would have an enemy and would therefore be able to wage war "as such." The crisis of the discovery of an extraterrestrial enemy -- an enemy not from this planet, not from earth -- would be necessary in order for humanity to become a political concept.
Thankfully, there probably aren't any extraterrestrial life forms waging war on humanity as such -- at least not at the moment. That goes without saying, right?
Perhaps not. In fact, one could say that The Theory of the Partisan takes place entirely within the space opened up by that strange little aside.
It is not by accident that I am using the term "extraterrestrial" here instead of merely "alien." After all, Schmitt specifies that a proper enemy for humanity as such is not simply alien -- every enemy is in some sense alien -- but distant from the planet, from Earth, as we call it. Humanity as such has the characteristic of being on the Earth. The humanity that has an enemy is that which is close to the earth, "telluric." And as we know, the only way humanity would know if it had an absolute enemy would be for that enemy to announce itself--but this is precisely what the bourgeois state does, in Schmitt's account:
The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its 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. To confiscate the word humanity, to invoke and monopolize such a term probably has certain incalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being human and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity. (Ibid.)
Is this not a precise description of the outcome of counterinsurgency against a telluric partisan? While one party is robbed of the name humanity, we can't help but note which side is implicitly being pegged as inhuman: precisely the side that wants to claim the name humanity for itself. This same inhuman force is called "imperialist," thus precisely the type of enemy the partisan fights -- that is, the enemy who is not "of the soil" or "telluric." The one who is a certain distance from the planet, one might say.
Schmitt of course will never be a left-winger, but he is inches away from saying: humanity does have an absolute enemy, and the war is going on now. He even has a pretty clear idea of who the aggressor was, and who is by rights entitled to the name of humanity. Although he is biased toward the state, I really think that in the situation in which he finds himself by the time he writes The Theory of the Partisan, Schmitt is effectively on the side of the partisan against the state.
This has of course only been an initial gesture toward proving such a thesis, and an inadequate one at that.
By Adam Kotsko | June 9, 2006 in Carl Schmitt | Permalink
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What, no bugs?
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 9, 2006 1:36:26 AM
Let me take a guess at what's up in that sly aside: "at least not on this planet". It's the technological/transformative drive of modern humans, overturning any traditional order in the name of limitless possibility that has not only permanently destablized the legitimacy of the modern state, but put paid to the classical Christian regulative ideal of "humanity". Henceforth, "humanity" is coextensive with the planetary dominion of technology, which is why the minoritarian-resistant partisan gets defined as "telluric", as emblematic of a counter-position to technological domination, ironically invoking the fractured ideal of "humanity" and the traditional authority of "die Heimat". We're in the neighborhood of Heidegger's "Technology Question" here, become the strangest of critiques of imperialism, as literally not born of this earth.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 9, 2006 12:23:05 PM
Good guess, John.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 10, 2006 1:54:43 AM
Adam, I am not sure that I get the drift of your remark here, but what it brings to mind for me are the attempts by some thinkers to describe a position that falls outside all spatio-temporal parameters that humans are familiar with.
This attempt to find a place outside the human condition, exemplified perhaps best by the so-called "objective" viewpoint, is prompted by the desire to identify those things that are beyond question, things that will appear true no matter what your socio-cultural, historical circumstances might be.
In another place, I call this the attempt to become alien, to find that logical space that allows me to pronounce that this or that viewpoint, idea, or world-view is indeed circumscribed by motives less worthy of recognition because they are tainted by contigent and relative accretions.
I think of those times where I have read something along the following lines: "If an alien race were to come to earth and view us..." This statement expects to transport me to a space wherein I am to imagine that I can get that ultimately other/alien viewpoint that will provide the perspicuity to judge what's true vs. what's not.
This desire for the alien stands behind disparate phenomena that range from the efforts of yogis to go beyond normal human physiological armatures, the search for extraterrestrical life, the angelology of new agers, etc.
In his Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard has a statment that I've always been drawn to:
...But the highest pitch of every passion is always to will its own downfall; and so it is also the supreme passion of the Reason to seek a collision, though this collision must in one way or another prove its undoing. The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think. This passion is at bottom present in all thinking, even in the thinking of the individual, in so far as in thinking he participates in something transcending himself. [my emphasis] -- Kierkegaard, trns. Swenson, p. 46In context, this statement seems to refer to the passion for love of others or perhaps even God. It is perhaps an allusion to Descartes/Faust.
Bracketing those allusions, however, the statement could be redeemed with such examples as the cliches about "going where no one has gone before." On a deeper level, though, it dredges up associations of always seeking to build the tower of Babel or trying to "say the unsayable," as the early Wittgenstein put it.
Of course, Schmitt is saying something here that stays within the bounds of the sayable. His comments, on a much more mundane level, assert that the state monopolizes the concept of humanity to itself, thereby excluding others from this same designation. He has accepted the horizon of the human, limited by the parameters of mortality.
Schmitt's off-hand remark that you cite is meant therefore to remember the limitations--to circumscribe the conversation within those boundaries set by death and the earthly temporal. By doing so, it is perhaps Schmitt looking side-ways at the very desire for the otherwordly and ironically implying that it is this framework that obscures the the question and its proper answer. It is not the anti-human or otherwordly which we should consider as the proper context for understanding the political and its associated problem of the partisan.
Posted by: cynic librarian | Jun 10, 2006 12:40:08 PM
cynic librarian:
The problem is that Schmitt starts out from a classical conception of the state as precisely that "higher" stance of a third party above the fray, whose legality arbitrates and maintains socio-political order. But with the social revolution of the 19th century, culminating in the situation of the Weimar Republic with which he wrestled, he saw that the state had become interpenetrated with concentrated (and mutually antagonistic) social and economic interests in corporatistic arrangements that violated the neutrality of the state and the legitimacy of law, while disabling its capacity for authoritative decision. Similarly, he saw some of the same developments undermining the distinction and separation between foreign and domestic affairs upon which the conception of the sovereignty of the state had classically rested. Hence he sought to explore the political as the constitutional basis of the legal, in order to delimit both the extent and order of the political and the extent and order of the legal in relation to each other, in order, in practico-historical terms, to restore to the state its capacity for decision in troubled times, given that any appeal to natural law, he felt, had lost all credibility in the development of modernity. But the conception of the "total state", which he drifted toward, required, he felt, with reference back to Hobbes, some sort of residual appeal or reference to Christian eschatology, as extra-worldly and final, in accordance with Augustinian orthodoxy, to buttress the authority of sovereign decision and "legitimate" authority. He contrasted that with Jewish Messianicism, which he identified with historical progressivism, as an immanent/worldly waiting and emendation that would result in anarchy, statelessness.
The figure of the partisan here seems to be another Schmittian "myth", with large explanatory gaps and layers of irony. The partisan would seem to be the very figure of social revolution/civil war, of the division and undermining of the underlying social order. But Schmitt's notion of the "nomos" of the earth, with which he frames his post-Nazi thinking, is fancifully etymologized to "nehmen", "to take", and refers to an originary initial taking of land, (or other elements, such as sea, air, or outer space), which underlies historical politico-legal orders, which subsequently distribute that "taking" as property and power. This amounts to an attempt at a non-decisionistic "foundation" for politico-legal orders. Hence the partisan here seems to be functionning as a placeholder for the missing "natural law", at least, insofar as it brings out the craziness of those who would attempt to exercize dominion over the entire world through the exercize of sovereignty, a craziness which Schmitt himself knew all too well. The partisan, as the despised figure of limited war, in the Cold War context, would be counterposed to the absolute annihilation based on absolute emnity in the name of the supremacy of "higher" values.
It's odd, in the contemporary context, that all the posters here seem to focus on the figure of the partisan rather than what he is counterposed to. "Full spectrum dominance", anyone? It's true that Schmitt seems to have nothing to offer by way of an analysis of imperialism; for one thing, as a lawyer, he deals with economics in terms of property rights, rather than in terms of the dynamics of production systems. But then he did suggest something of the distortions of constitutional arrangements through the usurpations of sectional interests/elite factions, while criticizing "political romanticism".
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 10, 2006 6:05:13 PM
John, I'm pretty sure if you requested to do so the Long Sundayistas would be happy to take a post by you on that which Schmitt counterposes to the partisan. Or you could do so in a long comment. I for one am interested to hear more.
Posted by: Nate | Jun 10, 2006 6:44:36 PM
Seldom has a post been so decisively superceded by its own comments.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Jun 10, 2006 10:07:15 PM
Nate:
Sorry, I'm no expert here,- (and I only skimmed the 65 pg. pdf. to catch the drift of it: such is the freedom of the internet). But I think it's perhaps important to catch what sort of "game" Schmitt is playing here, (since, in the course of his career, he played several different "games" through many hands), before one can presume to attempt an "Umfunktionierung" and apply his conception to a counter-analysis. His "nomos" conception undergirds his post-war stance, following on his Nazi-era "Grossraeume" conception, (roughly, power-blocs or extra-territorial sovereign spheres of influence, of which the Monroe doctrine was the opportunistic example), and other than pre-dating the question of origin, I don't exactly see how it provides a "foundation" to his core problem of the legitimation of legal-political order. Rather, stewing in his resentments and wallowing in his own self-inflicted devaluation, Schmitt seems to be looking on at the Cold War as the complete "final" collapse of any order of sovereign legal-political legitimacy through the twin invasion of social antagonisms and international power relations, a kind of global triumph of political nihilism, on analogy with Heidegger's post-war stance,- ("Nur ein Gott kann uns retten", etc.) But then am I wrong to detect, behind his pedantic formality, in his portrayal of the partisan a latent identification on Schmitt's part, himself the very figure of devaluation, marginality, and excluded partisanship? (Or is he identifying with Gen. Salan?) And then does not the partisan figure the very absence of any principle of self-limitation on which to found a legal-political order, which natural law can not (any longer?) suffice for, (since, from the beginning, the power of the sovereign to decide the exception was supposed to be in the interest of preserving legitimate constitutional order through accessing some underlying basis of political limitation).
So it's difficult to specify what the implied counterposition to the partisan might be or how to characterize it, since it's, as it were, the wind at Schmitt's back, and he's looking at it in an inverted way. And, as I said, one shouldn't expect any reliable, step-wise and historical analysis of imperialism from him, since he's a man of the right, no matter how independent and conversant with the left, and an emphatic statist, which, as a professor of public/constitutional law, he'd more-or-less have to be. But the implied background seems to be globe-spanning power-relations organizing trans-national economic interests without any real possibility of international law, nor any means of "legitimate" political decisions, though "speaking" in terms of a fraudulent hyper-moralization of politics, that is, in the name of "humanity". The corollaries would seem to be a hollowing out of constitutional orders, a collapse of public spheres and an incapacitation of substantive political action. (Tax cuts, anyone?) The state of exception, (which is always the case, since no legal order is completely determinate, independent of political processes that enable and are enabled by it), become the state of emergency, becomes itself normalized, the state of normality, which admits of no exceptions.
The question is: how is power still organized, when it has become detached from any social and earthly basis? And how do sectional/factional power elites hold sway over ostensible centers of sovereign decision-making, when their own interests have become detached from the institutional basis of such decisions? Have they not become themselves as intersticial as the partisan? I don't have any real answers. I'm as perplexed as anyone over the politics of the last 5 (or 35) years. The only thing I can suggest is that, if the sovereign is defined as the capacity to decide the exception, then perhaps politics should be defined as the capacity to take exception.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 10, 2006 10:44:34 PM
A minor point, ever so briefly alluded to below, but which I think is important in explaining Schmitt's particular 'materialism', as well as the source of the friend/enemy polemicism: less Augustinian than Tertullian - on which there's more here.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 11, 2006 1:32:16 AM
Or maybe Schmitt was influenced by Origen?
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 11, 2006 2:50:15 AM
Adam,
I believe it's less a supercession and more of a teleological suspension.
By the by, your emphasis on the term "extraterrestrial" would be interesting to compare with Schmitt's remarks on pirates and the relationships between land and sea. The pirate as enemy of humanity and as sea-dweller is an extraterrestrial, being not of any soil at all.
best,
Nate
Posted by: Nate | Jun 11, 2006 3:13:50 AM
Origen? How so? The Fall? The Holy Trinity as State - Movement - People? :)
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 11, 2006 3:33:21 AM
I've always read Schmitt's scattered comments on "extraterrestrials" quite literally, as the idea usually only appears in reference to "humanity": as aliens from another planet; as the most radical other possible. I think he literally means that 'humanity' could only be politicized as 'friend' against something like Klingons, or Martians, or whatever.
Posted by: Craig | Jun 11, 2006 1:30:22 PM
sOmetim3s:
Oy vey! That was the old theological dirty joke, referencing the impotence of Schmitt's post-war condition: "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out..." I'd mentioned Augustine, aside from being the main theological influence on the transmission of Western Christianity, based on Karl Loewith's nice little book on the philosophy of history as a secularization of Christian theology, which, IIRC, begins with Augustine having definitively separated out sacred salvational history as sheerly transcendent from secular history,- and any residue of immanent Messianic expectation,- with the fall of the Roman Empire. He locates the beginning of the movement of reversal of that with Joachim da Fiore, though IIRC he oddly doesn't mention Dante at all.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 11, 2006 1:51:36 PM
I'll have none of that, John - there's a porn symposium next month. Or so I hear ...
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 11, 2006 3:00:23 PM
Craig -
How does he mean it, though? That humanity could only _really_ become a friend (in the sense of having a common way of life threatened by an enemy) if there were aliens? Because there are precisely other political uses of humanity deployed regularly. Adam quotes one. I don't see why those should be not political(ized) or illegitimately so, but that does seem to be what Schmitt is saying. What do you think?
Nate
Posted by: Nate | Jun 11, 2006 7:35:00 PM
I took it literally at first, too, Craig -- until I read Theory of the Partisan. I wasn't just trying to be clever: the remark about "at least not on this planet" was ringing in my ears the whole time.
Nate, the pirate connection is a good one -- something I'd want to draw in if I were to actually "advance my argument" in a convincing way. I'm also wondering about something like the Mongol hordes and how they became the enemy of all sedentary cultures. (John Emerson has a really interesting piece on them.)
What I find unconvincing about s0metim3s's interpretation of our little phrase is that there doesn't seem to be a simplistic "rural == good" in Schmitt's piece. After all, isn't the entire situation of his "friend/enemy" distinction the modern state, thought as the inheritor of something like the Greek tradition? You need cities for that.
"The city in Schmitt" -- that'd be interesting to look at.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Jun 12, 2006 2:34:20 PM
Erm, what "rural = good" interpretation could you possibly be referring to, Adam?
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 12, 2006 2:45:01 PM
Sorry, I mixed up who said what. Or maybe misinterpreted entirely.
Everyone just go back to what you were doing.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Jun 12, 2006 2:47:17 PM
Adam, have you by any chance read Schmitt's "Land and Sea"? He has this whole typology of land cultures and sea cultures there, and stuff on pirates and whales and whaling. It's wild. Would relate to this thing on the city, too. I'm not a careful reader, generally, so I haven't noticed this myself, but I'm told convincingly that Schmitt's very much a believer in a story of human decline. In that sense, then, something like a rural vs urban or similar dichotomy (location of the less degraded present, because more in touch with the better past,- vs more degraded present that's more distant from this past) might make some sense.
Posted by: Nate | Jun 12, 2006 9:59:11 PM
Not rural v city, but Schmittian politics is deeply territorial - or, maybe more accurately, geopolitical.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 13, 2006 12:33:39 AM
I fear that I am beginning to sound like a broken record here, but the readings of Schmitt offered thus far in this symposium are so provocatively incomplete that some substantial correctives are necessary. Perhaps (and this is only a shot in the dark) the difficulty here lies in the fact that one text of Schmitt has been selected for this symposium and that text is not even close to Schmitt’s most important text. That shouldn’t automatically exclude it, of course. It should, however, tip one off that it may be wise to read it in the light of Schmitt’s most important work; the work he revised twice; the work “The Theory of the Partisan” is meant to follow (but not supersede). Thankfully, this post deals with that work.
On aliens, extraterrestrials, and other such things…
The entire discussion revolving around this “point” strikes me as bordering on the absurd. The distance/nearness of the extraterrestrial enemy is meaningless; what is always meaningful in Schmitt’s concept is the intensity of the enmity between the two parties. But that is beside the point. The real point is that the pursuit after or in the name of “humanity” (“mankind”) is always fruitless. Recall Schmitt’s lifting of the phrase, “Whoever says mankind intends to deceive.” (The translation you are using doesn’t bring this out adequately at all.) There is no such thing for Schmitt, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t vigorously pursued within the horizon of bourgeois-liberalism. The “aside” remark Schmitt makes should be taken as just that. He is referencing nonsense because “humanity” itself is nonsense. It is a deceptive trick meant to usurp that which cannot be usurped. It is helpful to recall what it is Proudhon was waging his battle against (see, e.g., Schmitt’s remarks in Political Theology).
What also seems to be ignored here is Schmitt’s nausea over everything that is tied up with the notion of “humanity” (a nausea Strauss clearly identified in his “Notes”). It is a nausea that goes back as early as 1916 in Schmitt’s colorful indictment of modernity and it is a nausea that permeates his work. While I grant that it seems Schmitt is willing to deploy the term in the context in which it is commonly understood, that doesn’t eliminate for one second the reality of Schmitt’s moral disapproval. He knows the concept is indeed a “useful ideological instrument” with “certain incalculable effects,” but one is missing the point if they think the crux of his concern is that the outcome of “war...driven to the most extreme inhumanity.”
On sitting outside of humanity…
I would challenge anyone to produce any evidence that Schmitt ever thought he was sitting outside of the world when he wrote what he wrote. His “objectivity” (or lack thereof) is a pointless consideration to make unless one first reveals where he believed himself to be in relation to the human race (or beyond it). It means, of course, getting over the temptation to saddle Schmitt with the same problems that may face other political theorists.
Also, I am equally perplexed as to where it is Schmitt ever claims it is necessarily “the state” which appropriates or monopolizes “humanity” for the purpose of excluding others. His treatment of the concept of “humanity” is far more robust than all of that. True, he is making a mundane observation, but it shouldn’t be divorced from the larger moral force of his enterprise. Also, it strikes me as clearly erroneous to say that Schmitt is making a claim that the state appropriates “humanity” when it is in the name of “humanity”—“humanity” understood in its fullness—that undoubtedly gives rise to a phenomena Schmitt is so thoroughly against: the erosion of the state. It is “humanity” which has brought about the different spheres that Schmitt indicts in The Concept of the Political. It is “humanity” which would confine the political to a separate sphere rather than recognize what is at the core of Schmitt’s teaching: the political is total.
A closing remark
I think John raised some interesting questions, but the problem that remains in this thread and in this “symposium” at large is a thorough understanding of what it was that Schmitt was “up to” and, more basically, what Schmitt’s concept of the political means. Attempts to “apply” Schmitt to concrete political situations and expect an answer to some identified problem strikes me as foolhardy. At least, it’s foolhardy until one knows how to distinguish between the friend and the enemy as Schmitt taught. It really doesn’t matter if Schmitt, in his life, was a “man of the right” or, in his reinvigoration, a misappropriated tool of the left. What matters is Carl Schmitt the political theologian. Any attempt to avoid that Carl Schmitt is to deal with a paltry writer whose ideas surely deserve to be swept into the dustbin of history.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 5:57:32 PM
Gabriel,
I eagerly await your forthcoming book on Schmitt.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Jun 13, 2006 6:27:02 PM
Adam,
That's a pretty immature response given the allegedly "intellectual" air that surrounds this forum. I see no point in trying to mock someone just because they've exposed the severe limitations of your reading.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 6:47:36 PM
I'm sorry -- I read too much Derrida as a kid. Now I can't read anything without picking up on little details like "at least not on this planet," then try to see the ways in which the inconsistencies or strange things in Schmitt's texts might work against his stated intentions or the scholarly concensus. This approach works well when one is assigned to read an admittedly marginal work of a canonical thinker.
So: I promise that I have already read Concept of the Political and Political Theology -- I daresay I even understood them. They are not particularly difficult works. I also promise that I did not read a word of Strauss's comments in the University of Chicago edition of Concept of the Political. I wouldn't presume to read Schmitt against the grain if I didn't think I had a decent grasp of him with the grain -- it's uncharitable of you to assume that an "against the grain" reading is prima facie evidence of ignorance.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Jun 13, 2006 7:25:23 PM
Adam,
The problem is that the University of Chicago edition of The Concept of the Political is the second, not last, edition of that work. As such, it doesn't contain Schmitt's final revisions which bring his intentions to the forefront (intentions which Strauss hints at [which is, of course, the value of having his "Notes" appended to the text]). Considering the high regard Schmitt held for Strauss's "Notes" and, apparently, Strauss himself, understanding Schmitt's second edition of The Concept... in the light of Strauss's critique would not be misunderstanding him (even if it doesn't allow for a complete misunderstanding).
I think your blowing-off of The Concept... as not a "difficult" work may bespeak the extent to which you have underestimated Schmitt and hence failed to do what is critical for any interpretation: understand the author as he understood himself. Granted, to understand Schmitt is to read more than that one work or, for that matter, that one work coupled with Political Theology. I am the last person to disagree that those two works form the cornerstone of Schmitt's theoretical enterprise, but one *must* get beyond them to understand it wholly. I don't believe that is in any way, shape, or form possible without the 1933 edition of The Concept of the Political or, at least, access to those crucial changes which Schmitt made. (One can gain such access through the English translation of Heinrich Meier's The Hidden Dialogue.)
As a last point, I don't know what really is "the grain" as it concerns Carl Schmitt anymore. If you read Telos, you get one variety, and if you read the post-1988 European reception (exemplified by Heinrich Meier and, to some extent, Jacob Taubes), you get another. There's a great in-between and, naturally, lots of snotty polemical potshots to boot. I do believe that the publication of Schmitt's Glossary a few years ago really tipped the scale for the current European reading; a reading which had been carried out to great heights prior to any access to that work.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 7:54:44 PM
hi Gabriel,
I don't have time to read through all this now, I've just skimmed it. I'm eager to return to read it more slowly when I have the time, and I appreciate you taking yours to make these comments.
That said, your placing of "intellectual" and "symposium" and use of the world "allegedly" as a modifier of intellectual strike me as rude. I'm not LS management, just a reader and two time contributor when they've offered to let nonmembers contribute pieces on stuff I've been trying to get clear on. As one reader to another, please don't do this, here. I suspect that will also help make for more openminded and constructive responses to your comments.
Best regards,
Nate
Posted by: Nate | Jun 13, 2006 10:05:15 PM
Nate,
I'm not sure what you are referring to, especially with me placing "symposium" in quotes on here (though I did so on my blog). I think "allegedly" describes it as best as I can tell because, like I said in another post, I haven't read through everything here. However, when you have responses from lead posters on here of the nature of Adam's, placing "intellectual" in quotes seems more than warranted.
I look forward to your reply.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 10:23:44 PM
Gabriel,
Your comments seemed very aggressive to me and seemed to be rather territorial with regard to Schmitt -- basically, you seemed to be holding us to a standard that none of us claimed to be aspiring to. Since your commitment to and knowledge of Schmitt are obviously greater than ours (and I'm not being sarcastic here), all I could say was that I hoped you found an appropriate forum for your love of Schmitt.
I will abstain from remarking on the irony of the fact that the posters here at Long Sunday are doing precisely what you suggest -- going beyond the two "big" works of Schmitt. Yet you complain about this!
(I'd say that I'm most influenced by Taubes and Agamben in matters of Schmittian interpretation.)
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Jun 13, 2006 10:32:08 PM
Adam,
I think your two replies to me is exactly what I was getting at with my placing "intellectual" in quotes. I was very interested in your initial post in that it brought the discussion squarely on the central text in Schmitt's corpus, but I thought your reading of it was poor. Instead of replying to me, you mocked me and now, with your "love of Schmitt" remark, you are at it again. What is that even supposed to mean? Call me crazy, but I have always found it better to try and understand a thinker accurately before posting something about him, especially in a forum that is self-consciously calling itself a symposium. Also--and this may be equally bonkers--I have found it helpful in my life to listen to the criticism of others on a topic that I have an incomplete understandong of. (And, judging by your remarks, you are wholly conscious of your own with regard to Schmitt.)
You seem to miss the point that my suggestions to go beyond those works presupposes one understands those works. As I have stated on here multiple times, there has been a shortcoming there with regards to The Concept of the Political. So, there is hardly any irony in my suggestions.
As for Taubes, I would make the qualification that he understands Schmitt. However, his position is decidedly contra Schmitt and therefore I don't know if that lends him to being the best interpreter. The same for Agamben, though he seems caught too much in the notion of Schmitt as a juridical thinker. The benefit of Meier is the charity and depth of his reading to draw his conclusions. (Though I do have doubts that Meier in any way agrees with Schmitt.)
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 11:02:56 PM
I was just trying to say that you appear to have a very significant investment in Schmitt. I don't view that as a slur -- in fact, it's a good thing.
On to your more substantive points:
You don't know that Schmitt ever claims that "the state" hijacks "humanity" as a political term -- but I said "modern bourgeois state," which was an inference from Schmitt's connection of the hijacking of the term "humanity" and imperial expansion in modern times.
My thoughts on distance were based purposely on taking Schmitt's "aside" at its word -- I know that, officially, Schmitt doesn't think that "humanity" can be a political concept, but I was trying to tease out the conditions under which his "aside" said that such a thing would be possible. My intention was to link this idea of "humanity" as political and the idea of "absolute emnity" (presumably something with higher stakes than your everyday run of the mill emnity -- and probably different from Schmitt's previous concept of the enemy since he says that Lenin discovered it, no?) from Theory of the Partisan.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Jun 13, 2006 11:14:02 PM
hi Gabriel,
I need to fix mint tea and get a coldpack for my unfortunately migraine afflicted partner, so I must be brief (and I haven't yet had time to read all of this, my apologies). You put symposium in quotes in your comment that begins "I fear that I am beginning (...)". If you didn't mean the quotes to indicate basically the equivalent of "allegedly", then I take back those comments. As I said, I only skimmed and the scare quotes and "allegedly" jumped out at me.
If I were to attend any in person event and say "your so-called activist group/reading group/writing group/community theater/etc (...)" that would be a bit rude. You may not have intended for the comment to come off that way - I have a US midwestern sense of manners, you may not, I know not everyone does. All I mean to say is first, please act here as you would in an in-person gathering to discuss this stuff, and second, the exchange will be more productive if we stick to that level. If your sense is that you're not the only one's been rude, then fair enough - this is an omni-directed appeal on my part. Now, lest my remarks here become themselves a source of unproductive and acrimonious exchanges, I'll leave this off and go pour that cup of tea.
All of this aside, I look forward to reading your remarks on Schmitt here and at yours as soon as I'm able. Schmitt's a figure I find interesting and who I want to know better.
Best regards,
Nate
Posted by: Nate | Jun 13, 2006 11:42:45 PM
Drat. I wasn't as clear as I meant - I meant to say "an in-person gathering with relative strangers". (Many of my close friends and I are often quite rude to each other person as a form of humor, but it's predicated on a prior and very secure trust, respect, and affection.)
Posted by: Nate | Jun 13, 2006 11:44:23 PM
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