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From the partisan to the political
(The following is a guest post by Gary Sauer-Thompson, author of the weblog Philosophical Conversations.)
Can Carl Schmitt's theory of the partisan inform us about what is happening today in the war on terror that we are living? More specifically, how does his theory of the partisan change the way we understand the political as a friend/enemy antithesis (understood in an existential, concrete sense)? Is this friend/enemy understanding of the political, often interpreted as a weapon in the battle against liberalism an historical one? In highlighting Schmitt's response to this I am building on a previous post at philosophy. com, which was more or less a working through Schmitt's text. It is based on an understanding of the political as a basic characteristic of human life. The suggestions of an answer to the above questions can be found in the last section of Schmitt's text entitled, 'From the Real to the Absolute Enemy'. It is here that Schmitt explores the way in which the conception of the political presupposed in his theory of the partisan mutates into something quite different. He explores so by asking a simple question, 'who is the enemy'? Whilst showing how the legimatization of the partisan is given by a third party, Schmitt introduces a bounded concept of the enemy. He says :
... the heart of the political is not enmity per se but the distinction of friend and enemy; it presupposes both friend and enemy. The powerful third party who is interested in the partisan may think and deal in an entirely egoistic way, but with his interest he stands politically on the side of the partisan. This functions as political friendship and is a kind of political recognition, even if it is not expressed in terms of public and formal recognition as a warring party or as a government.
So the theory of the partisan presupposes a bounded concept of enemity. The partisan has a real, but not an absolute enemy. Schmitt reinforces this conception of the political when he says that another boundary of enmity follows from the telluric character of the partisan.The partisan defends a patch of earth to which he has an autochthonic relation. His basic position remains defensive despite his increasing mobility.The real enemy is not declared the absolute enemy, and also is not the ultimate enemy of mankind as such. Schmitt then argues that a shift has taken place in the bounded concept of the enemy, in that an absolute enemy has been made out of the real enemy. Though Lenin's professional revolutionary of the world-wide civil war made the conceptual shift of making an absolute enemy out of the real enemy the new understanding of the enemy has its roots in the technical-industrial development that has made human weapons into pure means of destruction. Therein lies the danger. Schmitt says that the weapons of absolute annihilation:
.. require an absolute enemy lest they should be absolutely inhuman. Men who turn these means against others see themselves obliged/forced to annihilate their victims and objects, even morally. They have to consider the other side as entirely criminal and inhuman, as totally worthless. Otherwise they are themselves criminal and inhuman. The logic of value and its obverse, worthlessness, unfolds its annihilating consequence, compelling ever new, ever deeper discriminations, criminalizations, and devaluations to the point of annihilating all of unworthy life.
There in lies the danger. A nuclear world is one in which the partners push each other in this way into the abyss of total devaluation before they annihilate one another physically. Are we not in Heidegger's world of the planetary dominion of the technological mode of being, in which the world becomes totally enframed as a picture, and integrates the world as standing reserve? A technological ordering in which there is a refusal of limits, a rejection of boundaries and concrete difference and a blurring of borders? Schmitt says that this gives rise to new kinds of absolute enmity, and he understands this darkly. He says that:
enmity will be so terrifying that one perhaps mustn’t even speak any longer of the enemy or of enmity, and both words will have to be outlawed and damned fully before the work of annihilation can begin. Annihilation thus becomes entirely abstract and entirely absolute. It is no longer directed .. against an enemy, but serves only another, ostensibly objective attainment of highest values, for which no price is too high to pay. It is the renunciation of real enmity that opens the door for the work of annihilation of an absolute enmity.
Being political now means being orientated to dire emergency; as it is a situation in which two orders of what is right confront each other, without any mediation or neutrality. Is this not what we in the war on terror? A war in which the enemy is both external and internal? Schmitt by making reference to The Nomos of the Earth since nomos is a way to understand the transformation from one historical epoch to another.
By Long Sunday Admin | June 12, 2006 in Carl Schmitt, Politics | Permalink
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I stumbled on here quite by accident, but I thought I'd offer a few remarks...
It is based on an understanding of the political as a basic characteristic of human life.
Then it is based on a critical misunderstanding. For Schmitt, the political is total...end of story. It is not a "basic characteristic" but the characteristic of human life. Any attempt to engage Schmitt's thought without that understanding clear from the get-go seems, to me at least, to be a futile exercise.
Granted, I haven't spent a lot of time with the "Theory of the Partisan", but your reading--as far as I can tell-circumvents the core text that work is meant to elucidate: The Concept of the Political. It seems to me that you are reading Schmitt as a "social observer" who calls out the consequences of war. That was never Schmitt's project. Rather, his work centers on a recovery of the political from the obscuring effects of liberalism. His teaching is a teaching of political theology, of faith against faith (even when the contrary faith posits itself to be entirely atheistic and antitheological).
When Schmitt speaks about the political's heart not being enmity per say, he is doing so--as best as I can tell--to further his separation of the political from the agonal. He is not concerned with war for war's sake anymore than he would be with art for art's sake. What makes the political is the friend/enemy distinction and the enemy is that which proves to be an existential threat. On the plane of the "war on terror", the political comes into being by way of intensity, i.e., the way it always comes into being. The rhetoric of terrorism is the rhetoric of existential annihilation; the self-conscious battle of faith against faith where Providence has established the friend/enemy distinction seems to me at least to match the ultimate example of intensity to be found in Schmitt's writings: Cromwell's speech against Papist Spain.
Being political now means being orientated to dire emergency; as it is a situation in which two orders of what is right confront each other, without any mediation or neutrality. Is this not what we in the war on terror? A war in which the enemy is both external and internal?
For Schmitt, being political *always* means being oriented towards a dire emergency--the dire emergency of the existential threat. I do not believe there is any basis in Schmitt's writings to reduce the concept down to one which merely observes two orders against one another without making the decision for one, against the other. To restate, the political is not agonal; it is not "war for war's sake" or, for that matter, blind toleration of two warring parties, where appreciation arises over the alleged "seriousness" of one or both. One side is decidedly for what is right (friend), the other is not; only tearing Schmitt's concept from its theological implications could ever lead one to conclude that there isn't indeed a right side to be on in the battle.
As for the internal/external distinction, it's not relevant to Schmitt's concept. The political is a matter of intensity. As such, the internality or externality of the enemy is meaningless. (Note Schmitt's changing emphasis of this fact from his first edition of The Concept... to the second and third editions.)
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 12:56:11 AM
Gabriel Sanchez:
No, I don't think so. Schmitt was well aware of the work of Max Weber, and "The Concept of the Political" means to define its character as one Weberian "value-sphere" among other possible ones. (And remember Weber already spoke of differences between value-spheres as conflicts among "warring gods"). And "political theology" refers to political concepts as *secularizations* of theological concepts, most of all, "sovereignty", Hobbes' "mortal god". The analytic dimension is very much there along side the "decisionistic" dimension, (which was being counterposed to legal positivism), and you're missing the whole originating problem of Schmitt's recourse to the political, namely how to define and secure the legitimacy of the constitutional/legal state as sovereign.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 13, 2006 1:32:40 AM
I'm a big fan of people identifying where they draw their conclusions from. Without it, I have a hard time understanding their points. All the same...
No, I don't think so. Schmitt was well aware of the work of Max Weber, and "The Concept of the Political" means to define its character as one Weberian "value-sphere" among other possible ones.
I won't deny for a minute that Schmitt was well aware of Weber, but I can't conceive of how he was either a fan or slave to Weber's thought. (Roman Catholicism & Political Form reads--in part--as a polemic against Weber).
And "political theology" refers to political concepts as *secularizations* of theological concepts, most of all, "sovereignty", Hobbes' "mortal god".
That's a rather narrow understanding of P.T. that fails to take into account the wholeness of Schmitt's work (especially his posthumously published Glossary). The thesis of P.T. does not end with the work of the same name; it continues well through the '32 and '33 editions of Concept... and certainly into Schmitt's WWII-era work on Hobbes. Unmasking secularized concepts as decidedly theological is one step in forwarding the larger assault on modernity's avoidance of the friend/enemy distinction; its Providential meaning; and its attempt to obscure that which can never go away. Recall again Schmitt's painting of Bakunin and Marx in distinctly theological colors. It serves a polemical purpose which is, of course, always to the defense of the political.
The analytic dimension is very much there along side the "decisionistic" dimension, (which was being counterposed to legal positivism), and you're missing the whole originating problem of Schmitt's recourse to the political, namely how to define and secure the legitimacy of the constitutional/legal state as sovereign.
It seems to me we're missing each other on the point of how best to understand Schmitt. If one wishes to confine his thought to the clear historical situations he was responding to, then yes, your interpretation is surely valid. When I first sat down with Political Theology, I reached a similar conclusion. All the same, it misses The Concept of the Political and what that work stated in-full in its final edition. It misses the fact that while Schmitt was very much a jurist of the decaying Weimar republic, he was also a man responding to the political itself. "Decisionism" is never blind in Schmitt, at least, not true decisionism. It must be "for" something and it is that "something" which is only out of reach for those--to borrow from Heinrich Meier--who wish to detoxify Schmitt's thought.
One can go back to as early as 1916 to see, on the moral level, where Schmitt's attack is oriented. Keeping with the logic of the political itself, the recognition of the enemy reveals--on the existential level--who one is. It is impossible to read Schmitt's critiques of what is for him the enemy (or, rather, the Enemy), i.e., what he is against and then be blind to what he is for. (Again, note the recently published Glossary, Strauss's "Notes", and the subsequent replies to those "Notes" in the '33 revision of The Concept...).
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 12:16:52 PM
"For Schmitt, the political is total...end of story. It is not a "basic characteristic" but the characteristic of human life."
I don't have Theory of the Political handy, but I recollect Schmitt very pointedly saying that the political is historical. In fact, looking ove rmy notes, it's his discussion that follows page 19: "The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political." Without the state there is no political (humanity not having an enemy as such) and so a stateless, global society is a post-political reality, albeit one that Schmitt doesn't see happening any time soon.
I'd say you're reading is fundamentally wrong, unless he changes his view in this Glossary you're speaking about, but if that's the case then Schmitt is fundamentally wrong.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Jun 14, 2006 12:08:21 AM
That is to say, the political is the virtual that creates the state, but without the actual creation of the state the virtual that is the political fails to exist in this particular 'emanation'.
I really wish I had the text ready-to-hand though to really get into it and give you some adequate quotations.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Jun 14, 2006 12:53:50 AM
It's interesting you put it that way, Anthony, I've always found the location of the constituting or instituting power in Schmitt to be somewhat obscure or problematic.
Posted by: Craig | Jun 14, 2006 1:01:29 AM
"The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political." Without the state there is no political ...
Um, unless there's something here you've omitted from citation, I can't see how the second proposition follows from the first.
So, while I'd agree that Schmitt's politics are etatist, and it might be a question of 'virtual-actual', Gabriel has been somewhat more attentive to the intersections between Schmitt's Catholicism and his politics - if I'm to put it like that. Or, Schmitt's temporalities and materialism and their Catholic, theological inflections. Craig is right to bring up the question of constitutive power. But perhaps it's not so much obscure as Catholic - which can be obscure ...
If Gabriel, or anyone else more acquainted with Catholic theology, would kindly give an explanation of the role of the katechon in the eschaton, I'd be appreciative - if they can bring themselves to converse with the enemy.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 14, 2006 3:06:39 AM
I only have my notes here and if I remember correctly that citation is the first line of the piece. My point was just that I don't think there is textual support for saying that the political is !*THE*! characteristic aspect of humanity. I think it contradicts a few things in Schmitt, the first being that humanity cannot be a political concept (so why would the political be a humanitarian concept) and the second being that I know somewhere in Concept of the Political or Theory of the Partisan he says something along these lines.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Jun 14, 2006 9:20:17 AM
If I might, and I admit here that I'm hazarding even further confusion, but when Gabriel remarked on "the characteristic of human life", I think this approximates something more like the mos maiorum that I mentioned before than it does 'humanity' in any humanist sense.
Schmitt is indeed no humanist, but his concept of politics, for me anyway, very much turns on the concept of a 'way of life'.
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 14, 2006 11:15:49 AM
I think Ange is on to the right train of thought here: part of our inability to converse adequately with Gabriel and his confusion at our set of concerns derives from what appears to be an essential committment to Catholicism. And, also, his committment to what we (and maybe himself?) would call a rather conservative political philosophy: I note (scanning his blog) that he includes Strauss and Voegelin, along with Schmitt, as the three most important political theorists of the twentieth century.
To an extent, I 'get' the direction he's coming from: the person I had for fourth year ('honors') political theory in undergrad liked to talk about how Schmitt, Strauss, Heidegger and Kojeve were the most important political theorists of the twentieth century. Voegelin came fifth. The concerns are, clearly, somewhat different from our own.
Posted by: Craig | Jun 14, 2006 11:32:39 AM
I thought I posted something on this earlier, but maybe I forgot to copy and send it...
"The political is the total" is drawn directly from the third and final edition of The Concept of the Political. (I don't believe it is in the commonly-cited second edition.) It is the culmination of Schmitt's ever-evolving point that the political is not one domain amongst many (e.g., economic, moral, aesthetic), but can be reached from any of them. The political is a mode of intensity, not a realm to be entered/exited. As far as the political being historical, I am not sure where you are getting that from. It is true that Schmitt believed the political arises out of concrete historical situations, but that doesn't deny that the political has always been and will always be a part of human existence.
I take some (limited) offense at the attempt to psychologize and/or belittle my points here based on my interests and/or religious leanings. If you had done more than "scan" my blog, you would have realized that I am *not* Catholic. (I do confess that my name, ethnicity, and current academic institution may lead one astray on that point.) Also, I have said nothing on the point that I believe Schmitt's teachings arise out of his questionable affiliation with the Catholic Church. (A cursory reading of Schmitt's life reveals that he was an apostate for a good deal of it and highly critical of the Church.) That doesn't mean, of course, that I would deny that behind the writings there is a fundamentally theological teaching.
I wonder, do my "concerns" come more to light if I say, for example, that Aristotle and Plato were the most important thinkers of fourth century B.C. Greece or Maimonides was the greatest Jewish thinker of all time? That Augustine is the supreme political thinker of Christian antiquity? In other words, are my "concerns" connected to my recognition of who is important to what field/era being discussed?
For the record, my "concern" here is to contribute what I believe to be a more accurate reading of Schmitt that what is (sometimes) being presented. I do not deny that one can go in a myriad of directions with Schmitt's ideas, but one should have a foundational sense of what those ideas entail. Otherwise, you run the risk of misapplication and discussing something that has nothing to do with Carl Schmitt. One doesn't need to have "Catholic concerns" to recognize what Schmitt means when he uses the term "humanity" or that the political *is not* historical in the way Anthony seems to be implying.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 14, 2006 12:48:40 PM
Gabriel: no one is belittling you for being interested in theology. A number of contributors to the symposium (or, as you put it, 'symposium') are, in fact, themselves theologians.
If there is any bewilderment at your intervention, it is with the great righteousness in your tone of voice and not, so much, with the points you are raising, as evidenced by your suggestions that people have no business discussion Schmitt -- in a blog -- if they haven't read everything Schmitt has written! In other words, it seems that you imply that one is disqualified from discussing a topic unless one is already recognized as an expert in that topic. Strauss' method of reading a text isn't the only one; i.e., your much vaunted 'understand an author as he understood himself.'
Short of 'becoming-Schmitt,' many here will deny the possibility of obtaining a knowledge of Schmitt - including, no doubt, that psychologism that disturbs you so much - equal to Schmitt's own understanding of himself. But then, it is quite possible that you are both more self-aware and other-aware than I am. Frequently, I don't even know why I am drinking a cup of coffee, let alone the motivations, influences and desires that culminate in a text I spend a great deal of time writing!
We're sorry - all of us, I'm sure - that Long Sunday is merely a blog, something we do in our spare time when we aren't pursuing our own specialized professional and personal interests and not, as you seem to desire, a peer reviewed journal! Or, better yet, a monograph! Please do recognize the limitations of the format: you can't expect people spending a few hours written two thousand words on a sixty page essay to 'say it all'!
You should also recognize that, pursuant to the above, the level of discussion we strive for approximates, as some put it, drinking beer and playing ping-pong with friends in a basement.
Posted by: Craig | Jun 14, 2006 1:31:54 PM
I am sympathetic to Gabriel's comments. I appreciate the effort to clarify Schmitt's larger project and situate TP within that context. And I am particularly struck by Gabriel's point that: "It is impossible to read Schmitt's critiques of what is for him the enemy (or, rather, the Enemy), i.e., what he is against and then be blind to what he is for." Though I have a limited understanding of Schmitt, having read only excerpts and smaller essays, I am honestly curious what Gabriel thinks Schmitt is for?
My limited understanding is that he is best known for the distinction between friend and enemy. This distinction is to be understood "existentially" - the enemy is whoever is "in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible." The enemy needn't even be based on nationality: so long as the conflict is potentially intense enough to become violent, the actual conflict can be over anything. "The Concept of the Political" is an attempt to achieve state unity by defining the content of politics as opposition to a foreign "other," and also through the preeminence of the state.
Up to this point it makes sense to me as an analysis of how "the political" and "the state" function. But other than the biographical information about his virulent anti-semitism and nationalism, I really do not see the positive content of his position.
Posted by: Alain | Jun 14, 2006 1:45:23 PM
Hey Gabriel,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. And yes, please do rest assured the "symposium" title is not intended without some irony, as are the Internets so stamped (often enough to excess) generally.
Just out of casual curiosity, if you're inclined to stick around, I can't help but wonder, what do you make, if anything, of Derrida's reading of Schmitt (in Politics of Friendship)?
I ask reluctantly, because I appreciate the concern, over the inherent limits of certain fora, but also regarding the act of patience and the serious investment -both thought and time-wise - required in discussing certain things.
Posted by: Matt | Jun 14, 2006 2:16:41 PM
A litany of points...
- I don't have an "interest" in theology, at least not in the way I assume you are implying.
- The reading of Schmitt I have been endorsing isn't anymore "Straussian" than what people had been doing prior to the mish-mash antics of modern forms of "reading." It is not as if I am calling for people to look for the "esoteric" in Schmitt. Keep in mind, Schmitt is not a philosopher. As such, the "Straussian" reading would seem wholly inappropriate based on the criteria for such readings Strauss laid out. There is nothing radically new about reading someone carefully.
- Nobody has to read everything Schmitt wrote to comment on him or even to write something very thoughtful on him. I've been returning to the same work again and again through all of this. I think that is simple enough.
In response to Alain...
When I said...
"It is impossible to read Schmitt's critiques of what is for him the enemy (or, rather, the Enemy), i.e., what he is against and then be blind to what he is for."
...I was presenting an invitation for someone to identity the Enemy. I suppose there's no point in beating around the bush that for Schmitt, the Enemy is the age-old Enemy, i.e., Satan. One is either for him (and against God) or for God (and against him). It's a startling either/or, but it is the plane on which Schmitt operated. The recovery for the political for Schmitt is part of that battle. He saw quite clearly in Proudhon's use of the term "mankind" what that really meant, i.e., what it meant against God. Schmitt the political theologian is not worth resisting because it is Schmitt the political theologian who is speaking through the revisions of The Concept of the Political, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomes Hobbes, and most definitely in the Glossary.
Again, consider Schmitt's example of the most intense form of politics in Cromwell's eschatological speech against Papist Spain. Consider the place of the Crusades as manifestly political. There is something else going on there, just as there is something going on (as Strauss keenly pointed out in his "Notes") when Schmitt references faith in relation to man's dangerousness. It is sin--original sin--which Schmitt is aware of; without recognition of that sin, there is no true theory of politics. (IIRC Schmitt makes this point in the second edition of the Concept... as well.)
Sadly, I am not at home, so I don't have any books in front of me. But, there is the "conclusion" so-to-speak on Schmitt...just without all of the details. I'm sure I'll have time to get into them should a "backlash" arise over this reading.
P.S. Derrida's reading of Schmitt is something I haven't spent enough time with to fairly comment on. Part of that has to go with the fact I can't stomach Derrida. Still, I won't dismiss it outright until I've read it thoroughly.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 14, 2006 3:12:49 PM
Gabriel,
on the latter (and more rare) point, glad to hear.
Posted by: Matt | Jun 14, 2006 3:16:25 PM
""The political is the total" is drawn directly from the third and final edition of The Concept of the Political."
Ah, well then, he's wrong. Thanks for the clarification though.
Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith | Jun 14, 2006 3:29:25 PM
The introduction of Catholicism into this thread was my fault.
I've been trying to point to Schmitt's Tertullian grounding throughout this discussion, and then got lazy and then substituted 'Catholic' (in part, because I thought it would be an easier point of reference). Obviously, it created more problems, but maybe they usefully came out in the washup.
That is, yes - and what would the phrase be? Schmitt is God's jurist?
Which is why some of the commentary turned to Tocqueville's remarks on "religious terror".
Posted by: s0metim3s | Jun 14, 2006 3:46:52 PM
Gabriel, thank you for the thoughtful response.
Posted by: Alain | Jun 14, 2006 5:01:47 PM
Does Schmitt have a Tertullian grounding? I always sensed a more distorted Augustinianism in his texts or, at least, a conformity with Augustine on the level of the insecurity of human existence in this life.
I think the place of katechon in Schmitt's writings would be worth thinking about more, but I honestly haven't given it a lot of attention. I don't know, based on what I have read, if Schmitt really thought part of his project was to hold back the eschaton. That he thought he was living in an apocalyptic age seems to be confirmed by his remarks in the Glossary and in various other places. I don't believe his understanding of "mankind" (or "humanity") can be divorced from his indictment that it is nothing but a deception. (And we all should know who the greatest Deceiver in history is.)
I don't know if Schmitt is "God's jurist." I believe labeling him as a political theologian is probably as far as it can be taken within reason. Without his Christian anthropology, Schmitt is writing about nothing. The fact he obscured this and other theological underpinnings throughout his career makes sense in light of the fact that Schmitt both detests the "culture" of discussion and would find it unbecoming to submit his theology to it. So, really, what we are seeing now in this thread and, more generally, in current serious confrontations with Schmitt's thought, is one of the many things he simply could not stomach in his own lifetime.
For my part, I confess that I try (and typically fail) to be purposefully vague about Schmitt (or anyone's) theology for the simple fact that they seem to remove from the table a serious confrontation with their thought. Schmitt loses his "charm" so-to-speak with the intelligentsia when he is revealed as the political theologian. I suspect that is one of the reasons why they scream and shout so loud to drown out the voices of those who have and continue to recognize that crucial element of Schmitt's being.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 14, 2006 5:31:50 PM
Well, I'm still waiting for the Second Coming of Gary. But since I'm one of the least Schmitt-obsessed here, (as well as, perhaps one of the least knowledgeable), and am just an interloper,- (though I have already been accused- legitimately!- of being a pornographer, due to my lack of interest in the finer points of Christian theology),- I thought I might jump back into the fray with some comments as to how to "read" Schmitt and why take any interest in him. I've already suggested that Schmitt's whole framework is outmoded, (which is something of what I took Squib to be saying), and, indeed, Schmitt is in some sense dealing with his outmodedness from the beginning, since he is a reactionary, (in which case he's a dime-a-dozen and of little interest), but among the most sophisticated and modernistic of reactionaries,- (outdone perhaps only by Heidegger, who figured out how to turn the clock 180 degrees forward rather than 180 degrees backward),- and hence clearly recognizes the irreversible differentiation of modern societies and the corresponding impossibility of any traditionalistic legitimation of authority. It's his forthright response to the shock of modernity and his exploration of the corresponding quandaries of sovereignty/authority/constitutionality/legality/legitimacy in relation to the political and in terms of the constitutional aporia of the constituent/constituted power,- (which is only "obscure", because essentially unresolvable),- that remains of interest, inspite of the historical obsolescence and explanatory limitations or gaps in the assumptions of his framework. (Well, for one thing, I don't think he has any explanation of what power is or how it is generated, other than to assume it as the medium in which "the political" necessarily operates). Further, his recourse to the political recognizes that jurisprudence can not be conducted "autonomously", in the absence of the political conditions that "determine" the legitimacy, hence hold and applicability, of the authority of law.
Which brings me to the question of how and why Schmitt should be read, pace Gabriel Sanchez. I don't think that Schmitt's writings present or amount to a coherent doctrine; to the contrary, AFAIK, they present an ever-shifting tangle of issues on uncertain ground. And the moderate, restrained, analytical Schmitt exists side by side with the militant, extremist, decisionistic Schmitt, often enough in simultaneous writings. Which is to say, that I don't think that a tendentious, teleological, de-historicizing treatment of his work is appropriate. (And I especially don't think the Nazi-era work should be "privileged" over the Weimar writings, as if they were the logical outcome, rather than its reductio ad absurdum, since what of legality and legitimacy could remain under Nazi auspicices? Rather, regardless of what the man might have said retrospectively at any given point,- and there's plenty of reason to be suspicious of his motives and his reflexive self-understanding,- the "key" to interpretation should be specific conceptual analyses over against the historical context in which his writings took issue.) G.S. claims that for Schmitt the political is characterize solely by its intensity, but he reads that intransitively rather than transitively: I take Schmitt's point to be that anything can enter into the political, be politicized, but once it does it enters into the intensified dynamics of conflict which characterize the political. Certainly, Schmitt valorizes what he sees as the essential tension of the political, (and that is bound up also with his embattled sense of Christian civilization/transcendence, without which there threatens the utter loss of meaning in human life, nihilism), but it does not follow that the political must be "total",- (however one understands that word, as totalitiarian, totalizing, or demanding of "total" commitment), at the expense of other domains or value-spheres. Similarly, the claim that there is no ready entry/exit from the political is directed at liberal/privatistic conceptions, whereby the political is merely optional and concerns attending to one's interests: once one enters into the political, one confronts all the others, as friends and/or enemies. Furthermore, the (initial?) appeal to "theology" in Schmitt is paradoxical: the political is precisely an earthly, terrestrial domain and it is to draw off any implication of universal "humanity",- (which is a category of Christian moral theology and not politics, indeed, the Christian category par excellence, since nothing of the same scope could be inferred from the conceptions of pre-Christian antiquity),- as precisely not criterial for political judgment. Indeed, the transcendence of the theological figures for Schmitt the necessary constraints of the political,- (else one might have him as an advocate of religious wars, which, as an inheritor of the classical European tradition of Christian, -in a descriptive sense,- political thought, strikes me as unlikely). In short, the political as "total" does not imply its exclusive value. But what the "theological" guarantees for Schmitt is that, though the political always concerns historical situations, they are never the product of the movement of History: theology as infinite deferment. Still, though Schmitt might not be an historicist, that does not prevent us from reading him historically. And when G.S. declares that the Enemy par excellence is Shaitan himself,- (for all that there might be some textual warrant for such a claim, since Schmitt returned to RC observance for some considerable reasons),- he has departed from any political realism into an entirely imaginary plane or space. It's not that I think there is a political real absent any imaginary, but rather that the flight into the sheer imaginary rescinds any sense to the political, belying the peculiar constraints that would "constitute" the political.
When I encountered G.S., I thought of Strauss right away, (whom I've never read and have no interest in), and the intentionalist-textualist style of doctrinal interpretation involved. (I take my hermeneutics from Gadamer and I don't have any particular patience for ahistorical dogmas). But what I want to remark upon is that such exclusive modes of interpretation close off not just the historical situtatedness of a body of thinking/writing, but also any comparitive perspective, in which the clash of ideas/thinkings takes place, and in which the outmoded can still be nonetheless informative for current judgments. In short, there is no ultimate perspective on perspectives; there's only the muddling on through; and any purification of doctrine might just as well be evasive as informative. The comparison I think might be helpful here is to the work of Hannah Arendt, who seems, though I don't recall her ever mentioning Schmitt, the very antipode of him. Arendt's conception of the political contrasts it, as speech, with violence, and her conception of public-communicative power residing in the public sphere specifically is set against and criticizes the notion of sovereignty, (as rooted in violence), while evading the question of how there can be a public sphere without a state. (That's the answer to the conundrum/logical nonsequitar above that the state presupposes the political/public, even as the political/public presupposes the state, regardless of any precise textual warrant in Schmitt. That's an ambivalance that must be faced, perhaps particularly from a left point-of-view, regardless of what any political thinker might say about it.) I'd suggest that perhaps Schmitt's "theology" should be posed with Arendt's "worldliness" in considering, in today's context of globalized power relations, that death might no longer be the measure of (political) man. Perhaps it's only in the context of that "obsolescence", speaking to collective survival, speaking to just what it is that is to "survive", that one can begin to address the issue of terrorism and the misprisions that it evokes.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 14, 2006 10:51:45 PM
John,
To say you have no interest in reading Strauss explains much. All the same, to read Schmitt carefully is not to read him as a “Straussian”, but to read him with the aim of understanding him. To read like a “Straussian” is something entirely different; it is applicable (if one accepts it) to philosophy, not to political theology. My argument is to read Schmitt with the aim of seeing first if there is a coherent “doctrine” (I prefer “teaching”) and, if so, what that is. If there are limitations, then they will reveal themselves in the texts. If you’ve paid any attention at all to my comments, you will see that I have drawn consistent attention to the fact that Schmitt altered The Concept of the Political not once, but twice. These alterations need to be taken into account when considering his consistency and what his aims indeed are. I think there is a strong argument to be made that he changed his orientation by the time his second edition came out and that it was only after the challenge that Strauss presented in his “Notes” that Schmitt followed through on his own logic. This self-recognized lack of consistency on the part of Schmitt and his attempts to correct it (which I believe he did) bespeaks an entirely different mode of communication than what a “Staussian” would identify in a thinker like Maimonides or Rousseau.
As far as “intensity” goes, I take Schmitt at his word. If you believe he was being deceptive on that point, then you are more of a “Straussian” than I could ever be. To say that the political is total means that the political is possible everywhere; every domain of human life or, more relevantly, every domain of the liberal spheres of culture can be political. The economic, moral, religious, aesthetic, etc. can all be political. Schmitt categorically rejected—by the second edition of his work—the notion that the political was one domain amongst many. By the time the third edition arose, he had not only geared in on the model of intensity, but attempted to conceal that he ever thought it was anything else.
As for the Enemy in Schmitt, it’s pretty clear who that Enemy is. One serves him or God…end of story. When you speak of Schmitt departing from “political realism”, you speak as one who has not accepted the reality that Schmitt took for granted as a matter of faith. “Real” people marched for one side, and “real” people march for the other. Schmitt’s treatment of Bakunin is, in my estimation, a very obvious telling point of Schmitt’s theological vision. It has nothing to do with how orthodox of a Catholic he is or was (or became). I read him more as a Protestant than anything else. It’s wholly superficial to bring Schmitt’s Catholicism (or lackthereof) into play; there is something less obvious, and certainly more unstable going on there.
As far as your hermeneutical faith goes, that’s fine. I wouldn’t think of dissing Gadamer without a cogent argument behind it. I also don’t think I’d bother “inheriting” anything, either.
In the end, your dismissal/appraisal/whatever of Schmitt doesn’t “matter” in the sense that it can’t strike at the core of his work. You’ve limited your horizon too much for that to be a possibility. Self-assured dismissal is always at one’s disposal, but why that would actually mean anything is quite beyond my meager ability to comprehend.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 15, 2006 11:23:52 AM
I wonder if Craig has any idea how difficult it is to play ping pong and drink beer at the same time.
I don't see how thought advances by saying everything is or can be political. We can think here of E. E. Schattschneider's great book _The Semi-Sovereign People_. In it he points out that just about any issue can become political if it becomes something that the state is forced to deal with. For a long time how women or physically disabled people were treated in the workplace was a 'labor' issue. But as unions and the women's movement grew, these issue became 'politicized,' that is, the state and conflicting interest groups got involved and the result is a 'political' and legal settlement of the problem. So yes, lots of issues can become political, in this practical sense. Sanchez seems to push in the direction of a highly religious reading of Schmitt, which makes him (Schmitt) a lot less interesting to me. Sanchez writes:
[begin Sanchez]
Without his Christian anthropology, Schmitt is writing about nothing. The fact he obscured this and other theological underpinnings throughout his career makes sense in light of the fact that Schmitt both detests the "culture" of discussion and would find it unbecoming to submit his theology to it. [end Sanchez]
Well but it's a little bit too twisty-curvy, don't you think, to claim that without his religion Schmitt is writing about *nothing,* and then say that this sine qua non is intentionally obscured -- and why? To avoid chatty discussions like this one; and besides, its his religion, he's not going to talk about that with anyone. I trust Schmitt here rather than an interpreter of him: if Schmitt didn't think the Christian anthropology stuff *had* to go into his writing as foundation, that's because he didn't think that without it, he would be writing about nothing.
Posted by: John S. Ransom | Jun 15, 2006 1:03:13 PM
that Schmitt both detests the "culture" of discussion and would find it unbecoming to submit his theology to it
some truth to this, maybe.
Posted by: Blip | Jun 15, 2006 1:53:01 PM
Well but it's a little bit too twisty-curvy, don't you think, to claim that without his religion Schmitt is writing about *nothing,* and then say that this sine qua non is intentionally obscured -- and why? To avoid chatty discussions like this one; and besides, its his religion, he's not going to talk about that with anyone. I trust Schmitt here rather than an interpreter of him: if Schmitt didn't think the Christian anthropology stuff *had* to go into his writing as foundation, that's because he didn't think that without it, he would be writing about nothing.
I think you miss the sheer volume of venom dripping from Schmitt's words when he speaks about "discussion", "entertainment", and the culture that finds "things" to be "interesting." It's a moral indictment to be sure, and not one that I think Schmitt would want to see turned on himself (or his beliefs).
I believe Schmitt *had* to put the "Christian anthropology stuff" into his writings and he believed he did as well. Again, look to his remarks on that anthropology and man's dangerousness. Schmitt did not even acknowledge the legitimacy of any theory of politics that *didn't* contain it. Certainly, his own ideas are fraught with it.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 15, 2006 1:53:24 PM
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