Schmitt contended that political representation in a
liberal democracy was formulaic, and that the mystical nature and
personalist ideal of the Catholic sovereign was essential.
The Dictatorship In his essay
Die Diktatur ("The Dictatorship"), he discussed the foundations of the newly established
Weimar Republic, emphasising the office of the
President of Germany. Schmitt compared and contrasted what he saw as the effective and ineffective elements of his country's new constitution. He saw the office of the president as a comparatively effective element, because of the power granted to the president to declare a
state of exception (
Ausnahmezustand). This power, which Schmitt discussed and implicitly praised as dictatorial, For Schmitt, every government capable of decisive action must include a dictatorial element within its constitution. Although the German concept of
Ausnahmezustand is best translated as "state of emergency", it literally means "
state of exception", which, according to Schmitt, frees the executive from any legal restraints to its power that would normally apply. The use of the term "exceptional" must be underlined here: Schmitt defines
sovereignty as the power to
decide to initiate a
state of exception, as
Giorgio Agamben has noted. According to Agamben, Schmitt's conceptualization of the "state of exception" as belonging to the core-concept of sovereignty was a response to
Walter Benjamin's concept of a "pure" or "revolutionary" violence, which did not enter into any relationship whatsoever with right. Through the state of exception, Schmitt included all types of violence under right, in the case of the authority of Hitler, leading to the formulation "The leader defends the law" ("
Der Führer schützt das Recht"). rather, it was "suspended" for four years, first with the 28 February 1933
Reichstag Fire Decree, with the suspension renewed every four years, implying a continual state of emergency).
Political Theology On Dictatorship was followed by the 1922 essay
Politische Theologie (
political theology); in it, Schmitt gives further substance to his authoritarian theories with the now notorious definition: "The sovereign is he who decides on the exception." By "exception", Schmitt means stepping outside the
rule of law under the
state of exception (
Ausnahmezustand) doctrine he first introduced in
On Dictatorship for the purpose of managing crisis, which Schmitt defines loosely as "a case of extreme peril, a danger to the existence of the state, or the like." For this reason, the "exception" is understood as a "borderline concept" for Schmitt because it is not within the purview of the normal legal order. Schmitt opposes this definition of
sovereignty to those offered by contemporary theorists on the issue, particularly
Hans Kelsen, whose work Schmitt repeatedly criticizes in the essay. The state of exception is a critique of "normativism", a
positivist concept of law developed by Kelsen as the expression of norms that are abstract and generally applicable, in all circumstances. A year later, Schmitt supported the emergence of
totalitarian power structures in his paper "
Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus" (roughly: "The Intellectual-Historical Situation of Today's Parliamentarianism", translated as
The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy by Ellen Kennedy). Schmitt criticized the institutional practices of liberal politics, arguing that they are justified by faith in rational discussion and openness that is at odds with actual parliamentary
party politics, in which outcomes are hammered out in
smoke-filled rooms by party leaders. Schmitt also posits an essential division between the liberal doctrine of
separation of powers and what he holds to be the nature of
democracy itself, the identity of the rulers and the ruled. Although many critics of Schmitt today, such as
Stephen Holmes in his
The Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism, take exception to his fundamentally
authoritarian outlook, the idea of incompatibility between liberalism and democracy is one reason for the continued interest in his
political philosophy. In chapter 4 of his
State of Exception (2005), Italian philosopher
Giorgio Agamben argued that Schmitt's
Political Theology ought to be read as a response to
Walter Benjamin's influential essay
Towards the Critique of Violence. The book's title derives from Schmitt's assertion (in chapter 3) that "all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts"—in other words, that
political theory addresses the state (and sovereignty) in much the same manner as
theology does God.
The Concept of the Political For Schmitt, "the political" is not equal to any other domain, such as the economic (which distinguishes between profitable and not profitable), but instead is the most essential to identity. While churches are predominant in religion or society is predominant in economics, and the state is usually predominant in politics. Yet, for Schmitt, the political was not autonomous or equivalent to the other domains, but rather the existential basis that would determine any other domain should it reach the point of politics (e.g. religion ceases to be merely theological when it makes a clear distinction between the "friend" and the "enemy"). He views political concepts and images as inherently contestable. Hegemonic powers seek to control and direct how political concepts are applied for a purpose and to effect an outcome such as making the enemy knowable and, in all cases, intended to manifest the inclusive and exclusive aspects of the social order represented by the political words and symbolism: Schmitt, in perhaps his best-known formulation, bases his conceptual realm of state sovereignty and autonomy upon the distinction between
friend and
enemy. Schmitt writes: This distinction is to be determined "existentially", which is to say that 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". Such an enemy need not even be based on nationality: so long as the conflict is potentially intense enough to become a violent one between political entities, the actual substance of enmity may be anything. In this work, Schmitt makes the distinction between several different types of enemies one may make, stating that political enemies ought to be made out of a legitimate concern for the safety of the state rather than moral intuitions. The collectivization of friendship and enmity is, for Schmitt, the essence of politics. This theory of politics was influential in the Third Reich where the recognition and eradication of the enemy became a necessary component of the collective national identity. Similar views were shared by other Nazi legal theorists like
Werner Best. Although there have been divergent interpretations concerning this work, there is broad agreement that
The Concept of the Political is an attempt to achieve state unity by defining the content of politics as opposition to the "enemy". Additionally, the prominence of the state stands as an arbitrary force dominating potentially fractious civil society, whose various antagonisms must not be allowed to affect politics, lest civil war result.
Dialogue with Leo Strauss According to
Heinrich Meier, Schmitt provided a positive reference for
Leo Strauss, and approved his work, which was instrumental in winning Strauss the scholarship funding that allowed him to leave Germany. In turn, Strauss's critique and clarifications of
The Concept of the Political led Schmitt to make significant emendations in its second edition. Writing to Schmitt during 1932, Strauss summarized Schmitt's political theology thus: "[B]ecause man is by nature evil, he therefore needs
dominion. But dominion can be established, that is, men can be unified only in a unity against—against other men. Every association of men is necessarily a separation from other men… the political, thus understood, is not the constitutive principle of the state, of order, but a condition of the state." However, Robert Howse has argued that this interpretation of Heinrich Meier is exaggerated and unfounded, and that there is no proper basis for the idea that Strauss's critique had a major influence on Schmitt. Other scholars have questioned this interpretation.
Hugo E. Herrera argues that reducing Schmitt’s thought to political theology overlooks important philosophical-anthropological and juridical dimensions of his work. According to Herrera, Schmitt’s reflections on the political rely extensively on philosophical arguments concerning conflict, existential seriousness, and the relation between rule and case. From this perspective, Schmitt situates juridical thought between technological rationality and theology, rather than grounding politics directly in theological premises.
Political Romanticism Schmitt's
Political Romanticism (1926) contains Schmitt's critique of
Romantic conservatism, which he considers unrealistic for the political arena of the modern era as it only seeks a restoration of the
ancien régime, which Schmitt considers unfeasible. Distancing himself from the tradition of legitimist "restorative conservatives" such as
Adam Müller or
Joseph de Maistre, Schmitt instead champions the thought of the 19th century Spanish reactionary thinker
Juan Donoso Cortés, who advocated for a dictatorship. According to
György Lukács, this text is both the starting point of Schmitt's advocacy for a
politics of realism and his extreme anti-humanism. Lukács quotes Schmitt's comment that Cortes's 'great theoretical significance for the history of counter-revolutionary theory lies in [that] his contempt for human beings knew no bounds; their blind understanding, their feeble wills, the derisory elan of their carnal desires seem so pitiful to him that all the vocabulary of all human languages is not sufficient to express the full baseness of these creatures,' and Lukács writes: Here we clearly perceive Schmitt's association with all anti-human tendencies, past and present, along with the reason for it in socio-human terms: he is an enemy of the masses grown blind with hatred, a fanatic in the campaign against
Vermassung or mass feeling.
The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, with the subtitle "Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol", is a 1938 work by Schmitt that revisits one of his most critical theoretical inspirations:
Thomas Hobbes. Schmitt's work can be described as both a critique and an appraisal of the controversial political theorist. This work also contains some of Schmitt's more antisemitic language. As contemporary writers on Schmitt have noted, his antisemitism may be read as more a kind of "anti-Judaism" as, unlike his Nazi allies, he did not attribute the dangers of Judaism to "biological" reasons but strictly religious ones. This work by Schmitt is also one of the most intimately involved by him with the concept of myth in a political setting. The text itself begins with an overview of the religious history of the mythical character "
Leviathan". Schmitt traces this character as a unique subject of conflicting interpretations in
Abrahamic doctrines, whereby the Leviathan, understood most pointedly as a "big fish," is occasionally interchangeable with that of a dragon or serpent, which Schmitt remarks have been "protective and benevolent deities" in the history of non-Jewish peoples. But, as Schmitt makes clear, Hobbes' Leviathan is very different from these interpretations, being illustrated firstly in his work
Leviathan as a "huge man". The Leviathan as a "huge man" is used throughout Hobbes' work as a symbol of the sovereign person. Although the Leviathan is not the only allegory made by Hobbes of the sovereign, which gravitates throughout his work as "a huge man, a huge leviathan, an artificial being, an
animal artificiale, an
automaton, or a
machina". Hobbes' concern was mainly to convey the sovereign person as a frightening creature that could instill fear into those chaotic elements of man that belong to his interpretation of the
state of nature. Schmitt's critique of Hobbes begins with Hobbes' understanding of the state as a "machine" which is set into motion by the sovereign. That, according to Schmitt, is actually a continuation of
René Descartes's concept of
mind–body dualism. For Hobbes to conceptualize the state as a machine whose soul is the sovereign renders it really as just a mechanic structure, carrying over the cartesian dualism into political theory: "As a totality, the state is body and soul, a
homo artificialis, and, as such, a machine. It is a manmade product ... the soul thereby becomes a mere component of a machine artificially manufactured by man." Schmitt adds that this technical conception of the state is essential in the modern interpretation of government as a widespread administrative organ. Therefore, Schmitt attributes Hobbes' mechanistic and often also a legally positivist interpretation of the state (what is legitimate = what is legal) with the process of political neutralization. This is consistent with Schmitt's larger attitude toward attempts to apply technical principles to political matters. Also, Schmitt critiques Hobbes' insistence that belief in miracles must only be outwardly consistent with the position of the state and can, privately, deviate into one's own opinion as to the validity of such "miracles". The belief in miracles was a relevant point in Hobbes' century, for kings would regularly "bestow miracles" by touching the hands of those of ill health, supposedly healing them—obviously a consequence of the medieval belief that kings had a divine character. Hobbes' position was that "private reason" may disagree with what the state claims to be a miracle, but the "public reason" must, by necessity, agree to its position in order to avoid chaos. Schmitt's critique of Hobbes here is twofold. Firstly, Hobbes opens the crack toward a liberal understanding of
individual rights (such as the right to "private reason") which Schmitt was a tireless critic of and, secondly, Hobbes guts the state of any "substantive truth" (such as the genuine belief of the individual, even in private, of the kings
divine right) and renders the state into now simply a "justifiable external power". This opens up the elementary basis of liberal society, which, for Schmitt, was
pluralism. Such a pluralist society lacked ideological homogeneity and nationally bound group identity, both of which were fundamental premises of a democratic society to Schmitt. Despite his critiques, Schmitt, nonetheless, finishes the book with a celebration of Hobbes as a truly magnificent thinker, ranking him along with other theorists he values greatly like
Niccolò Machiavelli and
Giambattista Vico.
The Nomos of the Earth The Nomos of the Earth is Schmitt's most historical and geopolitical work. Published in 1950, it was also one of his final texts. It describes the origin of the
Eurocentric global order, which Schmitt dates from the
discovery of the New World, discusses its specific character and its contribution to civilization, analyses the reasons for its decline at the end of the 19th century, and concludes with prospects for a new world order. It defends European achievements, not only in creating the first truly global order of
international law, but also in limiting war to conflicts among sovereign states, which, in effect, civilized war. In Schmitt's view, the European sovereign state was the greatest achievement of
Occidental rationalism; in becoming the principal agency of secularization, the European state created the modern age. Notable in Schmitt's discussion of the European epoch of world history is the role played by the
New World, which ultimately replaced the
Old World as the centre of the Earth and became the arbiter in European and world politics. According to Schmitt, the
United States' internal conflicts between economic presence and political absence, between isolationism and interventionism, are global problems, which today continue to hamper the creation of a new world order. However critical Schmitt is of American actions at the end of the 19th century and after World War I, he considered the United States to be the only political entity capable of resolving the crisis of global order. Since 1942, Schmitt envisaged the
nomos of the New World installing itself "upon the ruins" of the Old.
Hamlet or Hecuba Published in 1956,
Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play was Schmitt's most extended piece of literary criticism. In it, Schmitt focuses his attention on
Shakespeare's
Hamlet and argues that the significance of the work hinges on its ability to integrate history in the form of the taboo of the queen and the deformation of the figure of the avenger. Schmitt uses this interpretation to develop a theory of myth and politics that serves as a cultural foundation for his concept of political representation. Beyond literary criticism or historical analysis, Schmitt's book also reveals a comprehensive theory of the relationship between aesthetics and politics that responds to alternative ideas developed by
Walter Benjamin and
Theodor W. Adorno.
Theory of the Partisan Schmitt's
Theory of the Partisan originated in two lectures delivered during 1962, and has been seen as a rethinking of
The Concept of the Political. It addressed the transformation of war in the post-European age, analysing a specific and significant phenomenon that ushered in a new
theory of war and enmity. It contains an implicit theory of the terrorist, which during the 21st century has resulted in yet another new theory of war and enmity. In the lectures, Schmitt directly tackles the issues surrounding "the problem of the Partisan" figure: the guerrilla or revolutionary who "fights irregularly" (p. 3). Both because of its scope, with extended discussions on historical figures like
Napoleon,
Vladimir Lenin, and
Mao Zedong, as well as the events marking the beginning of the 20th century, Schmitt's text has had a resurgence of popularity.
Jacques Derrida, in his
Politics of Friendship remarked: Despite certain signs of ironic distrust in the areas of metaphysics and ontology,
The Concept of the Political was, as we have seen, a philosophical type of essay to 'frame' the topic of a concept unable to constitute itself on philosophical ground. But in
Theory of the Partisan, it is in the same areas that the topic of this concept is both radicalized and properly uprooted, where Schmitt wished to regrasp in history the event or node of events that engaged this uprooting radicalization, and it is precisely there that the philosophical as such intervenes again. Schmitt concludes
Theory of the Partisan with the statement: "The theory of the partisan flows into the question of the concept of the political, into the question of the real enemy and of a new
nomos of the earth." Schmitt's work on the Partisan has since spurred comparisons with the post-9/11 'terrorist' in recent scholarship. The Italian philosopher
Domenico Losurdo comments: Thus, for Schmitt, the colonized peoples' struggle for national independence, although embracing ever larger sections of the population, becomes synonymous with terrorism, while the actions of the occupying army, foreign and hated by the citizens of the occupied country, are characterized as "counter-terrorist". Of course, the "retaliations" can be very harsh, but – Schmitt observes, referring to
Algeria and
Vietnam – we must take into account the "irresistible logic of the old rule according to which insurgents can only be dealt with by insurgent methods." As we see, the main difference between terrorism and counter-terrorism is not a specific behavior (ie. the impact on, or participation of, citizens). It coincides with the border between barbarism and civilization, between East and West. The power that determines who the barbarians are every time also determines who the terrorists are. == Personal life ==