Carl Schmitt’s Two Concepts of Humanity
Matthias Lievens
Catholic University of Brussels
Vrijheidslaan 17
1081 Brussels
Belgium
matthias.lievens@kubrussel.ac.be
Tel. + 32 2 412.42.76
Fax. + 32 2 412.42.00
Abstract: A dominant interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s work depicts him as a
theologically inspired and anti-humanist thinker. This paper argues, however, that his
concept of the political, founded on a plea for relative instead of absolute enmity,
takes Schmitt away from theology onto a profane level, where enemies recognize each
other as human beings. Although Schmitt states that he who uses the concept of
humanity wants to betray, one can trace in his work a distinction between two
concepts of humanity which gives a philosophical foundation for the distinction
between relative and absolute enmity, and thus, for the political. It is at the basis of a
minimally normative understanding of the political which can be of great interest for
contemporary debates on the contemporary world order.
Key words: Carl Schmitt, the political, political theology, sovereignty, recognition,
humanity, enmity
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Introduction
Schmitt is often depicted as a theologically inspired and anti-humanist thinker. A
large number of recent Schmitt readings underline the theological underpinnings of
his writings. Moreover, he wrote two books titled ‘Political Theology’ and is wellknown as a fighting catholic.
However, Schmitt’s philosophy is not as clear-cut as it may seem. In this article, I will
argue against the dominant ‘theological’ reading of Schmitt1 to show that his concept
of the political contains a profane and even humanist twist, which can also be used to
deconstruct some of the more problematic parts of his work. Schmitt’s concept of the
political entails a peculiar form of normativity and is based on a specific concept of
humanity that he wants to rescue from the dominance of moral thinking in politicis in
a liberal world. However odd that may seem, I will try to show that there is indeed a
politics of humanity present in Schmitt’s work, despite his severe criticisms of the use
of the concept of humanity. The stake of elaborating upon this element in Schmitt is
this. As we entered an era of global civil war, the frontiers between states no longer
function as means to relativize enmity: struggle became deterritorialized. Frontiers
and territoriality are becoming less and less factors that make the political possible.
The search for the sources of the political and the avoidance of absolute enmity has to
be oriented elsewhere. My hypothesis is that the analysis of Schmitt’s two concepts of
humanity supplies important clues for such an endeavour.
Current wars and trials ‘in the name of humanity’ are rightly what Schmitt feared the
most. He depicted these as the outcome of the logic of global civil war. But as I will
try to show, there is an alternative way to conceive of the rescuing of the political
without having to reterritorialize conflict. It is situated in the functioning of a specific
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concept of humanity within the symbolic order. In this sense, Schmitt does more than
just unmasking the ideology of humanity, but he gives us clues for a more positive
elaboration. That is why thinking creatively with Schmitt can contribute to the current
debate in political philosophy, to the extent that this engagement with Schmitt is, as
Andreas Kalyvas states, “neither apologetic, nor dismissive, but reconstructive and
selective.”2
The dialectic of the concept of humanity
Schmitt is well-known as a critique of liberalism. Fundamentally, he claims,
liberalism is internally contradictory to the extent that it lacks a necessary concept of
the political (which Schmitt understands as based on the distinction between friends
and enemies). Liberalism is an antipolitics, it is a theory which starts from an
opposition to the state and the political, giving free space to ethics and economy
instead3. Political struggle dissolves in liberal theory into competition on the
economic terrain, and discussion on the spiritual level.
In practice, however, liberals of all countries have acted politically4. They formed
coalitions and waged struggles, without recognizing the importance of the political as
such. One cannot install a liberal order without a precedent process of political
struggles and decisions. The crux of Schmitt’s critique of liberalism consists in his
contention that when liberalism, with its stress on the “ideological humanitarian
conception of humanity”5, starts to act politically, it risks to turn this very idea into its
opposite. When one makes an appeal to humanity, one has to give a qualitative
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content to this idea, drawing a distinction between what is really human and what
isn’t.
In The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt explains how humanists and humanitarians as
Francis Bacon came to very inhuman conclusions in their dealings with indigenous
peoples in newly colonized territories on the other side of the Atlantic. According to
Bacon, these peoples were cannibals by nature, they were outside humanity and thus
could not be seen to have rights. “By no means is it paradoxical,” Schmitt says, “that
non other than humanists and humanitarians put forward such inhuman arguments,
because the idea of humanity is two-sided and often lends itself to a surprising
dialectic.”6
A political struggle, waged in the name of humanity, tends to turn into the most
intensive and extreme forms of struggle, where the enemy falls outside humanity. She
is no longer recognized as a political opponent, but becomes criminalized, outlawed.
Liberal ‘politics’, too, slides very easily back into police actions, with its typical
asymmetry between friend and enemy, as is the case in wars against terrorism and in
the name of humanity, democracy or freedom, or in tribunals judging crimes against
humanity. Such practices often even go further than just criminalizing the enemy: in
regular penal law, a criminal has certain rights of defence, while in extreme war
situations, the enemy turned into a war criminal often even lacks these basic rights
when he appears before exceptional courts.
Drawing on these extreme situations, Schmitt tries to point to the impossibility of
liberalism: it needs a politics, but doesn’t or can’t think it. And when it develops a
politics in actual facts, this threatens to become an inhuman one. The
(im)moralization of the enemy potentially leads to the most intensive forms of war
which simply aims to annihilate the enemy. Liberalism is thus unable to provide a
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coherent theory. This doesn’t mean Schmitt dismisses all its intuitions as such7. But
its starting point is wrong. When one starts from a moral theory of the human and its
values, which claims universal validity, it becomes impossible to formulate a theory
of the political. Schmitt begins the other way round: he starts with the concept of the
political, in order to render it more human.
Taking Schmitt away from theology
Paradoxically, the attempt to find a human form of the political seems to take Schmitt
into a very profane direction. Schmitt’s concept of the political is based on the famous
criterion of the distinction between friend and enemy. “The distinction of friend and
enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an
association or dissociation”8. In fact, he locates the political on a scale of increasing
intensity, ranging from a pre-political level, where the social relation is not interpreted
in terms of friend/enemy oppositions, going via an actual political level, to a
hyperpolitical level where the conflict is intensified to such a degree that the enemy
becomes moralised9 or theologised10. This last situation is dangerous, according to
Schmitt, because such a struggle, which tends to strip the enemy off his human
character, potentially opens the door for a war of annihilation. “Such a war is
necessarily unusually intense and inhuman because, by transcending the limits of the
political framework, it simultaneously degrades the enemy into moral and other
categories and is forced to make of him a monster that must not only be defeated but
also utterly destroyed.”11. The rigorous consequence of a confrontation with an
immoral enemy is the decision to totally annihilate her. The theologisation of the
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enemy has a similar effect of intensifying the conflict to an inhuman degree12.
Schmitt’s theory of the political is thus aimed at finding a middle ground, recognizing
the reality of political conflict, and at the same time avoiding its degeneration into a
war of annihilation.
As said, a great part of the secondary literature on Schmitt deals with the theological
or even mythical underpinnings of his writings. It was Heinrich Meier who
inaugurated the ‘theological turn’ in the literature on Schmitt. This could only be done
by downplaying the distinction Schmitt draws between the political and what
‘transcends the limits of the political framework’, i.e. between the genuinely political
enemy (the relative enemy) and the moralised or theologised, and thus absolute,
enemy13. Meier never speaks of relative enmity in the first place, and claims that
“Schmitt’s later differentiation between the ‘conventional,’ the ‘real,’ and the absolute
enemy’ (…) is not decisive for the concept of the political.” 14 Our contention,
however, is that Schmitt’s theory necessitates a clear delineation of the genuinely
political, characterised by relative enmity and based on a specific concept of
humanity, and that this concept of the political leads into a profane direction15. This
distinction between relative and absolute enmity is a key to make sense of Schmitt’s
work16.
This development onto a profane level takes place through two successive moves.
Firstly, Schmitt states that all political concepts are secularised theological concepts 17.
This doesn’t make Schmitt a theologian, however. In Political Theology, he says of
political theories that they cannot be understood without understanding their historical
origin in theology and their structural similarity to theological conceptions. He sees
for instance an analogy between deism and the scientific way of thinking of the
Enlightenment18. Still, this must not be read too strictly: Schmitt would never agree
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with the political counterpart of theism, notably world monarchy19. The political
concepts with which Schmitt is dealing (e.g. the State and Sovereignty), thus have a
certain independence vis-à-vis their theological origins. Time and again, Schmitt cites
Albericus Gentili’s phrase “Silete theologi in munere alieno!” 20. This must be read as
also applying to Schmitt himself.
What political concepts do retain from their theological origins, however, is
something of their absolute character. Indeed, in Political Romanticism, Schmitt
conceives secularisation as the process through which the absolute shifts from one
instance to another: for instance, from God to “mundane and worldly factors”21. In
this sense, political concepts such as the State and Sovereignty are still somehow
imbued with the absolute character they inherited from their theological origins.
In a second move, then, Schmitt implicitly takes a step further away from the
theological origins of political concepts through his defence of the political as defined
in terms of relative instead of absolute enmity. The absolute enemy is the one who
simply has to be annihilated because he is inhuman, immoral or an obstacle for the
course of History. Relative enmity presupposes a certain respect for the human and
political dignity of the adversary, as I will show in the development of the concept
below.
What is important at this stage, is that while secularisation remained somehow within
a religious frame of thought, focusing on notions of the absolute (no longer a strictly
theological absolute, but the absolute of the State, Sovereignty, Morality, History or
Humanity – with a majuscule), Schmitt’s concept of the political, defined in terms of
relative enmity, now leaves this frame behind in favour of a relativisation of such
absolute concepts. This takes him - maybe unwittingly - to a very profane level, where
the political in Schmitt’s sense can be found: it discards all absolute truths and
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instances in the name of which struggles are waged, and opens a space for relativity
and openness. It is this level that Schmitt wants to rescue from absolute notions that
lurk behind the criminalization of the enemy in a certain liberal moralism or in the
Marxist tendency to see the class enemy as a relic of a society that is doomed by the
course of History. Such a relativisation of enmity represents for Schmitt “a great
progress from a humane point of view”22, as it goes against the “moral and physical
annihilation of the enemy”.
Although Schmitt has very often been criticized as war-prone, the acknowledgement
of the proper level of the political as the terrain of relative enmity is the precondition
to avoid absolute wars and regulate the conflict in the real world of politics. The
paradox Schmitt underlines is that no morality can legitimise the killing of other
people23, while at the same time the moralisation of politics, for instance through the
concept of humanity, leads very fast to the conclusion that the enemy has to be
annihilated and thus intensifies the conflict beyond the proper political level. Instead
of being bellicose, Schmitt’s concept of the political has the ambition to defer the
moment of taking resort to violence, and to avoid the rapid intensification of the
conflict into a war of annihilation24. Schmitt’s relativisation of enmity thus claims to
lead to less violence. He underlines the way absolute ideas function ideologically to
intensify the struggle and accelerate the use of violence: “As Trotsky justly reminded
the democrat Kautsky, the awareness of relative truths never gives one the courage to
use force and to spill blood.”25
The impurity of the political
8
Schmitt is desperately trying to save the political from the impact of thinking in terms
of absolute instances as Morality or History, which tend to shift the conflict from a
political to a hyperpolitical terrain. However, it is very difficult to conceive a political
fight without acknowledging that some moral content is at stake. Schmitt tried to
circumvent this problem by territorializing the political: the only really political
struggle is then the one between the territorially bounded sovereign states of the 17th18th century. Once struggles become deterritorialized, however, it becomes harder to
avoid a moral content slipping into the political struggle, always threatening it to
become hyperpolitical. Still, despite Schmitt’s admiration for the Jus Publicum
Europaeum, the question can be asked whether this danger of the contamination of the
political is not unavoidable in the first place. As the existential threat which unleashes
the fight between states is the threat of the “way of life” of a people 26, isn’t there
always a certain even though maybe only minimal (moral, religious, economic,
cultural etc.) content which is the ground of the subsequent politicisation? As
Kondylis stresses, does a political-existential decision not always have to be
articulated normatively27?
A double movement of displacement and condensation always seems to be present in
any shift of a social relation onto the political terrain. On the one hand, there is a
process of displacement, from a prepolitical to a political level, from one kind of
normativity to another one. The politicisation of a social relation means that the
struggle which unfolds will be governed by the specific normativity of the political.
On the other hand, through a kind of condensation, something of the original content
of the social relation is maintained in its politicisation. Any kind of social relation, be
it religious, moral, cultural, ethnic, can become political, according to Schmitt. He
warns that when the political appears outside the state level, these fights will very
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easily absolutise the enemy. The original content of the social relation that is being
politicised thus has an impact on the dynamic of the conflict. When this content enters
the polemical sphere, however, it can no longer be understood merely out of itself, but
is always also determined through the polemical relation with the enemy. One can
even say that in a political context, meaning is always overdetermined by the
polemical opposition with the enemy. Politicisation introduces a kind of heteronomy:
social identities and ideological narratives are no longer self-grounded, but are
defined through the polemic with the enemy. The original content of a social relation
condenses thus with the existential content of the polemic.
This condensation always threatens the displacement to the political terrain, and tends
to take it even further, to the terrain ‘beyond the political’. The hyperpolitical
unavoidably haunts the political. The political must always remain impure, despite
Schmitt’s attempt to find pure concepts28.
The dialectic of the concept of sovereignty
Before developing the concept of relative enmity in terms of its foundation in a
specific concept of humanity, the deconstructive potential of this profane twist in
Schmitt’s concept of the political has to be shown shortly. Indeed, Schmitt argues
against the absoluteness of Morality, Humanity and History, but retains himself
absolute concepts such as Sovereignty and State. Of course, it was between sovereign
states that an international system came into being that was able to relativize enmity.
But the discussion on the sovereign as “he who decides on the exception”29, mainly
deals with the question of the internal enemy. The State not only has the monopoly to
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determine the enemy externally, but also internally30. In his Political Theology
Schmitt doesn’t mention enmity, but crisis as crucial for an understanding of why the
sovereign declares the state of exception and how he acts within this state. He does
speak of enmity, however, in Die Diktatur. Both texts were written in the same
period, and elaborate upon the notion of the state of exception. In his book on
dictatorship, Schmitt states that in the state of exception, means-end rationality is the
only guide to reach the goal: the total defeat of the enemy, who has to be calmed
down or crushed31. In the state of exception, the dictator has to treat the enemies as
rightless rebels32.
Schmitt’s Concept of the Political and his theory of the state of exception thus seem to
sit uneasily together, although they don’t have to be conceptually incompatible to the
extent that the state of exception could become the context of genuine political
struggle33. However, Schmitt’s statism and his vision of the people as a homogeneous
entity seem to be at odds with his defence of the normative core of the concept of the
political, which consists in the recognition of the enemy. Reminiscent of the
aforementioned dialectic of the concept of humanity, a similar ambiguity seems to be
at play in the concept of sovereignty. There is a tension between two fundamental
elements in Schmitt’s theory of Sovereignty and the State. On the one hand, the State
is constituted by the constituent power of the people, which is supposed to be
homogenous. On the other hand, Schmitt’s concept of State Sovereignty is a concept
of crisis: “(t)he exception (…) can at best be characterized as a case of extreme peril,
a danger to the existence of the state, or the like.”34 The Sovereign thus seems to rely
on two opposite conditions. On the one hand, he is the expression of the homogeneity
of the people; on the other hand, he appears only when this homogeneity is obviously
absent, and the conflict appears internally, making the State lose its monopoly of the
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political decision. At the moment the State has to be at its strongest, it appears to be at
its weakest. The coming into action of the Sovereign is the symptom of his own crisis,
of the appearance of an alternative political claim: the Sovereign never comes alone.
As there is no political unity, according to Schmitt, when there is no monopolisation
of the political decision35, the state of exception marks by definition the disappearance
of the political unity.
According to Julien Freund, Schmitt’s concept of Sovereignty implies that in such a
case of internal conflict, there can be only one winner36. But is what happens in the
state of exception, as described in Die Diktatur, really ‘political’ in the specific
Schmittian sense of the word? In the state of exception the internal heterogeneity of
the political unity tends to become so radical that there is no longer any common
ground, and it is this, as I will try to show, that enables notions of absolute enmity to
appear.
Towards a regulative concept of humanity
As said above, the logic of the concept of relative enmity tends to take Schmitt away
from theology, and clears the way for a profane understanding of the political.
However, Schmitt upholds the idea that ‘metaphysics’ is somehow unavoidable. Even
the most profane theory still has its underlying metaphysical suppositions37. I will
now try to show how a specific concept of humanity can be seen to play such a role
with regard to the notion of relative enmity.
We saw how the notion of humanity risks to turn into its opposite when it is
appropriated by a party in a struggle. The concept of humanity and the way it
12
functions in ideological discourses can then have terrible consequences. Still, Schmitt
doesn’t want to dismiss the positive, normative core of the concept as such. A certain
concept of humanity is even a precondition to think the political, according to him. In
a highly interesting passage in his “Ethic of State and Pluralistic State”, Schmitt states
the following:
“Certainly, there is no human and no political life without the idea of
humanity, but this idea constitutes nothing, certainly no distinguishable
community. All peoples, all classes, all adherents of all religions, Christians
and Saracens, capitalists and proletarians, good and evil, just and unjust,
delinquent and judge, are people, and with the help of such a universal concept
every distinction may be negated and every concrete community ruptured.
Such elevated ideas (as God, world and humanity, ML) can and should temper
and modify. However, as soon as particular peoples and social groups, or even
individuals, make use of them in order to identify themselves with the others,
the regulative idea is transformed into an awful instrument of human
domination. Even within the narrow boundaries of the state (…) it is a
dangerous deception when one single group pursues its special interests in the
name of the whole, and unjustifiably identifies itself with the state. For then
the name of the state serves only political suppression and deprivation of
rights. And when, for the first time, a supreme and universal concept like
humanity is used politically so as to identify a single people or a particular
social organization with it, then the potential arises for a most awful expansion
and a murderous imperialism.”38
Schmitt explains in this passage how the concept of humanity must function in order
to stick to its own normative claims: it has to be “enthroned above – very high above
13
– any plurality in concrete reality.”39 Schmitt points to concepts as humanity, god and
world as regulative ideas, and warns for the fact that they constitute nothing, but can
contribute to the intensification of political conflicts when appropriated by a single
party, as Schmitt already explained in The Concept of the Political.
Without referring to him explicitly, Schmitt certainly has here Kant in mind. In his
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between the transcendental ideas or pure
concepts of reason and the categories or pure concepts of the understanding. The
categories of the understanding refer to possible objects of experience, while the ideas
of reason relate to the totality of possible experience. The object of the idea can never
be encountered in experience. Still, “human reason has a natural tendency to
transgress these limits” and to relate the ideas to specific objects40. That is why Kant
warns for a wrong use of the ideas, which are only allowed to be used regulatively,
and not constitutively, i.e. related to specific objects of the experience. From the
moment they are used constitutively, a dialectic unfolds which ends up in insoluble
antinomies41.
Something similar seems to be at stake in Schmitt’s short analysis of the concept of
humanity. Of course, he shifts the Kantian distinction from an epistemological to a
political or even moral level. By way of analogy, the regulative concept of humanity
can then be considered as the concept under which the totality of concrete, ‘empirical’
political forces can be subsumed. When used constitutively, however, such a concept
leads to a similar kind of dialectic as the one of Kant’s ideas: its normativity then
turns into its opposite.
Moreover, just as the ideas are the precondition for knowledge in Kant, the regulative
concept of humanity appears as the condition of possibility of the political in Schmitt.
14
Without the minimal recognition of enemies as human beings, the political tends to
degenerate into the hyperpolitical.
What can be inferred from Schmitt’s stress on the regulative nature of this concept of
humanity? Firstly, with this concept, Schmitt points to a minimal level of
homogeneity which has to be shared by all potential friends and enemies to be able to
speak of the political and to avoid the hyperpolitical. In a radically heterogeneous
world, there would be no ground for recognition and for the avoidance of the
annihilation of the enemy. When people are no longer considered as human beings,
but as technically manipulable objects, as in Brave New World, one can kill
undisturbedly in a technical way42. The regulative concept of humanity points to this
minimum basis which makes recognition possible. From the moment one goes below
this minimum level, denying the humanity of the opponent, nothing prevents total
annihilation43.
Secondly, this concept must not be appropriated by a political force in the context of
conflict. Just as the idea in the kantian framework refers to a totality of possible
experience without being itself an object of experience, the regulative idea of
humanity refers to the totality of political (friend/enemy) positions, but cannot be
itself such a position. When appropriated by a particular force, and thus used
constitutively, the concept of humanity acquires a strong exclusionary logic. Schmitt’s
emphasis on its regulative use favours a more inclusive approach. The regulative
concept of humanity, which is a political concept which takes the actual reality of
enmity serious, is an extensive and inclusive concept. The constitutive concept of
humanity, on the other hand, can be seen as an intensive and exclusive concept, as it is
a moral concept based on a rationalist and foundational way of thinking.
15
Thirdly, Schmitt’s discussion of the concepts of humanity contains an interesting form
of ideology critique. He points to the specific effectivity of such humanitarian
narratives, focusing on how they intensify or attenuate conflict. He criticises not the
specific content of the constitutive concept of humanity, but the fact that the concept
is used constitutively in the first place. His critique of ideology is thus not a critique of
the truthfulness or coherence of this content, but it is a functional critique. The
formulation of the concept of humanity has an impact on the nature of the relations
involved: whether they will be political or hyperpolitical. Like this, Schmitt’s thesis
that political concepts are always polemical concepts acquires a double meaning: on
the one hand, these concepts arise through the political conflict and bear its stamp, but
they also shape it, intensifying or ‘bracketing’ the fight. The nature of the concept
influences the nature of the relations to which they refer and in which they intervene.
Philosophy is political struggle in theory in a specific sense: it is not only a weapon in
the fight, but it even influences the plane on which the conflict is fought out.
Fourthly, only minimal claims can be directly inferred from the regulative concept of
humanity: the claim to be recognized as a human being and be treated with due
respect. Nevertheless, it can easily be shown that the two different concepts of
humanity underpin different institutional designs. The regulative concept of humanity
can be considered as underlying an international order of the Jus Publicum
Europaeum-type, while its constitutive counterpart would then be underpinning
certain ‘cosmopolitan’ notions such as the trial for crimes against humanity. Schmitt
certainly has the regulative concept of humanity in mind when he discusses certain
institutional designs. For instance, he praises the four Geneva Conventions of 12
August 1949 as “the work of a humane conscience, a humanitarian development that
deserves our admiration. While they not only permit the enemy a share of humanity
16
but even of legitimacy in the sense of recognition, they remain grounded in classical
international law”44. Such international law regulates conflicts by creating a common
ground which enables conflicting forces to recognize each other, while cosmopolitan
law starts from a more substantially determined concept of humanity, from which
concrete, substantial conclusions can be drawn and legitimations for specific political
positions can be elaborated. Schmitt’s main object of criticism in this regard is the
League of Nations, which pretends to be universal, but is in fact a victors’ institution,
and is thus a “fictive community”45. The constitutive concept of humanity functions
here in a similar way as the concept of progress in Walter Benjamin’s theses on the
concept of history. Every claim of progress has its counterpart of barbarism,
according to Benjamin46. Just like the idea of progress, the universal claim of
constitutively understood humanity makes the defeated disappear. In a similar vein as
Benjamin’s attempt to break up the concept of history and progress, Schmitt tries to
break up this image of false universality to give space to the defeated.
What Schmitt calls the ‘Hegung des Krieges’ (the bracketing of war) in his analysis of
the Jus Publicum Europaeum draws heavily on the notion of the frontier. The
avoidance of absolute war is conditional upon the reciprocal recognition of the
frontier, behind which the fighting parties can redraw without entering into a logic of
annihilation. As the JPE dissolved, however, a world made up of clear boundaries and
territorially circumscribed political entities gave way to a deterritorialization of the
political struggle, without common frontiers. The regulative concept of humanity
might be seen as introducing another type of boundary with possibly similar effects:
the boundary between the regulative ideas (and their eventual institutional
concretisation) and the concrete political forces at hand. There has to remain a
17
distance, Schmitt says, between the political fight, and these ideas, which “maintain
their dignity as highest concepts only as long as they remain in their most high
position.”47 As it doesn’t have a material substrate similar to the territorial frontier,
this boundary is weaker, and presupposes an intersubjective practice of reciprocal
recognition.
A question of dignity
What is at stake in this intersubjective space, is the dignity of the enemies, which is
always threatened by the specific logic values have within a polemical context. In his
text Die Tyrannei der Werte (The Tyranny of Values), Schmitt denounces the
increasing importance of free-floating, equivocal ‘values’ on the juridical, political
and ideological level. The rise of value philosophy is only a recent phenomenon48.
Schmitt regrets the loss of the former wisdom that it is only objects which have a
value (Wert), while human beings have dignity (Würde)49. For Schmitt, the Marxist
account, according to which this phenomenon is only the superstructural expression of
the centrality of value on the economic level, is too easy. The success of value
philosophy is, according to him, rather a reaction to 19th century nihilism. But it is a
negative phenomenon, because it increases the tendency towards absolute enmity that
I have already shown to be present in the constitutive concept of humanity.
According to Schmitt, the logic of values has led to a war of all against all, in which
values function as the spectres of the disenchanted gods: their absolute character
generates absolute enmity, as one cannot speak about value without implying a nonvalue. A value judgment always implies a judgment of worthlessness. The logic of
18
value is thus “the logic of worthlessness, and the destruction of the bearer of this
worthlessness”50. People have “to consider the other side as entirely criminal and
inhuman, as totally worthless. Otherwise they are themselves criminal and
inhuman.”51 Subjective values become objectified, their bearer concealed. Anyone
can appropriate them in his struggles.
Against this danger, Schmitt seems to suggest a double move: on the one hand, he
tries to take universal concepts out of the hands of particular political subjects and
relegates them to an intersubjective sphere of reciprocal recognition52. On the other
hand, he always links ideas with the subject which enunciates them and requires a
kind of homology between the idea and the subject which enunciates it: a particular
subject cannot be speaking on behalf of humanity, for instance. For some
enunciations, there does not exist a subject which may enunciate them.
Schmitt often stresses the link between ideas or norms and the subject which
enunciates them. He only rarely discusses ideas as such without relating them to
subjective, historical and political positions. In his theory of sovereignty, his critique
of normativism or his theory of the state, he always asks the question of the subject
behind it: “Quis judicabit? Quis interpretabitur?”53 Law is never only a norm, but is
the unity of a norm and a subjective political decision54. The constitution is never just
a set of rules, but it is a decision of a people55.
It is the denial of subjective, political and historical situatedness which is here
Schmitt’s focus. When criticizing the League of Nations and the Versailles Treaty for
instance, he wants to underline the fact that these are not composed of free-floating
rules, to be judged in themselves, but that these rules are those of the victors, whose
claim of universality is illegitimate. In this sense, too, he tends to profanate law,
19
relating it to historical political situations and arguing strongly against the idea of
free-floating universal norms, which can be appropriated by anyone.
The regulative concept of humanity seems to be the only universal idea which has an
explicit and positive place in Schmitt’s thinking. It cannot be traced back to a specific
subject: according to Schmitt, humanity as such is not a subject that can act
politically56. In the sense that humanity encompasses for instance future generations,
this is a sound idea: “Every day humanity as a whole shows a different face: it is
‘never together’.”57 Nobody can speak on behalf of it. The idea of humanity can at
most appear in an intersubjective space of reciprocal recognition between enemies. In
this sense, the regulative concept of humanity represents an interesting anomaly in
Schmitt’s thinking, with its stress on subjective decisions.
The parties in the conflict cannot appropriate these universal concepts, but neither can
a third party. Schmitt strongly rejects the judgment by a third party which is not
directly involved in a political conflict. The conflict cannot be settled by having
recourse to a preordained general standard, nor by a judgement by an impartial third
party58. Tertium non datur. For Schmitt, this higher third position is a logical
impossibility in the first place. As all political concepts are polemical, it is impossible
to enunciate anything in a political context without getting enmeshed in the political
field itself. Moreover, the rejection of a higher third judging instance is somehow a
condition of possibility of the political. When recourse to such a really neutral
instance would always be possible, there would be no more political conflicts59.
The resulting situation is at least ambiguous. On the one hand, the political introduces
an insurmountable form of heteronomy: one can no longer define her position
autonomously, out of itself, but one is always defined through the polemic, through
the position the enemy takes. The identity and the meaning of the enunciations of a
20
political subject are no longer mastered by herself, but are overdetermined by the
displacements and condensations of the political field. On the other hand, a political
subject cannot rely on a higher instance to solve the conflict, but it has to take a
position and fight. There is a peculiar logic of self-activity (and self-emancipation?) at
play here: nobody can solve the conflict in our stead, nobody can really take us onto
the plane of universality but ourselves, within an intersubjective space of reciprocal
recognition. Every attempt by an opponent or a third party to bring universality to
bear upon us from the outside, undermines this very universality and our dignity as
political and human subjects.
Still, this self always remains somehow heteronomous to the extent that no identity or
enunciation is ever totally ‘pure’: the meaning of political enunciations continually
shifts through the development of the polemic and the steadily moving lines of
conflictuality. As with the political as such, the notion of the self (and the concomitant
notions of self-emancipation, self-organisation etc.) remains impure.
Humanity as a political construction
Schmitt is not the belligerent thinker some claim he is. That’s what his stress on
relative enmity and the regulative concept of humanity should make clear. However,
in developing these concepts, one has to keep in mind that for Schmitt, the existential
reality of the distinction between friend and enemy comes first. His conceptual edifice
doesn’t start from the eternal a priori’s of human reason, but from the reality of the
political. In this sense, the regulative concept of humanity can only be discovered
through this historical reality, and the quest for its human form. As the authentically
21
political, which avoids the theologization or moralization of the enemy, is not an
omnihistorical given, one can only find the traces of the regulative concept of
humanity which underlies it in specific political practices in specific historical
periods. With the regulative concept of humanity, the political can historically get
lost. Logically, the regulative idea of humanity is situated before the relativisation of
enmity, as its condition of possibility, but chronologically, it can be seen as the result
of a historical political process of reciprocal recognition of enemies as human beings.
It becomes visible for instance in practices of regulated conflict in the context of the
JPE.
Universality is thus not in the first place a question of reason, but of political practice.
In the political, a spark of humanity lights up, that can never be appropriated without
destroying it. Acting politically means, then, to act in such a way as to cherish this
spark of humanity that is immanent in the political (the German word ‘hegen’, used in
Schmitt’s famous formula of the ‘Hegung des Krieges’ – the bracketing of war – also
means ‘to cherish’, ‘to foster’). Veritably political action gives a real effectivity to this
universal notion. Political action is thus in its very core a kind of universalising and
humanizing action. It is through the political that real humanity and real universality
come into being. Universality is not an idea of reason that can be appropriated by a
fighting party, nor does it reside in normative schemes or party programmes, but it is
immanent in the authentically political relation, which cherishes the frontiers between
friend and enemy and between enmity and the idea of humanity, enthroned high
above the parties. The world universalises through real, human politics. Universality
never resides just at the side of one party (e.g. the ‘proletariat’), in its ‘being’, but
always in its respect for the enemy, in its political action.60
22
The regulative idea is thus not some kind of transcendent reality. It is manifested in
the immanence of the friend/enemy relation itself. The real enemy is the one who
recognizes me as his enemy and as a human being61. The enemy is the one in whom I
recognize myself: “The enemy is our own question as Gestalt.”62 He “stands on my
own plane.”63
There might thus be a kind of ‘politics of humanity’ in Schmitt, focused on reciprocal
recognition and a concomitant becoming-human of the parties in conflict, depending
on the structural, ideological and juridical characteristics of the terrain on which their
struggle takes place (a certain Nomos of the earth). This reciprocal recognition of
enemies is the source of ‘real’ universalisation, which also includes the enemy.
Schmitt is thus not against universals as such, but distinguishes between the ‘false’
universal of the constitutive concept of humanity, and the ‘real’ one of its regulative
counterpart.
He acknowledges that the old international system of the JPE belongs to the past. In a
remarkable passage in Die Wendung Zum Diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff (The Turn
To The Discriminating Concept Of War) he says he doesn’t oppose a “real
community of peoples”, but warns for the unavoidable failure of any attempt to create
this through institutions as the League of Nations. This last one is fundamentally the
attempt of the victors of the first world war to maintain or reproduce the division
between victors and defeated, who have nothing to expect from it regarding justice or
fairness64. One can only speak of real universality when this division no longer plays:
“when it (the League of Nations, ML) raises itself above the political egoism of
individual powers or groups, particularly when the distinction between victors and
defeated is removed in actual facts – and not just out of courtesy during conferences
or in speech – to such an extent, that the defeated can have the feeling to be treated
23
justly”65. The problem of the discriminating logic of the League of Nations is its claim
that it can judge when a war is just or not. The logic of just wars entails the
impossibility for parties who are not directly involved to maintain a neutral stance.
They have to choose “between god and the devil” as Dante would have it66. Through
this logic, the active search of a “community of peoples” passes through an
intermediate phase of intensified conflict which tends to lead in the opposite direction
than what was intended. “Between the universal end goal and the reality of the present
situation, there would occur another war, perhaps another ‘definitively last war of
humanity’, anyway, an even deepened and sharpened ‘total’ war.”67 Any attempt to
institutionalise politically an international order on the basis of constitutively used
universal concepts, is doomed to end up in such an intermediate phase of total war
which threatens to become permanent.
As said, the basis of relative enmity is a kind of homogeneity, present in the reciprocal
recognition of enemies as human beings. However, this homogeneity can go further
than that: Schmitt points to some very concrete institutional realities which were
shared by the sovereign states during the heyday of the JPE (such as the protection of
property rights or the due process of law68), and enabled a relatively far-reaching
relativisation of enmity. These states were “structurally homogenous to some extent”
with regard to “their domestic as well as their interstate concepts of regularity and
irregularity, legality and illegality”69. As for the question whether this process can go
so far as to create a world without politics, Schmitt says he doesn’t know the
answer70. In any case, what can be said on the basis of Schmitt, is that a patient
political process of struggle and reciprocal recognition (and its concomitant
institutional framework) must be preferred to the impatient invocation of the spectre
24
of values in the name of which a cosmopolitan order is claimed to be constructed, but
which actually entails the risk of unleashing cruel ‘last wars’.
There is thus a possibility in Schmitt to think a process of ‘becoming universal’
without falling into absolute enmity. Undoubtedly this path is straight and narrow, and
doesn’t lead to a clear end goal. This universality will always seem ‘too little’, it will
remain a ‘universality to come’. But there is no other chance, as the other way,
through the constitutive concept of humanity, only reproduces absolute enmity and
the division between victors and defeated71. Without the authentically political,
without real recognition of the enemy or the defeated, universality will remain
imperialist. Paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, “not even the dead will be safe from the
enemy”, (as they will be dehumanised)72.
Dignity of the enemy, dignity of oneself
Schmitt focuses on the enemy and her dehumanisation. But in speaking of the enemy,
Schmitt always speaks about the self as well. The enemy is a mirror of ourselves: she
is the one in whom we recognize ourselves. In Schmitt’s words, “One classifies
oneself through his enemy”73. When you depoliticise your enemy by claiming to have
Morality, History or Humanity at your side, you also deprive yourself of the dignity of
being a political subject. One’s identity and thought are never pure, but are always
determined through the polemic with the enemy, who becomes part of who one is. In
this sense, the annihilation of the enemy destroys something in yourself. “All
annihilation is self-annihilation.”74 Destroying your enemy also destroys something in
yourself. The way you fight your enemy says something about yourself.
25
As we have seen, acting politically is a moral, historical and human question – here
without a majuscule. The dignity of a political subject is always inscribed in a
historically situated struggle: political dignity becomes a salient question through the
conflict, and especially afterwards, when defeated, as Schmitt himself experienced in
his prison after the second world war. As the constitutive concept of humanity is
often, even though implicitly, linked with the idea of the end of history, breaking up
this concept makes space for a more profane and open conception of history, too. This
enables the defeated as well as the victors to retain their political dignity: the defeated
of today could be the victors of tomorrow. “A historical truth is only true once”. And
“the victor will not easily understand that (…) his victory is only true once”75. Not all
the pasts have the same future.
As said, Schmitt is very wary of the judgment of so-called neutral third instances. As
was the case with the Versailles treaty and the compensations Germany had to pay
after the first world war, in actual facts it was the victor who judged. In the Concept of
the Political, Schmitt already pointed to the relevance of his theory for the problem of
political crimes and their prosecution: can political acts be subsumed under
jurisdiction? Isn’t it the case that “the juridical procedure as such, purely by its
procedural character, changes its matter and object and brings it into another state of
aggregation”76? From a Schmittian perspective, a fundamental critique can be
formulated of the increasing use of jurisdiction, also on the international scene, to
intervene in political questions. The last decades saw a steady increase of jurisdiction
as a means to fight the enemy. This is not only the case with local conflicts, but also
on the international level, with the well-known trials for crimes against humanity. To
a certain extent, this can be seen to give rise to what one might call in Schmittian
terminology an ‘international Jurisdiktionsstaat’. Many criticisms can be levelled at
26
this trend. Firstly, it is a form of jurisdiction without a framework of democratic
political legitimacy, and which often looks like exceptional jurisdiction by the victors.
Secondly, the roles and temporalities of history/historiography and jurisdiction tend to
be blurred: history becomes testimony and judge at the same time. Historians become
testimonies and experts at once.
Particularly, however, a definitive judgment risks to close the case, although nothing
really historical can ever be closed. From a Schmittian perspective one ought to
restore the primacy of politics over morality and history. History doesn’t judge.
Moreover, last judgments of past events in the name of humanity not only tend to put
the defendant outside humanity, stripping her of her dignity. They also blur political
distinctions, they undermine the political dignity of the self. As in the case of
Pinochet, for instance, the question of who is friend and who is enemy gets
obfuscated. Are those who currently prosecute Pinochet his political enemies?
Doesn’t jurisdiction not only depoliticise the enemy, but also the self? Wouldn’t the
best oppositional stance to Pinochet consist in creatively affirming the political legacy
of Allende instead of trying to ‘finally judge’ Pinochet as a criminal of history? Isn’t
the real (and politically dignified) judgment of Pinochet the political one, by the
Chilean people, overthrowing the dictator and building another type of state and
society?
Political Philosophy Research Group, Catholic University of Brussels
Brussels, Belgium
27
1
Cf. Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. The hidden dialogue
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995); Heinrich Meier, The
lesson of Carl Schmitt. Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology
and Political Philosophy (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1998); Günter Meuter, Der Katechon. Zu Carl Schmitts fundamentalistischer Kritik
der Zeit (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994); Theo De Wit, De onontkoombaarheid
van de politiek. De soevereine vijand in de politieke filosofie van Carl Schmitt
(Ubergen: Pomppers, 1992); Wolfgang Palaver. Die mythische Quellen des
Politischen. Carl Schmitts Freund-Feind-Theorie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1998).
2
Andreas Kalyvas, Who’s afraid of Carl Schmitt, Philosophy and social Criticism 25,
(1999): 89.
3
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), p. 70.
4
Ibid., p. 69.
5
Ibid., p. 72.
6
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum
Europaeum (New York: Telos Press Ltd., 2003), p. 103.
7
In some of his texts, Schmitt argues in favour of human rights, freedom of thought,
the rule of law, property rights etc. (e.g. Carl Schmitt, Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze
aus den Jahren 1924-1954. Materialen zu einer Verfassungslehre (Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 1985), p. 230; cf. Reinhard Merhing, Der Begriff des politischen. Ein
kooperativer Kommentar (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003), p. 81).
8
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 26.
28
9
Carl Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951 (Berlin: Duncker
und Humblot, 1991), p. 190; Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 36; Carl
Schmitt, Theory of the partisan, in: CR: The New Centennial Review 4, 3 (2004): 67.
10
Carl Schmitt, Ex captivitate salus. Erfahrungen der Zeit 1945/47 (Berlin : Duncker
& Humblot, 2002), p. 89 ; Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan, p. 66 ; Carl Schmitt,
Glossarium, p. 190; Jakob Taubes, En divergent accord. A propos de Carl Schmitt
(Paris : Payot et Rivages, 2003), p. 25.
11
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 36.
12
Schmitt sees also the opposite movement: a conflict which leads to the annihilation
of the enemy, theologises him. “He who wants to annihilate me, is not my enemy, but
my satanic prosecutor”. Carl Schmitt, Glossarium, p. 190.
13
This essential distinction is pictured by the editors of Telos as the distinction
between enemy and foe. See the special issue of Telos on Carl Schmitt, 72 (1987).
14
Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. The hidden dialogue
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 26.
15
Heinrich Meier also omits two crucial features of the political in Schmitt’s view,
notably the collective and public character of political conflicts. See Jan-Werner
Müller, A Dangerous Mind. Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 204.
16
I do not agree on this regard with Ernesto Laclau when he argues that “the
distinction between real ad absolute enemy is secondary – only a matter of degree”
(Ernesto Laclau, On ‘Real’ and ‘Absolute’ Enemies, in: CR: The New Centennial
Review 5, 1 (2005): 11). What defines absolute enemy is a specific, exclusive concept
of humanity. The examples of real enmity that Schmitt gives, lack a foundation in
such a concept.
29
17
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 36.
18
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology. Four chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), p. 48.
19
Cf. Wolfgang Palaver, Die mythische Quellen des Politischen. Carl Schmitts
Freund-Feind-Theorie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1998), p. 21.
20
Cf. Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, p. 70 ; Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the
Earth, p. 126.
21
Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), pp. 17-18.
22
Carl Schmitt, Het Begrip Politiek (Amsterdam: Boom, 2001), p. 48.
23
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 49.
24
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 35.
25
Carl Schmitt, The crisis of parliamentary democracy (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1992), p. 64.
26
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 27.
27
Kondylis, P., Macht und Entscheidung. Die Herausbildung der Weltbilder und die
Wertfrage (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984).
28
Carl Schmitt, Het Begrip Politiek, p. 47. I agree here with Jesse Sims, who deems
the hiatus within the political, between the condition and the content of politics, to be
itself of an ethical nature. Cf. Jesse Sims, Absolute adversity: Schmitt, Levinas, and
the exceptionality of killing; in: Philosophy & Social Criticism 31 (2005): 240.
29
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 5.
30
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 46.
31
Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur. Von den Anfängen des modernen
Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 1994), p. 10.
30
32
Ibid., p. 134.
33
Schmitt speaks of the containment of interstate war (his famous formula of the
‘Hegung des Krieges’), but of the taming of intrastate civil war. However, he never
explains what this taming exactly consists of (Carl Schmitt, The Theory of the
Partisan, p. 37).
34
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 6.
35
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 39.
36
Julien Freund, L’essence du politique (Paris : Sirey, 1965).
37
Cf. Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism, p. 17.
38
Carl Schmitt, Ethic of State and Pluralistic State, in: Chantal Mouffe, The
Challenge of Carl Schmitt (Londen/New York: Verso, 1999), p. 205.
39
Ibid., p. 205.
40
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), p.
532.
41
Ibid., p. 549.
42
Carl Schmitt, Glossarium, p. 200.
43
The regulative concept of God can also have a relativising effect on political
conflicts, Schmitt says. That is why he even prefers holy wars to just wars: in the last
ones, the process of absolutisation of the enemy goes even a step further as human
beings appropriate for themselves the right to judge in an absolute way (Carl Schmitt,
Ex Captivitate Salus, p. 58). However, Schmitt stresses much more the concept of
humanity in his discussion of regulative ideas and relative enmity.
44
Carl Schmitt, The Theory of the Partisan, p. 22.
45
Carl Schmitt, Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff (Berlin: Ducker &
Humblot, 1988), p. 53.
31
46
Walter Benjamin, Maar een storm waait uit het paradijs : filosofische essays over
taal en geschiedenis (Nijmegen: SUN, 1996), p. 146.
47
Carl Schmitt, Ethic of State and Pluralistic State, p. 205.
48
Claude Lefort, too, situates the origin of value philosophy in the 19th century.
Claude Lefort, Ecrire à l’épreuve de la politique (Paris : Calmann-Lévy, 1995), p.
227.
49
Carl Schmitt, Die Tyrannei der Werte (Hamburg: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1979),
p. 29.
50
Carl Schmitt, The Theory of the Partisan, p. 55.
51
Ibid., p. 67.
52
In this sense, Schmitt doesn’t limit himself to a criticism of the false universality,
but has something positive and universal to say, contrary to what Jean-Claude Monod
states in his interesting book on secularisation: La querelle de la secularisation. De
Hegel à Blumenberg (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2002), p. 171.
53
Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie II. Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder
Politischen Theologie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996), p. 30; Carl Schmitt,
Political Theology, p. 14.
54
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 10.
55
Carl Schmitt, Théorie de la Constitution (Paris : PUF, 1993), p. 175.
56
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 54.
57
Carl Schmitt, The Legal World Revolution, Telos, 72 (1987), p. 86.
58
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 27.
59
It is typical of romantic thinkers to refer to this higher instance, which enables them
not to get involved in politics in the first place. The idea of a ‘higher third’ is central
in romanticism, criticized by Schmitt in Political Romanticism, p. 87.
32
60
Schmitt implicitly refers to Hegel when he says: “Remind you of the great phrase of
the philosopher: the relation in the other to oneself, that is the really infinite. The
negation of the negation, says the philosopher, is no neutralisation, but the truthfully
infinite depends on it.” Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, p. 90.
61
Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, p. 89.
62
Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan, p. 61.
63
Ibid.
64
Carl Schmitt, Der Völkerbund und Europa (1928), in: Positionen und Begriffe. Im
Kampf mit Weimar, Genf, Versailles 1923-1939 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994),
p. 106.
65
Ibid., p. 107.
66
Carl Schmitt, Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff, p. 33.
67
Ibid., p. 51.
68
Cf. Hans-Christof Kraus, Freund und Feind im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges, in:
Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt. Der Begriff des Politischen. Ein kooperativer
Kommentar (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003), p. 185.
69
Carl Schmitt, The Theory of the Partisan, p. 25.
70
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp. 53-54.
71
Schmitt takes a middle ground: between apolitism and the hyperpolitical, between
total homogeneity and radical heterogeneity.
72
Benjamin, W., Maar een storm waait uit het paradijs, p. 145.
73
Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, p. 90.
74
Ibid.
75
Carl Schmitt, Gespräch über die Macht und den Zugang zum
Machthaber/Gespräch über den Neuen Raum (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), p. 61.
33
76
Carl Schmitt, Het Begrip Politiek, p. 50.
34