CHAPTER ONE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO CARL SCHMITT’S PHILOSOPHY 1.0
INTRODUCTION
Political philosophy can play in shaping the public culture and contributing to the creation of democratic political identities, according to John Rawls, but we consider that political theorists. Schmitt is known as the crown jurist of the third Reich. Politics for Schmitt is like a friend/enemy relationship. He believed in politics. His writings was said to be influenced by the Weimar republic and post Weimar republic according to some scholars. Carl Schmitt‘s background would be discussed in this chapter. Here we would be looking at who is Carl Schmitt? What was his life like? What were the things that influenced him in the long run of his life as a man? His political philosophy would also be looked into, his influences, those he influenced, his achievements, his theories and his thoughts. This would all be discussed in this chapter. 1.1
CARL SCHMITT – LIFE
Carl Schmitt is undoubtedly the most controversial German legal and political thinker of the twentieth century. If his friends and foes agree on nothing else, they both acknowledge his brilliance. Even his detractors concede that he is one of the outstanding intellects of our time. Why, then, is he so little known in the English-speaking world? Who is Carl Schmitt? Carl Schmitt was born in 1888 in a devout Catholic family in the predominantly Protestant town of Plettenberg in Westphaila. The young Schmitt greatly admired his church and was proud for its victory over Bismarck in the Kulturkampf controversy that had officially come to the end 1887. Though his family expected him to prepare for the priesthood, he opted for law instead, beginning his university studies in Berlin in 1907, and receiving his doctorate in Jurisprudence from the University of Strasbourg in 1910. Schmitt was a jurist and political theorist in Munich, Greifswald, Bonn, Berlin and Cologne. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. He volunteered for the army during 1916. The same year, he earned his habilitation in Strasbourg. He taught at various business schools and universities. During 1916, Schmitt married his first wife, Pavla a Serbian woman who pretended to be a countess. They were divorced, through an appeal to the Catholic Church for an annulation 1
was rejected. During 1926 he married his second wife, Duska Todorovic (1903- 1950), also Serbian; they had one daughter Anima Schmitt de Otero (1931- 1983) was married from 1957, to Alfonso Otero Valera (1925-2001), a Spanish law professor at the University of Santiago de Comostela and a member of the ruling Spanish Falange party under the Franco regime. She translated several works by her father into Spanish. Letters from Carl Schmitt to his son-in-law have also been published. As a young man, Schmitt was ―a devoted catholic until his break with the church in the mid-twenties‖. From around the end of the First World War he began to describe his Catholicism as ―displaced‖ and ―de-totalised‖. Consequently, Gross argues that his work ―cannot be reduced to Roman Catholic theology given a political turn. Rather, Schmitt should be understood as carrying an atheistic political theological tradition to an extreme. His books, the most important of which were written during the Weimar years, remain in print many languages and are the subject of intense scholarly debate. Not even increased awareness of the circumstances surrounding Schmitt‘s active collaboration with the Nazi regime has dampened interest in the man and his writing. In 1921, Schmitt became a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he published his essay ―Die Diktatur‖ (―On Dictatorship‖), in which he discusses the foundations of the newly-established Weimer Republic, emphasing the office of the Reichsprasident. Although most Anglo American scholars rate ―The Concept of the Political‖ as occupying a central place in Schmitt‘s work, this may simply be the result of the historical fact that this work was the first of Schmitt‘s essay to be published in English. In many important ways, On Dictatorship is equally important, as its central theme presages much of Schmitt‘s later work. For Schmitt a strong dictator could embody the will of the people more effectively than any legislative body, ass it can be decisive, whereas parliaments inevitably involve discussion and compromise. This was followed by another essay in 1922, titled ―Politische Theologie‖ (Political Theology); in it Schmitt who at the time was working as a professor at the University of Bonn, further substantiated his authoritian theories, effectively denying free will based on a catholic world view. Another year later, Schmitt defended emerging totalitarian power structures in his paper ―Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus‖ (roughly ―The Thought- Historical situation of Today‘s Parliamentarianism‖).
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Schmitt changed universities in 1926, when he became professor for Law at the Hochschule für Politik in Berlin, and again in 1932, when he accepted a position in Cologne. It was in Cologne, too, that he wrote another paper, ―Der Begriff des Politischen‖ (―The Concept of the Political‖), in which he developed his controversial state law theories. Apart from his academic functions, Schmitt was counsel for the Reich government in the case ―Preussen contra Reich‖ when the SPD led Prussian government disputed its dismissal by the right wing von Papen government was Hermann Heller. In German history, this sad struggle leading to the de facto destruction of federalism in the Weimer republic is known as the ‗preussenschlag‘. Schmitt‘s theories in this paper were later used by the Nazis for an ideological foundation of their dictatorship, and Schmitt was later accused of having justified the ―Führer‖ state with regard to legal philosophy. In fact, Schmitt, who became a professor at the university of Berlin in 1933(a position held until the end of world war II) joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1993; he quickly was appointed ―preuẞischer Staatsrat‖by Hermann Göring and became the president
of
the
―Vereinigung
nationalsozialistischer
Juristen-Zeitung‖
(―German
jurisprudents‘ newspaper‖) in July 1934, he justified political murders of the Night of the Long Knives as the ―highest form of administrative justice‖. Schmitt presented himself as a radical anti-semite and also was the chairman of a law teachers‘ convention in Berlin in October 1936, where he demanded that German law be cleansed from the ―Jewish spirit‖ nevertheless, two months later, in December, the SS publication ―Das schwarze Korps‖ accused Schmitt of being an opportunist and called his anti-semitism a mere mock-up citing earlier statements in which he criticized the Nazi‘s racial theories. After this, Schmitt lost all of his prominent offices, and retreated from his position as a leading Nazi jurist, although he remained as a professor in Berlin. In 1945, Schmitt was captured by the American forces; after spending more than a year in an internment camp, he returned to his home town of Plettenburg following his release in 1946. Despite being isolated in the scientific and political community, he continued studying international law from the 1950s on, and he received a frequent series of visitors, both colleagues and younger intellectuals, until well into his old age. Important among these visitors were Ernst Jünger, Jacob Taubes and Alexandre Kojѐve. Unsurprisingly, the significance and value of Schmitt‘s works is subjected to heated controversy. A group of authors sympathetic to Schmitt argue that Schmitt‘s analysis of 3
liberal constitutionalism during the Weimar period is separable from his support for National Socialism and that it constitutes an insightful and important analysis of the political presuppositions of a well-functioning liberal constitutional system. From the left, Schmitt‘s work is sometimes taken to illustrate the affinities between a purely economic liberalism and political authoritarianism. The view that the Schmitt of the Weimer period can be read as a defender of liberal order has been questioned by authors who stress the continuity between Schmitt‘s conceptions of law, sovereignty, and democracy and fascist ideology. Two focal points of recent interest are Schmitt‘s theory of popular sovereignty and his conception of international order. Schmitt‘s work has attracted the attention of numerous philosophers and the political theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Leo Strauss, Jürgen Habermas, Friedrich Hayek, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Susan Buck-Morss, Giorgio Agamben, Jaime Guzman, Antonio Negri and Slavoj Žižek among many others. Much of his work remains both influential and controversial presently due to his association with Nazism, for which he is known as the ―crown jurist of the Third Reich‖. Schmitt‘s final days were spent in his home town Plettenberg. Where he later died on 7 April 1985and is buried in Plettenberg. In the 1900s (after Schmitt‘s death) his books became more influential and a stream of translations and analyses of his work appeared. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND INFLUENCES TO CARL SCHMITT’S
1.2
PHILOSOPHY Carl Schmitt was a radical democrat that was influenced by Thomas Hobbes. Schmitt‘s long term interest in Thomas Hobbes is well known and to anyone familiar with the writings of Carl Schmitt, it is easily inferred from his writings. The clearest expression of this interest is the fact that Schmitt subsequently turned his lectures on Leviathan into a book in 1938, entitled Der Leviathan in der Staatslebre des Thomas Hobbes- Sinn und Fehlslag eines politischen Symbols. Even in the beginning of the 1930s, before his lectures on leviathan, Schmitt‘s admiration for Hobbes was known. This can be seen in his correspondence with Leo Strauss. In his famous (and notorious) (1927/1932) work Der Begriff des Politischen he had focused attention on what he conceived as being Hobbes‘ central concern – his protection-obedience axiom – which, in a modified version, Schmitt made his own, and in 1937 he had published a smaller 4
article titled Der staat als Mechanismus bei Hobbes und Decartes. As Paul Gottfried has put it, Schmitt‘s association with Hobbes became in fact do firmly fixed in Schmitt‘s own mind that both his disciples and his critics now take it for granted. Schmitt‘s book on Leviathan is interesting in several respects. Seen in its historical context of 1938, after 5 years of Nazi-rule and after the attacks on Schmitt‗s person in 1936, Der Leviathan can be read as a critical comment to the Nazi-regime, and as a key to the questions of where Schmitt placed himself between Nazi-communitarianism and Weimar individualism. In this respect it becomes central in the interpretation of Schmitt‘s role as ‗the Crown Jurist for the Third Reich‘ and for the question of continuity versus discontinuity between the pre 1933 and the post 1933 Schmitt. Both favourable and critical commentators of Schmitt have thus focused attention on Der Leviathan as a key to the understanding of Schmitt‘s own political theory and his concept of the state. Not surprisingly it has been used both in order to show a totalitarian and a more liberal nature of Schmitt‘s work. As is clear from Schmitt‘s commentary on Leviathan, Schmitt saw a set of striking parallels between his own times and conceptualisations and those of Hobbes. The notes he wrote during the post-war confinement dwell on these parallels. Like Hobbes in seventeenth century England; Schmitt saw himself as being confronted with political instability and the threat of civil war. And as Hobbes had done before him Schmitt saw the problem as originating in the absence of a strong single authority and they both pointed to the state as the ordering principle. As Hobbes had been before him Schmitt was preoccupied with the fear of chaos and the concern with physical safety and public order. Perhaps more than any other political thinker since Hobbes Schmitt can be identified with this concern for public order at the expense of individual freedom. Like Hobbes Schmitt stressed the centrality of violence in the human experience and he associated sovereignty with ‗power being exercised on behalf of groups locked in conflict‘. As Paul Gottfried has noted, both favourable commentators of Schmitt, such as Julien Freund and Günter Maschke and liberal democratic critics, such as Helmut Rumpf, agree on these parallels. Rumpf notes on this comparison: ‗Hobbes is conservative to the extent that the stability of the civitas is more important for him than the significance of individuals and social interests. He is political realist to the extent that he knows that Behemoth of the Revolution threatens the Leviathan constantly; this tenacity and vigilance
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are required for the maintenance of state authority…. Insofar as Carl Schmitt held a similar perspective, a similar function was attached to his work or parts of it‘. Schmitt shared with Hobbes the anthropological assumption that human nature was fundamentally dangerous and the state of nature, the primal human condition was, therefore, characterised by chaos. According to Schmitt, the fundamental human condition and the basis of human interaction is therefore conditioned by conflict, and any ‗genuine‘ theory of politics must accordingly presuppose ‗man to be evil, i.e., by no means unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being‘. Hence one of Schmitt‘s main criticisms of liberal political theory was that it does not acknowledge this condition, but on the contrary rest upon an idea of rational reasoning and the belief that conflict of interest can be solved through rational reasoning. To Schmitt this is a dangerous illusion that does not take into account the fact that sudden human conflicts are of a fundamentally antagonistic nature and cannot be solved through rational discussion. To Schmitt the religious wars were an example of this. Schmitt was highly influenced by Thomas Hobbes. It could be seen clearly above. Schmitt‘s also has his disagreement or criticisms on some of the works of Hobbes which you would see at chapter 3. 1.3.
CARL SCHMITT’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY As a young professor of constitutional law during the Weimar period, Schmitt wrote
influential works about his political concepts. His essay “Political Theology” contained his theory of sovereignty, and his 1923 book, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, questioned the legitimacy of parliamentarism in government. His most famous paper, “The Concept of the Political‖, was published in 1927. In that work, he described his view of politics as based on the construct of friend versus enemy. His 1928 book, Constitutional Theory, is considered his greatest achievement. He used it as a forum to interpret the Weimar constitution according to his political theory. We are going to briefly discuss his political concepts which are written above. There can be little doubt that Carl Schmitt‘s “Political Theology” Schmitt discussed of the theory of sovereignty of which he had four chapters on the concepts of sovereignty has turned out to be one of the most important texts in modern political thought-for better or for worse. In a broad attack on both traditional state law theory and philosophical liberalism, Schmitt seeks to ground the political order of the modern state in what has aptly been called 6
―metaphysis of existence‖. Postulating a structural analogy between jurisprudence and theology, Schmitt introduces a concept of sovereignty that is not derived from basic constitutional norms, as in case of left-liberal legal scholars in Weimar Germany like Hans Kelsen. Instead, Schmitt defines sovereignty almost exclusively from perspective of the state of emergency ―the exception‖, as he notes. Political order, in other words, cannot be safeguarded by constitutional provisions, but by an extra-legal authority, that is, by that which by definition cannot be part of constitutional arrangements. Schmitt defined the essence of sovereignty as the decision over what is an exception and decide the measures taken to eliminate such an exception. The state of exception is both monopolistic domain of the sovereignty, too, then, is also he who defines what ―the normal‖ is. As Schmitt writes, ―for a legal system to make sense, a normal situation must exist, and he is sovereign who definitely decides whether this normal situation actually exists‖. The preservation of the normal is precisely the rationale for which the exception is instituted. As such, sovereignty is an inherent theory of the state: ―The state suspends the law in the exception on the basis of its right of self-preservation, as one would say‖. Decisions are the key conceptual/practical hinge for his political theory. Since ―the political‖ for Schmitt is exercised on the basis of a friend/enemy distinction (both between and within states), sovereign power has to be monopolized by a single actor that is simultaneously ―outside‖ the legal system, but still part of it. The Forward cites Schmitt other book on political theology: ―today one can no longer define politics in terms of the state‖, as I would argue Weber did, ―on the contrary what we can still call the state today must inversely be defined and understood from the political‖. Otherwise, the friend/enemy ―political‖ is mired as a Hobbesian war of all against all. ―But sovereignty (and thus the state itself) resides in deciding this controversy that is in determining definitively what constitutes public order and security, in determining when they are disturbed, and so on‖. The exception is almost an escape hatch to reset the conditions in which the political can proceed without putting the state itself under threat. In distinction from the liberal view, Schmitt explicitly argues against the state‘s role being the eliminator of conflict and the political, but rather the means through which order and security are not the cost of these antagonistic relations. He writes: ―Today nothing is more modern than the onslaught against the political‖, finding socialist, anarchists, and liberals all guilty on this point. Sarcastically parroting them, he continues, ―There must no 7
longer be political
problems, only organizational-technical and economic-sociological
ones‖. Another reason Schmitt argues against the liberal view is that he says liberal normativism (namely constitutions) cannot foresee the contingent events that necessitate the suspension of the law in the interest of preserving the state itself. The most a constitution can provide is a delineation of who decides. However, an important point to note is that Schmitt claims at the end of the book that the exception is not dictatorial because it still has some legitimate basis. He gives legitimacy a democratic spin. He credits Donoso Cortѐs with basically saying that people are so vile that they cannot be expected, much less collectively as in the liberal frame, to be afforded such democratic privileges. Bourgeois liberalism, Donoso Cortѐs said, was simply a bunch of people talking their ears off, never coming to the critical moment of decision. Schmitt cuts the book off at a point in which he would logically provide an alternative, but doesn‘t. And it is the legitimacy question that seems to be what his later book the Nomos of the Earth is trying to answer. What makes a sovereign legitimate? He answers the question by pointing to the bracketing of war by states and the related centrality of land appropriation in creating a secure spatial order, a nomos. A stable (though not conflict-less) nomos is seen by Schmitt as both an internal (to Europe, to states) and an external order (between states and continents). Quoting from Schmitt‘s Concept of the Political, the translator notes, ―Every norm presupposes a normal situation, and no norm can be valid in an entirely abnormal situation. As long as a state is a political entity, this requirement for the internal peace compels it in critical situations to decide also upon the domestic enemy. Schmitt credits the emergence of statehood as what accomplished the singular achievement as both the secularization of theological concepts into the political ones (Political Theology) as well as the bracketing of war (Nomos of the Earth) and the distinction between (just) enemies and the criminals or rebellion. Without the constitution of just enemies, war would remain a military relation of annihilation The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, a work first published in 1923 with the preface having been written for the 1926 edition. In this work, Schmitt describes the dysfunctional workings of the Weimer parliamentary system. He regards this dysfunctional as symptomatic of the inadequacies of the classical liberal theory of government. According to this theory as Schmitt interprets it, the affairs of states are to be conducted on the basis of open discussion between proponents of competing ideas as a kind of empirical process. Schmitt contrasts this 8
idealized view of parliamentarianism with the realities of its actual practice, such as cynical appeals by politician to narrow self-interests on the part of constituents, bickering among narrow partisan forces, the use of propaganda and the symbolism rather than rational discourse as a means of influencing public opinion, gthe binding of parliamentarians by party discipline, decisions made by means of backroom deals, rule by committee and so forth. Schmitt recognizes a fundamental distinction between liberalism or ―parliamentarism‖ and democracy. Liberal theory advances the concept of a state where all retain equal political rights. Schmitt contrasts this with actual democratic practice as it has existed historically. Historic democracy rest on an ―equality of equals‖, for instance, those holding a particular social position (as in ancient Greece), subscribing to particular religious beliefs or belonging to a specific national entity. Schmitt observed that democratic states have traditionally included a great deal of political and social inequality, from slavery to religious exclusionism to a stratified class hierarchy. Even modern democracies ostensibly organized on the principle of universal suffrage do not extend such democratic rights to residents of their level colonial possessions. Beyond this level, states, even officially ―democratic‖ ones, distinguish between their own citizens and those of the other states. At a fundamental level, there is an innate tension between liberalism and democracy. Liberalism is individualistic, whereas democracy sanctions the ―general will‖ as the principle of political legitimacy. However, a consistent or coherent ―general will‖ necessitates a level of homogeneity that by its very nature goes against the individualistic ethos of liberalism. This is the source of the ―crisis of parliamentarism‖ that Schmitt suggest. According to the democratic theory rooted in the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a legitimate state must reflect the ―general will‖, but no general will can be discerned in a regime that simultaneously espouses liberalism. Lacking the homogeneity necessary for a democratic ―general will‖, the state becomes fragmented into competing interests. Indeed, a liberal parliamentary state can actually act against the ―peoples‘ will‖ and become undemocratic. By this same principle, anti-liberal states such as those organized according to the principles of fascism or bolshevism can be democratic in so far as they reflect the ―general will‖. In The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy offers a powerful criticism of the inconsistencies of representative democracy. It argues that the original, liberal underpinnings of parliamentarism have been lost and have been increasingly perceived to be so. The ―crisis of parliamentary democracy‖ that Schmitt is addressing is a crisis of legitimacy. On what political or ethical principles does a liberal democratic state of the type Weimar purports to 9
be claim and establish its own legitimacy? This is an immensely important question, given the gulf between liberal theory and parliamentary democracy as it is actually being practiced in Weimar, conflicts between liberal practice and the democratic theories of legitimacy as they have previously been laid out by Rousseau and others and, perhaps most importantly, the challenge to liberalism and claims to ―democratic‖ legitimacy being made by proponents of totalitarian ideologies from both the Left and Right. Schmitt‘s The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy was criticized by Richard Thoma. Schmitt also acknowledge the criticisms of Thoma in his work or response to Thoma‘s argument. Schmitt says ―Nevertheless it would be unjust to ignore specific examples of objective criticism and the detailed and thoughtful review of such leading jurist as Richard Thoma in particular deserves an exhaustive reply‖. Richard Thoma raised two objections to Schmitt‘s view of parliamentarism. First, that it was purely ideological, dealing only with the political theory of parliament as an institution and liberalism as a doctrine; and second, that Carl Schmitt had mistaken the ideological foundations of contemporary parliamentarism in Germany.
The argument which Thom
criticized in his review two years later, was that the essence of parliamentarism is openness and discussion, because these are recognized in liberal political philosophy as the means of political reason: One believed that naked power and force- for liberal, Rechtsstaat thinking, an evil itself, ‗the way of beasts,‘ as Locke said- could be overcome ―through openness and discussion alone, and the victory of right over might achieved. Richard Thoma, a leading exponent of parliamentary government, reviewed Schmitt‘s book in 1925, portraying it as a direct attack on the Weimar Republic‘s democratic institutions. Increasingly, however, the problems Schmitt identified in the balance of liberal institutions and democratic principles have been recognized as fundamental. Because Schmitt‘s ruthlessly systematic attack on liberal democracy has remained unanswered and largely ignored; his perceptive analysis remains an intellectual force to be reckoned with. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy is included in the series studies in contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. The recent revival of interest in political theorist Carl Schmitt has subsequently placed the spotlight once again on one of his most seminal works, The Concept of the Political, which he first published in 1927 in Germany. As perhaps the clearest and thus most controversial
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distillation of his political thought, recent efforts to expound on the fuller meaning of the most salient ideas in this work are certainly worthy of attention. In the following essay it is my intention to more fully explore the potential meanings of several of Schmitt‘s fundamental ideas, with the input of some of the latest scholarship in that regard. In particular, my focus includes Schmitt‘s friend-enemy distinction in his description of the political and the state, and also specific criticisms of liberalism that he discussed. Also we are going to look at some scholars views that discussed friend/ enemy distinction before Carl Schmitt. The connection of political theories with theological dogmas of sin which appear prominently in Bossuet, Maistre, Bonald, Donoso Cortes, and Friedrich Julius Stahl, among others, is explained by the relationship of these necessary presuppositions. The fundamental theological dogma of the evilness of the world and man leads, just as does the distinction of friend and enemy, to a categorization of men and makes impossible the undifferentiated optimism of a universal conception of man. A good world among good people, only peace, security, and harmony prevail. Priests and theologians are here just as superfluous as politicians and statesmen. What the denial of original sin means socially and from the viewpoint of individual psychology has been shown by Ernst Trocltsch in his Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen and Seilliere (in many publications about romanticism and romantics) in the examples of numerous sects, heretics, romantics, and anarchists. The methodical connection of theological and political presuppositions is clear. But theological interference generally confuses political concepts because it shifts the distinction usually into moral theology. Political thinkers such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, and often Fichte presuppose with their pessimism only the reality or possibility of the distinction of friend and enemy. For Hobbes, truly a powerful and systematic political thinker, the pessimistic conception of man is the elementary presupposition of a specific system of political thought. He also recognized correctly that the conviction of each side that it possesses the truth, the good, and the just bring about the worst enmities, finally the war of all against all. This fact is not the product of a frightful and disquieting fantasy or of a philosophy based on free competition by a bourgeois society in its first stage (Tonnies), but is the fundamental presupposition of a specific political philosophy. These political thinkers are always aware of the concrete possibility of an enemy. Their realism can frighten men in need of security. Without wanting to decide the question of the nature of man one may say in general that as long as man is well
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off or willing to put up with things, he prefers the illusion of an undisturbed calm and does not endure pessimists. The Concept of the Political according to Schmitt, the irreducible minimum on which human political life is based is the friend/enemy distinction. This friend/enemy distinction is to politics what the good/evil dichotomy is to morality, beautiful/ugly to aesthetics, profitable/unprofitable to economics, and so forth. These categories need not be inclusive of one another. For instance, a political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly. What is significant is that the enemy is the ―other‖ and therefore a source of possible conflict. The friend/enemy distinction is not dependent on the specific nature of the ―enemy‖. It is merely enough that the enemy is threat. The political enemy is also distinctive from personal enemies. Whatever one‘s personal thoughts about the political enemy, it remains true that the enemy is hostile to the collective to which one belongs. The first purpose of the state is to maintain its own existence as an organized collective prepared if necessary to do battle to the death with other organized collectives that pose an existential threat. This is the essential core of what is meant by the ―political‖. Organized collectives within a particular state can also engage in such conflicts (i.e., civil war). Internal conflicts within a collective can threaten the survival of the collective as a whole. As long as existential threats to a collective remain, the friend/enemy concept that Schmitt considers to be the heart of politics will remain valid. In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt describes the enemy as follows: ―The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transaction. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible‖ ( The Concept of the Political). Who ―we‖ are not politically is just as important who ―we‖ are as a political group. Friends, by contrast, share a commitment to a way of life that binds them together, that gives them a sense of solidarity, a sense transcending matters of economics or morality, something that resembles a shared, homogenous identity reaching beyond the imperatives of private lifeeven if these ―friends‖ do not know one another. Friendship- the condition of amity between those making up a large socially or communally cohesive association- is always prior to enmity. For it is impossible to have a life threatening ―them‖ without first having a life12
affirming ―us‖. This friendship implies that the ―particular‖ trumps the universal and that a compromised convergence of interest, based on qualities shared with the enemy, is inconceivable. To be political in Schmitt‘s sense requires, then, not just a prior commitment to domestic relations of friendship and the social solidarity it engenders, but also to a particular form of life in which group identity is valued, in the last instance above physical existence. War is simply an ―ever present possibility‖, which Schmitt recognized and designated as the core of the political sphere. The concept of ―the other‖ and the ever present possibility of combat are, in Schmitt‘s view, essential to the formation of the political body and to the concept of political itself. The political arena has always been, essentially, this type of Hobbesian struggle, and it will never truly settle down to peace and order. Schmitt writes ―A world in which the possibility of war is ultimately eliminated, a completely pacified globe, would be a world without the distinction of friend and enemy and hence a world without politics‖. What‘s more, failure to recognize the primacy of the friend/enemy distinction or, worse, to attempt to deny it spells doom for the political body. Schmitt, curiously, appeals to the ideas of rationality when he explains why the concept of the political is based on the distinction friend-enemy. ―Rationally speaking, it cannot be denied that nations continue to group themselves according to the friend and enemy antithesis, that the distinction still remains actual today, and that this is an ever present possibility for every people existing in the political sphere‖. That is, rationality is necessary for him to develop his theory, and European rationality becomes that philosophical foundation upon which his entire concept of the political is drawn. It seems to me, that at some point Schmitt is driven in his writing by the experience of German defeat from Western liberal states in the WWI for example, where he discusses sacrifice as an important aspect of the political), so his writing is a way to shape the future (and the German state & society) which would be able for an effective mobilization for another European war. 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 ―other‖ (that is to say, an enemy, a stranger. This 13
applies to any person or entity that represents a serious threat or conflict to one‘s own interests.) In addition, the prominence of the state stands as a neutral force over potentially fractious civil society, whose various antagonisms must not be allowed to reach the level of the political, lest civil war result. This first English translation of Carl Schmitt's Verfassungslehre (1928), prepared by Jeffrey Seitzer and published under the title Constitutional Theory, makes a welcome contribution to the growing corpus of Schmitt's writings available in English. Schmitt is considered by many to be one of the most original—and, because of his collaboration with the Nazi party, controversial—political thinkers of the twentieth century. In Constitutional Theory, Schmitt provides a highly distinctive and provocative interpretation of the Weimar Constitution. At the centre of this interpretation lies his famous argument that the legitimacy of a constitution depends on a sovereign decision of the people. In addition to being subject to long-standing debate among legal and political theorists in Western Europe and the United States, this theory of constitution-making as decision has profoundly influenced constitutional theorists and designers in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Constitutional Theory is a significant departure from Schmitt's more polemical Weimar-era works not just in terms of its moderate tone. Through a comparative history of constitutional government in Europe and the United States, Schmitt develops an understanding of liberal constitutionalism that makes room for a strong, independent state. This edition includes an introduction by Jeffrey Seitzer and Christopher Thornhill outlining the cultural, intellectual, and political contexts in which Schmitt wrote Constitutional Theory; they point out what is distinctive about the work, examine its reception in the postwar era, and consider its larger theoretical ramifications. This volume also contains extensive editorial notes and a translation of the Weimar Constitution. His scholarly works span several eras of German history, beginning in the Wilhelmine Empire of 1910, traversing the First World War years, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and World War II, and post war Germany. The last work published in his lifetime appeared in 1970. Schmitt (1888-1985), the so-called Crown Jurist of the Third Reich, published his Verfassungslehre during the only sustained period of calm that the Weimar Republic enjoyed. Schmitt's reputation suffered from his membership in the NSDAP and his many publications in support of the Third Reich from 1933 to 1936--whether sincere or opportunistic--has been a matter of vigorous debate. His copious political and legal writings continue to challenge 14
liberal thought, engendering countless scholarly books and articles and a quasi-cottage industry of articles in the journal Telos. In Constitutional Theory, Schmitt defended the Weimar constitution, which had been adopted August 11, 1919. Its most controversial feature was Article 48, which empowered the president to preserve public security and order with "necessary measures," including the use of armed force. Article 48 explicitly authorized the president to suspend the operation of six constitutional articles that protected basic civil rights: inviolability of living quarters, privacy of communications, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom from arbitrary expropriation, and an analog of habeas corpus. In the final three years of the Weimar Republic, parliamentary party factionalism brought conventional legislative and cabinet government to a halt. The German state became governed by presidential decree, in reliance on Article 48. During this period, Schmitt emerged from academic life and became an advisor to the government thanks to his friendship with General Kurt von Schleicher, who served as Weimar's last chancellor in the republic's final two months. Although Schmitt owed his political influence largely to Schleicher's patronage, he offered no protest when Schleicher and his wife were murdered during the Night of Long Knives on June 30, 1934. On the contrary: Schmitt celebrated the bloody events with an article bearing the jaw-dropping title "The Führer Protects the Law." In Constitutional Theory, Schmitt contextualized the Weimar constitution within the historical development of constitutional government in France, Switzerland, Belgium, the United States, England, and Germany itself--with particular consideration of the 1871 constitution of the Second Reich. The Weimar constitution, approved on August 11, 1919, attempted to balance representative parliamentary government with a cabinet headed by a chancellor and a popularly elected president. Clearly recognizing the challenge of factionalism to a functioning German republic, the framers of the constitution placed special trust in the president as an official above party and beholden only to the electorate as a whole. Schmitt's methodology is historical. He identifies threads running through constitutions from the French and American revolutions onward and rejects the "contract" theory of state formation. The state is formed, not by a fictional agreement among constituent individuals, but by a unity of purpose among the homogeneous many that finds expression ultimately in the decisive action of the one or the few. This process comes about by virtue of what Schmitt calls "the people's ever-present, active constitution-making power".
15
The book (constitutional theory) is divided into four broad parts, treating respectively the concept of the constitution, its Rechtsstaat component, its political component, and the constitutional theory of the federation. For Schmitt, "constitution" is a concept separate from the document customarily given that name. The constitution in the ideal sense is not a law or series of laws, but an act of political will, whereby a people united by a common purpose creates a state. Schmitt subdivides the concept into three categories. "Constitution in the absolute sense" is "the concrete manner of existence that is a given with every political unity". A second sense is constitution as "a special type of supremacy and subordination". In this sense, "the state is a constitution. It is a monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, council republic, and does not have merely a monarchical or other type of constitution". The third sense of constitution is dynamic: "the principle of the dynamic emergence of political unity, or the process of constantly renewed formation and emergence of this unity from a fundamental or ultimately effective power and energy". (The copious italicization is present in the German original, as well as in the translation under review.) What we customarily call a "constitution" (for example, when we refer to the United States Constitution) to Schmitt is "constitutional law" or the "relative concept of the constitution" (p. 67). Both the United States and Weimar Germany would be categorized as Rechtsstaaten. As Schmitt points out, the majority of contemporary constitutions are of the "modern, bourgeois Rechtsstaat" type. The German Rechtsstaat cannot be translated into English with a single word. A Rechtsstaat is a state governed by law, as distinguished from (say) a tyranny. 1.4.
CONCLUSION
Schmitt‘s political ideas are more easily understood in the context of Weimar‘s political situation. He is considering the position of a defeated and demoralized Germany; unable to defend itself against external threats, and threatened internally by weak, chaotic and unpopular political leadership, economic hardship, political and ideological polarization and growing revolutionary movements, sometimes exhibiting terrorist or fanatical characteristics. Schmitt regards Germany as desperately in need of some sort of foundation for the establishment of a recognized, legitimate political authority capable of upholding the interests and advancing the well-being of the nation in the face of foreign enemies and above domestic factional interests. This view is far removed from the Nazi ideas of revolution, crude racial determinism, the cult of the leader and war as a value unto itself. Schmitt is clearly a much different thinker than the adherents of the quasi-mystical nationalism common to the radical 16
right-wing of the era. Weimer‘s failure was due in part of the failure of political leadership to effectively address the questions raised by Schmitt.
17
REFERNCES 1.
Schmitt Carl, The Concept of the Political Translated by George Schwab, Expanded Edition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, (1929)
2.
Schmitt Carl, Political Theology, Four chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty Trans. George Schwab, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1985)
3.
Schmitt Carl, Jewish Virtual Library Accessed 15th February 2015
4.
Schmitt Carl, The Hobbesian of the 20th century by Jacob Als Thomsen, (University of Roskilde, Denmark, (1997)
5.
Preston Keith. The Political Theory of Carl Schmitt Accessed 20th February 2015
6.
Schmitt Carl, Constitutional Theory, Translated by Jeffrey Seitzer, (Durham: Duke University Press,( 2008)
7.
Schmitt Carl, Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Translated Ellen Kennedy, (Cambridge (1985)
18
CHAPTER TWO CARL SCHMITT’S ANTI-LIBERALISM 2.0
INTRODUCTION In this chapter 2 we are going to examine different concepts and its use to the political
ground. Here we are going to discuss on terms like, what is liberalism? What is Antiliberalism? In the cause of discussing these terms we are going to see how these terms originated or how these terms got into the political atmosphere. One of Schmitt major works in politics was on liberalism. He was an anti-liberalist. He believed in sovereignty. He believes that the power of a sovereign is stronger in a government. He wasn‘t up for liberty or freedom in the state. For Schmitt liberty brings disorder in the society. Therefore a sovereign power is better in a government. It creates an orderly and less chaotic society. Schmitt‘s views would be discussed. Also his political meaning to anti-liberalism would be analysed in this work. This chapter is one of the major parts of this topic and we are going try to make it understandable for everyone that comes in contact with his work. 2.1
LIBERALISM AS A POLITICAL CONCEPT The term liberalism is a concept that has been used over the years. It‘s said that the term
liberalism doesn‘t have a definite definition. Different scholars have perceived liberalism in different conception. The root word of liberalism is liberty. The word ―liberal‖ derives from the Latin ―liber‖ (meaning ―free‖ or ―not a slave‖). The concept liberalism could be defined as a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas and programs such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, and international cooperation. Liberalism believes that society should be organized in accordance with certain unchangeable and inviolable human rights, especially the rights to life, liberty, and property. Some scholars find liberalism in ancient Greece and Rome, but liberalism is most commonly traced to the English revolutions of the century. Another major contributing group to the ideas of liberalism are those associated with the Scottish Enlightenment, especially David Hume and Adam Smith. 19
Politically liberalism originated in the Revolution of the 1640s and the Levellers, particularly the Putney debates, in which
Colonel Thomas Rainsborough (1610-1648) argued for
widening the electoral franchise saying, ―I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as greatest he; and therefore truly, sir I think it‘s clear, that every man that is to live under government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under‖. Intellectually, liberalism stems from the writings of John Locke (1632-1704), who developed the arguments for consent, majority rule, and rights, particularly property rights. Liberal philosophy has certainly not been static, but has adapted to changing political, social and economic conditions as it evolved over the centuries. In one process it has branched in many directions. Thus, any single characterization of liberalism will not encompass all of its adherents. Having made this disclaimer, I will try to provide a core definition of the liberal tradition that will provide the context for the communitarian critique later in the work. First in importance is the liberal claim of the priority of right. This means that in a constitutional democracy he guarantees of individual political and civil liberties like priority over any good that could that could be accomplished by rescinding those rights. Only the protection of a more basic human liberties can justify curtailing another. This inviolability of basic personal rights is grounded in the equal worth and dignity of each individual human being. Once the priority of right is established, the second liberal claim of neutrality follows. Liberal neutrality requires that a government be neutral between competing conceptions of what is good in life or which way of life is morally preferable that is, that it make no laws favouring one conception of the good on all citizens would violate the most basic individual liberty; to live in accordance with one‘s own values. These two doctrines restrict the scope of government to the status of a referee: it must ensure each individual‘s freedom to form a conception of a good life and pursue it provided that he or she does not infringe on the freedom of others to do likewise. As a morality, liberalism retains many elements of this political theory: the moral value of an action is determined by a body of universally applicable principles and each individual is equally subject to their authority. When I interpret and apply those moral principles, I must treat you and myself and every other person equally. In the interest of fairness, liberal 20
morality does not allow me to make exceptions: moral principles are universal. Both of our major ethical theories deontology and utilitarianism follow this legal model of ethics. In deontological ethics, a plurality of principles regulates human importance of the good each protects. For example, ―Do not take a life‖ outweighs ―Do not break a promise‖ On the other hand, utilitarianism honors a single principle: ―Choose whichever action would promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.‖ In both of these moralities, the moral agent deliberates and chooses according to his or her understanding of these principles and is therefore, individually responsible for that choice. In the moral and political theories of liberal philosophy then, the solitary individual bears both rights and obligations. Because the properties and capacities of this individual are of immense importance to the liberal program, they have been the prime focus of modern metaphysics. Until very recently, both the philosophy of mind and the theory of the person have been preoccupied with the solitary individual, and this individualism has served as a base for modern moral theories and liberal politics. The rational, coherent, and tightly fitting set of ideas that forms the liberal tradition has excluded the social dimension of human experience. When communitarians criticize liberalism they refer to this complex of metaphysics (individualism), ethics (universalism) and politics the priority of rights and neutrality. Individualism has been the target of communitarianism criticism, but it has also lost the support of many liberals. Just as liberal theorists have adjusted their philosophy to social changes in the basic, so too current liberals have begun work on a more, social conception of the person to replace their individualistic metaphysics. Now the question for liberalism is, Can liberal philosophers graft a well-developed morality and politics onto a new conceptual base without losing the advances they have made or undermining the legitimacy of their institutions be developed from a metaphysics assuming that a person is embedded in a community network? But the future development of liberalism is another topic for a different book. Today most liberals argue that liberalism is primarily concerned with liberty and they trace their roots to John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and his little book ―on liberty‖ (1859), which stressed freedom of thought and speech. But the general emphasis on liberty has taken two differing routes from Mill to the present: One approach is really a continuation of Locke‘s concern with rights including property rights. The other approach developed in the late 21
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the writing of T H Green (1836-1882) and others, who argued that some people need help to exercise their liberty. This argument was the beginning of what became known as ―welfare liberalism‖. These varied strands bring us to a liberalism that today can be described as having the following characteristics: 1. A tendency to favour change 2. Faith in human reason 3. Willingness to use government to improve the human condition 4. Preference for individual freedom but ambivalence about economic freedom 5. Greater optimism about human nature than conservatives These defining principles of liberalism do not change much over time. We will see how they are applied today in the United States. In his speech in 1960 accepting the nomination of the New York Liberal Party. John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) defined what was then seen as liberalism by saying, ―If by a ‗liberal‘ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people – their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties – someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that gap us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a liberal then am proud to say that I am a liberal. Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978), who was the standard-bearer of liberalism of liberalism in mid-twentieth century America, once wrote, ―Liberals fully recognize that change is inevitable in the patterns of society and in the challenges which confront man‖. Marcus G. Raskin (1934-2002) made the same point in stronger language, saying, ―If there is a fundamental liberal principle it is the recognition of change in all things as an inevitable condition of living‖. Liberals generally believe people should keep trying to improve society. Somewhat less optimistic about progress than they once were, liberals still believe beneficial change is possible. Such change can come about through the conscious action of men and women, as unforeseen side effects of decisions or through the operation of various social forces. But there will be change, and the liberal is convinced it can be directed and controlled for human benefit.
22
Traditional Liberalism Traditional liberalism, in this sense a tradition dating back to the 1930s, is described by its opponents as advocating big government, deficit spending, and expensive welfare programs. Traditional liberals see themselves as advocates of working people, the poor, and minorities against big business and as supporters of civil rights for African Americans, women, and ethnic and other minorities against the repression of government and business. Thus they see themselves as defenders of freedom and equality. They believe that only government is powerful enough to achieve these goals; therefore, they favour strong government. Liberals are united on goals but divided on means. All liberals believe in an equalitarian society with protection for civil rights, but they are divided on how to achieve it. And in recent years, liberals have tried to expand civil rights to the disabled indigenous groups, and gays and lesbians. Classical liberalism Classical liberalism is a political ideology that values the freedom of individuals — including the freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and markets — as well as limited government. It developed in 18th-century Europe and drew on the economic writings of Adam Smith and the growing notion of social progress. Liberalism was also influenced by the writings of Thomas Hobbes, who argued that governments exist to protect individuals from each other. In 19th- and 20th-century America, the values of classical liberalism became dominant in both major political parties. The term is sometimes used broadly to refer to all forms of liberalism prior to the 20th century. Conservatives and libertarians often invoke classical liberalism to mean a fundamental belief in minimal government. The tenets of this parent, known as classical liberalism, have answered the needs and the challenges of over three centuries in the West. By observing its past and discovering how it responded to the dramatic historical dynamics of economic, technological, political, and social changes we may understand how classical liberalism provides a strong foundation for the future. A political belief in which primary emphasis is placed on securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of the state. In its economic form, it advocates a respect for private property and free markets. Classical Liberalism should not be confused with democracy. One can be a liberal and yet be opposed to democracy.
23
Neoliberalism Neoliberals have identified themselves as fiscal conservatives, while remaining social and foreign policy liberals, albeit with a slight shift to the conservative side in both cases. Neoliberals stress that they are concerned with getting the system to work rather than with ideology. They want to change the pattern of government spending because it is they say, too high and inefficiently handled. They want a strong defense but more government oversight of military spending. They want efficient and effective welfare programs. Generally they want what they consider to be a realistic liberalism that faces rapid social and economic change. In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs; attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and cutbacking social programs. The Republican "Contract" on America is pure neo-liberalism. Its supporters are working hard to deny protection to children, youth, women, the planet itself -- and trying to trick us into acceptance by saying this will "get government off my back." The beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world's people. For the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before: suffering without the small, hard-won gains of the last 60 years, suffering without end. Today neoliberals dominate the Democratic Party in the United States. 2.2
WHAT IS ANTI LIBERALISM Anti-liberalism is an intellectual position which rejects and censures the worldview of
liberalism as an ideology centered on extreme individualism, an obsession with maximizing individual liberties in every possible area, and egalitarianism. Anti-liberalism is a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavour, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties. Scholars quote on Anti-liberalism: "The essence of liberalism is individualism. The basis of its error is to mistake the notion of the person with that of the individual and to claim for the latter, unconditionally and according to egalitarian premises, some values that should rather be attributed solely to the former, and then only conditionally. Because of this transposition, these values are transformed into errors, or into something absurd and harmful... The individual may be conceived only as an atomic unit or as a mere number in the reign of quantity... [In contrast to 24
the atomic individual] The person is an individual who is differentiated through his qualities, endowed with his own face, his proper nature, and a series of attributes that make him who he is and distinguish him from all others - in other words, attributes that make him fundamentally unequal." – Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins "Liberalism is the party of upstarts who have insinuated themselves between the people and its big men. Liberals feel themselves as isolated individuals, responsible to nobody. They do not share the nation‘s traditions, they are indifferent to its past and have no ambition for its future. They seek only their own personal advantage in the present. Their dream is the great International, in which the differences of peoples and languages, races and cultures will be obliterated.” – Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Germany's Third Empire "Liberal freedom thus supposes that individuals can be abstracted from their origins, their environment, the context in which they live and where they exercise their choices, from everything, that is., that makes them who they are, and not someone else. It supposes, in other words, as John Rawls says, that the individual is always prior to his ends. Nothing, however, proves that the individual can apprehend himself as a subject free of any allegiance, free of any determinism. Moreover, nothing proves that in all circumstances he will prefer freedom over every other good. Such a conception by definition ignores commitments and attachment that owe nothing to rational calculation. It is a purely formal conception that makes it impossible to understand what a real person is – Alain de Benoist, "Critique of Liberal Ideology" The love of humanity emerged primarily as a protest against the love of fatherland, and consequently it became a protest against every organised community. – Max Scheler, Ressentiment It‘s clear that liberalism as a political concept preaches individuality. Anti-liberalism is an opposition to the liberal movement.
25
2.3
HETEROGENEITY OF ANTI-LIBERALISM Scholars have different views or theories to anti-liberalism. Anti-liberalism is been
perceived from different angle by anti-liberalist. In trying to discuss the diverse nature in anti-liberalism we are going to look at the Communitarians who are one of the notable critiques of liberalism. The core principle of communitarianism is community. According to the communitarian critique of liberalism, liberalism overemphasizes the individual to the detriment of the community. Liberals say that the communitarian alternative destroys liberty. In this debate, liberals focus on the desirability of developing autonomous individuals who are protected from government by universally applicable rights. Communitarians focus on the community rather than the individual, as the basis for personal and political identity and oral decision making. Communitarians argue that, to some extent, all individuals are created by the and embedded in specific communities. Our beliefs, moral systems, and the senses of self-come from the community or communities of which we have been and are a part. The political conclusions drawn by communitarianism vary across the political spectrum from Left to Right although the Right has been most clearly identified with communitarianism. Some left wing communitarians see it as simply an extension of participatory democracy with a greater concern for the community in which the participation takes place. Thus communitarianism could be seen as a development of the emphasis on community that was found in the New Left, but this is not how most communitarians see it. Most communitarians are conservatives who believe that the growth of legally enforceable individual rights has gone too far, to the detriment of society as a whole. They believe that there must be a renewed focus on personal, family and community responsibility. Are individuals responsible to and for themselves? Or, as products of the communities of which they are a part, are they responsible to the community, and the community to them? Most important from the liberal point of view: should we accept the dominance of community values if those values include the elimination of minority rights? In a sense, this is asking who constitutes the community. Is it the current majority in some geographical area? Are they allowed to simply impose their values on everyone else in that area? These questions are at the heart of the confused state of liberalism and conservatism in the United States today, people want to live the lives they choose without interference, and 26
they worry about interference from both government and their neighbours, whose vision of the good life may be different from theirs and who might want to impose those values on them. This concern is not without justification: there are people who want us all to live their way. We usually call them extremists. We are witnessing a revival of communitarian criticisms of liberal political theory. Like the critics of the 1960s, those of the 1980s fault liberalism for being mistakenly and irreparably individualistic. But the new wave of criticism is not a mere repetition of the old. Whereas the earlier critics were inspired by Aristotle and Hegel. The Aristotelian idea that justice is rooted in ―a community whose primary bond is a shared understanding both of the good for man and the good of that community‖ explicitly informs Alasdair Maclntyre in his criticism of John Rawls and Robert Nozick for their neglect of desert; and Charles Taylor in his attack on ―atomistic‖ liberals who ―try to defend the priority of the individual and his rights over society‖. The Hegelian conception of man as a historically conditioned being implicitly informs both Roberto Unger‘s and Michael Sandel‘s rejection of the liberal view of man as a free and rational being. The political implications of the new communitarian criticisms are correspondingly more conservative. Whereas the good society of the old critics was one of the collective property ownership and equal political power, the good society of the new politics is one of settled traditions and established identities. For many of the old critics the role of women within the family was symptomatic of their social and economic oppression for Sandel, the family serves as a mode of community and evidence of a good greater than justice. For the old critics patriotism was an irrational sentiment that stood in the way of world peace; for Maclntyre, the particularistic demands of patriotism are no less rational that one universalistic demands of justice. The old critics were inclined to defend deviations from majoritarian morality in the name of non-repressions: the new minds are inclined to defend, the efforts of local majorities to ban offensive activities in the name of preserving their community‘s way of life and the values that sustain it. The subject of the new and old criticism also differs. The new critics recognize that Rawls work has altered the premise and principles of contemporary liberal theory. Contemporary liberals do not assume that people are possessive individualist, the source of their individualism lies at a deeper, more metaphysical level. According to Sandel, the problem is that liberalism has faulty foundation in order to achieve absolute priority for 27
principle of justice; liberals must hold a set of implausible metaphysical views about the self. They cannot admit, for example that our personal identities are partly defined by our communal attachments. According to Maclntyre, the problem is that liberalism lacks any foundation at all. It cannot be rooted in the only kind of social life that provides a basis for moral judgements one which views man as having an essence which defines his true end. Liberalist therefore bound either to claim a false certainty for their principle or to admit that morality is merely a matter of individual opinion, that is, is no morality at all. The critics claim that many serious problems originate in the foundational faults of liberalism. Perhaps the most troubling for liberals is their alleged inability to defend the basic principle that individual right cannot be sacrificed for the sake of the general good. Because Sandel and Maclntyre make the most detailed and, if true, devastating cases against believing in a liberal politics of rights. I shall focus for the rest of this review on their arguments. The central argument of Sandel‘s book is that liberalism rests on a series of mistaken metaphysical and metaethical views for example, that the claims of justice are absolute and universal: that we cannot know each other well enough to share common ends and that we can define our personal identity independently of socially given ends. Because its foundations are necessarily flawed, Sandel suggest in a subsequent article that we should give up the ―politics of rights‖ for a politics of the common good. Maclntrye begins his book with an even more ―disquieting suggestion‖: that our entire moral vocabulary, of rights and the common good, is in such grave disorder that we have very largely, if not entirely lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. To account for how we have unknowingly arrived at this unenviable social condition. Maclntyre takes us on an intriguing tour of moral history, from Homeric Greece to the present. By the end of the tour, we learn that the internal incoherence of liberalism forces us to choose Nietzsche or Aristotle, ―a politics of the evil to power or one of communally defined virtue. 2.4
SCHMITT’S ANTI-LIBERALISM Critique of liberalism has a long tradition. However, those launching critical attacks
against liberalism frequently turn out to be liberals themselves who are concerned, for instance, about the common equation of liberalism with a bourgeois attitude of "possessive individualism" or with the reduction of liberal politics to an empty proceduralism. The recent 28
debate between liberalism and communitarianism largely amounts to such a kind of liberal self-criticism. Even outspoken communitarian critics, like Sandel, undoubtedly appreciate important achievements of liberalism; often they take these achievements more or less for granted. Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism or his anti-liberalism is different. His polemic does not fit into the tradition of liberal self-criticism. As I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere, Schmitt systematically undermines the liberal principle of the rule of law. He wants it to be replaced by an authoritarian version of democracy, a democracy based upon the "substantial homogeneity" of the collective unity of the people rather than one resting upon the principles of a participatory republicanism. Although Schmitt until 1933 opposed the Nazi party, his ardent anti-liberalism entails from the outset the potential for fascism. It is thus more than a pure coincidence that he finally proved able to espouse the political ideology of the Third Reich and to take up for some time the role of a legal advisor to the Nazi regime, without substantially changing his previously developed political concepts. Schmitt's understanding of the political provides the basis for his critique of liberalism. On a descriptive level, Schmitt claims that liberalism has a tendency to deny the need for genuine political decision, to suggest that it is neither necessary nor desirable for individuals to form groups that are constituted by the drawing of friend-enemy distinctions. Liberals believe that there are no conflicts among human beings that cannot be solved to everyone's advantage through an improvement of civilization, technology, and social organization or be settled, after peaceful deliberation, by way of amicable compromise. As a result, liberalism is unable to provide substantive markers of identity that can ground a true political decision. Liberal politics, consequently, boils down to the attempt to domesticate the polity, in the name of the protection of individual freedom, but it is unable to constitute political community in the first place. If this is a correct account of the character of liberal ideology and of the aims of liberal politics, Schmitt is right to conclude that liberalism has a tendency to undermine a community's political existence, as he understands it. But in order for this observation to amount to a critique of liberalism, Schmitt needs to explain why a liberal subversion of the political would be undesirable. Schmitt's political works contain a number of rather different answers to this question. A first line of thought emphasizes, with appeal to Hobbes, that a state can only be legitimate as long as it retains the capacity to offer protection to its 29
members. And a state that has suffered a subversion of the political, induced by liberal ideology, Schmitt argues, will be unable to offer protection to its members, because it will fail to protect them from the indirect rule of pluralist interest-groups that have successfully colonized the state and, more importantly, because it will lack the power to protect them from external enemies. If a people are no longer willing to decide between friend and enemy the most likely result will not be eternal peace but anarchy or subjection to another group that is still willing to assume the burdens of the political. This first answer, however, is not Schmitt's last word on why liberal de-politicization is undesirable. Schmitt seems to admit that a global hegemon might one day be able to enforce a global de-politicization, by depriving all other communities of the capacity to draw their own friend-enemy distinctions, or that liberalism might one day attain global cultural hegemony, such that people will no longer be interested in drawing friend-enemy distinctions. Schmitt, then, cannot rest his case against liberal depoliticization on the claim that it is an unrealistic goal. He needs to argue that it is undesirable even if it could be achieved. Schmitt replies to this challenge that a life that does not involve the friend-enemy distinction would be shallow, insignificant, and meaningless. A completely de-politicized world would offer human beings no higher purpose than to increase their consumption and to enjoy the frolics of modern entertainment. It would reduce politics to a value-neutral technique for the provision of material amenities. As a result, there would no longer be any project or value that individuals are called upon to serve, whether they want to or not, and that can give their life a meaning that transcends the satisfaction of private desires. But that a world in which one does not have the opportunity to transcend one's interest in individual contentment in the service of a higher value would be shallow and meaningless does not suffice to establish that a willingness to kill or to die for a political community will confer meaning on a life, much less that it is the only thing that can do so. When Schmitt claims that the defence of the political is the only goal that could possibly justify the killing of others and the sacrifice of one's own life he assumes without argument that the life of political community, as he understands it, is uniquely and supremely valuable. Some interpreters have explained Schmitt's hostility towards liberal de-politicization as being grounded in the view that a willingness to distinguish between friend and enemy is a theological duty. Schmitt argues in Political Theology that all key concepts of the modern doctrine of the state are secularized theological concepts, which suggests that a political theory that continues to use these concepts needs a theological foundation. In The Concept of 30
the Political, Schmitt claims that all true political theorists base their views on a negative anthropology which holds that man is by nature evil and licentious, and thus needs to be kept in check by a strong state capable of drawing a friend-enemy distinction if there is to be social order. This latter thesis, Schmitt admits, can take a secular form, as in Hobbes or Machiavelli, as the purely descriptive claim that man is inherently dangerous to man. But Schmitt suggests that this secular version of a negative political anthropology is open to be transformed into the view that man, though by nature dangerous, is perfectible or into the view that man's dangerous behaviour is a mere contingent consequence of a mistaken form of social organization. In order to establish a permanent need for political authority, negative political anthropology must be given a theological reading that portrays the dangerous nature of man as an irrevocable result of original sin. Liberal de-politicization, from this perspective, is to be rejected as a sign of human pride that rebels against God, who alone, but only at the end of history, can deliver humanity from political enmity. Schmitt himself admits that the theological grounding of politics is based on an anthropological confession of faith. And one is tempted to say that Schmitt's theory turns out to be philosophically irrelevant if this is really the last word. Schmitt would likely have replied that the liberal assumption that man is perfectible, that humanity can overcome political enmity, and that to do so is desirable, is also an article of faith. The theological partisan of the political, in Schmitt's view, is as justified in practicing his creed as the liberal cosmopolitan and to engage in a deliberate cultivation of political enmity. As long as the political theologian can make sure that the friend-enemy distinction survives, liberals will be forced to enter the arena of the political and to go to war against the partisans of the political. And this fight, Schmitt hopes, is going to secure the continuing existence of political enmity and prevent the victory of liberal de-politicization. Carl Schmitt anti-liberalism was also said to have been influenced by the Weimar republic. Some scholars said that the Weimar period was one of the best rules for German before the takeover by German Adolf Hitler. While some scholars like Schmitt was of the view that the Weimar republic brought disharmony to the society. That the parliamentary government opened up to nuisance to come into the administration of the political. Schmitt saw the sovereign as the best for the political society to grow, someone with exception that can bring order and peace in the society. Schmitt is one of the known anti-liberalists.
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2.5
HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL SOURCES OF SCHMITT’S ANTILIBERALISM In examining the historical and theoretical sources of Schmitt‘s anti-liberalism, we need to
seek out the scholars before Schmitt that was opposing liberalism or had opposing views to liberalism in our society. Liberalism is a political theory that is been practiced in societies. Some scholars are of the view that it promotes individualism. Individualism in our society is said to brew hate, selfishness, greed and personal interest. This led some scholars like Schmitt to oppose this view. Some of Schmitt‘s historical influence can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher known as Plato. Also it‘s traced in the works of Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Aquinas medieval scholar. These scholars‘ works has some traces of anti-liberalism. In this work we are going to examine each scholar and their views on liberalism. A respectable philosopher known by all and whose name goes as Plato, who was a student to the very brilliant Socrates. Plato is said to be the mouth piece of Socrates. Plato has a lot of work in philosophy but in regards to this work we are going to focus on his ―Republic‖ which was where he talked about the Government and Liberalism. Plato is generally regarded as notoriously anti-liberal, a reputation which is based mainly upon his most famous political work, the Republic. However, a more comprehensive view of his political thought reveals a much more nuanced picture. Socrates was killed due to democracy; the death of Socrates aggravated Plato. This now lead Plato to research into the government and its political theory. Socrates was killed or asked to commit suicide due to the fact he was saying the right things about the government and its ways of ruling the people, Socrates had an option of running away but instead took the punishment melted out to him. This act made Plato hate the democratic government. He was against freedom or liberalism in the government or society. Plato was said to be an anti-liberalist by coming up with three ways a society should be divided. For him if this division is adhered to you would get a perfect state. Plato‘s absolute stated comprises of (1) Philosopher king (Rulers, wise decisions) (2) Soldiers (auxiliaries, courageous actions) (3) Artisan (farmers, merchants, and other people, moderated desires) The ideal of a Philosopher King was born in Plato‘s dialogue Republic as part of the vision of a just city. It was influential in the Roman Empire and was revived in European political thought in the age of absolutist monarchs. For Plato a philosopher king is one who has been 32
trained in philosophy and has been drilled with the act of truth and honesty. He is to melt out justice without bias views or emotion. The philosopher is not to be entitled to family or children. A philosopher king must emulate the good qualities of a leader. He must be a person for the people. A philosopher king should attend to the affairs of the state and bring peace within the state.
According to Plato, the best form of government is that in which
philosophers rule. Thus the key notion of the ―philosopher king‖ is that the philosopher is the only person who can be trusted to rule well. Philosophers are both morally and intellectually suited to rule: morally because it is in their nature to love truth and learning so much that they are free from the greed and lust that tempts others to abuse power and intellectually because they alone can gain full knowledge of reality, which in Books V through VII of the Republic sis argued to culminate in knowledge of the forms of Virtue, Beauty, and above all, the Good. The city can foster such knowledge by putting aspiring philosophers through a demanding education, and the philosophers will use their knowledge of goodness and virtue to help other citizens achieve these so far as possible. The auxiliaries are seen as the soldiers of the state. Their job is defending the state from external enemies. The soldiers also have a place as a ruler. They uphold justice and melt our punishment to those found wanting. The artisans or producers who are either the farmers, merchants, or other people who provide for the state. Their job is to provide food and services to the rulers and soldiers. They are the food chain of the state. The artisans are the lowest class of people in the state. They follow the commands of the rulers and soldiers. The guardians and auxiliaries have the same education, which begins with music and literature and ends with gymnastics. Indeed, then, life in Plato‘s ideal state has affinities with life under a totalitarian government. Another historical influence on Schmitt anti-liberalism is Thomas Hobbes from his work the Leviathan. Hobbes leviathan influenced Schmitt‘s sovereignty in his political theology. The rule of the exception. A book called Leviathan (1660), written by Thomas Hobbes, in argues that all social peace and unity is and can be achieved through the use of a sovereign power. Hobbes begins the Leviathan with his theories on man. He believes men are a basic creature and relativity simple. They are nothing but creatures that react to their surroundings, which leads to their wants and desires. Because the world's environment is ever changing so is man. All of these different desires floating around put man in an unending warring state. In this 33
never ending violent state men are reduced to living in constant fear and in a state of endless anxiety. Men only think for their own lives because of this, and Hobbes solution is to create a state that has a main goal of protecting the ever nervous creatures. The second part of the book is then brought into play; man's duties to this government that is trying to protect them. In the eyes of Hobbes, the most efficient form of government is a monarchy because is a single power, strong enough to save man from outside invaders and from themselves. The subjects of such a government have a complete and total duty to their government. Of course there is always the option to leave if one does not like the ideals however; this places man back in the state of constant warring and always defending one's self. Next, Hobbes ponders the question of obedience to divine and sovereign authority. He concludes that there is no reason for the two to clash. But, because of man's belief that god is within human reach, the two conflict. According to Leviathan, because God is supernatural and unreachable, man has no claim to religious authority, leaving only worldly authorities to answer to such as the law. Finally, the final chapter of Leviathan describes a setting for man when they do not follow the rules and ideals set forth for them. In this life, there is an endless manipulation of man by others and they cycle continues. Thomas Aquinas a known scholar of the medieval period that emphasised that God is in charge and the one that tells us what to do. For Aquinas power rests on God, his ruler. He didn‘t believe in man been in charge, for him God is the determinant of our existence. That we are been created by God and we would do his will. Aquinas called this Theocracy. Theocracy is seen as a form of government whereby God passes down instructions to his subject who are the priest, clergymen, reverend, pastors etc. God uses these men to passes across his messages to his subject or people. Here authority is been placed on God, a supreme being. 2.6
CONCLUSION
Therefore in this work we aim to show and pin point the important aspect and concept of this entire work. This chapter is said to discuss the key issues like liberalism, anti-liberalism, and the diversity in anti-liberalism, also the historical sources of anti-liberalism. In the course of this work, we were able to see the different ways at which liberalism is been defined and classified. Scholars views on liberalism and its loopholes that are found in it. The antiliberalist who are the communitarians that criticized the liberals and their views. The communist showed us a great light into its critique of liberalism through Sandel‘s work. Also 34
we come to discuss Schmitt‘s anti-liberalism and how the Weimar republic gave him the push to be an anti-liberalist. How he campaigned for a sovereign state to that of democracy. The historical sources of Schmitt‘s work were also evaluated and we came across scholars like Plato, Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Aquinas. These historical sources influenced Schmitt‘s view on anti-liberalism. Carl Schmitt anti-liberalism is said to be that of a different critique to liberalism. His anti-liberalism is mainly to save the government from deteriorating into a laughing stock. He was trying to use sovereignty as the medium for a better governance in the society, but this his view was criticized by Stephen Holmes and his good friend Leo Strauss. He sought for the promotion of community love and backing, having unity among the people of the society. Schmitt was very intelligent man that brought about a new light to antiliberalism. He was a German scholar that was involved with the Nazi Party. He was a crown jurist. His approach to liberalism would be study from time to time to see if it can be reconstructed to bring a brighter light in the society.
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REFERENCES 1.
Sargent Lyman Tower University of Missouri- St. Louis Contemporary political ideologies: A comparative Analysis Fourteenth Edition (Australia: Wadsworth cengage learning) 2009
2.
www.chegg.com Definition of Classical Liberalism Accessed on 3rd of March 2015
3.
Sturgis Amy H, The Rise, Decline, and Re-emergence of Classical Liberalism (The Lockesmith Institute) 1994
4.
www.metapedia.com Anti liberalism Accessed on 6th of March 2015
5.
www.dictionaryreference.com Anti-liberalism Accessed on 7th of March 2015
6.
Daly Markate (Ed), San Francisco State University, Communitarianism: A New Public Ethics, Belmont, California: (Wadsworth Publishing Company) 1994
7.
Gutmann Amy Communitarian Critics of Liberalism Retrieved on 12th of June 2015
8.
Standard Encyclopaedia of philosophy- Carl Schmitt- Anti Liberalism Retrieved on 16th of August 2015
9.
www.publicbookshelf.com – The Philosopher King: Socrates vision of Plato‘s Republic Accessed on 20th of August 2015
10.
Hobbes Thomas - Leviathan from www.wikipedia.com Retrieved on 20th of August 2015
11.
Aquinas Thomas - Theocracy from www.wikipedia.com Retrieved on 20th August 2015
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CHAPTER THREE APPRAISIAL OF SCHMITT’S ANTI-LIBERALISM 3.0
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter which is the Appraisal of Schmitt anti-liberalism, we are going to judge or assess Schmitt‘s anti-liberalism. Schmitt‘s rejected liberalism tenet which preached on Individuality in the society and the freedom of human or human right. The liberals were doing more of individual right should have power in a political society more than the community or state. When you say am a ―liberal‖ or a ―liberalist‖ you are championing for freedom and individual right. You are an activist of human right. According to the liberal thinking of Schmitt‘s time, the law was not the product of the sovereign‘s command: rather, the state was a product of the law, brought into being and regulated by the norms laid down in the constitutional document, and its powers divided amongst different state organs. Schmitt looked at these tenets of Liberalism and rejected it. Schmitt now criticized liberalism. Liberalism negates democracy and democracy negates liberalism. For Schmitt, liberalism was the dominant form of instrumental reason in the political sphere of his time, and in the context of a profoundly fractured party politics, he believed that its value neutrality posed a threat to the survival of the political form of the Weimar Republic. Against the formalism of technocratic liberalism, Schmitt‘s work on emergency powers then advocates an authority to decide for the constitution, and against its enemies, thereby restoring law and order. For Schmitt the state should have more power in making political decision. He proposed a sovereign state. Sovereignty for Schmitt is the power to decide the instauration of state of exception. By ―exception‖ Schmitt means the appropriate moment for stepping outside the rule of law in the public interest. For Schmitt in other for the law to become effective, there needs to be an authority that decides how to apply general legal rules to concrete cases and how to deal with problems of contested interpretation of under- determination. However, the material content of the law does not itself determine who is to interpret and to apply it. Hence, a sovereign authority prior to the law is needed to decide how to apply general legal norms to particular cases. In this work, we are going to see Schmitt diagnosis of authority as well as the critique of Schmitt anti-liberalism. Then we would discuss Schmitt as the contemporary of Hobbes. Schmitt was highly influenced by Thomas Hobbes.
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3.1
SCHMITT AND THE PATHOLOGY OF AUTHORITY
We need to discuss two concepts here, which are pathology and authority. The discussion of this concept would make it easier for us to understand this topic. Pathology: The medical specialty that provides microscopy and other laboratory services or the study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development and consequences. Hannah Arendt discussed authority as, to live in a political realm with neither authority nor the concomitant awareness that the source of authority transcends power and those who are in power, means to be confronted anew, without religious trust in a sacred beginning and without the protection of traditional and therefore self-evident standards of behaviour, by the elementary problems of human living-together. Authority: can also be described as the power invested on someone with legitimacy. It can also be defined as the power to enforce rules or give orders. Looking at the definition of these terms, it‘s obvious that sovereignty has a problem in Schmitt‘s work. Its problem is the power of authority on just one person or state. This act is a problem, because it emphasis the fact that the lives of lot in the society depends on one person. It doesn‘t allow freedom of the people. The sovereign dictator has the power, in taking the decision on the exception, to set aside the positive legal and constitutional order in its entirety and to create a novel positive legal and constitutional order, together with a situation of social normality that fits it. It follows that the sovereign dictator cannot base his claim to be acting in the name of the people on any kind of formal authorization. If the old constitution no longer exists and the new one is not yet in force, there is no formal procedure for generating a public will. And yet, the sovereign dictator claims to exercise the constituent power of the people. What is more, the constitutional order he is to create is to be considered as legitimate since it rests on the people's right to give itself a constitution. Schmitt's view assumes that it is possible to speak of the existence of a people in advance of the creation of any positive constitutional framework. Schmitt therefore has to explain what it means for a people to exist prior to any constitutional framework, and he has to give an account of how the people's political existence prior to any constitutional framework can ground a sovereign dictatorship. As is clear from Schmitt's commentary on Leviathan, Schmitt saw a set of striking parallels between his own times and conceptualisations and those of Hobbes. The notes he wrote during his post-war confinement dwell on these parallels. Like Hobbes in seventeen century England; Schmitt saw himself as being confronted with political instability and the threat of 38
civil war. And as Hobbes had done before him Schmitt saw the problem as originating in the absence of a strong single authority and they both pointed to the state as the ordering principle. This means that the sovereign authority (the state) cannot always be restricted by legal norms. Only an active state - not processual standards can, through its leaders, act efficiently under changing circumstances. This way of thinking represents a kind of rule scepticism; the validity of a political decision is established. Sovereignty is where the state leaves its decision on one man or a single authority. It‘s a single authority rule and the society is to adhere to these rules or order. In Schmitt‘s work on sovereignty, scholars saw problems in it. That if the society is under a sovereign rule they won‘t really be a progress in the society. The society is going to be static no changes or improvement. It‘s going to promote in orderliness in the society. Here the sovereign master is going to pass down decrees that going to favour him and his sub ordinate if he has one. His not going to consider the society he rules. Even if he considerers them it won‘t be an allrounder thing. Sovereignty also promotes a tie firm on the society. The rules are going to be too much and strict. When a sovereign master passes down a decree it‘s expected to be obeyed if violated u would face the consequences involved. People won‘t be free to be their self. But for Schmitt he sees sovereignty as a better option to democracy or liberalism. He believes that sovereignty would bring orderliness into the society that democracy allows disorder because it‘s open to people with different views and opinions. This differences breeds diversity in the society. But if the power or authority rests on a single authority with little cabinet, decisions would be made in regards to the e.g. the Enemy state. You don‘t have to wait for a bunch of government officials like the: Legislators, Executives and judiciary to pass and approve a bill or look into a situation, before handing their decision to the president. This for Schmitt is a waste of time, because the state needs an ―exception‖ that would make the decision urgently to a situation. Without having to wait for a bunch of approvals. Schmitt the task was, therefore, to create a new decisionist state that derived its legitimacy from its function as an organic expression of the national community, something not very far from the Nazi-states volkisch image of itself In Schmitt' view this organic nature was to be created through a excluding cultural relativism that rejected universal moral principles of ―right" and "wrong" as guidelines for politics, and was built on a) a homogenised people, and b) the identification of an (external) enemy. This issue of authority on a sovereign was later revisited by Schmitt in his work Hamelt or Hecuba. This would be discussed below.
39
The alteration of power and authority is traditionally held as the substantive basis for democratic legitimacy, but such alteration comes at significant cost, and modern democracies face a perpetual crisis in legitimating new authority. Proponents of agonistic democracy in particular see institutions as prone to bureaucratic neutralizations of the political body through the depoliticalization of competing interests. Central to this critique is the thought of Weimar (and later Nazi) jurist Carl Schmitt. Contemporary theorists argue (with Schmitt) that current liberal democratic institutions create psychological, economic, and political incentives for abstention from politics, which in turn delegitimizes democratic authority. But this project is complicated by democratic theorists‘ efforts to avoid acquiescing to Schmitt‘s conservative and fascist conclusions. As these theorists run up against the problem of what model of democratic citizenship can respond to Schmitt‘s insights effectively, Schmitt‘s work has become reproblematized. To gain ground on this problem, we suggest a turn to developments in a later and less well explored work, where the friend/ enemy distinction and the related notion of sovereignty begin to take on significant transformations. Our paper aims to rethink the theoretical basis of authority through a reading of Schmitt‘s essay Hamlet or Hecuba: Der Einbruch der Zeit in das Spiel. There, Schmitt turns to Shakespeare's Hamlet as a way of rethinking sovereignty and its effects on political communities. Schmitt‘s turn to Hamlet might sound strange, especially given Schmitt‘s earlier positions. Why turn to a character such as Hamlet as a model for decisionism when that character is so often by read as impotent and incapable of decision? Schmitt‘s move is motivated by perceived failures in the Hobbesian model he previously employed, and his newly developed theory of political myth. Hobbes fails where Shakespeare succeeds, because Hobbes misconceives myth, and modern political communities‘ need for it. Shakespeare succeeds where Hobbes fails because he is in a historical position that enables him to see the political problem (or catastrophe) of modernity. Shakespeare‘s Hamlet becomes an entry point for the perceived problems associated with the separation of theology from politics, and all the requisite consequences Schmitt reads in that division. We argue that Schmitt turns to Shakespeare because Hamlet correctly represents the agony of the citizen in modern politics, in which the individual continually seeks to define himself against (and sometimes through) the laws. By excavating Schmitt‘s own rethinking of his theory of sovereignty, democratic theorists will have better opportunity to maintain distance and awareness of Schmitt‘s conservative closures which were intentionally meant by Schmitt as a counter to democracy.
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3.2
CRITIQUE OF SCHMITT’S ANTI-LIBERALISM Schmitt‘s anti-liberalism is an attack on liberal constitutionalism; he saw it as not fit for
ruling a state. Parliamentary democracy he saw as a bad government.
He proposed a
sovereign authority. A sovereign rule would make decisions for the state when it‘s urgent against an enemy state. It doesn‘t wait for legal norms or laws. Schmitt‘s anti-liberalism has been criticized by scholars because of the rigidity in its attack. In this work am going to use scholars like Leo Strauss and Stephen Holmes. Leo Strauss a German scholar born on September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-American political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated from Germany to the United States. He spent most of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books. Originally trained in the neo-Kantian tradition with Ernst Cassirer and immersed in the work of the phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Strauss later focused his research on the Greek texts of Plato and Aristotle, retracing their interpretation through medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy and encouraging the application of those ideas to contemporary political theory. Schmitt, who would later become, for a short time, the chief jurist of Nazi Germany, was one of the first important German academics to review Strauss's early work positively. Schmitt's positive reference for, and approval of, Strauss's work on Hobbes was instrumental in winning Strauss the scholarship funding that allowed him to leave Germany. What brought Strauss to evaluate Schmitt's work can be traced to an intellectual transition the former had recently undergone. Strauss's critique and clarifications of The Concept of the Political led Schmitt to make significant emendations in its second edition. Writing to Schmitt in 1932, Strauss summarised Schmitt's political theology that "because 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." What then allured Strauss to Schmitt's treatise was its subject matter, the critique of modern liberalism. Strauss was motivated to review Schmitt's work as a result of his recent rediscovery of classical political philosophy and the concept of reason as it was originally 41
understood. He had revitalized the ancient distinction between knowledge and opinion, and was in this way prepared to re-examine the relationship between thinking and politics. Strauss' first expression of his change in orientation was his critical review of Schmitt's Concept of the Political.' He had, by this time, discovered the transcendental nature of Classical philosophy, and had discarded his enthusiastic advocacy of political Zionism. Schmitt's concern in The Concept of the Political is with "political" theology, whereas Strauss' critical review is animated by the directives of classical political "philosophy" (due to his change in intellectual orientation). Leo Strauss suggests that Schmitt is indeed aspiring to a genuinely moral purpose. In Strauss‘ view, Schmitt defends and confirms the moral earnestness of human existence against the increasing predominance of selfish bourgeois attitudes in liberal society. Strauss writes that ―the affirmation of the political is in the last analysis nothing other than the affirmation of the moral. Leo Strauss‘s observation that Schmitt‘s ―critique of liberalism takes place within the horizon of liberalism‖ is accurate, but only if we acknowledge that Schmitt‘s interpretation of the ―horizon of liberalism‖ is limited. Strauss' philosophical examination of Schmitt's work exposes this connection at numerous junctures as Meier's interpretation confirms. Strauss' critical review is centrally important since 1) it exposes with clarity the "faith" which gives meaning to the otherwise enigmatic definition of politics expounded in The Concept of the Political ,2)elucidates the interrelation between political theology and political action, and 3) points toward an understanding of how it is that Schmitt's perspective sequentially resulted in his affiliation with the National Socialists, a political action which irrevocably tainted his name and career." Strauss, by Schmitt's own admission, was able to penetrate the surface of The Concept of the Political, thereby bringing into view its incompleteness and theological bent "as nobody else had". What did Strauss see through and why did Schmitt's work require such exacting analysis? Two initial observations can be made in response to this question. First, Schmitt painstakingly attempts to categorize the political sphere as an independent domain. He contends that "the political has its own criteria which express themselves in a characteristic way" and that in the final analysis, can be reduced to the distinction between friend and enemy (emphasis added). Schmitt insists that the political can exist theoretically and practically without drawing upon moral, aesthetic, economic or other distinctions and conceptions. Second, Schmitt is intransigent in his effort to preclude abstractions and normative ideals in the elaboration of his concept of the political. Indeed, as Meier makes clear, Schmitt's own enemy is one "who would like to dissolve even metaphysical truth into a 42
discussion". Schmitt insistently claims that his concept is grounded in inherent reality, placing it beyond discussion and question." Strauss' critique of Schmitt is grounded in the directives of classical political philosophy. Strauss approached Schmitt's work by putting the Socratic question "What is the Political?" first. From his point of view, it was incumbent upon the thinker to move from the sphere of "opinion" to the domain of "knowledge" by questioning opinion.' Strauss was therefore especially suited to notice what the presupposing mind cannot in Schmitt's writing. Since Strauss' intention was singularly one of genuinely understanding the political, he was able to discern that Schmitt's text was not motivated by the same desire. On two occasions in his "Notes" Strauss points out that Schmitt "expressly desists from providing, and expressly forgoes, providing an exhaustive definition of the political". Strauss suggests that Schmitt "confronts the liberal negation of the political with the position of the political". He perceives that Schmitt is not interested in comprehending the political, but in the affirmation of his own political concept. Strauss punctuates this perception by noting that Schmitt's concept "cannot be evaluated at all, cannot be measured by an ideal". Schmitt replaces the question of what the political is with his own normative prescription of what he desires it to be. Strauss exposes this ulterior motive by raising the pertinent question "why does Schmitt affirm the political?‖ Strauss "Notes" make clear, Schmitt is incapable of transcending the modern liberalism he is so desirous of defeating. This derives from the fact that his effort is based upon an act of faith. Schmitt bases his concept of the political upon the distinction between friend and enemy without providing evaluative criteria for determining who the friend or enemy is or ought to be. He disallows inquiry into the fundamental purpose or meaning of the distinction which is central to his concept of the political. Schmitt's act of faith makes the raising of questions regarding his concept of the political unnecessary and intrusive. Strauss, however, directly opposed Schmitt's position. For Strauss, Schmitt and his return to Thomas Hobbes helpfully clarified the nature of our political existence and our modern self-understanding. Schmitt's position was therefore symptomatic of the modern liberal selfunderstanding. Strauss believed that such an analysis, as in Hobbes's time, served as a useful "preparatory action", revealing our contemporary orientation towards the eternal problems of politics (social existence). However, Strauss believed that Schmitt's reification of our modern self-understanding of the problem of politics into a political theology was not an adequate solution. Strauss instead advocated a return to a broader classical understanding of human
43
nature and a tentative return to political philosophy, in the tradition of the ancient philosophers. Stephen Holmes wrote a book known as The Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism. In this book he tends to criticize the thought of some scholars, who are anti-liberalist. He was a liberalist. So his work was an attack on anti-liberalism and its scholars: Joseph de Maistre, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Alasdair Maclntyre. As the 1990s bring us the recrudescence of many unfulfilled progressive enthusiasms from the 1970s, we may begin to understand that the intervening Reagan decade was indeed an exceptional period of American political and intellectual life. With that rhetorically gifted President setting the cultural tone, public men retreated headlong from programs tainted with "the L-word." Above the political fray, meanwhile, a diverse band of "communitarians" rigorously challenged liberal political and moral theories. Liberalism was accused of atomizing society into a collection of anomic individuals, and of promoting secularism, materialism, and various other isms understood to be the pathologies of modernity. Indeed, liberalism was found to undermine the conditions necessary for genuine friendship and for the moral life. Surprisingly, unlike the conservatives who originally espoused many of these views, the communitarians were attended to respectfully by many academic spokesmen for liberalism. Stephen Holmes book is a response to this new intellectual strain of arguments against liberalism. The book begins with a series of chapters analysing what he takes to be a representative sample of "anti-liberal" thinkers: the dark genius of the Counter– enlightenment, Joseph de Maistre; Carl Schmitt, the German constitutional theorist implicated in the Third Reich; the German-born Jewish historian of ideas, Leo Strauss; historian Christopher Lasch; Catholic moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre; and Roberto Unger, a radical legal theorist at Harvard. Holmes wants to demonstrate that for all their differences, these men belong to a single "anti-liberal tradition," a tradition dangerously wrong in its understanding of political life. His purpose is to vindicate the liberal traditionfrom Locke and Montesquieu to Madison and Mill-and refute the erroneous arguments of the anti-liberals. Holmes engages his subject intelligently and artfully, but in the end his own attitudes underline the cogency of many elements in the anti-liberal argument. Holmes' fairness in his account of his antagonists is immediately called into question by his decision to begin with Maistre and Schmitt. For Maistre-one of the greatest stylists in the 44
French language-a veritable anti-Voltaire could never resist the temptation to epater les bourgeoisie; his writing is filled with provocative, extremist aphorisms. Maistre is also maddeningly complex, with some of his darkest thoughts appearing in works published only after his death. Yet Holmes builds his case primarily on these posthumous works. To claim this singular thinker as the fount of any tradition is dubious in itself. Nor does Holmes ever actually argue that his subjects can be said to have influenced one another; "guilt" is simply inferred from ideological affinity. Schmitt's prominent place in Holmes' anti-liberal canon, on the other hand, directly confronts us with the suggestion that anti-liberalism is essentially linked with fascism. And this takes us to the heart of Holmes' project. Holmes repeatedly claims he is not trying to identify contemporary anti-liberalism-the communitarians-with fascism, but the claim is disingenuous. He does distinguish between "hard" and "soft" anti-liberals, but it happens that the three deceased anti-liberals he discusses are all "hard" while his three living specimens are all "soft." Holmes clearly intends to present contemporary critics of liberalism with a great decision: either they recognize that their anti-liberalism is so "soft" that it amounts to a mere quibble within liberalism, or they persist in their posture of total critique, in which case they must acknowledge fascism as an elder brother; nothing in between is possible. To attract the communitarians to liberal orthodoxy, then, Holmes denies that liberalism is a complete theory of man that encourages a particular range of virtues and modes of life and rules out others. Instead, he presents liberalism as a minimal set of noncontroversial practices to which no one could reasonably object. He thus directs our attention away from the social criticism at which the anti-liberals excel and raises questions about political institutions. In a discussion of MacIntyre, for example, he writes, "Modern liberal societies glorify instrumental relations between human beings; we are told by MacIntyre, as if the abolition of slavery was a negligible affair." This is Holmes at his best and worst, for while abolition was no small achievement, Holmes must know perfectly well that this is not responsive to MacIntyre's point. In context, this formulation would seem to imply that for Holmes any noninstrumental relation is slavery. In the second part of this book Holmes addresses what he takes to be the permanent structure of anti-liberal thought, dissecting in turn the charges against liberalism of atomization, moral scepticism, and selfishness that he has uncovered in the writings of the anti-liberals. In these chapters he pursues two strategies to defend liberalism. Against those 45
who understand it to be anarchically individualistic and hostile to all authority and to the common good, Holmes argues that liberalism is in fact constructive of community: it is not hostile to authority per se but only to "illegitimate" authority. (This of course begs the highly theoretical and hotly contested question of what constitutes legitimacy.) He argues, moreover, that if liberal society does coincidentally encourage certain social evils, these are inextricably bound up with the fundamental political goods that liberalism alone has secured; such discrete evils must therefore be tolerated. This line of argument is not original, but it remains the most persuasive defence available to liberalism in the Anglo-American world. Where this defence is open to question is in its boast of liberal uniqueness in securing the indispensable political good of domestic peace. This question comes to light when Holmes turns to history. Here he protests an antiliberal habit of "antonym substitution," in which original oppositions formulated to further liberal purposes (rights vs. arbitrary rule) are transposed into new contrarieties that place the liberal position in a less flattering light (rights vs. duties). He argues plaintively that such substitutions result in bad history. Without historical context, he says, it becomes impossible to understand the "moral motivation" of the early liberal theorists, who among other things first embraced the idea of individual rights. (At no point, of course, does Holmes address seriously, much less sympathetically, the moral motivation behind the anti-liberals' rejection of rights-talk.) Yet by Holmes' own account, alluding to the summum malum of seventeenth-century religious war constitutes a dubious defence of liberalism, for him himself begins the antiliberal tradition with Maistre (1753-1821) rather than with the patriarchalist advocate of hereditary kingship, Robert Filmer (1588-1653), or the champion of the divine right claims of Louis XIV, Bishop Bossuet (1627-1704). If context is called for, many anti-liberals might well agree that the liberal theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had more convincing arguments than their opponents. That historical judgment says nothing about the disputes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the disputes in which Holmes' anti-liberals are engaged. The decisive "argument" for liberalism appears to rest on anachronism. Returning to the present, Holmes writes that he finds communitarian anti-liberalism necessarily dangerous because the group identities celebrated in communitarian theories must be formed by making a "friend- foe" distinction, a term of art from Schmitt. Whether or not this correctly describes the communitarian project, Holmes either fails to understand or 46
refuses to recognize that his own position rests on a friend-foe distinction. His world is radically divided between-liberals and anti-liberals. On one side we find reasonable secular cosmopolitans such as Stephen Holmes, and on the other we find everyone else-notably, the "ethnic workers" championed by Christopher Lasch. Holmes doesn't even take the trouble to ask any ethnic workers what they think about political and social questions; he knows a priori that they are given to racism, sexism, and other atavisms. What particularly horrifies him is that such reactionary populations have in the 1980s found theoretical champions from among the liberal classes. Holmes‘s claim, as far as I understand it, is that ranting‘s like these – which he calls ‗bold‘ and ‗brilliant‘ – form part of the intellectual ancestry and thus the heritage of modern communitarianism. He doesn‘t agree with them, of course; his chapters have helpful sections entitled ‗A Rebuttal‘ and ‗Defects in the Argument‘. But these are thoughts that are supposed to have inspired and moulded the ‗anti-liberal tradition‘ to which Holmes, as a defender of liberalism, wants to respond to the critics. The second of his anti-liberals is Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), a Nazi jurist and political theorist, of whom the best that could be said is what he, said himself to his interrogators at Nuremberg: ‗I am an intellectual adventurer.‘ He is in the Anatomy presumably to remind us that when modern anti-liberals like Alasdair MacIntyre or Michael Sandel talk of the rootlessness of the liberal individual and his lack of ‗constitutive attachments‘, they are using language redolent of earlier attacks on ‗rootless‘ and ‗cosmopolitan‘ Jews. Holmes insists he is not saying that late-20th-century communitarians are in danger of turning us or themselves into fascists, anti-semites or bloodthirsty ultramontanists. ‗I am not worried about the practical consequences of their ideas,‘ he says. ‗They benefit from historical circumstances that make them politically harmless.‘ Indeed, one of his themes is a contrast between ‗hard‘ anti-liberals like Maistre and Schmitt and more recent writers whose anti-liberalism, though robust and ambitious in its philosophical expression, is softened or ‗diluted‘ in its political output. Thus, Holmes might meaningfully be described as an "anti-communitarian," for he often seems positively to loathe the spirit of settled community enjoyed by groups such as the ethnic workers. While he does not seek to destroy his "foe" through violence, he does seem to hope that "irreversible social processes" will eliminate the basis for their Gemeinschaft altogether. In the event that the tide of history might fail, liberals like Holmes have resort to 47
(re-)education in the public school monopoly and ultimately to the coercive enforcement of novel individual "rights" against communities that seek to defend their norms through democratic legislation. Holmes emphasizes the priority of practices and political institutions: the sovereign political institution for all contemporary liberal theorists is the undemocratic judiciary, that branch of government most completely controlled by those who share a liberal understanding of the good life. A liberalism that has devolved in practice into an oligarchy of those whose values are seriously questioned by the majority of a nation's citizens is eminently deserving of criticism. In fin de siècle America, "anti-liberal" voices are needed to remind us that liberal values are themselves dangerously irresponsible unless supported by non-liberal virtues. . Against this picture, Holmes outlines the classical liberal arguments most often misrepresented by the enemies of liberalism and most essential to the future of democracy. Constructive as well as critical, this book helps us see what liberalism is and must be, and why it must and always will engender deep misgivings along with passionate commitment. Stephen Holmes in this critical essay on Schmitt noted that Schmitt himself after the war tried to impose the view that his book on Hobbes was ‗harmlessly liberal in spirit', thereby trying to hide a strongly anti-Semitic, series of arguments and covering up his embarrassing Nazi sympathies. 3.3
SCHMITT AS THE CONTEMPORARY HOBBES Carl Schmitt is referred to as the Thomas Hobbes of the 20th century due to his
tendencies to base his philosophies on the 17th century realist. In the following work, it will be explained how the realist philosophies of both, the more modern, and the original Thomas Hobbes hold not only similar views but also contrast on key international relations topics. To start off, Thomas Hobbes‘s theories on international relations, particularly his theory of Natural Law will be broken down to better understand the historical realist thinker. Carl Schmitt and his infamously controversial ‗concept of the political‘ will then be analysed in order to comprehend his view of the international arena. To gain a further understanding of why Hobbes and Schmitt are called ‗parallel thinkers in different centuries,‘ their philosophies on non-state actors in international relations system will be compared and examined. Lastly, to gain more of an appreciation for the originality of each theorist, their views on the justification of conflict in the international system will be explained and observed. Essentially, the composition will look to prove that although Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt are classed together as realist, they are nonetheless completely dissimilar on how they define the international system. Carl Schmitt‘s long-term interest in Thomas 48
Hobbes is well known and, to anyone familiar with the writings of Carl Schmitt, it is easily inferred from his writings. The clearest expression of this interest is the fact that Schmitt subsequently turned his lectures on Leviathan into a book in 1938, entitled Der Leivathan in tier Staatslebre des Thomas Hobbes –Sinnand Fehlslag eines politischen Symbols. Thomas Hobbes is mistaken to be classified by many as an ‗extreme realist, or rather ‗some who regard the international arena as pure anarchy in which law could have no meaning and aggression could always be justified by the dictates of self interest. He should be more considered a rationalist since his views tend to lean against the unchanging pessimism of the typical realist school of thought. The reason why most find Thomas Hobbes to be such an extreme realist is due to his famous theory the ‗Laws of Nature,‘ or Natural Law. Hobbes‘ Natural Law applies to a society in which there is an absence of a sovereign to compel order among individuals. He then proceeds to say that parallelism exists between the individual man and the individual state and that no matter, all individuals are equal. Hobbes states that Natural Law is brought about by the absence of peace; which he defines as the best situation where men can be assured that their death can be prolonged the longest, since life is man‘s greatest possession. Basically, he explains men, in a state without peace, will defend themselves by any means possible, that defense is a right of man that cannot be taken away, and that all covenants made by men are binding since men only make covenants to ensure security. Essentially, Thomas Hobbes believes that since a state of peace is the ultimate goal for all men, a world of peace is the ultimate goal for all states. Natural Law is simply the way individuals act when anticipation of conflict can be foreseen. Thus, to Hobbes, anarchy and lawlessness do exist in the international system but are nonetheless conditional. Also Thomas Hobbes relies very heavily on the philosophies and teachings of the classic realist Thucydides. Like Thucydides‘ theory that the pressures from war and civil unrest would create the same circumstances no matter the situation, Thomas Hobbes believes Natural Law can be applied to any part of the history of humanity. Essentially, Hobbes, like Thucydides, simplifies man to be a predictable self interest based actor in the anarchic system of international politics. Carl Schmitt holds the basic notion that the international system is controlled by the political. He defines the political to be any force that will bring about the conflict of friend against foe. Through the use of various antitheses, such as the aesthetic controversy of 49
beautiful versus ugly, the moral dilemma good versus evil, and the economic thought over profit versus loss, Schmitt claims that the only antithesis in the world that holds the possibility to bring about an existential result is the predicament of friend versus foe. Schmitt states that the willingness to die and to kill will present itself only in a situation of friend versus foe. Thus he moves on to point out that any group that is willing to allow its members to die or to kill for the sake of cause enters ‗the political.‘ Hence, it can be simply observed that Schmitt sees politics as simply a synonym for the pre-emptive thought of war. In his own theory, he believes the only actors in the international system are friends and enemies. Schmitt continues on by stating his abhorrence for ideal ideologies such as liberalism and pacifism. As a stark patron of the political himself, he believes that liberal ideologies negate the political and make it harder to observe politics. Schmitt favors politics so much because it is the source of seriousness in life and allows one to sacrifice one‘s life or to kill for the sake of a group‘s cause. Thus, he states that liberalism only hinders the world from observing politics as it provides temporary cooperation as opposed to conflict. Schmitt believes that the only reason as to why alliances, international organizations and pacts are formed is out of self-interest to ensure security against a state‘s foes. Thus, liberalism to Schmitt is nothing more but the cause of mere delays in ‗politics.‘ In fact, under the definition of Schmitt, natural law is and forever will be the political. When examining the role of non-state actors in the eyes of both Hobbes and Schmitt, it can obviously be seen that they hold parallel views that can be seen to coincide with modern day structural realism. To properly explain Thomas Hobbes‘s view on non-state actors, his theory of the Laws of Nature must be taken into consideration. His third Law of Nature addresses that the individual will enter into a contract only for security purposes. ‗Men shall keep their agreements or promises is only binding in conditions of security and security only exists where there is a power to coerce possible defaulters into keeping their contracts. ‗Thus, Hobbes argues that contracts created by individuals are solely conditional based on their needs for security and are not symbols of international cooperation. Henceforth, Hobbes sees such non-governmental organizations, international treaties, and other non-state actors as provisional and in, what he considers to be, a system of anarchy individual states are the sole actors and decision makers. Similar to Hobbes‘ perspective, Schmitt sees third party pacts in his political system of friend versus foe as useless and a simple waste of time. As previously stated with Carl 50
Schmitt, liberal based international organizations and treaties who strive for a world order are simply a delay to political forces. In resemblance to the Hobbesian view on conditional agreements, Schmitt views non-state organizations as just a different means to ensuring state security and building up against ‗the enemy.‘ For example, Schmitt was an admirer of the American ‗Monroe Doctrine‘ not because of its protection of Central and South American states against European powers, but because it was a form of American imperialism in the form of an international treaty. Hence, it can be seen that both realist thinkers believe that, like most structural realists, the anarchic system is composes solely of state based actors. In order to see contrasting views of the great realist thinkers, justified warfare needs to be examined on each account. Much like Thucydides classical account on the nature of man, Hobbes believes that competition, glory and diffidence make up the causes of conflict. Competition is driven by man‘s need for gain in order to build up their own security while glory is chased for the reason of reputation so that an image of power can be built for a defense against threat. However in the end, fear is the sole key factor that gives a state to justification to engage in war and is the only justification to take life. Mutual fear, according to Hobbes, is not just a fear of an individual of another, but rather is the fear of the anticipation of violence and death. As a result, man‘s natural right to life and self defense comes into play and gives the individual the legitimate right to fight until threat of death is cleared from sight. It is out of fear that individuals form commonwealths and enter into covenants to ensure self-security. ‗Covenants undertaken through fear, like other acts undertaken through fear and threats…are still morally significant.‘ Furthermore, the state, formed by the agreement or covenant of man, has an obligation to ensure that death be prolonged as long as possible. Although Hobbes does believe that individuals do hold the rationality to obtain peace, all men are evil by nature and cooperation is nothing more than a farce. While on the contrary, Carl Schmitt surrounds the fact that justified warfare arouses from a state‘s sole desire to maintain a way of life. Unlike Hobbes‘s theory that the state exists through the mutual agreement of individual men to prolong life, Schmitt believes the state is formed by mutual agreement in order to consecrate the pact to fight common enemies who threaten their way of life. In Schmitt‘s Just-War Theory, he explains that the state will foster the notion that the enemy is morally evil and that in justified warfare; states should disregard conduct acceptable to wartime conflict. Essentially, in the eyes of Carl Schmitt, members of 51
groups hold the responsibility to not only kill for the sake of a way of life but also are expected to risk their life as well for the cause; thus going against Hobbes‘s opinion that justified war should have the moral basis to protect life. In the political, the antithesis of friend versus foe is justification enough to enter into conflict. Nonetheless, Schmitt holds a firm disagreement with Hobbes that justified war is not only immoral but will eventually lead to world mass destruction. The both extremely controversial and widely praised philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt can be viewed as both radically contrasting and corresponding. Thomas Hobbes‘s reliance on the classical realist theories of Thucydides as well as his commended more contemporary theory on the Laws of Nature make his position on the realist spectrum very questionable. However, it is clear that Carl Schmitt‘s extremist view of the international system as a war driven world of friends versus foes reveals him as an extreme realist. It is clearly seen that both Hobbes and Schmitt‘s theories closely resemble modern day structural realist philosophies on the anarchy of the world and the existence of only state-based actors. On the contrary, when it comes to the question of morality in the system of international relations, Hobbes and Schmitt could not be more divergent. Although Hobbes holds a firm notion that law and morality cannot exist outside the state, he nonetheless believes that the reason for a state to go to war is to preserve the lives of individuals; as opposed to Schmitt‘s believe that the cause of the group demands life sacrifice from the individual in order to preserve a way of life. Henceforth, although Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt‘s realist philosophies are seen as fundamentally similar, Schmitt‘s typical realist-pessimistic view on human nature is more of an antithesis than a similarity to Hobbes‘s rationalistic and somewhat hopeful view of the individual‘s conquest for peace. 3.4
CONCLUSION We can conclude that on this chapter, Schmitt is a political theorist who is open to
criticisms on his work. Schmitt was said to have responded well to his critics even we could see that he did a rework on his theory of sovereignty due to criticism about the work. His friend Leo Strauss also criticized his Concept of Political. Carl Schmitt is also seen as the contemporary of Hobbes because of the influence Hobbes had on Schmitt. Schmitt was said to have read Hobbes work on Leviathan and did a work on it. Schmitt is seen as the modern man from Hobbes influence. He modernized Hobbes sovereignty. Schmitt is indeed the 20th century of Thomas Hobbes. 52
REFERENCES 1.
www.englishdictionary.com – Definition of pathology Accessed 13th October 2015
2.
Arendt Hannah ―What is authority‖ in Between past and future (1968)
3.
www.englishdictionary.com – Definition of authority Accessed 13th October 2015
4.
www.stanfordphilosophyencyclopaedia.com – Concept of the political and critique of liberalism Accessed 14th October 2015
5.
Michelbach A. Philip and Andrew Poe - Renewing Democratic Authority: Hamlet’s Politics with (and against) Carl Schmitt Accessed 14th October 2015
6.
Bielefeldt Heiner – Deconstruction of the “Rule of Law”: Carl Schmitt’s Philosophy of the Political, (Franz Steiner Verlag, (1996)
7.
William E. Scheuerman - Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism, (Cambridge University Press, (1996)
8.
Henrie C. Mark– Book Review in Stephen Holmes Anti Liberalism Accessed 16th October 2015
9.
Bennett Collins - Thomas Hobbes vs. Carl Schmitt Assessed on 20th October 2015
10.
Thomsen Als Jacob - Carl Schmitt the Hobbesian of the 20th Century? (University of Roseilde, Denmark (1997)
11.
Schmitt Carl and Strauss Leo: The Hidden Dialogue by Heinrich Meier. Translated by J. Harvey Lomax. Foreword by Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1995).
53
CHAPTER FOUR CARL SCHMITT ANTI LIBERALISM AND ITS CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE 4.0
INTRODUCTION Carl Schmitt is a political theorist whose views are seen as a radical change in the
political environs. His works and thought have made an impact in the German society and beyond. His relevance in the political society can be said to be unexplainable. He was a crown jurist, a political activist, a lecturer and a man whose work is based on faith. In this work we are going to assess his views and thoughts and demonstrate how his thoughts can be of relevance or help to Nigerian crisis. 4.1
ASSESSMENT OF CARL SCHMITT ANTI-LIBERALISM In the course of researching on Carl Schmitt, we came in contact with a lot of his views
and works that can be plausible and not plausible. Schmitt is a German scholar that was influenced by the Weimar republic and its rule in Germany at that time. A philosopher is said to be a product of his own culture, age/time, orientation, school of thought, and the influences around him at that time. Schmitt was influenced by this factors listed above. He was a man that sought for what goes for the state and how a state can progress. He was more about the state been wholly in charge of all the affairs that take place. Schmitt‘s theory is said to be absolutist and decisionist in nature. We would love to asses two of his work that has been of relevance to my work. This works are: The Political Theology and The Concept of The Political. Each of this works had an ingredient that was important in my course of study. The Political Theology which was written by Carl Schmitt in 1922, in German was later translated to English by George Schwab in 1934. He talked about sovereignty. In this work we see Schmitt talking about sovereignty in four chapters of his work. He defined sovereignty, discussed the problems in sovereignty as the problem of legal form and decisionist, he also talked about political theology and then the counterrevolutionary philosophy of the state (de Maistre, Bonald, Donso Cortѐs). These were the sub topics discussed in this his work. Schmitt‘s idea of sovereignty is as an attack on liberalism or rather a better political theory. He saw liberalism as the triumph of a greedy and disloyal middle class. Schmitt derives a communal value from intergroup conflict. Group conflict lends direction and significance to the individual's life. Nationalism and war likewise give meaning to politics, and liberals thoroughly misunderstand the nature of politics. Politics is conflict between 54
groups, not simply social interests or ideas, and it must be resolved by the destruction of one side rather than by compromise, as liberals mistakenly believe. Schmitt's claim that liberal democracies cannot survive in a dangerous world is, as Holmes notes, thoroughly unconvincing. In his Political Theology Schmitt's definition of sovereignty and on how he applied this concept in his efforts to save the Weimar state. As already mentioned, World War I was decisive in forming Schmitt's conception of the state and, hence, of sovereignty. Concerned about the conditions that obtained in the wake of Germany's defeat and the cenuifirgal forces that pulled at the new republic, Schmitt sought a theoretical construct with which to analyze and combat these challenges. He adopted the view that "all significant concepts of the modem theory of the state are secularized theological concepts." But he went on to show that even though a concept such as the omnipotent lawgiver could be traced to the omnipotent God, the meaning of the concept had changed profoundly over the centuries. Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. Only this definition can do justice to a borderline concept. Contrary to the imprecise terminology that is found in popular literature, a borderline concept is not a vague concept, but one pertaining to the outermost sphere. This definition of sovereignty must therefore be associated with a borderline case and not with routine. It will soon become clear that the exception is to be understood to refer to a general concept in the theory of the state, and not merely to a construct applied to any emergency decree or state of siege. The assertion that the exception is truly appropriate for the juristic definition of sovereignty has a systematic, legal-logic foundation. The decision on the exception is a decision in the true sense of the word. Because a general norm, as represented by an ordinary legal prescription, can never encompass a total exception, the decision that a real exception exists cannot there- fore be entirely derived from this norm. When Robert von Mohl said that the test of whether an emergency exists cannot be a juristic one, he assumed that a decision in the legal sense must be derived entirely from the content of a norm. But this is the question. In the general sense in which Mohl articulated his argument, his notion is only an expression of constitutional liberalism and fails to apprehend the independent meaning of the decision. Subsumed under Schmitt's definition are, of course, the sovereign's ability to decide "what must be done to eliminate" the exception and the ability to decide whether order and stability have been restored and normality regained-attributes of sovereignty that were 55
explicit in the works of such thinkers as Bodin, Hobbes, and Donoso Cortes, according to Schmitt. The restoration of order and stability was the precondition for the reinstatement of norms. According to Schrnitt, "for a legal system to make sense, a normal situation must exist, and he is sovereign who definitely decides whether this normal situation actually exists." Arguing that the essence of sovereign power precludes it from being subject to law all the time, even in exceptional times, Schrnitt maintained that the endeavours of the sovereign can only be understood in the overall context of the legal order within which this authority operates. He accepted the new German order and desired to strengthen it against the centrifugal forces that had developed in the republic; he considered the emergency provision of the Weimar constitution adequate for meeting crises; and as a close examination of his writings of the Weimar period will show, he acknowledged the interdependence of the state and the constitution. According to his view, interpreting the pro- visions of the constitution in a manner that strengthened the state's raison d'ѐtre, assuring citizens of order and stability, would enable the constitutional order of the state to function normally. We could see that the sovereign for Schmitt is a person with exception. Sovereign authority is one that makes all legal decisions for the state without waiting for the constitution to mandate when this decision should be taken. A sovereign dictator for Schmitt makes decisions for the state based on the legitimacy placed on him, he has the legitimate power to decide when to go to war and when not. He knows his friend and his enemy and deals with the state enemy accordingly. Schmitt theory on sovereignty has been said to come under scrutiny due to the over emphasis on power and authority resting on one person. Scholars say this as a wrong move in a political atmosphere. They believe that a state of exception is sometimes not really good. Decisions sometimes should be duly consulted from different people or different political heads before one affirms a decision that involves the state. But for Schmitt when a decision is been debated on it‘s seen to have selfish or compromised outcome, which for him is not good for the state. He believes that a sovereign dictator is better than a parliamentary government. Carl Schmitt the so-called "crown jurist of the Third Reich," articulated a vision of politics dominated by the distinction between friend and enemy. For Schmitt, this distinction was not merely an attribute of the political. It was foundational; it served as a prerequisite, the condition sine qua non of the political, which, in turn was a logical precursor of the state. 56
This key concept is declared in the first sentence of The Concept of the Political: "The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political‖. In this work he discussed the friend and enemy distinction as well as the critique on liberalism. Schmitt used The Concept of the Political to discuss the key issues in politics. The division of the world into allies and opponents is likely to resonate with many readers; it also squared conveniently with the notions of the National Socialists. Schmitt was, of course, not the first to understand the political utility of the friend/enemy antithesis. From Cato the Elder to the Crusaders, from the American demonization of the "Hun" to their criticism of "godless communism," extending to Islamicist use of the term "the Great Satan," moments of crisis lend urgency to such characterizations. As Oren Gross and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin have noted, "counter-terrorism measures often actively produce and construct a suspect community. One is either with 'us' or with 'them.' There is no middle way." For Schmitt, however, the idea of the enemy was more than an instrument of politics or policy. It was antecedent to the very existence of the state. The fundamental status of this concept did not prevent Schmitt, in his Nazi reincarnation, from using the idea of the enemy as a theoretical basis for identifying the Jews with that baleful role (or hamper leaders of the Third Reich in doing so, either). Schmitt saw a need for war in the political environ. For him an enemy of the state should be dealt with squarely, and that if it results to war, let the war be. The war could foster peace and unity in the state. The state should know its friends and its enemy. "The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism," Schmitt wrote. War is the most violent form that politics takes, but, even short of war, politics still requires that you treat your opposition as antagonistic to everything in which you believe. It's not personal; you don't have to hate your enemy. But you do have to be prepared to vanquish him if necessary. Also what we call "a democracy," Schmitt would call a "liberal constitutional state." In a Schmittian democracy, spheres of social activity normally thought of as non-political can integrate with the political, as long as one or more such spheres intensifies to the extremity of furnishing a casus belli in regards to some other internal or external group of people. Schmitt lists as examples religious, cultural, economic, legal, and scientific areas of activity. In a Schmittian democracy, all of these realms are potentially political. Thus, democracy is unattainable if society is sharply divided, to the point of possible warfare, on issues of great moment. A workable society requires that the population be, in Schmitt's terms, "homogeneous." Homogeneity implies a sharing of important cultural values. This unanimity rests, in turn, on a common religion, common socioeconomic precepts, and common 57
ethnicity. For Schmitt, democracy is not inconsistent with a dictatorship. If such a unified society elects to be governed by an autocrat, the choice is "democratic." Indeed, for Schmitt, the truly democratic state is the total state, in which all important spheres of life are integrated with the governance of the state. Schmitt critique on liberalism was also seen in this work. His attack on liberalism was as a result of futile rule of the Weimar republic in Germany at that time. Schmitt's understanding of the political provides the basis for his critique of liberalism. On a descriptive level, Schmitt claims that liberalism has a tendency to deny the need for genuine political decision, to suggest that it is neither necessary nor desirable for individuals to form groups that are constituted by the drawing of friend-enemy distinctions.
Schmitt argued that liberals,
properly speaking, can never be political. Liberals tend to be optimistic about human nature, whereas "all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil." Liberals believe in the possibility of neutral rules that can mediate between conflicting positions, but to Schmitt there is no such neutrality, since any rule -- even an ostensibly fair one -- merely represents the victory of one political faction over another. Liberals insist that there exists something called society independent of the state, but Schmitt believed that pluralism is an illusion because no real state would ever allow other forces, like the family or the church, to contest its power. Liberals, in a word, are uncomfortable around power, and, because they are, they criticize politics more than they engage in it. No wonder that Schmitt admired thinkers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, who treated politics without illusions. We could see that Schmitt love for politics is what led him to write the Concept of the Political this work gives us a great insight of how Schmitt‘s feel the state should be governed. Schmitt desire for a peaceful and unified state led him to the distinction between the friend and enemy. This distinction is needed in a political society for the sovereign to make decisions that would favour the state against its enemies. This work The Concept of the Political is said to have come under attack by some scholars. A friend of Schmitt known as Leo Strauss was said to have criticized his Concept of the political and did a work on the book. 4.2
LESSONS FROM CARL SCHMITT ANTI-LIBERALISM Carl Schmitt is a political theorist who believed in the power of politics in a society. He
believes that politics should be played in an atmosphere that decisions should be done by an exception or a sovereign dictator. Schmitt is of the view that politics should play a high role 58
in the society. For him having political environs facilitates the growth of the economy and the well-being of the state. Schmitt can be called a lover of politics and someone that thrived so hard in his work to see that politics is been played by people who are meant to play it. His works are mostly written on politics. His political theory is been reckoned in Germany and beyond. Carl Schmitt is not a popular scholar in the English world, like the likes of his fellow German colleagues known as: Martin Heidegger, Hegel, Edmund Husserl, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx etc. His is also seen as a conservative. But his work has somehow been found in the constitution of the United States. He is a man that believes that humans are selfish and have self interest in anything. He was highly influenced by Hobbes, who believes that man is naturally evil and needs a leviathan to control him and his hunger. His theories were influenced by the situation or circumstances on ground in Germany at that point in time. Germany is seen as political society that has been in existence over the years. According to Hegel, the absolute spirit became objectified or fully rational in the German mind. This quote from Hegel shows that the Germans saw themselves as superior to others. The Germans have been in the act of politics for a while. Therefore Schmitt was a product of his time and his theories were based on his experiences in his society. Nigeria is said to be a country that is highly active in politics. Politics has a great role to play in Nigeria‘s social and economic areas. Nigeria is said to be the giant of Africa, a country that was colonized by the British. Nigeria is one of the largest in Africa. Its known for its natural resources like: Oil, Coal, Rubbers, Woods, etc. Nigeria is a country mixed with different people and languages. Nigeria is a country that‘s fully blessed with rich and fertile lands and water. Our country is blessed in such a way that we would be competing with nations like: America, China, Japan, Russia, Germany etc. But do to our lack of management from our leaders we are still rated as an under developed country or Third world country. Our political sector is not something worthy of appreciation. Our political sector is said to be disorganised and not up to the standard for the Internationals. Our politics is been played by people who have no proper training in politics or the act of politics, we have politicians who are in for their selfish interest and not the growth of the country or its economy. Politics in Nigeria is not been handled by the right parliament. Nigeria runs on a democratic government, a government that‘s meant to be for the people, by the people and the people. Instead it‘s been run for the leaders, by the leaders and the leaders. The public has no say to the matters or problems. The needs of the people are shunned while the leaders enrich themselves. Nigeria is a country that can oversee all the problems of the people, but do to the 59
corrupt leaders that we have we can‘t seem to find any trustworthy leader that can help us from our problems.
Our problems as a country is great or would I say many, but still the
executives been voted in seems to be worried more about its allowances that should be allocated to them. The executives are been watched fight over whose political party should be the leader and whose shouldn‘t. They say the youths are the leaders of tomorrow but we sit and watch the way our leaders of today fight in their parliamentary houses were decisions about the affairs of the state like: Education, Power supply or the generation of power supply, Job employment, Building of refineries, Good transportation system, Good roads, Availability of natural resources, Lack of security etc., should be deliberated or discussed for the welfare of the people. Our woefully tales are quite a lot. In this work, we would like to use the lessons learnt from Carl Schmitt anti-liberalism to see how we can impact our political realm with his views. Schmitt anti-liberalism is seen as a an attack on liberalisms and its views. Liberalism holds the view that the society should be based on the rule of law, it also talks about individualism in the society. Schmitt saw a problem with their view and created a political theory that emphasis on the authority of a sovereign who would rule with exception, without waiting for the rule of law or legal norms. Also the sovereign would make us of the friend and enemy distinction for the affairs of the state. Now how can we incorporate Schmitt‘s theory into Nigeria and also see if it can serve a better ground in Nigeria. Schmitt sovereign dictator is someone Nigeria needs, our country is been ran by one political party with people of different interests towards the nation‘s growth. If we have a sovereign leader of exception who makes the decision for the state without him waiting for the approval of the cunny executive who are all up for themselves. A sovereign dictator would be able to do away with all corrupt practices and people in the government. Our nation would be able to fair well if the corrupt minds are either removed or eliminated. Our country can function if and only if all the corrupt minds and people are been discarded from the government. The people with clear and uncorrupted minds who have been trained in the act of governing or seeing to the welfare of the people are put in as leaders. Nigeria needs a fair share of fresh air from the corrupt leaders. We need an authoritative leader who knows what the state needs and works to get it; a person whose mind is been built or centred on the welfare of the people, whose vision is to carry Nigeria to the far height of the World and make it one of the greatest nations to be feared.
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The sovereign leader is one who should be able to differentiate between friend and enemy. In Nigeria, our sovereign leader is meant to understand the threat and eliminate it. Nigeria has the problem of insurgency in Nigeria, which have been said to have started in Nigeria since 2009. The cause of this insurgency is been known as a sect of Muslims who call themselves the ―Boko Haram‖. Boko Haram is an Islamist extremist group responsible for dozens of massacres of civilians and the abduction of more than 500 women and girls in its five-year insurgency in Nigeria. Boko haram was founded in Maiduguri in 2002 by the Muslim cleric Mohammed Yusuf. Boko Haram was largely contained to the northern part of the country in the beginning, before expanding its reach with the help of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the terrorist organization‘s affiliate in West Africa. The deadly bombings and brazen kidnappings are the hallmarks of the insurgent group, which has terrorized local populations and regularly engages the Nigerian military in bloody combat. It aims to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the government, then establish an Islamic caliphate in its place. Clashes between Muslims and Christians, common in Nigeria, radicalized the group, as did frictions with local authorities that escalated into retaliatory attacks. After the group‘s founder was killed by the Nigerian police in 2009, his followers went underground, swearing vengeance. Since then, Boko Haram has carried out a number of increasingly lethal attacks on villages, government buildings, police stations, prisons, churches and even mosques. By 2011, the heavily armed group had expanded its attacks to other parts of the country, carrying out audacious strikes in the capital, Abuja, where a car bomb detonated at the United Nations headquarters killed nearly two dozen people in August 2011. In early 2012, Boko Haram conducted a series of attacks in Kano, northern Nigeria‘s largest city, killing more than 100 people, then the group‘s deadliest strike. The group continued to engage in mounting battles with the Nigerian military. Earlier this year in Maiduguri, more than 500 people were killed when security forces responded to what the military portrayed as a jailbreak attempt by Boko Haram. In its effort to undermine the efforts of Nigerian government towards development, Boko Haram militants have tried to violently root out Western influence by attacking schools. Roughly translated, Boko Haram means ―Western education is forbidden.‖ Boko Haram continually slaughter teenage boys, some burned alive, others are enrolled in the contingent of insurgents. That atrocity, like many others, was quickly forgotten in Nigeria and barely noticed outside of it. But the group attracted international attention, when, on April 15,2014 militants marched into a girls‘ school in Chibok, in the remote northeast corner of the 61
country, kidnapped more than 250 teenagers, loaded them onto trucks and drove them into a dense forest at night. The government‘s failure to respond to the enraged parents of the girls prompted a rare, grass-roots protest movement to pressure President Goodluck Jonathan to take action. Several hundred women marched on the Parliament building in Abuja, and a social media campaign employing the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls took off. The situation has worsened since then: a Human Rights Watch report released in October estimated that at least 500 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since it began its insurgency in 2009. The failure to rescue the girls ―appears to have emboldened Boko Haram to step up abductions elsewhere‖. This insecurity hasn‘t been handled well by the former authorities and the present authorities. The Boko haram menace has been tolerated in Nigeria for almost six years now still no signs of change or the exposure of the evil mind behind these insurgences. The security personnel‘s of Nigeria are said to not have the right equipment to combat these insecurities. Politics is been played in the security system, no one wants to sacrifice for the country. The evil men roam the place with their evil deeds and no one to call them to justice. This is why Nigeria needs a sovereign dictator that would be able to look at these problems and eliminate them. The sovereign has to end the reign of evil people or the enemies to the state. His job is to fish out these enemies and call their bluffs and deal with them squarely. Schmitt‘s theory can play an important role in Nigeria, it‘s a theory Nigeria needs to try out and see if it would make an impact in our political sphere. 4.3
CONCLUSION Schmitt relevance to the contemporary time is one that you could see through his political
thought. His works and theories made him standout among his peers. His views about how politics should be run in the society, his impact during the Nazi regime. Schmitt's significance for modern political thought includes his theory of the state of emergency (Ausnahmezustand), a condition that arises when the very existence of the state and its constitutional order are threatened by external or internal forces. In the state of emergency, legal norms are set aside as a new "sovereign" assumes power. Schmitt begins his other foundational work, Politische Theologie (1922), with the famous statement: "Souverän ist, der über den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet." The existence of states of emergency, états de siege, and other challenges to national stability and the effect that such a condition should or should not have on the legal order have been subjects of widespread scholarly interest for many decades. The relevance of the subject to current political debates about the powers of 62
the national executive vis-à-vis the challenge of transnational terror organizations requires no elaboration. Despite efforts by international judicial bodies such as the European Court of Human Rights to limit the extent to which signatory states may "derogate" from human rights treaty obligations in cases of national emergency, the "margin of appreciation," in fact, deference, accorded sovereign declarations of such emergencies remains wide, especially in the case of nations whose democratic credentials are not suspect. Schmitt makes it clear that "in critical situations" a state must be prepared to identify and designate the "domestic enemy" and deal with this enemy by extraordinary means, including "special laws"
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REFERNCES 1.
Schmitt Carl, Political Theology, Four chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty Trans. George Schwab, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1985)
2.
Schmitt Carl, The Concept of the Political Translated by George Schwab, Expanded Edition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, (1929)
3.
Wolfe Alan, Essay: The eerie relevance of fascist philosopher Carl Schmitt to contemporary America (Boston College, (2004)
4.
Rachlin D. Robert, Review of Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political (H-German, H-Net Reviews. October,( 2007)
5.
www.nytimes.com Explaining Boko Haram, Nigeria‘s Islamist Insurgency Accessed 1st of November 2015
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BIBLOGRAPHY Books by Carl Schmitt Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political Translated by George Schwab, Expanded Edition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, (1929) Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, Four chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty Translated by George Schwab, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1985) Schmitt, Carl Constitutional Theory, Translated by Jeffrey Seitzer, (Durham: Duke University Press, (2008) Schmitt, Carl, Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Translated Ellen Kennedy, (Cambridge (1985) Books related to this work Jacob Als Thomsen Carl Schmitt, The Hobbesian of the 20th century by, (University of Roskilde, Denmark, (1997) Accessed 15th February 2015 (1985) Preston Keith. The Political Theory of Carl Schmitt Accessed 20th February 2015 Sargent Lyman Tower University of Missouri- St. Louis Contemporary political ideologies: A comparative Analysis Fourteenth Edition (Australia: Wadsworth cengage learning) 2009 Schmitt Carl, Jewish Virtual Library Accessed 15th February 2015 Gutmann Amy Communitarian Critics of Liberalism Retrieved on 12th of June 2015 Daly Markate (Ed), San Francisco State University, Communitarianism: A New Public Ethics, Belmont, California: (Wadsworth Publishing Company) 1994 Sturgis Amy H, The Rise, Decline, and Re-emergence of Classical Liberalism (The Lockesmith Institute) 1994 Arendt, Hannah ―What is authority‖ in Between Past and Future (1968) Michelbach A. Philip and Andrew Poe - Renewing Democratic Authority: Hamlet‘s Politics with (and against) Carl Schmitt Accessed 14th October 2015
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Bielefeldt Heiner – Deconstruction of the ―Rule of Law‖: Carl Schmitt‘s Philosophy of the Political, (Franz Steiner Verlag, (1996) William E. Scheuerman - Carl Schmitt‘s Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism, (Cambridge University Press, (1996) Henrie C. Mark– Book Review in Stephen Holmes Anti Liberalism Accessed 16th October 2015 Bennett Collins - Thomas Hobbes vs. Carl Schmitt Assessed on 20th October 2015 Schmitt Carl and Strauss Leo: The Hidden Dialogue by Heinrich Meier. Translated by J. Harvey Lomax. Foreword by Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1995). Wolfe Alan, Essay: The eerie relevance of fascist philosopher Carl Schmitt to contemporary America (Boston College, (2004) Rachlin D. Robert, Review of Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political (H-German, H-Net Reviews. October, (2007) Online materials www.chegg.com Definition of Classical Liberalism Accessed on 3rd of March 2015 www.metapedia.com Anti liberalism Accessed on 6th of March 2015 www.dictionaryreference.com Anti-liberalism Accessed on 7th of March 2015 www.publicbookshelf.com – The Philosopher King: Socrates vision of Plato‘s Republic Accessed on 20th of August 2015 Hobbes Thomas - Leviathan from www.wikipedia.com Retrieved on 20th of August 2015 Aquinas Thomas - Theocracy from www.wikipedia.com Retrieved on 20th August 2015 www.englishdictionary.com – Definition of pathology Accessed 13th October 2015 www.englishdictionary.com – Definition of authority Accessed 13th October 2015 www.stanfordphilosophyencyclopaedia.com – Concept of the political and critique of liberalism Accessed 14th October 2015
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www.nytimes.com Explaining Boko Haram, Nigeria‘s Islamist Insurgency Accessed 1st of November 2015
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