Was he right? Does the friend/enemy distinction form the essence of the political? Is the liberal attempt to do away with this distinction self defeating?
Carl Schmitt
Colton Gonzalez
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Connor Campbell
>the liberal attempt to do away with this distinction
What? He also never said getting rid of politics would be a bad thing.
Jace Green
I think that the evolution of American and French politics during their respective post-revolutionary period shows the transition from unity to faction within the context of politics, which would counter the thesis in OP.
The current liberal attempt at hegemony of political thought is something else. I suspect it derives from the secularization of most of the left side of the political spectrum, and politics filling the void where religion used to be. Hence the heresy of small government conservatism and libertarianism, and the enemy-other in the right, which is truly the pagan to their true faith.
Nathan Gutierrez
Someone who has read Schmitt, elaborate on his concepts regarding State of Emergencies and dictatorship, please
John Murphy
Yes, now realize that Trudeau has read Schmitt and understands him perfectly.
You cannot completely kill your enemy.
Oliver Nelson
What is there to elaborate on? There's always going to be someone outside the law and that person is the one who decides when its a state of emergency (when normal laws can be suspended). Liberals think this can be decided upon rationally and with oversight but it's just an illusion.
His distinction between democracy and parliamentarism is great. He accurately points out that democracy did not originate with representative government and cannot truly be ever represented. Again, liberals (american conservatives are still liberals btw) think parliaments are places where decisions can be made rationally but Schmitt says this is an illusion, they're subjected to money/power. No one is getting actual representation.
If democracy is a valid ideal, why can't it be actually practiced? Why let someone else do it for you? Here is where he starts to shift towards finding other forms of governance, namely because our societies have gotten so complex.
Brody Clark
the last essay in 4 chapters on the concept of sovereignty deals with liberalism in a pretty damning way. liberals are the 'chattering classes' , the people who want to postpone the inevitable decisive moment as long as possible, even to the point of claiming there isn't an actual decision to take. It isn't hard to see how this can end looping back into totalitarianism. Schmidt came to believe the theological construct of Sovereignty was too much of a burden and that it could be better to construct a corporate society that dispensed with sovereignty entirely. Probably similar to Bookchin or the confederalist project in Rojava, I guess.
Jaxson Cook
Sounds fucking great. Spengler has similar criticisms regarding the "dictatorship of money."
Josiah Edwards
(OP)
>Is the liberal attempt to do away with this distinction self defeating?
It is consistent for rawlsians to eat their own kind.
From behind the aptly named Veil of Ignorance, you can see no brown or white, no male or female, no rank either, only a finite number of people to distribute rights, positions, and resources.
Equality being the only way these things are being distributed, the rawlsian sees only one way to get more things for oneself, to be "more equal": the rawlsian is to eliminate the others, as many as possible, with no regard for rank, creed, ethnicity, color, sex, family relations, friendships, etc.
You will not distinguish any friend or foe behind the Veil of Ignorance, because on the other side there can only be foes.
Charles Parker
>please elaborate on 'x'
Colton Ramirez
How would he be similar to bookchin? Wasn't bookchin an anarchist and Schmitt a National Socialist?
Connor Gonzalez
Read Agamben's Homo Sacer.
Chase Perez
I had a feeling someone was going to post that, but I figured since I was asking someone to voluntarily speak about someone else's ideas instead of a professor to elaborate on their own it wouldn't matter to anyone. Guess I was wrong.
Jace Reyes
Concept of the Political and Nomos of the Earth are great too. He points out that part of your identity is formed by opposition to an enemy. Liberals ignore this, but it also means that you shouldn't wage total wars to completely annihilate your enemy. A war should be waged to end the risk posed by an enemy. A war's end should be peace with the enemy. In this sense, despite his Nazi affiliation, he's most definitely against a "final solution" that would completely eradicate the Jews.
He likes the idea of the treaty of Westphalia which sets certain rules for waging war, recognizing their aggressor in a pragmatic way (we fight now but later we make peace). Liberals want to believe in the notion of a world without wars and getting triggered by the idea of having rules for war which they see as a contradictory and inhumane but this is where Schmitt gets real clever.
When you abandon the notion of having rules for war, you end up with wars for human rights or "just wars" so to speak. Liberals now wage their wars with the idea that they're actually starting a war against war. It's subtle but instead of saying, my enemy wants to advance its power and claims and one day we shall make peace, Liberals end up saying, all war is injustifiable, if you start a war, we have to attack you because what you are doing is 100% wrong objectively (and we're in the right position to judge). In other words, they become wars based on "human rights." So if a nation wants to wage war (in its own interests), that's wrong, but in turn a nation can wage war justly in the name of international justice/rights.
This is wholly contradictory because to wage a war for humanity, your "enemy" is still human, so part of that humanity. So how can a human be an enemy to humanity? You end up implying that your enemy is not human and wage an inhuman war in the name of humanity. From your nice desire for perpetual peace you end up engaging in perpetual war. When you wage war in the name of morality you end up implicitly making your enemy inhuman.
This is in part why he's taking up by left-wing thinkers like Agamben (who is great btw, regardless of your political stance). Because he shows how Liberals are in many ways hypocrites and not truly left-wing and do not approach the goals they claim to want.
Also, I strongly disagree with those who associate Schmitt with neo-cons. That's not him at all.
Hunter Smith
Schmidt wasn't a committed national socialist, he was a ambitious professional jurist living through times of radical political change. His Weimar era writings are proposals for saving the Weimar republic, his nazi era writings are about dismantling weimar. He had lots of rivals within the party and ended up marginalised and with no real connection to power. His actual personal beliefs where more catholic conservative in nature. He's simmilar to bookchin in the sense he came to embrace a model which rejects the sovereign state.
Robert Allen
Nice post
Anthony Richardson
I'm not sure I agree with the comparison to Bookchin but you're right about the rest.
He did sort of write against the Nazis during Weimar, so it's possible to play up his association with them as mere opportunism but I don't think it was entirely. He realized there was a problem with liberal democracies, with parliamentary representation but he also knew that societies are now too complex to really have a form of direct democracy. It's true he didn't end up having a lot of influence with the Nazis and I think he even kind of felt bad for the Jewish persecution after the war(where his Catholicism really comes out, and the don't eliminate your enemies thing) but still resisted re-integration and never admitted culpability for associating with the Nazis and always felt that the way Germany was treated after the war was hypocritical and unjust. Basically he never ended up a Liberal but you can't accuse him of being a monster in any way.
Evan Green
> Also, I strongly disagree with those who associate Schmitt with neo-cons. That's not him at all.
I can see how Schmitt can be drawn on by neoconservatives in a rhetorical attempt to justify their positions, but, like almost every other major thinker associated with the neocons (Leo Strauss, Fukuyama, and others) who themselves are not really neocons, I agree that Schmitt would never approve of neoconservative policies and actions.
Brody Hill
The hypocrisy and cynicism behind liberal wars for human rights gets a good treatment from a left socialist perspective in Perry Anderson's recent American Foreign Policy and its Thinkers.
Wyatt Gonzalez
yes
Levi Mitchell
nice, will check out
Ayden Diaz
I think I now get what you mean with the comparison with Bookchin. I admittedly don't know Bookchin but you're right.