Carl Schmitt is one of the most influential — and most controversial — jurists and political theorists of the twentieth century. Born in Plettenberg, Westphalia, on 11 July 1888, and died in the same city on 7 April 1985, Schmitt produced a vast and systematically coherent body of work spanning legal theory, theory of the state, political philosophy, and international law. His membership of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) in May 1933 and his intellectual activity during the Third Reich mean that his reception is inevitably marked by ethical and political tension. His subsequent estrangement from regime structures (around 1936, following attacks from the SS) did not dispel the controversy. Nonetheless, the analytical rigour of his work continues to generate first-order philosophical and legal debate.
Key Concepts
Political Theology and Sovereignty (Politische Theologie, 1922; 2nd ed. 1934): The most celebrated assertion in Schmitt appears in the opening of this work: “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception” (Souverän ist, wer über den Ausnahmezustand entscheidet). This thesis contains two inseparable elements. First, sovereignty resides not in the ordinary norm but in the decision that suspends the norm — in the capacity to declare a suspension of the normal legal order. Second, “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts”: the state of exception corresponds to the miracle in theology; the omnipotent legislator corresponds to the omnipotent God. Political theology is not metaphor but structural analysis of the forms of political legitimation.
The Concept of the Political (Der Begriff des Politischen, 1927; expanded 1932): Schmitt proposes that the political cannot be reduced to the economic, moral, aesthetic, or legal — it has its own criterion: the friend/enemy distinction (Freund/Feind-Unterscheidung). The “enemy” (Feind) is not a private adversary (inimicus) nor an economic rival: he is “the other, the stranger” (der Andere, der Fremde) in an existential and public sense — one whose form of life is sufficiently different to enter into conflict of maximum intensity. The political designates the extreme degree of association or dissociation. This distinction does not imply morality or a necessity of war, but identifies the threshold at which conflict may reach the point of actual confrontation. The consequence is that liberalism, by attempting to dissolve the political into the economic or the moral, does not eliminate conflicts but merely conceals them.
Constitutional Theory (Verfassungslehre, 1928): A fundamental distinction between Verfassung (constitution in a substantive sense — the fundamental political decision on the mode of being of the state) and Verfassungsgesetz (constitutional law — the positive provisions of the constitutional text). A parliamentary majority may amend constitutional laws but cannot alter the constitution in its substantive sense without a new constituent decision. Schmitt further distinguishes four concepts of constitution: the absolute (the concrete organisation of the state), the relative (a written document), the positive (the fundamental decision of the constituent power), and the ideal (a “good” constitution according to some normative standard).
Legality and Legitimacy (Legalität und Legitimität, 1932): A text from the final phase of the Weimar Republic. Schmitt distinguishes legality (conformity with the law in force) from legitimacy (the political foundation of power). He argues that the Weimar parliamentary system had lost legitimacy by becoming an instrument for parties seeking to use legality to destroy the constitutional state itself.
Critique of Liberal Parliamentarism (Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus, 1923; 2nd ed. 1926): Parliamentarism presupposes two principles: discussion (the clash of opinions produces political truth) and publicity (deliberations must be open and rationally controllable). Schmitt argues that modern parliaments have in practice ceased to function through rational discussion and instead operate through the negotiation of factional and party interests. The crisis of parliamentarism is not one of excess democracy, but rather that mass democracy and liberal parliamentarism rest on incompatible principles.
Nomos of the Earth and International Law (Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, 1950): In the post-war phase, Schmitt analyses the spatial order of international law. The Nomos is the originary appropriation of land (Landnahme) that founds a legal order. The European public law (jus publicum Europaeum) constructed between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries had “bracketed” war between sovereign states, rendering it relative rather than absolute. The dissolution of this nomos with the World Wars and the emergence of humanitarian universalism (League of Nations, UN) reinstates the just war on absolute moral grounds, paradoxically generating more total wars.
Influenced by
- Thomas Hobbes — sovereignty, state of nature, political decision
- Jean Bodin — theory of sovereignty
- Machiavelli — political realism
- Max Weber — typology of political legitimacy (incorporated critically)
- Catholic counter-revolutionaries: Joseph de Maistre, Donoso Cortés, Louis de Bonald — political theology and critique of liberalism
Influenced
- Leo Strauss — “Notes on Der Begriff des Politischen” (1932): Strauss and Schmitt engaged in a textual and epistolary debate; Strauss observed that Schmitt’s critique of liberalism still remained within the liberal horizon and called Schmitt to radicalise his position
- Walter Benjamin — the concept of the state of exception resonates in the Eighth and Eighteenth Theses On the Concept of History (1940)
- Giorgio Agamben — Homo Sacer (1995) and State of Exception (2003): Agamben takes up the state of exception as a paradigm of contemporary governance, in explicit dialogue with Schmitt and Benjamin
- Chantal Mouffe — The Democratic Paradox (2000) and On the Political (2005): Mouffe carries out a “democratic and agonistic appropriation” of Schmitt, replacing the friend/enemy distinction with adversary/antagonism and proposing a pluralist democracy that acknowledges the political without dissolving it into Habermasian consensus
- Ernesto Laclau — theory of populism and hegemony (Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, with Mouffe, 1985)
- Critical Legal Studies (in the United States)
Works
Gesetz und Urteil (1912); Politische Romantik (1919); Die Diktatur (1921); Politische Theologie (1922; 2nd ed. 1934) [Political Theology]; Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (1923) [The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy]; Der Begriff des Politischen (1927; expanded 1932) [The Concept of the Political]; Verfassungslehre (1928) [Constitutional Theory]; Der Hüter der Verfassung (1931); Legalität und Legitimität (1932) [Legality and Legitimacy]; Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (1950) [The Nomos of the Earth]; Theorie des Partisanen (1963); Politische Theologie II (1970); Ex Captivitate Salus (1950).
See also
Political Philosophy Sovereignty and the State Giorgio Agamben Chantal Mouffe
Recommended books:
The Concept of the Political — Carl Schmitt
Ver na Amazon →
Political Theology — Carl Schmitt
Ver na Amazon →