Carl Schmitt, 1888- 1985

1
Carl Schmitt, 1888- 1985
2

• He who fights with monsters should look to it
  that he himself does not become a monster. And
  when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also
  gazes into you.
• Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, paragraph 146

3
Schmitt

• Life
• Weimar Germany

4
(No Transcript)
5

• Only at the end did my suspicions of you, said
  Captain Delano to Benito Cereno get the better
  of me, and you know how wide of the mark they
  then proved."
• "Wide, indeed," said Don Benito, sadly "you were
  with me all day stood with me, sat with me,
  talked with me, looked at me, ate with me, drank
  with me and yet, your last act was to clutch for
  a villain, not only an innocent man, but the most
  pitiable of all men. To such degree may malign
  machinations and deceptions impose. So far may
  even the best men err, in judging the conduct of
  one with the recesses of whose condition he is
  not acquainted. But you were forced to it and
  you were in time undeceived. Would that, in both
  respects, it was so ever, and with all men."
• "I think I understand you you generalize, Don
  Benito and mournfully enough. But the past is
  passed why moralize upon it? Forget it. See, yon
  bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue
  sea, and the blue sky these have turned over new
  leaves

6

• Schmitt sees danger in the increasing sense of
  the State as a great enterprise -- ein grosser
  Betrieb (PT 65) Increasingly this plant is a
  huge industrial plant it runs on its own
  and the decisionistic and personalistic
  element in the concept of sovereignty is lost.
  (PT 68)

7
First problem

• our present stage technicity is the
  striving for a neutral sphere.
• When a people no longer has the strength or the
  will to hold itself to the realm of the
  political, the political does not thereby
  disappear from the world. It is only a weak
  people that perishes. (Concept of the Political

8
Second problem

• critique of liberalism as a clasa discutora .
• If a liberal is asked Christ or Barrabas, he
  responds with a proposal to adjourn or appoint a
  committee of investigation.

9
Sovereignty

• Sovereign is he who decides on the exceptional
  case. (PT, page 5)
• on (?)
• exceptional (?)
• NOT a theory of dictatorship

10
Law

• Against Kelsen all law is situational law. (PT
  13).
• Against Locke He did not recognize that the
  law does not designate to whom it gives
  authority. It cannot be just anybody. (PT 32)
• Point create a juridical order (Recht zu
  schaffen) under conditions that threaten anarchy.

11
Sovereignty and miracles

• The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to
  the miracle in theology. (PT 36)
• Cf Hobbes a miracle is a work of God, (besides
  his operation by the way of nature, ordained in
  the creation,) done, for the making manifest to
  his elect, the mission of an extraordinary
  minister for their salvation. (Leviathan,
  chap.37)

12
The decline of the political in modernity

• Today nothing is more modern than the onslaught
  against the political. There must be no longer
  be political problems, only organizational
  technical and economic-sociological ones. (PT
  65).

13
The effects of secularization

• On power
• On myth
• On the people (Volk)

14
Politics

• Politics as Friend and Enemy

15
How did Hitler appear?

• August 1, 1934 Der Führer schutzt das Recht
  The Führer protects the legal order

16
Schmitt, the Jews and anti-Semitism

• To say Jesus is the Christ is to say that He is
  the Messiah, that is, He is anointed and
  appointed by God to lead a people and that what
  He does transcends all Law.
• Messiah mashiah anointed one
• Cf Saint Paul and Epistle to the Romans
• the event of Christianity is political rather
  than religious
• .

17
Schmitt and Nazi regime

• Article 48 of Weimar Constitution

18

•  Dostojevsky and The Grand Inquisitor
• It was a terribly humane measure when Pope
  Innocent III created the 'Inquisitorial Law.' The
  Inquisition was probably perhaps the most humane
  institution conceivable, since it came from the
  standpoint that no one accused could be condemned
  without a confession. When, in the course of a
  century, the practice of the Inquisition
  degenerated into torture, because one wanted a
  confession, and had to extort it, that is indeed
  a dark chapter of cultural history, but seen in
  terms of legal history, even today the idea of
  Inquisition can hardly be touched. (Sept, 1936)

19
Concluding thoughts

• Are there crimes against humanity?
• Wars on terror