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A Philosophy of Concrete Life: Carl Schmitt and the Political Thought Of Mika Ojakangas A Philosophy of Concrete Life Carl Schmitt and the Political Thought of Late Modernity [SoPhi] A Philosophy of Concrete Life Mika Ojakangas A Philosophy of Concrete Life CARL SCHMITT AND THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF LATE MODERNITY Woe to him who has no friend, for his enemy will bring him up for trial. Woe to him who has no enemy, for I shall be his enemy on Judgment Day. Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate salus SoPhi 77 SoPhi 77 Toimitus: Yhteiskuntatieteiden ja fi losofi an laitos PL 35 (MaB) 40014 Jyväskylän yliopisto http://www.minervakustannus.fi /sophi Kustantaja ja myynti: Minerva Kustannus Oy Kuokkalan kartano Riihimäentie 3, 40520 Jyväskylä Puh. (014) 3386 845, 3382 800, fax (014) 3386 812 kustannus@minervakustannus.fi © Kirjoittaja Kansi ja taitto: Kalevi Nurmela ISBN 952-5092-90-9 Paino: Kopijyvä Oy, Jyväskylä 2004 Index Preface..............................................................................................7 1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................9 2. METAPHYSICAL CHARACTER................................................17 Psychology of a pessimist....................................................19 2.1 Philosophy of the Extreme ..................................................23 3. SOVEREIGN AND LAW..............................................................33 Miracle of the real...............................................................42 Panopticon and the ”founding rupture” .............................47 German stock.......................................................................53 4. THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL ........................................63 State-monster.......................................................................67 Agon and tragedy ................................................................72 The enemy within us ............................................................77 5. LIBERAL PATHOS.............................................................................87 5.1 Total State.................................................................................88 5.2 Parliamentarism and Democracy .............................................91 Either/or or And .......................................................................92 Between identity and representation ........................................99 5.3 Dictatorship and Myth............................................................103 6. THE NOMOS OF THE EARTH .......................................................115 Smooth and striated................................................................121 6.1 Jus Publicum Europaeum.......................................................127 Pirates and partisans .............................................................129 7. POLITICAL THEOLOGY...........................................................141 Christ, antichrist and history.............................................142 8. A PHILOSOPHY OF CONCRETE LIFE....................................151 Literature......................................................................................159 Preface he initial manuscript for this book was based on the introductory lectures Ton Schmitt which I held at the University of Jyväskylä in the autumn of 1998. Since then, however, both the form and the content of the text have changed quite a lot. Besides of introducing Schmitt’s ideas, I have tried to disclose the common ”metaphysical core” of Schmitt’s central ideas and concepts. Moreover, I have extended the work to include a comparison of Schmitt’s thought with the thought of some of the prominent political theo- rists in late modernity, including Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. What comes to the technical details of the work, I have made use of all the available translations of Schmitt’s texts in English. Therefore, all the references are to translations. Insofar as an English translation has not been available, translations are mine. Sometimes, however, I have also slightly altered the available translation, neither for the reasons of style nor for those of accuracy but rather because of the logic of my own argument. I owe special thanks to Soili Petäjäniemi-Brown who not only corrected my English but gave me a lot of stimulating comments. I also want to thank Alessandro Dal Lago who invited me at the University of Genoa in the spring of 1998 and thereby made it possible to start the work, and Sakari Hänninen whose project ”Displacement of Politics” (1999-2001) enabled me to continue the research. However, without a possibility to work as a fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies during 2003 I could not have completed the work. Finally, I want to thank my colleagues Elisa Heinämäki, Markku Koi- vusalo, Panu Minkkinen, and Henri Vogt for the highly valued comments. 7 1. INTRODUCTION We are all navigators on an endless journey and no book is more than a log- book Carl Schmitt, Völkerrechtiche Grossraumordnung ver since political thought declined into a mere calculation and classifi ca- Etion of empirical phenomena under the auspices of scientifi c positivism, an obvious vacuum has existed in the conceptualization of modern politics. It is true that a kind of renaissance of political thought is occurring at present. However, it seems at times that this rebirth amounts only to a return to the past. Politics is practice – speech and action – and it should not be framed in terms of those abstract rationalistic models that have recently been proposed as a foundation for political thought. John Rawls sums up the point of de- parture for these models when he delineates the foundations of his theory of justice. He suggests a model that “generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction the traditional conception of the social contract”,1 which in itself has traditionally been one of the most abstract of all political abstractions. Of course, in addition to the abstract individualism of liberal contract the- ory, there exists a communitarian theory whose point of departure is not the individual but the community. And at least part of the communitarian criti- que against liberalism is justifi ed insofar as liberal contract theory dismisses the fact that man is primarily a social being. The individual cannot provide the point of departure for political theory, because he is merely the outcome of the social interactions taking place in a concrete community. However, the “community” of communitarianism remains often as unhistorical as the “individual” in liberal theory. It rarely corresponds to the historical state of things, in particular because communitarianism tends to ignore the question of “violence” and power inherent in every real existing community. The critique of abstractions in political theory does not entail, however, that the only alternative left would be the empirical study of politics. Neither does 9 it mean that we should merely resort to the kind of historical analysis, which explores the political events and concepts of the past step by step. In fact, the assault of conceptual historians on political theory – and on the history of ideas – resembles in some respects the assault which the positivists launched on political theory after the Second World War. Nevertheless, a theory which is not somehow related to concrete historical conditions and events is neces- sarily empty – as for instance in the case of contemporary social theory. In it, society is often depicted as an automatically functioning abstract system within which different subsystems, the so-called political system included, form relatively independent entities with their own trajectories. The critique of such systems is important but not essential for political theory. This also applies to the theories in which human existence is assessed by the increa- singly more obscure measure of “democracy”, the panacea of our time. In my opinion, what is essential for political theory is to reveal the common and concrete foundations of these systems, whether democratic or not. Instead of resorting to easy empiricism, self-suffi cient political philosophy or the empty concepts of social theory, political theory should turn its attention to those basic theoretical concepts which could reveal the concrete essence of politics and thereby the “order of human things”. In this respect, the work done by the German constitutional jurist Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) is among the most promising of the last century. On the one hand, the acuity of Schmitt’s thought lies in his ability to avoid uni- versals and abstractions, which have no reference to a concrete instance or to the concrete state of things. On the other hand, it lies in his capacity to make immediately comprehensible conceptual distinctions, yet without forgetting the demands of generality posed to theoretical thinking. This dual intention becomes manifest already in the name of his approach: “A philosophy of concrete life.”2 Despite the name, however, we should not identify Schmitt’s philosophy of concrete life with the philosophy of life that was in vogue in Germany and especially in France at the turn of the 20th century. Schmitt’s thought does not display a tendency towards organic thinking or metaphysics of life. Admittedly, he argues that there exists a metaphysical core in the work of an author: “The thought and feeling of every person always retain a certain metaphysical character.” 3 In Schmitt’s case, however, this core is not life as such “in its complete spiritual emptiness
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