A Paper About Schmitt, Arendt and Mills, philosophy homework help

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Explain the meaning and the polemical target of one of the following concepts: Schmitt’s concept of “the political,” Arendt’s “banal evil,” or Mills’s “racial contract.” Then, apply that concept through a critique of a contemporary sociopolitical institution or trend. You must make use of at least 3 relevant, carefully analyzed quotations from the assigned readings.Extend your critique to an idea put forward by one of the Enlightenment philosophers that we have read: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, or Kant, making use of at least 2 additional quotations.



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THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL by CARL SCHMITT THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL EXPANDED EDITION CARL SCHMITT Translation, Introduction, and Notes by George Schwab With “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations” (1929 ) translated by Matthias Konzen and John P. McCormick With Leo Strauss’s Notes on Schmitt’s Essay, translated by J. Harvey Lomax Foreword by Tracy B. Strong THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 1996, 2007 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2007 Printed in the United States of America 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 2345 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73892-5 (paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-73892-2 (paper) This translation is based on the 1932 edition of Der Begriff des Politischen, published by Duncker & Humblot. Foreword and Translator’s Note to the 1996 Edition © 1996 by The University of Chicago. Acknowledgments, Introduction, Translator’s Note, and English translation of Der Begriff des Politischen © 1976 by George Schwab. English translation of “Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political” © 1995 by The University of Chicago. This expanded edition includes “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations” (1929), translated by Matthias Konzett and John P. McCormick, first published in Telos 26, no. 2 (1993): 130–42. Reprinted by permission of John P. McCormick. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schmitt, Carl, 1888–1985. [Begriff des Politischen. English] The concept of the political / Carl Schmitt ; translation, introduction, and notes by George Schwab ; with “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations” (1929) translated by Matthias Konzen and John P. McCormick ; with Leo Strauss’ notes on Schmitt’s essay, translated by J. Harvey Lomax ; foreword by Tracy B. Strong. — Expanded ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-73892-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-73892-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Political science. 2. State, The. I. Schmitt, Carl, 1888–1985. Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen. English. II. Title. JA74.S313 2007 320.019—dc22 2006034003 ø The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL In memory of my friend, August Schaetz of Munich, who fell on August 28, 1917, in the assault on Moncelul I The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political. According to modern linguistic usage, the state is the political status of an organized people in an enclosed territorial unit. This is nothing more than a general paraphrase, not a definition of the state. Since we are concerned here with the nature of the political, such a definition is unwarranted. It may be left open what the state is in its essence-a machine or an organism, a person or an institution, a society or a community, an enterprise or a beehive, or perhaps even a basic procedural order. These definitions and images anticipate too much meaning, interpretation, illustration, and construction, and therefore cannot constitute any appropriate point of departure for a simple and elementary statement. In its literal sense and in its historical appearance the state is a specific entity of a people.· Vis-a-vis the many conceivable kinds of • Schmitt has in mind the modern national sovereign state and not the political entities of the medieval or ancient periods. For Schmitt's identification with the epoch of the modern state see George Schwab, The Challenge of the Exception: An Introduction to the political Ideas of Carl Schmitt between /92/ and /936 2d ed. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), pp. 27, 54; also, 20 The Concept of the Political entities, It IS 10 the decisive case the ultimate authority. More need not be said at this moment. All characteristics of this image of entity and people receive their meaning from the further distinctive trait of the political and become incomprehensible when the nature of the political is misunderstood. One seldom finds a clear definition of the political. The word is most frequently used negatively, in contrast to various other ideas, for example in such antitheses as politics and economy, politics and morality, politics and law; and within law there is again politics and civil law,' and so forth. By means of such negative, often also polemical confrontations, it is usually possible, depending upon the context and concrete situation, to characterize something with clarity. But this is still not a specific definition. In one way or another "political" is generally juxtaposed to "state" or at least is brought into relation with it. 2 The state thus appears as something political, the political as something pertaining to the state-obviously an unsatisfactory circle. George Schwab, "Enemy oder Foe: Der Konflikt der modernen Politik," tr. J. Zeumer, Epirrhosis: Pestgabe fur Carl Schmitt, ed. H. Barion, E.-W. Bockenforde, E. Forsthotf, W. Weber (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1968), II, 665--666. 1 The antithesis of law and politics is easily confused by the antithesis of civil and public law. According to J. K. Bluntschli in Allgemeines Staatsrecht, 4th ed. (Munich: J. G. Cotta, 1868), I, 219: "Property is a civil law and not a political concept." The political significance of this antithesis came particularly to the fore in 1925 and 1926, during the debates regarding the expropriation of the fortunes of the princes who had formerly ruled in Germany. The following sentence from the speech by deputy Dietrich (Reichstag session, December 2, 1925, Berichte, 4717) is cited as an example: "We are of the opinion that the issues here do not at all pertain to civil law questions but are purely political ones. . . ." 2 Also in those definitions of the political which utilize the concept of power as the decisive factor, this power appears mostly as state power, for example, in Max Weber's "Politik als Beruf," Gesammelte politische Schriften, 3rd ed., ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1971), pp. 505, 506: "aspiring to participate in or of influencing the distribution of power, be it between states, be it internally between groups The Concept of the Political 21 Many such descriptions of the political appear in professional juridic literature. Insofar as these are not politically polemical, they are of practical and technical interest and are to be understood as legal or administrative decisions in particular cases. These then receive their meaning by the presupposition of a stable state within whose framework they operate. Thus there exists, for example, a jurisprudence and literature pertaining to the concept of the political club or the political meeting in the law of associations. Furthermore, French administrative law practice has attempted to construct a concept of the political motive (mobile politique) with whose aid political acts of government (actes de gouvernement) could be distinguished from nonpolitical administrative acts and thereby removed from the control of administrative courts. 3 Such accommodating definitions serve the needs of legal pracof people which the state encompasses," or "leadership or the influencing of a political association, hence today, of a state"; or his "Parliament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland," ibid., p. 347: "The essence of politics is ... combat, the winning of allies and of voluntary followers." H. Triepel, Staatsrecht und Politik (Berlin: W. de Gruyter & Co., 1927), pp. 16-17, says: "Until recent decades politics was still plainly associated with the study of the state. . . . In this vein Weitz characterizes politics as the learned discussion of the state with respect to the historical development of states on the whole as well as of their current conditions and needs." Triepel then justly criticizes the ostensibly nonpolitical, purely juristic approach of the GerberLaband school and the attempt at its continuation in the postwar period (Kelsen). Nevertheless, Triepel had not yet recognized the pure political meaning of this pretense of an apolitical purity, because he subscribes to the equation politics = state. As will still be seen below, designating the adversary as political and oneself as nonpolitical (i.e., scientific, just, objective, neutral, etc.) is in actuality a typical and unusually intensive way of pursuing politics. 8 • • • For the criterion of the political furnished here (friend-enemy orientation), I draw upon the particularly interesting definition of the specifically political acte de goutlernement which Dufour . . . (Traite de droit administratif applique, V, 128) has advanced: "Defining an act of government is the purpose to which the author addresses himself. Such an act aims at defending society itself or as embodied in the government against its internal or external enemies, overt or covert, present or future... ," 22 The Concept of the Political tice. Basically, they provide a practical way of delimiting legal competences of cases within a state in its legal procedures. They do not in the least aim at a general definition of the political. Such definitions of the political suffice, therefore, for as long as the state and the public institutions can be assumed as something self-evident and concrete. Also, the general definitions of the political which contain nothing more than additional references to the state are understandable and to that extent also intellectually justifiable for as long as the state is truly a clear and unequivocal eminent entity confronting nonpolitical groups and affairs-in other words, for as long as the state possesses the monopoly on politics. That was the case where the state had either (as in the eighteenth century) not recognized society as an antithetical force or, at least (as in Germany in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth), stood above society as a stable and distinct force. The equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each other. What had been up to that point affairs of state become thereby social matters, and, vice versa, what had been purely social matters become affairs of state-as must necessarily occur in a democratically organized unit. Heretofore ostensibly neutral domainsreligion, culture, education, the economy-then cease to be neutral in the sense that they do not pertain to state and to politics. As a polemical concept against such neutralizations and depoliticalizations of important domains appears the total state, which potentially embraces every domain. This results in the identity of state and society. In such a state, therefore, everything is at least potentially political, and in referring to the state it is no longer possible to assert for it a specifically political characteristic. [Schmitt's Note] The development can be traced from the absolute state of the eighteenth century via the neutral (noninterventionist) state 23 The Concept of the Political of the nineteenth to the total state of the twentieth! Democracy must do away with all the typical distinctions and depoliticalizations characteristic of the liberal nineteenth century, also with those corresponding to the nineteenth-century antitheses and divisions pertaining to the state-society (= political against social) contrast, namely the following, among numerous other thoroughly polemical and thereby again political antitheses: religious cultural economic legal scientific as as as as as antithesis antithesis antithesis antithesis antithesis of of of of of political political political political political The more profound thinkers of the nineteenth century soon recognized this. In Jacob Burckhardt's W t'ltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (of the period around I R7o) the following sentences are found on "democracy, i.e., a doctrine nourished by a thousand springs, and varying greatly with the social status of its adherents. Only in one respect was it consistent, namely, in the insatiability of its demand for state control of the individual. Thus it blurs the boundaries between state and society and looks to the state for the things that society will most likely refuse to do, while maintaining a permanent condition of argument and change and ultimately vindicating the right to work and subsistence for certain castes." Burckhardt also correctly noted the inner contradiction of democracy and the liberal constitutional state: "The state is thus, on the one hand, the realization and expression of the cultural ideas of every party; on the other, merely the visible vestures of civic life and powerful on an ad hoc basis only. It should be able to do everything, yet allowed to do nothing. In particular, it must not defend its existing form in any crisis-and after all, what men want more 4 See Carl Schmitt, Der Huler der Verfassung (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul SiebeckJ, 1931; Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969), pp. 78-79' 24 The Concept of the Political than anything else is to participate in the exercise of its power. The state's form thus becomes increasingly questionable and its radius of power ever broader." 5 German political science originally maintained (under the impact of Hegel's philosophy of the state) that the state is qualitatively distinct from society and higher than it. A state standing above society could be called universal but not total, as that term is understood nowadays, namely, as the polemical negation of the neutral state, whose economy and law were in themselves nonpolitical. Nevertheless, after 1848, the qualitative distinction between state and society to which Lorenz von Stein and Rudolf Gneist still subscribed lost its previous clarity. Notwithstanding certain limitations, reservations, and compromises, the development of German political science, whose fundamental lines are shown in my treatise on Preuss," follows the historical development toward the democratic identity of state and society. An interesting national-liberal intermediary stage is recognizable in the works of Albert Haenel. "To generalize the concept of state altogether with the concept of human society" is, according to him, a "downright mistake." He sees in the state an entity joining other organizations of society but of a "special kind which rises above these and is all embracing." Although its general purpose is universal, though only in the special task of delimiting and organizing socially effective forces, i.e., in the specific function of the law, Haenel considers wrong the belief that the state has, at least potentially, the power of making all the social goals of humanity its goals too. Even though the state is for him universal, it is by no means total. 7 The decisive step is found in Gierke's theory of association (the first volume of his Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht appeared Kroner's edition, pp. 133, 135, 197. Hugo Preuss: Sein StaatsbegriO und seine Stellung in der deutschen Staatslehre (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1930). 7 Studien zum Deutschen Staatsrechte (Leipzig: Verlag von H. Haessel, 1888), II, 219; Deutsches Staatsrecht (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1892), I, 110. 5 6 25 The Concept of the Political in 1868), because it conceives of the state as one assoCIatIOn equal to other associations. Of course, in addition to the associational elements, sovereign ones too belonged to the state and were sometimes stressed more and sometimes less. But, since it pertained to a theory of association and not to a theory of sovereignty of the state, the democratic consequences were undeniable. In Germany, they were drawn by Hugo Preuss and K. Wolzendorff, whereas in England it led to pluralist theories (see below, Section 4)' While awaiting further enlightenment, it seems to me that Rudolf Smend's theory of the integration of the state corresponds to a political situation in which society is no longer integrated into an existing state (as the German people in the monarchical state of the nineteenth century) but should itself integrate into the state. That this situation necessitates the total state is expressed most clearly in Smend's remark about a sentence from H. Trescher's 1918 dissertation on Moiltesquieu and HegeI. 8 There it is said of Hegel's doctrine of the division of powers that it signifies "the most vigorous penetration of all societal spheres by the state for the general purpose of winning for the entirety of the state all vital energies of the people." To which Smend adds that this is "precisely the integration theory" of his book. In actuality it is the total state which no longer knows anything absolutely nonpolitical, the state which must do away with the depoliticalizations of the nineteenth century and which in particular puts an end to the principle that the apolitical economy is independent of the state and that the state is apart from the economy. • 2 A definition of the political can be obtained only by discovering and defining the specifically political categories. In contrast to the various relatively independent endeavors of human thought and & 8 Rudolf Smend, Verfassung und Verfassungsrecht (Munich: Duncker Humbiot, 1928), p. 97, note 2. The Concept of the Political action, particularly the moral, aesthetic, and economic, the political has its own criteria which express themselves in a characteristic way. The political must therefore rest on its own ultimate distinctions, to which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced. Let us assume that in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable. The question then is whether there is also a special distinction which can serve as a simple criterion of the political and of what it consists. The nature of such a political distinction is surely different from that of those others. It is independent of them and as such can speak clearly for itself. The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.'*' This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content.t Insofar as it is not derived from other criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on anyone antithesis or any combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be confused with or mistaken for the others. The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theo• Since Schmitt identified himself with the epoch of the national sovereign state with its jus publicum Europaeum, he used the term Feind in the enemy and not the foe sense. t Of the numerous discussions of Schmitt's friend-enemy criterion, particular attention is called to Hans Morgenthau's La Notion du "politique" et la tMorie des diOhends internationaux (Paris: Sirey, 1933), pp. 35-37, 44-64· The critique contained therein and Schmitt's influence on him is often implied in Morgenthau's subsequent writings. The Concept at the Political 27 retically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. 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 transactions. 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. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party. Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence. Emotionally the enemy is easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political, as the strongest and most intense of the distinctions and categorizations, draws upon other distinctions for support. This does not alter the autonomy of such distinctions. Consequently, the reverse is also true: the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically beautiful, and economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend in the specifically political sense of the word. Thereby the inherently objective nature and autonomy of the political becomes evident by virtue of its being able to treat, distinguish, and comprehend the friend-enemy antithesis independently of other antitheses. 3 The friend and enemy concepts are to be understood in their concrete and existential sense, not as metaphors or symbols, not The Concept of the Political mixed and weakened by economic, moral, and other conceptions, least of all in a private-individualistic sense as a psychological expression of private emotions and tendencies. They are neither normative nor pure spiritual antitheses. Liberalism in one of its typical dilemmas (to be treated further under Section 8) of intellect and economics has attempted to transform the enemy from the viewpoint of economics into a competitor and from the intellectual point into a debating adversary. In the domain of economics there are no enemies, only competitors, and in a thoroughly moral and ethical world perhaps only debating adversaries. It is irrelevant here whether one rejects, accepts, or perhaps finds it an atavistic remnant of barbaric times that nations continue to group themselves according to friend and enemy, or hopes that the antithesis will one day vanish from the world, or whether it is perhaps sound pedagogic reasoning to imagine that enemies no longer exist at all. The concern here is neither with abstractions nor with normative ideals, but with inherent reality and the real possibility of such a distinction. One mayor may not share these hopes and pedagogic ideals. But, 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. The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship. The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the broader sense; nOAEIlLOC;, not EX'ltQOC;.9 9 In his Republic (Bk. V, Ch. XVI, 470) Plato strongly emphasizes the contrast between the public enemy (noAEIlLOC;) and the private one (EX{}QOC;), but in connection with the other antithesis of war (no4Il oc;) and insurrec- The Concept of the Political 29 As German and other languages do not distinguish between the private and political enemy, many misconceptions and falsifications are possible. The often quoted "Love your enemies" (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6 :27) reads "diligite inimicos vestros," ayunUtE -rou
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The theories that have been devised, throughout history, have been as diverse as the
cultures that have given rise to them. Oppression, after all, has been a constant in almost every
society that has developed. In every society, a dynamic of power will settle that determines the
welfare of the people affected. In this relationship, one side will be at a beneficial end, while the
other will be in a subjugated position. At times, these relationships have been called to question,
in attempts to disrupt the order imposed. In the West, specifically, many ideologies have sprung
up to oppose or perpetuate the perceived order. At times, this can lead to periods of prosperity; at
times, it can lead to totalitarian and abusive regimes. Even the most tyrannical leaders in history,
though, did not rain destruction on the world arbitrarily. There has always been some form of
justification, through the shape of the normalization of the oppressive forces, that allows these
situations to target specific groups of individuals without being violently denounced. The
conceptions that allow these systems to perpetuate, at a rational and irrational level, has let a lot of
thinkers to analyze the motivations and the consequences of these systems of ideology.
To put into example the ways in which different systems of oppression, and their analysis, can
meet tangible reality, we can focus our attention on one individual, as examined through various
analytical approaches. Charles Mills, in The Racial Contract, explores the way in which race has
been used as a major force of oppression in the United States. He describes a relationship that is
contradictory to the principle that the ideals of the nation represent “the people” of the country.
The country, he argues, is not ruled to favor the well-being of all those who reside on it, but only
the white majority. (Mills, 1997) In American politics, the 1960s, the racial divide that ruled over
the country had become so evident that a march in opposition was...


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