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
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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
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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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