WFI Schmitt K

SchmittWyoming Forensics Institute 2007Melodious/Brooklyn/Mormon - 1 -

Schmitt Table of ContentsLiberalism Bad Shell.........................................................................................................................................................3Enemies Good Shell........................................................................................................................................................12Link –Generic Links........................................................................................................................................................20Link – Aff Doing Anything Besides War........................................................................................................................22Link – Civil Society.........................................................................................................................................................24Link – Debate..................................................................................................................................................................25Link – Democracy...........................................................................................................................................................28Link – Education.............................................................................................................................................................31Link – Hegemony............................................................................................................................................................32Link – Humanity..............................................................................................................................................................33Link – Humanitarianism..................................................................................................................................................34Link - International Relations..........................................................................................................................................38Link – Justice...................................................................................................................................................................40Link – Liberalism............................................................................................................................................................41Link – Modernity (Generic)............................................................................................................................................43Link – Peace....................................................................................................................................................................44Link – Rights to Africans................................................................................................................................................45Link – Pluralism..............................................................................................................................................................46Link – Rule of Law..........................................................................................................................................................47Link – Technology..........................................................................................................................................................48Link – War on Terror......................................................................................................................................................49Link – We Demand.........................................................................................................................................................50Impact – Civil War..........................................................................................................................................................51Impact – Dictatorship......................................................................................................................................................52Impact – Extinction.........................................................................................................................................................53Impact – Governance Fails..............................................................................................................................................58Impact – Internal Conflict...............................................................................................................................................60Impact – Solvency Takeout.............................................................................................................................................62Impact – War...................................................................................................................................................................63Alternative – Agonism....................................................................................................................................................64Alternative – Friends/Enemies........................................................................................................................................67Alternative – Rejection....................................................................................................................................................70Alternative – Sovereignty................................................................................................................................................71Alternative Solvency – Compromise...............................................................................................................................73Alternative Solvency – Extinction...................................................................................................................................74Alternative Solvency – Economy....................................................................................................................................78Alternative Solvency – Empowerment............................................................................................................................79Alternative Solvency – Freedom.....................................................................................................................................81Alternative Solvency – Individual Effort........................................................................................................................82Alternative Solvency – Internal Conflict.........................................................................................................................83Alternative Solvency – Protection...................................................................................................................................84Alternative Solvency – Respect for the Other.................................................................................................................85Alternative Solvency – State Collapse............................................................................................................................87A2 Agamben....................................................................................................................................................................88A2 Bad States..................................................................................................................................................................89A2 Dictatorship Bad........................................................................................................................................................90A2 Exceptions Bad..........................................................................................................................................................91


A2 Friends Bad................................................................................................................................................................92A2 Impacts Improbable...................................................................................................................................................94A2 Liberalism Good........................................................................................................................................................95A2 Nazi............................................................................................................................................................................96A2 No Obligation to State...............................................................................................................................................98A2 Perm...........................................................................................................................................................................99A2 State Deconstruction Good......................................................................................................................................100A2 Schmitt War.......................................................................................................................................................102A2 Totalitarian...............................................................................................................................................................104Aff – Destroys Debate...................................................................................................................................................105Aff – Friendship Bad.....................................................................................................................................................106Aff - Nazi Turn..............................................................................................................................................................107Aff - Nihilism Turn.......................................................................................................................................................108Aff – Perm.....................................................................................................................................................................109Aff – Schmitt Dumb......................................................................................................................................................113War Turn.......................................................................................................................................................................114FYI: Difference between commissarial and sovereign dictatorship..............................................................................116


Liberalism Bad ShellThe neo-liberal agenda embodied by the United States erodes state sovereignty through imposing international requirements on foreign states – leads towards a single new world order

Odysseos 2004 [Dr. Louiza. Department of Politics and International Studies Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. University of London]. September 11. “Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger on the Line(s) of Cosmopolitanism and the War on terror.” http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/. P. 15-16. BH

The second strand of cosmopolitanism is neo-liberal in its ideological location. As Peter Gowan notes, it 'run[s] parallel to the discourse of globalisation and rhetorically complement[s] it.' 34 It is a cosmopolitanism that instantiates a rewriting of the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention, which were regarded as constitutive of the Westphalian order. Seen as conditional, they 'can be withdrawn should any states fail to meet the domestic or foreign standards laid down by the requirements of liberal governance. ,35 In the words of William Rasch, state sovereignty becomes restricted by 'the simple but uncontested sovereignty of liberalism itself'. 36 This neo-liberal cosmopolitanism, which Gowan associates with US and its allies and their academic apologists, often betrays an 'arbitrary attitude towards enforcing of universalist liberal norms of individual rights' despite its resting on the argument of a humanity that is 'finally on the verge of being unified in a single, just world order,.7 This arbitrariness often results in the imposition of incoherent domestic and international requirements on states in the form of legal domestic arrangements that promote individualism and liberal (i.e. good) governance, but also frequently in the form of social population control and consumerisation. Chantal Mouffe suggests that such policies might leadto an increasing detachment of citizens from their demos as a result of the imposition of externally acceptable arrangements. This would leave liberal cosmopolitans in the precarious position of losingtheir democratic rights of lawmaking. They would be left, at best, with their liberal right of appealing to transnational courts to defend their individual rights when those have been violated. In all probability, such a cosmopolitan democracy, if it were ever to be realised, would not be more than an empty name disguising the actual disappearance of democratic forms of government and indicating the triumph of the liberal form of govemmental rationality that Foucault called "governmentality"38

http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/


The West is reintroducing colonialism into the international sphere which is reinstating liberal globalism – this internalizes conflict and identifies those who are seen as the enemies of humanity

Thorup 2006 [Mikkel. Ph.D. Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas @ Uni. Of Aarhus Denmark]. January. In Defence of Enmity – Critique of Liberal Globalism. http://rudar.ruc.dk/handle/1800/2068. p. 320-321. BH

http://rudar.ruc.dk/handle/1800/2068


The concept of a singular humanity inevitably finds enemies to oppose, and when this happens total extermination is possible


Thirdly, 'humanity is not a political concept, and no political entity corresponds to it. The eighteenth century humanitarian concept of humanity was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic feudal system and the privileges accompanying it. ,56 Outside of this historical location, where does it fmd concrete expression? The discourse of humanity finds expression in an abstract politics of neutrality, usually in the name of an international community which acts, we are assured, in the interest of humanity. James Brown Scott, a jurist and prominent political fIgure in the United States at the beginning of the 20th Century, wrote in the interwar years of the right of this international community to impose its neutral will:The "international community," Scott writes, "is coextensive with humanity-no longer merely with Christianity;" it has become "the representative of the common humanity rather than of the common religion binding the States." Therefore, the international community "possesses the inherent right to impose its will. . and to punish its violation, not because of a treaty, or a pact or a covenant, but because of an international need" (283). If in the sixteenth century it was the Christian Church that determined the content of this international need, in the twentieth centmy and beyond it must be the secularized "church" of "common humanity" that performs this all¬important service. 57Finally, and most importantly, there is the relation of the concept of humanity to the other, and to war and violence. In its historical location, the humanity concept had critical purchase against aristocratic prerogatives, but its utilisation by liberal discourses in the individualist tradition, Schmitt feared, could bring about new and unimaginable modes of exclusion. Rasch explains:The humanism that Schmitt opposes is, in his words, a philosophy of absolute humanity. By virtue of its universality and abstract normativity, it has no localizable polis, no clear distinction between what is inside and what is outside. Does humanity embrace all humans? Are there no gates to the city and thus no barbarians outside? If not, against whom or what does it wage its wars? 58'Humanity as such' Schmitt noted 'cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet'. 59 As Ellen Kennedy notes, humanity 'is a polemical word that negates hs opposite. ,60 In T71e Concept of the Political Schmitt argued that humanity 'excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human being,.6! In the Nomos, however, it becomes apparent that, historically examined, the concept of humanity could not allow the notion of Justus hostis, of a 'just enemy', who is recognised as someone with whom one can make war but also negotiate peace. Schmitt noted how only when 'man appeared to be the embodiment of absolute humanity, did the other side of this concept appear in the form of a new enemy: the inhuman' (NE 104). It is worth quoting Rasch's account at length:We can understand Schmitt's concems in the following way: Christianity distinguishes between believers and nonbelievers. Since nonbelievers can become believers, they must be of the same category of being. To be human, then, is the horizon within which the distinction between believers and nonbelievers is made. That is, humanity per se is not part of the distinction, but is that which makes the distinction possible. However, once the term used to describe the horizon of a distinction also becomes that distinction's positive pole, it needs its negative opposite. If humanity is both the horizon and the positive pole of the distinction that that horizon enables, then the negative pole can only be something that lies beyond that horizon, can only be something completely antithetical to horizon and positive pole alike-can only, in other words, be inhuman62Without the concept of the just enemy associated with the notion of non¬discriminatory war, the enemy had no value and could be exterminated. The concept of humanity, furthermore, reintroduces substantive causes of war because it shutters the formal concept of Justus hostis, now designated substantively as an enemy of humanity as such. In Schmitt's accomlt of the League of Nations in the Nomos, hehighlights that compared to the kinds of wars that can be waged on behalf of humanity theinterstate European wars from 1815 to 1914 in reality were regulated; they were bracketed by the neutral Great Powers and were completely legal procedures in comparison with the modern and gratuitous police actions against violators of peace, which can be dreadful acts of annihilation (NE 186).Enemies of humanity cannot be considered 'just and equal' enemies. Moreover, they cannot claim neutrality: one cannot remain neutral in the call to be for or against humanity or its freedom; one cannot, similarly, claim a right to resist or defend oneself in the sense we understand this right to have existed in the jus publicum Europeaum. As will examine below in the context of the war on terror, this denial of the self-defence and resistance 'can presage a dreadfhl nihilistic destruction of all law'(NE 187).When the enemy is not accorded a formal equality, the notion that peace can be made with him is unacceptable, as Schmitt detailed through his study of the League of Nations, which had declared the abolition of war, but in rescinding the concept of neutrality only succeeded in the 'dissolution of "peace'" (NE 246). It is with the dissolution of peace that total wars of annihilation and destruction become possible, where the other cannot be assimilated, or accommodated, let alone tolerated: the friend/enemy distinction is not longer taking place with a justus hostis but rather between good and evil, human and inhuman, where 'the negative pole of the distinction is to be fully and finally consumed without remainder. ,63 With this in mind, 1 turn in the next section to the war on terror and its relation to the discourse ofhumanity and cosmopolitanism



A strong state is critical to avoiding wars of annihilation – the regulated wars that arise with concretely identifiable enemies are preferable to total extermination

Odysseos 2004 [Dr. Louiza. Department of Politics and International Studies Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. University of London]. September 11. “Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger on the Line(s) of Cosmopolitanism and the War on terror.” http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/. P. 7-9 BH

According to Schmitt there are four major achievements that can be attributed to this order. The first concerns that ability of the order to bracket and regulate war: the lines or distinctions drawn between European soil mId 'free space' available for appropriation (the so-called 'amity lines') facilitated the conduct of limited war on Europeml soil. The amity lines set aside two distinct areas considered 'open spaces' (NE 94-95). On the one hand, the landmass of the New World, whose belonging to the native populations was not recognised, and on the other, the newly mapped and navigable seas. In both types of space, force could be used freely and ruthlessely as these were areas 'designated for agonal tests of strength' amongst Europeml powers(NE 99).The interstate order which existed in Europe until 1914 had sought, through its international law, 'to prevent wars of anniliilation, i.e. to the extent that war was inevitable, to bracket it' (NE 246). It did not, on the contrary, seek to end war as such, to abolish or banish it from its international relations since it implicitly recognised that 'any abolition of war without true bracketing resulted only in new, perhaps even worse types of war, such as reversions to civil war and other types of wars of annihilation' (NE 246). It, rather, sought to find ways in which to gauge theopponent's strength, usually by striving for appropriation of lands in the new world or by fighting linlited wars on European soil, and by recognising the opponent as an enemy on equal grounds - as a justus hostis. This is the given foundation for a bracketing of war' (NE 187): '[t]he essence of such wars was a regulated contest of forces gauged by witnesses in a bracketed space. Such wars are the opposite of disorder' (NE 187).This brings us to the second achievement of this order, which was the development of the notion of justus hostis. The concept of an 'equal and just enemy' evolved alongside the consolidation ofthe modem state. With the predominance of this type of political entity and the weakening of the moral authority of the Church, war became divorced from substantive causes of justice. Since war was the means by which land could change ownership stahls, 'war came to be judged in terms of its outcome' and became a foml of military relation amongst states (NE 100). Any enemy that had the form of a state was a just enemy and war could be waged against it. This avoided wars of conviction, creed and religion (i.e. based on substantive issues of justice - justa causa) which had historically led to wars of annihiliation and destruction. For Schmitt, whose belief was that war was an inevitable part of political life, this regulation of war without substantive cause meant a 'rationalization, humanization and legalization' of war; regarding an enemy as both just and as an equal partner meant that peace could be made with that enemy - his ultimate destruction was not sought, but conflict with him was possible and regulated. The notion of the just enemy also meant that such a system of war allowed for both resistance and self-defence.And this is the third achievement of this order: given that the enemy was apriori just, its right to self-defense and to resistance was recognised, precisely because the issue of just cause was eliminated. No state could claim to have the issue of 'righteousness' on its side. Therefore, wars did not need to eliminate that enemy given the recognition of the right to defend oneself or to resist submission. Finally, the jus publicum Europeaum allowed for the construction and maintenance of a balance (NE 161). This relates to the avoidance of wars of destruction, because if balance was the political and military objective, then wars can be limited to achieving it, unlike wars of substance which required the submission of the opponent or their re-socialisation. All of these achievements together enabled the emergence of limited and regulated warsthat sought balance and the avoidance of preponderance, rather than the extermination of the enemy.



Liberalism lacks any political foundation – a lack of political theology dooms it to leadership failure – turns case

Thorup 2006 [Mikkel. Ph.D. Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas @ Uni. Of Aarhus Denmark]. January. In Defence of Enmity – Critique of Liberal Globalism. http://rudar.ruc.dk/handle/1800/2068. p. 63. BH



The kritik must come first, only through the sovereign state is the political will is further expressed. The sovereign is one who is given “the monopoly to decide,” in matters of the exception and to exercise these powers. The sovereign must come first before any political decisions can be made

Valk in 2002 (Frank Vander, Rockefeller College Review, Volume1., Issue 2, Carl Schmitt on Friends and Political Will, Spring). AN.

(Continuted on Next Page)



War is inevitable, but we must approach it from a political framework, because if we introduce moral, aesthetic or economic categories into warfighting considerations we will have a war to end all war that culminates in total extermination of enemies and ourselves – this political framework must rely on categories of friends and enemies so we can approach war with a solidarity that binds the warring factions, with an emphasis on strengthening sovereignty

Norris 1998 [Andrew, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University, received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley] “Carl Schmitt on friends, enemies and the political.” Telos; Summer98 Issue 112, p68. BH

This helps to understand the significance of Schmitt's almost cryptic note on Hegel in The Concept of the Political. "Hegel remains everywhere political in the decisive sense." He "also offers the first polemically political definition of the bourgeois. The bourgeois is an individual who does not want to leave the apolitical riskless private sphere." Finally: "Hegel has... advanced a definition of the enemy which has in general been evaded by modern philosophers. The enemy is negated otherness."(n41) The first two of these claims become clear in light of an explication of the third. Hegel argues that war is a fundamental possibility of political life, one that is actually beneficial. It is a fundamental possibility, because the state is, vis-a-vis other states, an individual, "and individuality essentially implies negation. Hence even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an opposite and create an enemy."(n42) It is a beneficial one because, by providing the necessary context for martial courage, war allows the individual to transcend the limited perspective of his place in society: "the important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal."(n43) As Hegel acknowledges, even "robbers and murderers bent on crime" sometimes demonstrate a willingness to risk their lives. Such bravery has a merely negative worth because "it is the negation of externalities, and their alienation, the culmination of courage, is not intrinsically of a spiritual character."(n44) That is to say, courage even in a wicked cause has some worth in that it strips away or "alienates" the inessential baggage of life (e.g... the obsession with property). This worth, however, is only negative because it is found in removing or negating the inessential, without affirming something of real spiritual worth. Quite different is patriotically motivated self-sacrifice: "The intrinsic [or positive] worth of courage as a disposition is to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the sovereignty of the state."(n45) The affinities between this position and Schmitt's are obvious.(n46) But where Hegel's commitment to the view that reason must be actual leads him to celebrate the actual virtuous conduct of war, Schmitt never praises war as such and remains silent on the value of courage. For Hegel, the modern state is the highest form of ethical life, and the sacrifices it demands are part of that life. Thus war "is not to be regarded as an absolute evil," as it itself contains an "ethical moment": courage.(n47) For Schmitt, war is essentially a political matter; as such, it is as little ethical as it is evil. "If there really are enemies in the existential sense meant here, then it is justified, but only politically, to repel them and, fight them physically. ...Justice does not belong to the concept of war."(n48) No doubt, the conduct of war is often also sublime, economically wasteful and immoral. But Schmitt cautions against concluding from this that moral, aesthetic, or economic categories should trump political ones. In particular, the attempt to end war because of its immorality may backfire horribly by producing a war to end all wars. Schmitt argues that this could well produce a form of warfare that is "unusually intense and inhuman because, by transcending the limits of the political framework, it simultaneously degrades the enemy into moral and other categories and is forced to make of him a monster that must not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed."(n49) As a political theorist, Schmitt neither celebrates nor bemoans war. Instead, he recognizes that it appears inevitable, and he argues that it is a distinctively political possibility, in that it can be the expression of the solidarity that binds together the various warring factions. No doubt, he would also recognize that war is not always the function of such political systems some wars are little more than private squabbles between princes, dictators and business interests, whose servants remain as alienated and isolated in conflict as they were in peace.If this interpretation is correct, it is not merely because people are "evil" in the sense of dangerous that the political is their destiny. It is not the threatening presence of the enemy alone that leads into the political; the enemy must threaten relations and forms of life that are sufficiently cherished by those who partake of them. It is such commitments and such solidarity that are the destiny of human beings.(n50) This seems to be what Schmitt has in mind when he writes: "In the concrete reality of the political, no abstract orders or norms but always real human groupings rule over other human groupings and associations."(n51)


To describe these "real human groupings" or "ways of life" as relations of friendship may be misleading. As one of the criteria of the political, "friend," like "enemy," has a formal, almost technical meaning. Just as Schmitt argues that the public enemy is conceptually distinct from the private enemy, whom one hates, so is his public friend distinct from the private friend, whom one loves. This, however, does not mean that Schmitt's political friendship is the same phenomenon described by Aristotle in books eight and nine of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle's philia emphasizes objective qualities of character and lacks the connotations of intimacy carried by "friendship." In contrast, Schmitt's political friendship implies as little about the character of the "friend" as it does about one's feelings for him. Indeed, in stark contrast to both the Aristotelian and the popular concepts of friendship, it is not necessary that those people who share a relation of political friendship even know one another. What is essential is that there be a shared commitment to their way of life. As Schmitt makes clear, that form of life might be defined in any number of ways: "All concepts, including the concept of mind, are pluralistic and can only be understood in terms of concrete political existence. Just as every nation has its own concept of nation and finds the constitutive characteristics of nationality within itself, so every culture and every cultural epoch has its own concept of culture. All essential concepts are not normative but existential."(n52)


Enemies Good Shell

The politics created by the affirmative is a deviation form the preparation from war which dangerously threatens state power – we must prepare for our moment of clarity where battle is immanent




Case Take Out: Political action can only be achieved through distinguishing friends from enemies



Identifying enemies is critical to avoiding wars of annihilation – the regulated wars that arise with concretely identifiable enemies are preferable to total extermination

Odysseos 2004 [Dr. Louiza. Department of Politics and International Studies Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. University of London]. September 11. “Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger on the Line(s) of Cosmopolitanism and the War on terror.” http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/. P. 7-9 BH

According to Schmitt there are four major achievements that can be attributed to this order. The first concerns that ability of the order to bracket and regulate war: the lines or distinctions drawn between European soil mId 'free space' available for appropriation (the so-called 'amity lines') facilitated the conduct of limited war on Europeml soil. The amity lines set aside two distinct areas considered 'open spaces' (NE 94-95). On the one hand, the landmass of the New World, whose belonging to the native populations was not recognised, and on the other, the newly mapped and navigable seas. In both types of space, force could be used freely and ruthlessely as these were areas 'designated for agonal tests of strength' amongst Europeml powers(NE 99).The interstate order which existed in Europe until 1914 had sought, through its international law, 'to prevent wars of anniliilation, i.e. to the extent that war was inevitable, to bracket it' (NE 246). It did not, on the contrary, seek to end war as such, to abolish or banish it from its international relations since it implicitly recognised that 'any abolition of war without true bracketing resulted only in new, perhaps even worse types of war, such as reversions to civil war and other types of wars of annihilation' (NE 246). It, rather, sought to find ways in which to gauge theopponent's strength, usually by striving for appropriation of lands in the new world or by fighting linlited wars on European soil, and by recognising the opponent as an enemy on equal grounds - as a justus hostis. This is the given foundation for a bracketing of war' (NE 187): '[t]he essence of such wars was a regulated contest of forces gauged by witnesses in a bracketed space. Such wars are the opposite of disorder' (NE 187).This brings us to the second achievement of this order, which was the development of the notion of justus hostis. The concept of an 'equal and just enemy' evolved alongside the consolidation ofthe modem state. With the predominance of this type of political entity and the weakening of the moral authority of the Church, war became divorced from substantive causes of justice. Since war was the means by which land could change ownership stahls, 'war came to be judged in terms of its outcome' and became a foml of military relation amongst states (NE 100). Any enemy that had the form of a state was a just enemy and war could be waged against it. This avoided wars of conviction, creed and religion (i.e. based on substantive issues of justice - justa causa) which had historically led to wars of annihiliation and destruction. For Schmitt, whose belief was that war was an inevitable part of political life, this regulation of war without substantive cause meant a 'rationalization, humanization and legalization' of war; regarding an enemy as both just and as an equal partner meant that peace could be made with that enemy - his ultimate destruction was not sought, but conflict with him was possible and regulated. The notion of the just enemy also meant that such a system of war allowed for both resistance and self-defence.And this is the third achievement of this order: given that the enemy was apriori just, its right to self-defense and to resistance was recognised, precisely because the issue of just cause was eliminated. No state could claim to have the issue of 'righteousness' on its side. Therefore, wars did not need to eliminate that enemy given the recognition of the right to defend oneself or to resist submission. Finally, the jus publicum Europeaum allowed for the construction and maintenance of a balance (NE 161). This relates to the avoidance of wars of destruction, because if balance was the political and military objective, then wars can be limited to achieving it, unlike wars of substance which required the submission of the opponent or their re-socialisation. All of these achievements together enabled the emergence of limited and regulated warsthat sought balance and the avoidance of preponderance, rather than the extermination of the enemy.



Alternative Solvency: Agonism crushes the drive towards destruction and instead replaces it with the production of excellence. Only agonism can solve liberalism's drive for destruction.

Hateb, 2002 (Lawrence J., Ph.D. from Fordham University, "Prospects for a Democratic Argon; why we can still be Nietzcheans")

Appel gives particular attention to a Nietzschean sense of agonistics that has been taken up by postmodern thinkers as applicable to democracy. He grants that an agonistic element can be very valuable for life and for democratic politics (NCD, p.162ff.), but he correctly notices a problem rarely faced in postmodern appropriations of Nietzsche: an agon, for Nietzsche, is a selective activity restricted to an elite and not extended to the public as a whole (NCD, p.140), which surely clashes with democratic provisions.

We can begin to address the complex question of agonistics by attending to an early text of Nietzsche's that is often cited in scholarly discussions, Homer's Contest (KSA 1, pp.783-92). In this text, Nietzsche maintains that civilization is not something separate from nature but a modulation of more vicious natural drives into less destructive forms. In the light of Hesiod's distinction between a good and bad Eris, Nietzsche distinguishes between a brutal drive to annihilate and a modified drive to defeat in a competition, what the Greeks called an agon . The proliferation of contests in ancient Greece represented both a sublimation of cruel instincts and a setting for the production of excellence, since talent unfolds in a struggle with a competitor (KSA 1, p.787). Nietzsche praises the Greeks for not succumbing to an Orphic life-denial or an ideal of harmony in the face of life's conflicts. Moreover, their sublimation of violence into cultural contests prevented the Greeks from regressing into "the abyss of a horrible savagery of hatred and lust for destruction" (KSA 1, p.791). And an agonistic spirit insured a proliferation of excellence by undermining the stagnation that stems from unchecked control and the "domination by one" (KSA 1, p.789). 8


Alternative: The alternative is to reject the affirmative by embracing a politics of enmity. This enables a more robust conception of tolerance and political rights informed by resistance. A true democracy must paradoxically embrace anti-democratic outcomes. Any other mode of democracy only paces the way for tyranny


If political respect implies inclusiveness and an open regard for the rightful participation of others, an agonistic model of politics can underwrite respect without the need for substantive conceptions of equality or even something like "equal regard." I have already mentioned that agonistics can be seen as a fundamentally social phenomenon. Since the self is formed in and through tensional relations with others, then any annulment of my Other would be an annulment of myself. Radical agonistics, then, discounts the idea of sheer autonomy and self-constitution. Such a tensional sociality can much more readily affirm the place of the Other in social relations than can modern models of subject-based freedom. Moreover, the structure of an agon conceived as a contest can readily underwrite political principles of fairness. Not only do I need an Other to prompt my own achievement, but the significance of any "victory" I might achieve demands an able opponent. As in athletics, defeating an incapable or incapacitated competitor winds up being meaningless. So I should not only will the presence of others in an agon, I should also want that they be able adversaries, that they have opportunities and capacities to succeed in the contest. And I should be able to honor the winner of a fair contest. Such is the logic of competition that contains a host of normative features, which might even include active provisions for helping people in political contests become more able participants. 25 In addition, agonistic respect need not be associated with something like positive regard or equal worth, a dissociation that can go further in facing up to actual political conditions and problematic connotations that can attach to liberal dispositions. Again allow me to quote my previous work.

Democratic respect forbids exclusion, it demands inclusion; but respect for the Other as other can avoid a vapid sense of "tolerance," a sloppy "relativism," or a misplaced spirit of "neutrality." Agonistic respect allows us to simultaneously affirm our beliefs and affirm our opponents as worthy competitors [End Page 142] in public discourse. Here we can speak of respect without ignoring the fact that politics involves perpetual disagreement, and we have an adequate answer to the question "Why should I respect a view that I do not agree with?" In this way beliefs about what is best (aristos) can be coordinated with an openness to other beliefs and a willingness to accept the outcome of an open competition among the full citizenry (demos). Democratic respect, therefore, is a dialogical mixture of affirmation and negation, a political bearing that entails giving all beliefs a hearing, refusing any belief an ultimate warrant, and perceiving one's own viewpoint as agonistically implicated with opposing viewpoints. In sum, we can combine 1) the historical tendency of democratic movements to promote free expression, pluralism, and liberation from traditional constraints, and 2) a Nietzschean perspectivism and agonistic respect, to arrive at a postmodern

model of democracy that provides both a nonfoundational openness and an atmosphere of civil political discourse. 26

An agonistic politics construed as competitive fairness can sustain a robust conception of political rights, not as something "natural" possessed by an original self, but as an epiphenomenal, procedural notion conferred upon citizens in order to sustain viable political practice. Constraints on speech, association, access, and so on, simply insure lopsided political contests. We can avoid metaphysical models of rights and construe them as simply social and political phenomena: social in the sense of entailing reciprocal recognition and obligation; political in the sense of being guaranteed and enforced by the state. We can even defend so-called positive rights, such as a right to an adequate education, as requisite for fair competition in political discourse.

Rights themselves can be understood as agonistic in that a right-holder has a claim against some treatment by others or for some provision that might be denied by others. In this way rights can be construed as balancing power relations in social milieus, as a partial recession of one's own power on behalf of the power of others—which in fact is precisely how Nietzsche in an early work described fairness and rights (D 112). And, as is well known, the array of rights often issues conflicts of different and differing rights, and political life must engage in the ongoing balancing act of negotiating these tensions, a negotiation facilitated by precisely not defining rights as discrete entities inviolably possessed by an originating self.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_nietzsche_studies/v024/24.1hatab.html



Beyond political rights, a broader conception of rights, often designated as human rights as distinct from political practice, can also be defended by way of the kind of nonfoundational, negative sense of selfhood inspired by Nietzsche. For Nietzsche, the self is a temporal openness infused with tragic limits, rather than some metaphysical essence, stable substance, or eternal entity. A via negativa can be utilized to account for rights as stemming not from what we are but from what we are not. So much of abusive or exclusionary treatment is animated by confident designations and reductions as to "natures" having to do with race, gender, class, role, character, and so on. [End Page 143] Nonfoundational challenges to "identity" may seem unsettling, but if we consider how identities figure in injustices, a good deal of work can be done to reconfigure rights as based in resistance. It is difficult to find some positive condition that can justify rights and do so without excluding or suppressing some other conditions. But a look at human history and experience can more readily understand rights and freedom as emerging out of the irrepressible tendency of human beings to resist and deny the adequacy of external attributions as to what or who they "are." It may be sufficient to defend rights simply in terms of the human capacity to say No.

Appel insists that a radical agonistics is a significant threat to democratic ideals and principles. Although he does little to develop how and why this may be so, the charge raises important questions facing postmodern, and particularly Nietzschean, approaches to democratic politics. In my work I have tried to face this question, admit the difficulty, and suggest a "tragic" model of democratic openness, to borrow from Nietzsche's interest in tragedy. 27 Many democratic theorists insist that politics must be grounded in secure principles, which themselves are incontestable, so as to rule out anti-democratic voices from having their day and possibly undermining democratic procedures or results. A radically agonistic, open conception of democracy that simply invites any and all parties to compete for favor seems utterly decisionist, with no justification beyond its contingent enactment. But from a historical perspective, despite metaphysical pretenses in some quarters, democratic foundings have in fact emerged out of the "abyss" of conventions and decisional moments. 28 And with the prospect of a constitutional convention in our system, it is evident from a performative standpoint that any results are actually possible in a democracy, even anti-democratic outcomes (not likely, but surely possible). The "tragedy" is that democracy could die at its own hands. Foundationalists would call such an outcome contradictory, but a tragic conception would see it as a possibility intrinsic to the openness of democratic practice.

Can there be more than a simply negative register in such a tragic conception? I think so. Just as, for Nietzsche, the tragic allows us to be sensitized and energized for the fragile meanings of existence, thus enhancing life, a tragic politics could wean us from false comforts in foundations and open us to the urgent finite conditions of political life in an enhanced way. And even if one conceded the existence of foundational self-evident political principles, would the force of such principles by themselves necessarily be able to prevent non-democratic outcomes? If not, the force of such principles [End Page 144] would be restricted to the solace of intellectual rectitude that can comfort theorists while the walls are coming down. The nonexistence of foundational guarantees surely does not prevent one from living and fighting for democratic ideals. What is to be said of someone who, in the absence of a guarantee, would hesitate to act or be obstructed from acting or see action as tainted or less than authentic? Nietzsche would take this as weakness. The most profound element in Nietzsche's conceptions of will to power, agonistics, and eternal recurrence, in my view, can be put in the following way. For Nietzsche, to act in the world is always to act in the midst of otherness, of resistances or obstacles. Hence to dream of action without otherness is to annul action. To affirm one's Other as necessarily constitutive of oneself is not only to affirm the full field of action (which is the sense of eternal recurrence), but also to affirm action as action, that is to say, a real move in life amidst real resistances, as opposed to the fantasy of self-sufficient, fully free, uncontested occurrences born in Western conceptions of divine perfection and continued in various philosophical models of demonstrative certainty and theoretical governance. The irony of a tragically open, agonistic politics is that it need not "infect" political life but in fact spur it toward the existential environment of it enactment. And as radically open, an agonistic politics has the virtue of precluding the silencing of any voice, something especially important when even purportedly democratic dispositions are comfortable with exclusions (frustrated by citizens who will not come around to being impartial enough, rational enough, secular enough, deliberative enough, communal enough, virtuous enough, and so on), thereby becoming susceptible to the most ironic and insidious form of tyranny done in democracy's name.




War is inevitable, but we must approach it from a political framework, because if we introduce moral, aesthetic or economic categories into warfighting considerations we will have a war to end all war that culminates in total extermination of enemies and ourselves – this political framework must rely on categories of friends and enemies so we can approach war with a solidarity that binds the warring factions


This helps to understand the significance of Schmitt's almost cryptic note on Hegel in The Concept of the Political. "Hegel remains everywhere political in the decisive sense." He "also offers the first polemically political definition of the bourgeois. The bourgeois is an individual who does not want to leave the apolitical riskless private sphere." Finally: "Hegel has... advanced a definition of the enemy which has in general been evaded by modern philosophers. The enemy is negated otherness."(n41) The first two of these claims become clear in light of an explication of the third. Hegel argues that war is a fundamental possibility of political life, one that is actually beneficial. It is a fundamental possibility, because the state is, vis-a-vis other states, an individual, "and individuality essentially implies negation. Hence even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an opposite and create an enemy."(n42) It is a beneficial one because, by providing the necessary context for martial courage, war allows the individual to transcend the limited perspective of his place in society: "the important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal."(n43) As Hegel acknowledges, even "robbers and murderers bent on crime" sometimes demonstrate a willingness to risk their lives. Such bravery has a merely negative worth because "it is the negation of externalities, and their alienation, the culmination of courage, is not intrinsically of a spiritual character."(n44) That is to say, courage even in a wicked cause has some worth in that it strips away or "alienates" the inessential baggage of life (e.g... the obsession with property). This worth, however, is only negative because it is found in removing or negating the inessential, without affirming something of real spiritual worth. Quite different is patriotically motivated self-sacrifice: "The intrinsic [or positive] worth of courage as a disposition is to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the sovereignty of the state."(n45) The affinities between this position and Schmitt's are obvious.(n46) But where Hegel's commitment to the view that reason must be actual leads him to celebrate the actual virtuous conduct of war, Schmitt never praises war as such and remains silent on the value of courage. For Hegel, the modern state is the highest form of ethical life, and the sacrifices it demands are part of that life. Thus war "is not to be regarded as an absolute evil," as it itself contains an "ethical moment": courage.(n47) For Schmitt, war is essentially a political matter; as such, it is as little ethical as it is evil. "If there really are enemies in the existential sense meant here, then it is justified, but only politically, to repel them and, fight them physically. ...Justice does not belong to the concept of war."(n48) No doubt, the conduct of war is often also sublime, economically wasteful and immoral. But Schmitt cautions against concluding from this that moral, aesthetic, or economic categories should trump political ones. In particular, the attempt to end war because of its immorality may backfire horribly by producing a war to end all wars. Schmitt argues that this could well produce a form of warfare that is "unusually intense and inhuman because, by transcending the limits of the political framework, it simultaneously degrades the enemy into moral and other categories and is forced to make of him a monster that must not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed."(n49) As a political theorist, Schmitt neither celebrates nor bemoans war. Instead, he recognizes that it appears inevitable, and he argues that it is a distinctively political possibility, in that it can be the expression of the solidarity that binds together the various warring factions. No doubt, he would also recognize that war is not always the function of such political systems some wars are little more than private squabbles between princes, dictators and business interests, whose servants remain as alienated and isolated in conflict as they were in peace.If this interpretation is correct, it is not merely because people are "evil" in the sense of dangerous that the political is their destiny. It is not the threatening presence of the enemy alone that leads into the political; the enemy must threaten relations and forms of life that are sufficiently cherished by those who partake of them. It is such commitments and such solidarity that are the destiny of human beings.(n50) This seems to be what Schmitt has in mind when he writes: "In the concrete reality of the political, no abstract orders or norms but always real human groupings rule over other human groupings and associations."(n51)


To describe these "real human groupings" or "ways of life" as relations of friendship may be misleading. As one of the criteria of the political, "friend," like "enemy," has a formal, almost technical meaning. Just as Schmitt argues that the public enemy is conceptually distinct from the private enemy, whom one hates, so is his public friend distinct from the private friend, whom one loves. This, however, does not mean that Schmitt's political friendship is the same phenomenon described by Aristotle in books eight and nine of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle's philia emphasizes objective qualities of character and lacks the connotations of intimacy carried by "friendship." In contrast, Schmitt's political friendship implies as little about the character of the "friend" as it does about one's feelings for him. Indeed, in stark contrast to both the Aristotelian and the popular concepts of friendship, it is not necessary that those people who share a relation of political friendship even know one another. What is essential is that there be a shared commitment to their way of life. As Schmitt makes clear, that form of life might be defined in any number of ways: "All concepts, including the concept of mind, are pluralistic and can only be understood in terms of concrete political existence. Just as every nation has its own concept of nation and finds the constitutive characteristics of nationality within itself, so every culture and every cultural epoch has its own concept of culture. All essential concepts are not normative but existential."(n52)


Link –Generic Links

The imminent danger embodied by the affirmative advantage scenarios is an act of the state alienating the indvidual – it is a sign of the retreat of the state




The affirmative plan is a representation of civil society that is the site of the dissolution of state power because of its implicit liberalism

Cristi 1998. [Renato, Professor in department of Philosophy, Wilfred Laurier University] Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism. p. 74-75. BH

The plea for a strong state was the one theme that stood out inSchmitt's early Weimar production. The theme linked this earlyproduction with his work later in Weimar and the Nazi period,and marked the conceptual ground that confirmed the continuityof his theoretical and practical interests. If the state was to main-tain its strength and survive, one ought to affirm its sovereignty,authority and unity. The state could not yield to the factitioustemperament of civil society. This was the site of pluralism andthe dissolution of state unity.20 In R6mische Katholizismus andPolitische Form (Roman Catholicism and Political Form),published in 1923, three facets articulated Schmitt's plea for astrong state. First, Schmitt attributed the modern state's difficultyand ideas espoused by contemporary liberalism, and also assumedby democrats and socialists, which he designated as 'the economicpoint of view'. In essence, the economic point of view sought tominimize the role of the state and dissolve its separation from civilsociety. By eliminating the state's autonomy and diluting itsauthority, civil society was given a free rein spontaneously to putits own affairs in order. Second, in opposition to the economicpoint of view Schmitt affirmed the viewpoint of the political. Theaffirmation of the political secured the ultimate foundation onwhich rests the state's claim to authority. Third, Schmitt observedthat the Catholic Church had preserved intact an awareness of thepolitical and had kept faith in the true meaning of authority. Onlythe Church was in the position and had the will to affirm thepolitical and frustrate the prevalence of pure economic thought.The Church did so by endorsing a form of rationalism opposed tothe rationality of economics and technology. The Church was notthe seat of irrationalism but it embodied a form of rationality,akin to juridical thinking, that was foreign to the culture thatissued from the Enlightenment.

The state’s current method of politicization (esp economics) contributes o the state’s dissolution through internally warring political factions


In the mean time, another misguided view, representing a totally opposed standpoint, had become equally pervasive. Schmitt described this view by means of a tantalizing formula, the 'total state'. That notion represented a centralized state that had expanded in every direction and politicized every domain of human existence . There was no sphere that could remain free from its interventions, so that 'not even a bowling club [could] continue to exist without maintaining a good relation with the state' (App. p. 218). Politicization was most visible in the sphere of economics. 'After years of attempting to reduce the state to economics, it now [appeared] that economics [had] become entirely politicized' (App.: p. 216). According to Schmitt, the bearers of the total state were the total parties.If we take a c loser look, we s ee that we do not have a total state but a plurality of total parties. Each party realizes in itself the totality, totally absorbing their members , guiding individuals from the cradle to the grave, from kindergarten to burial and cremation, situating itself totally in the most diverse social groups and passing on to its membership the correct v iews, the correct ideology, the correct form of state, the correct economic s y stem, and the correct sociability on account of the party. (App.: p. 219)


Link – Aff Doing Anything Besides War

Interference by the state into modern society weakens the apparatus as a whole – historically proven to be true


The first time Schmitt mentioned the notion of total state during the Weimar period was in his Der Hiiter der Verfassung (TheProtector of the Constitution), whose preface was dated March 1931. He used that notion to highlight what he considered to bethe latest phase in the 'dialectical development' of the modernstate. This development had its point of departure in the 'absolutestate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries', and then, medi-ated by the 'neutral state of the nineteenth century', it reached itsfinal destination with the twentieth-century 'total state whichidentifies state and society' (1931: 79). As his argumentproceeded, it became clear that the identity that characterized thetotal state meant a weakening, and not a strengthening of stateauthority. In this respect, the total state was diametricallyopposed to its earlier configurations. It demanded the interpenetration of state and civil society, and thus denied the completeindependence and autonomy on which rested the authority ofboth the absolute and the neutral states. ' in his Legalitit undLegitimit,4t (1932a), the notion of total state was again mentionedand explicitly contrasted with that of the authoritarian state. Inthis case, Schmitt acknowledged the work of Heinz Otto Ziegler.The notion of authoritarian state in contrast to the total statewas the theme of Ziegler's book entitled precisely Autoritdreroder totaler Staat (1932). The next time Schmitt made publicreference to this notion was in his keynote address entitled'Strong State and Sound Economy', presented at a meeting of the Langnamverein.2 This time he reversed his position and extendec*the use of the term 'total state' to include the authoritarian statehe sponsored. This was to be understood as a qualitative totalstate, as opposed to the purely quantitative total state which heequated with twentieth-century democracy.On each one of these occasions, Schmitt brought up the topicin the context of a broader discussion, namely the development ofGermany's constitutional design after the revolution of 1918-19,and more pointedly after the inauguration of a presidentialgovernment on 28 March 1930. On that day, ReichsprisidentHindenburg appointed Heinrich Briining as Chancellor withoutprior consultation with the political parties. The new governmentcould function as a non-parliamentary regime that rested onHindenburg's own authority. The legal basis for his decision wasarticle 48 of the Weimar constitution. This event marked thecollapse of what Schmitt called the 'legislative state' in Germanyand the beginning of a presidential regime that departed from theparliamentary system as it had come to be known and practisedin the Weimar republic.In a 1929 article entitled 'Der Hiiter der Verfassung' (1929b),which he expanded in 1931 into the book of that same title(19 31),3 Schmitt sought to justify Hindenburg's presidentialregime not merely as a legal configuration sanctioned by theconstitution but also as the republic's only politically viableoption. Up to that point, much of Schmitt's work as a jurist hadbeen devoted to demonstrating the need for an enhanced politicalrole for the Reichsprisident. A consistent use and application ofarticle 48 of the constitution was the procedure he suggested.This, he thought, would break the hegemony of a parliamentary system gone astray and restore the fine balance between legisla-tive and executive functions procured by the parliamentarytradition before 'it was corrupted by the advancement of demo-cracy. The entrenchment of a presidial system could becharacterized as more than a provisional step aimed at solving theconj'unctural difficulties of Weimar parliamentarism. What was atissue here compromised the very existence of the modern state.Like a dying star, the state had experienced a voluminous expan-sion in size, matched by a commensurate loss of prestige, powerand authority.4 By overstepping its limits and becoming involvedin what were the exclusive concerns of civil society, the state hadlost its autonomy and independence and advanced with acceler-ated pace towards its own extinction. Hindenburg's presidialregime intended to save the state by reinforcing its executive func-tions at the expense of the legislative power. According toSchmitt, this action could only be interpreted as the restoration ofa balance disrupted by the influx of democratic party politiCS.5The total state was Schmitt's description of this predicament,which resulted in the modern state's slanted evolution. Schmittcharted the course of this evolution and for that purpose hedistinguished four distinct state configurations: the Judicial, exec-utive, legislative and administrative forms of the state. These werefunctional descriptions which corresponded to four historical embodiments- the feudal state, the seventeenth- and eighteenth century absolutist state, the nineteenth-century parliamentarvstate and the twentieth-century democratic state which he alsocalled the 'administrative' or 'total' state.The aim Schmitt had in mind in drawing this manifold distinction was a description of the political regime that had evolved under the aegis of the Weimar constitution.With the distinction between the legislative state, the judicial state.the executive state and the administrative state, the theory of thestate and the constitution acquires the specific indicators that help better and more clearly to understand the concrete peculiarity o-the legal system and its present situation. (Schmitt, 1932a:'19)These configurations did not constitute four specific instantia-tions of a common generic nature. The administrative or tota.state was not properly a state but served as the portrayal of 'itsdissolution. What was common to the first three configurationswas the dualist structure constituted by the separation of the statefrom civil society. The dissolution of the state occurred, according to Schmitt, when the dualism maintained by the separatior.between civil society and the state dissipated.


Any deviation of the state from a protective function is bad – the affirmation of positive outcomes weakens the state and fails to respect the autonomy of civil society


Hayek defended the view that democracy and liberalism wereunrelated answers to completely unrelated questions. This sameview was espoused by Schmitt and used by him as a way ofaccommodating political options akin to decisionism within theliberal discourse. The strong state advocated by Schmitt in the1930s was supposed to respect the autonomy of civil society.Hayek appeared to be saying the same thing when he wrote:Liberalism and democracy, although compatible, are not the same.The difference is best seen if we consider their opposites: theopposite of liberalism is totalitarianism, while the opposite ofdemocracy is authoritarianism. In consequence, it is at least possi-ble in principle that a democratic government may be totalitarianand that an authoritarian government may act on liberal princi-ples. (1967: 161; compare with Hayek, 1960: 103)lsThat a liberal polity, one limited by abstract general rules, couldbe open to authoritarian rule did not appear contradictory toHayek. Like Schmitt, he too distinguished sharply between civilsociety and the state. Like Schmitt, again, he distinguishedbetween authoritarianism and totalitarianism in strict adherenceto the views expressed by Heinz Otto Ziegler in his Autoritarer und Totalitarer Staat, a work heavily influenced by Schmitt. Theautonomy and independence reserved to the state grounded itsauthoritarian potential. Again like Schmitt, Hayek opposedcentral planning and any form of state intervention in economicmatters. The role of the state ought to be negative, never affirma-tive of any positive outcomes or ideal patterns of production or distribution. It ought to be limited to a merely protective func-tion. Hayek's idea of a spontaneous order presupposed civilsociety's capacity for self-regulation and autonomous administra-tion. This should confirm the complete dethronement of politicswithin that sphere (compare with Hayek, 1976: 102-3; 1979:149-50). Still, the negative tasks ascribed to the state were to bedetermined and sustained by the action of the state itself. It wasthus positively and actively that the state ought to restrict andlimit its action to a merely negative one, so that the depoliticiza-tion of civil society could turn dialectically into the state's activepreservation of its monopoly over the political as such. Wheneverthe normal working of civil society became in any way imperilled,so that its spontaneous order was converted into an organization,the knowledge of such a situation and the decision to alter thespontaneous order of civil society lay beyond its powers in so faras they were recognized as being of a political nature. Hayekadmitted that the power to declare a state of emergency belongedto the state. And it did not escape his attention that there wassome plausibility in Schmitt's contention that 'whoever has thepower to proclaim an emergency and on this ground suspend anypart of the constitution is the true sovereign' (Hayek, 1979: 125).It appears as if Hayek was unable to exorcise the notion of sover-eignty. Hayek offered a series of precautionary measures aimed atavoiding a relapse into an unbalanced decisionist posture. I willnot discuss here whether these measures were effective or not. Iwill only say that decisionist elements were potentially incorpor-ated into his system in so far as the separation between state andcivil society was essential to it.Hayek reiterated his support for a politically conservativeliberalism and expressed a preference for strong but limitedgovernment. This concurred with the necessary limitation andrelativization of state power demanded by individuals whoclaimed sovereignty and the spontaneous order that arose fromtheir free and sovereign activity. In accordance with liberalism,Hayek first postulated unbounded individual freedom and therecognition of rights that were prior to the state. Individualspossessed a domain of action over which they alone could claimabsolute sovereignty, and which demanded limitations onconstructivist state interference. Second, while Hayek emphasizedthe typical liberal limitations on the state, he did not object to the formation of a strong state. He thought that strong authoritariangovernments could ensure the necessary depoliticization of civilsociety.16 His liberalism was thus politically conservative for itpresupposed the possibility of postulating both a strong state anda liberal society. Possibly no one better expressed this conceptualdichotomy than Benjamin Constant when he wrote: 'le gouverne-ment en dehors de sa sph6re ne dolt avoir aucun pouvoir; dans sasph~re il ne sauralt en avoir trop' (compare with R6pke, 1948:28; Friedrich, 1955: 531). It should come as no surprise thatHegel, together with Hayek and Schmitt, expressed a close affin-ity with Constant's political philosophy. And just as Schmitt wasan attentive reader of Hegel, so Hayek was an attentive reader ofSchmitt.


Link – Civil Society

When Civil Society is increased, the State is diminished until it is just another association among many, where it is further reduced to the technology of the administration.

Rasch 2000 [William, Asssociate Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University] Theory, Culture, and Society. “Conflict as Vocation: Carl Schmitt and the Possibility of Politics.” http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/17/6/1. AN

http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/17/6/1


Link – Debate

Open debate only serves to undermine the political and state authority


Schmitt himself demonstrates an easy confidence in his own ability to make the required distinctions: "To demand seriously of human beings that they kill others and be prepared to die themselves so that trade and industry may flourish for the survivors or that the purchasing power of the grandchildren may grow is sinister and crazy."(n59) Such a remark might well be made in a debate over "Operation Desert Storm." Here the claim might be that Americans are committed to and united in a democratic freedom that has only contingently been aligned with capitalism's interests, and that Middle-East oil is not one of this polity's vital interests. Put this way, the reply is easy enough to imagine. On the face of it, such a debate about the nature of shared identity and the focus of mutual commitment would not seem to be in conflict with Schmitt's strictures. Nonetheless, he does not permit for political decisions to involve public debate and deliberation, even of the minimal sort his theory will allow. In his constitutional theory, the populace is accorded the right to evaluate the performance of the state only in the form of acts of acclamation. This limitation is a result of Schmitt's decisionism. Schmitt understands the political decision as an alternative to the law -- one necessitated by the law's own limitations. The rationality that characterizes the normal situation is, in his eyes, that of a norm or law governing that situation. In its absence, there is no indication, in Schmitt's texts of the 1920s, of any rational guidance whatsoever.(n60) This is why Schmitt has no faith in public debate. If the only rational guidance that can be found is that of a norm, and if that will not apply in the case of an exception, it is plain that open debate will serve no purpose but that of undermining authority. Schmitt is quite frank about this: "The decision becomes instantly independent of argumentative substantiation and receives an autonomous value."(n61) In the end "The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology."(n62)The relevant point here is that this characterization of the irrationality or arationality of the political decision is not necessarily connected with Schmitt's characterization of the nature of political community. Schmitt' s version of identity politics is largely derived from his reading of Rousseau. As he emphasizes again and again, according to this model, democracy is not a matter of popular participation, revocable consent, or liberal/ parliamentary institutions; instead, it is a question of the identity of the ruler and the ruled.(n63) Such identity is not at all irreconcilable with a form of dictatorship that denies to the populace the right to debate political issues.(n64) This much is clear in Rousseau's own infamous references to the possibility of forcing the citizenry to be free when they misunderstand their own (general) will. But it does not necessitate dictatorship. As The Social Contract again makes clear, a Rousseauian polity that rests on the homogeneity of the commitments of its members is compatible with a variety of political structures and institutions.(n65)


Political decisions are left only to the state, when individuals make political decisions it leads to social contracts that will break down the system of sovereignty





Link – Democracy

Democracy is self defeating and it contributes to a weakened state


Schmitt's reform proposal assumed that contemporary parlmentarism was facing a crisis due to a betrayal of its originalideals. The institution devised by classical liberals had beendefiled by the prevalence of democratic ideals. The segregationand inflection of parliament's liberal essence was mandatory. Asa genuinely liberal institution, parliament ought to limit andcontrol democracy's overwhelming leverage. By opening the doorto democracy, the Weimar constitution had introduced an ambiguity which now eroded parliamentary practices and weakenedthe state. First, the Reichstag, like other contemporary parliaments, had ceased to be a place of rational discussion. Accordingto Schmitt, individual deputies no longer complied with theliberal requirements of the Weimar constitution as stipulated byarticle 21. They could not be said to be 'bound only to theirconscience' and to be free from the instructions of the particularelectoral group they represented. Instead of being the 'representatives of the whole people' and 'bound by no instructions',deputies were acting as popular agents and commissaries, inaccordance with well-established democratic demands. Second,the Reichstag had ceased to be, if it ever was, open to publicinvestigation and scrutiny. Article 29 of the constitution requiredthat its deliberations be public, but its discussions weresurrounded by secrecy and only the results yielded by voting werepublicly announced. Furthermore, the parliamentary commissionhad become a place for secret party deals whose content thepublic ignored. The arcana imperli of absolutist times were fullyrevived (compare with Schmitt, 1928: 318-19).Schmitt's aim was to separate the parliamentary institutionfrom its democratic ties. Parliaments, if allowed to function in agenuinely representative manner, should not have to yield todemocratic pressures. On the contrary, much like the CatholicChurch, parliamentarism could not be said to constitute a specificpolitical form or a specific form of state (compare with Schmitt, .923a: 10). Indifference to the political as such allowed parliamentarism to remain open to different political forms (comparewith Schmitt, 1928: 305). The historical development of parliamentarism

had successfully incorporated monarchical,aristocratic and democratic elements, without identifying itselfwith any of them. Precisely because parliaments could not be saidto constitute specific political forms, they functioned as opento constitutesystems that used and mixed diverse political forms. According toSchmitt, parliamentarism owed its current problems to the ascendancy of democracy. By displacing the competing monarchicala-id aristocratic elements, democracy acquired a disproportionateinfluence, disrupting the delicate balance presupposed by theparliamentary system. In his earlier works, Schmitt thoroughlyidentified liberal parliamentarism and democratic legitimacy.Since 1848, democratic legitimacy had supplanted the monarch-:cal principle, which until then had secured the unity of the state.The nineteenth-century liberal-democratic rapprochement wasinterpreted by Schmitt as an irreversible pluralist trend whichinevitably led to the demise of the state. The identification ofliberalism and democracy precluded any possibility of securing arole for the state as guarantor of political unity. It was thereforenatural that Schmitt would rely, in Die Diktatur and PolitischeTheologie, on a counter-revolutionary dictatorship as the onlymeans to guard the political unity of a nation and sustain the dualonslaught arising from humanitarian liberalism and atheistdemocracy.

Democracy is self defeating – the will of the people is unorganized and fails to succeed

Cristi 1998. [Renato, Professor in department of Philosophy, Wilfred Laurier University] Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism. p. 122-123 BH

After considering the issue of the subject of constituent powerSchmitt analysed its activity. Constituent power, like sovereignpower, preceded and rose,

legibus solutus, above all positiveconstitutional normativity. Its activity escaped constitutionalbounds, just as any measure transcends what is measured by it. Inthe case of sovereign monarchs, their activity could include theunilateral granting of constitutional charters. At times, prudencedictated

that monarchs reach agreements with the representativesof special interests. But this did not imply a renunciation of theirsovereignty. In democratic polities, the people exercises itsconstituent power by means of any manifestation which conveysits express will. According to Schmitt, the people as such was nota firm and organized entity, and not endowed prima facie withpermanent authority. Even if its power and plastic energy couldnot be extinguished and could embody an infinite variety offorms, the people was not to be taken as an organized subject of decision. This was the reason for its weakness and explained why.ts actual will could be falsified.Constituent activity, according to Schmitt, persistedautonomously and independently of any positive constitutionallegislation. This was an indication of sovereignty. Constituentpower could not be destroyed, changed or altered in any way; itpersevered as the extra-constitutional ground of constitutions andconstitutional laws. It was not exhausted by its exercise and.retains the ability to persevere in its existence' (Schmitt, 1928:92). The positive constitution, as an accident supported byconstituent power, could be born, suffer alterations and eventually die, but alongside and above it the pouvoir constituant wouldContinue to exist.


Democracy skews the separation between state and civil society and puts the power of the state in jeopardy


Two phases characterized the departure from the tradition ofthe strong executive state: one was determined by a liberaldemand, the other by a democratic demand. First, the nineteenth-century legislative state sought to encircle the authority of theexecutive state by way of a normativist system. Liberalism sawin the strong state of absolutist monarchs a threat to the indi-vidualist values of liberty and private property. As a guaranteethat those values would be respected it demanded state neutral-ity and the replacement of the rule of men by the rule of law. Butwhat it got was a division of powers, which meant thatmonarchs, dislodged from legislative functions, could still retainthe control of the executive (compare with Kelsen, 1929: 81).Second, the liberal demand was superseded by a democratic de-mand that led to the formation of the twentieth-century state of total administration. 8 By emphasizing the democratic principle c--identity, the distinction between state and civil society "-ascompromised. The state was put in charge of the supervision ancdirection of the spontaneous order of the market, untouched b-.the nineteenth-century legislative state. This meant a loss o-autonomy and independence for the state, which naturally led tothe weakening of its authority. In Schmitt's view, the curren:crisis of the Weimar republic was ultimately a crisis of authoritv.Schmitt defined the legislative state as the state 'ruled by imper-sonal, general and predetermined norms, by lasting norms ofdeterminable and measurable content, where law is detached fromits application to the concrete case, where the legislator is detachedfrom the officials that execute it' (1 932a: 8). Typical of the legisla-tive state was the distinction between laws and measures ordecrees, between law and its execution. It was also on this concep-tion of law that Schmitt based his distinction between normativismand decisionism. The legislative state, and its parliamentaryembodiment, realized the ideal of the Recbtsstaat. The oldAristotelian dictum that laws and not men ought to rule impliedthat sovereignty and power were extinguished. Whoever claimedexercise of sovereignty and power could do so only 'according tothe law or in the name of the law' (ibid.). Schmitt envisaged thelegal system imposed by the legislative state as hermetically closed.Its claim to validity excluded and made it refractory to any exter-nal appeal to legitimacy, and thus to any recourse to a right ofresistance. Legality meant 'making superfluous and rejecting notonly legitimacy (both monarchical and the plebiscitary will of thepeople) but also any sovereign or higher authority' (ibid.: 14). Thisalso implied a perfect congruence between justice and legality,which made the possibility of abusive legislation inconceivable. Schmitt would thus conclude that legality was conceptuallyDpposed to legitimacy.

Democracy kills the unity of the state, it must be neutralized

Cristi 1998. [Renato, Professor in department of Philosophy, Wilfred Laurier University] Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism. p. 17. BH

Before drawing the distinction between liberalism and democracy in his Parlamentarismus, Schmitt had attack liberalism because it seemed inextricably bound to democracy. He charged liberalist for its inability to withstand the democratic avalanche. But as a universe of ideas distinct from democracy, and interpreted as an apolitical, neutral posture, attentive only to the protection of individuals, liberalism appeared to Schmitt in 1923 as the best way to neutralize democracy. Liberalism was objectionable only when it assumed a political stance. If the pluralism that was congruent with liberalism were allowed political expression, the unity of the state would be put in jeopardy. Schmitt’s paramount concern was the attainment and safeguard of the unity of the state. Once he came to the view that liberalism was, at its core, not a political form, his reservations subsided. Nineteenth-century liberalism tried to fashion a state in its image and likeness, and aimed at exporting pluralism onto the political sphere. But if kept at a clear distance from any political form, liberalism ceased to be a threat. Schmitt was now able to aim his attack at the democractic populace, which he would attempt to disarm by means of a democratically elected sheriff. The distinction between liberalism and democracy, which Schmitt introduced in 1923, marked the beginning of his rapprochement with liberalism. This accommadation allowed him to identify what he feared most: the increased pace of the democratic revolution. Schmittian scholarship has for the most part assumed a strict unity and continuity in his Weimar writings. Thus, what he wrote in Parlamentarismus is read in line with his earlier Die Diktatur and his Political Theology. The anti-liberal stance of this early work is then projected onto his later Weimar writings. In Parlamentarismus, however, he was bale to extricate liberalism from popular democracy, and could henceforth aim all his efforts at taming democratic absolutism.


Democracy forces the state to intervene in civil society weakening its neutrality and strength


This coexistence and balance between state configurations did notpreclude the possibility of describing concrete states on the basisof the 'central sphere' of state activity (ibid.). It was fair to say,for example, that the nineteenth-century constitutional stateought to be described as a legislative state, for in it the notes thatdefined both the judicial and the executive states were subordi-nate to the legislative function. But Schmitt's primary interest wasto point out the common features that typified the historicalembodiment of those state functions, namely the dualism'of stateand civil society. Observance of that dualism meant that the nine-teenth-century state resulted from 'a balance between two kindsof state: it was at the same time an executive state and alegislative state' (ibid.: 75). First, the separation of the state fromcivil society ensured the formation and endurance of a strongstate, strong enough to keep at bay the many religious, culturaland economic differences that divided a state-free society.According to Schmitt, the realization of a 'common opposition tothe state relativized those differences and did not impede socialintegration' (ibid.: 73). Second, a strong state could also be aneutral state, neutral with respect to religion and the economy and 'respectful of the autonomy of these vital and objectivedomains' (ibid.). In this respect, the nineteenth-century state was'neither absolute nor strong enough to render any non-state busi-ness meaningless' (ibid.). The balance between state and non-statecompetences allowed the persistence of dualism. The state, as astato neutrale e agnostico and bereft of any metaphysical commit-ment, was able 'to build a state-free economy and aneconomic-free state' (ibid.). The neutrality of the state was aresult of its strength. Only a strong state could hand over to civilsociety, without fear or jealousy, the management of its ownaffairs. Schmitt recognized thatthe tendency of the liberal nineteenth century was, when possible,to limit the state to a minimum, to prevent it from intervening andinterfering with the economy, to neutralize in relation to societyand its conflicts of interests, so that society and the economy couldadopt in their respective spheres the necessary decisions accordingto their immanent principles. (ibid.: 78)Accordingly, he saw no oblection in allowing the market tooperate according to its own 'automatic mechanism', thus assur-ing the highest economic prosperity (ibid.: 78; compare withFil'alkowski, 1958: 27). But this liberal order could only survive ifplaced under the aegis of a strong state.10 A fundamental alter-ation occurred when the dualist structure of state and civil societylost its antithetical tension. By yielding to democracy and inter-vening in society's spontaneous order the state became a 'welfarestate' and in the process lost its autonomy and independence, itsneutrality and strength.

Democracy destroys state strength


It is plain to see that Schmitt's interest in a description of state-forms and the difficulties he found in combining them prefacedhis concern for the preservation of the state as such. In his esti-mation, the state's very existence was compromised by the rise ofdemocratic party politics and the state-form that democracydemanded and advanced, namely the administrative or total state.Democracy, furthermore, was responsible for weakening theunitary and decisive will of parliament. Parliament had becomethe 'scenario of a pluralist system' (1932a: 90), so that partypolitics meant that the will of the majority shifted according tounstable compromises between a plurality of heterogeneousorganizations. This situation seriously compromised the legis-lative state's capacity to survive. For it to survive as a state it wasessential that state sovereignty be enhanced and a sharp separa-tion from civil society be maintained. The total state obliteratedthat separation and imperilled the autonomy and independencenecessary for the state to function. This development need nothave occurred if the parliamentary regime had been truly success-ful in preserving a status mixtus, i.e. an inner balance among itsconstituent elements, particularly between its executive andlegislative functions, and not allowed the exorbitant developmentof the latter. Because the Weimar regime failed to do this, Schmittproposed the retrieval of an executive state as a solution to thecrisis currently faced by the Weimar republic. The crisis resulted from the extinction of the authoritarian ethos and the decisionisttemper that could sustain a strong state.


Link – Education

Education projects in South Africa can lead to force to implement our values in the area

Gottfied, 1990. [Paul Edward, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College] “Carl Schmitt: Policies and Theory” Global Perspective in History and Politics.PG 91. SD

It is irrelevant that Bloom and other "traditionalist" intellectuals prefernot to speak of "values" but proclaim the "principles" of democraticequality. What they want is recognition of their own highest value, not areturn to older patterns of life; and it is not extraneous to our discussionthat their stated Hchstwert is one the political and intellectual Leftembraces no less readily than they. Both the American Right and theAmerican Left consider a secular, majoritarian democracy with a mixedeconomy to be the highest universal good, which they hope to see implemented everywhere, including the Soviet Union and South Africa. Schmitt would find understandable this convergence of views, for theasserting and imposing of values, he notes, entails Denkschaltungen, conceptual manipulations in which values are readily reordered inaccordance with the changing wills of individuals or groups. It is alsoconceivable that intellectuals competing for political control will accept thesame highest value, but disagree on who is to carry it through. Force isof course an acceptable tool to achieve compliance. Like other valueassertors, Bloom and his admirers demand that their values be validatedthrough acts of imposition. Thus they justify war not as a means toprotect national territory, but as an "educational project."


Link – HegemonyU.S. hegemony contributes to a spaceless universalism that destroys the ability of lines to be drawn – leads to exclusion and annihilation


It is today often assumed that end of the Cold War meant the victory of the US, and that an American Empire is now being constmcted. At this stage, however, this is far from the first altemative that Schmitt had outlined in that 'world unity' has not emerged under a sole sovereign or even through the impending retreat and demise of the modem state that processes of globalisation herald. Neither has a new global balance been constmcted in an explicit system akin to the European system of the balance of power under US hegemony. And, indeed, despite the attraction of regional blocs that the 'success' of the European Union has created, politically it is difficult to speak of the regional spatial order with the assumption of intemal unity within each bloc that Schmitt had presumed. While the emergence of US hegemony since 1945, but especially since 1989, is often discussed through various perspectives, in this paper, I would like to remain with Schmitt's argument and concem of a 'spaceless universalism', which I think still best captures the lack of explicit spatiality to global politics that is prevalent today. 15 I would like to explore this spaceless universalism under the heading of today's cosmopolitanism and discuss some of the repercussions of cosmopolitanism's claim to 'erase' the lines or distinctions set by the intemational state order and promote the idea(l) of a universal humanity.Schmitt had argued vehemently against the 'spaceless universalism' that followed the jus publicum Europeaum. That this post-1914 order was spaceless was exemplified in the inability and unwillingness of major public actors to draw lines and spatial distinctions16 Schmitt's concem was that the ideal of universality and of a common oruniversal humanity that was first promoted by the League of Nations, and subsequently by the United Nations (despite the UN Charter's tense comprom.ise between human rights and the affIrmation of state sovereignty and the norm of nonintervention); would not rid the political world of exclusions. The unwillingness or inability to concretely draw lines and distinctions would definitely not entail their permanent erasure but rather m.ight signal the return of substantive conceptual distinctions that could lead to even more horrendous 'otherings' and exclusions. Schmitt's historical survey and analysis led him to argue that a certain '''dialectic'' of inclusion and exclusion' operated in each historical era and could not be ignored or easily rescinded in the post-19l4 era as was believed by the League of Nations. 17



Link – Humanity

The discourse of humanity represents a battle against political that serves to ensure cosmopolitanism


In The Concept of the Political Schmitt had already indicted the increasing usage of the terminology of 'humanity' by both theorists and public actors, such as the League of Nations. There are in fact four main criticisms arising from political considerations, which Schmitt puts forward against the discourse of humanity. The first is an allencompassing objection that arises from the location of this discourse in the liberal universe of values: by using the discourse of humanity the new cosmopolitanism reverberates with the 'ringing proclamations of disinterested liberal principle' which go back to the nineteenth century.45 As David Dyzenhaus notes 'liberalism quite successfully conceals its politics, which is the politics of getting rid of politics. ,46 For Schmitt, liberal modernity 'is the battle against the political - as Schmitt defines thepolitical,47 in terms of the friend / enemy distinction. The politics of humanity focuses on moral questions and hopes to ignore or surpass questions of conflict altogether.48



Link – Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism is a war for liberalism – the goal is not to help the victims of the world but instead to extend liberalism





Humanitarian efforts are a form of liberalist impositions on the state


Schmitt explained this uneasy accommodation as the confluence of two distinct elements. On the one hand, a liberal,apolitical element stressed the protection of individuals.Individuals were assured a sanctuary for their immunities andprivileges. From this perspective the state ought to be seen as anintruder whose actions required close supervision. On the other hand, a political form, resting on the pouvoir constituent of the people, allowed for an interventionist political state. A democratic volonte generale, Schmitt recognized, could override and render superfluous the inalienable human rights (1921: 140), hence the need to distinguish between liberalism and the political. The existence of the state, particularly if it responded to those unlimited political demands, contradicted the spirit of liberalism, which saw in those demands a permanent threat to the freedom of individuals. The tensions and contradictions within the Weimar constitution were powerful arguments aimed by Schmitt against humanitarian liberalism. The mere existence of a state proved that the attempt to dispense with notions such as sovereignty, dictatorship and politics was futile.

Humanitarianism attempts to create universal friendship, but this produces new internal enemies that results in efforts at extermination


A new type of war also requires a new type of enemy: 'it is an apparent fact', Rasch argues, 'that the liberal and humanitarian attempt to construct a world of universal friendship produces, as if by internal necessity, ever new enemies'. 85 As we discussed above, the discourse of humanity enables the creation of 'a category of political non¬persons, since those who fall outside of these delineations become ... subject to a demonization which permits not simply their defeat, but their elimination'. 86 In the case of the war on terror, the 'freedom-hating' recalcitrant others, those subjects of other ‘modernities’ entangled with the liberal one,87 become those to be excised from the global liberal order. The notion of enemy used by the war on terror is problematic because it denies any rationality or justice to its opponents. As Schmitt argued in the Nomos, the notion of just us hostis which the interstate order had developed, alongside the notion of non-discriminatory war, was what allowed war to be limited in nature but also peace to be made with enemies. When enemies are denied this procedural kind of 'justness', then peace cannot be made with them, nor are they allowed a rightof resistance and self-defence. The notion of an unjust enemy in the war on terror relies on the reintroduction of the notion of just cause for one's own side and points to an 'other' who has to be fought until there is no more resistance



Humanitarianism is an effort to achieve a universal order in which opposition to this order is seen as the enemy of humanity




Link - International RelationsInternational Relations force alliances and groups to make friends and enemies thereby erasing the grey area of indistinction, where life can be eradicated; clearly defining friends and enemies during war and peace





Link – Justice

State intervention in the arena of social justice destroys individual freedom and is a deviation from the state’s true purpose – a strong state and sound economy is the necessary alternative – it protects civil society’s independence


In this affirmation of a substantive conception of law, Hayekstood very much in agreement with Schmitt. In theVerfassungslebre, Schmitt distinguished between the rule of lawas a generic notion and the liberal rule of law. The latter presup-posed a state whose function was limited to 'the preservation ofthe legal order'; and by legal order he meant 'a liberal legal order,viz. one based on private property and personal freedom, onewhich considers the state to be the armed warranty of liberalpeace, order and security' (Schmitt, 1928: 130; my emphasis).This corresponded to the substantive core embraced by earlyliberalism. In addition, Schmitt postulated that the conception oflaw required by the liberal rule of law demanded conformity withfour specific criteria: generality; predictability and measurabilityof all political and juridical decisions; an administration subjectto judicial review (ibid.: 130-2); and equality before the law(ibid.: 154-5). In his The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek adoptedthese same four criteria (1960: 207-12), and acknowledged hisdebt to Schmitt (p. 207 n. 9). He explicitly referred to the memor-andum written by Schmitt in 1926, where he proposed that thedistinction between law and measure, together with equalitybefore the law, constituted the 'proper foundation of theRecbtsstaat and the most effective warranty against all despotism'(1926: 23). Schmitt defined laws as general and abstract, andmeasures as concrete, particular and open to the needs and inter-ests of particular individuals or groups. The generality andpersistence of law was meant equally to protect all individualsfrom prerogative and arbitrary authority (Schmitt, 1928:139-41). Schmitt and Hayek agreed in assuming that the legalfoundations of liberalism consisted in this objective encirclementof authority. In other words, coercive orders were in principleincompatible with the liberal idea, but they could be permitted oncondition that the authorities in charge of implementing themallowed all individuals equally to foresee and calculate the courseof legal actions.Both Schmitt and Hayek acknowledged that the rule of lawremained a purely procedural condition. The requirement ofequality before the law and the rejection of the particular opportunities, privileges and dispensations conveyed by particu-lar measures implied that the rule of law was indifferent to theconsequences of its application (Schmitt, 1928: 154; comparewith Hayek, 1960: 231-3). The emergence of substantive differ-ences among individuals was of no concern here. The value ofindividual freedom would be jeopardized only by attempts tomodify and correct such outcomes under the guidance of prin-ciples defined by social justice and by state intervention (Hayek,1960: 93). In this respect, Schmitt's attacks on democratic liber-alism matched Hayek's assault on the welfare state. As WilliamScheuerman has noted, Schmitt sought to dispose of the Weimarwelfare state and thus eliminate the burdensome obligationsimposed by the principle of social justice (1995: 122). Thealternative to this state of affairs was summarily captured bySchmitt's formula 'a strong state and a sound economy', whichsought to give capitalist managers freedom from state welfareregulation. At the same time, a decrease in state regulation couldnot amount to a decline in discretionary state authority. On thecontrary, only a very strong state, one that strongly asserted itsmonopoly over the political, would be able to protect the inde-pendence required by civil society.


Link – Liberalism

Neither liberalism nor democracy favor politics of restraint and democracy sacrifices private life and heads to totalitarian politics

Gottfied, 1990. [Paul Edward, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College] “Carl Schmitt: Policies and Theory” Global Perspective in History and Politics. PG 80-81. SD

Neither liberalism nor democracy, in Schmitt's opinion, favored apolitics of restraint: liberalism because it paid insufficient attention to man as a "dangerous, dynamic being”; and democracy because it politicizedlife entirely to the detriment of other human activity. Though Schmittapparently preferred democracy to liberalism, or at least found it moreconsistent with the maintenance of sovereignty in Weimar Germany, his prodemocratic statements were mostly tactical. He made them in order todefend an authoritarian presidential government against a liberal parliamentary one. Plebiscitary democracy, he thought, was the means bywhich a conservative president could hold the German state together. Inno other respect was Schmitt a political majoritarian. He finessed hisdefinition of "democracy" to avoid making it refer to government thatdepended on changing popular opinion. The association of democracywith national homogeneity would allow an ideal sovereign to benefit fromdemocratic legitimation without being stymied by majoritarian whims. What Schmitt really thought of democracy comes through in Legality and Legitimacy when he expresses the opinion that "the cause of the totalstate, more accurately of the total politicization of man's entire existence,must be sought in democracy." It is that mode of organizing human groupings that totally sacrifices private to public life and that carries political antagonisms into ideological crusades. F. R. Cristi is right whenobserves that, contrary to the view of Schmitt as primarily antiliberal, “his attacks were directed against the democratic component in nine-teenth-century liberalism, particularly against the principle of popular sovereignty." Schmitt regarded liberals as too muddled to saveEuropean states from democracy, which he believed would engender totalitarian policies.

Liberalism has increased the gap between representation and reality – we must break this cycle

Thorup 2006 [Mikkel. Ph.D. Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas @ Uni. Of Aarhus Denmark]. January. In Defence of Enmity – Critique of Liberal Globalism. http://rudar.ruc.dk/handle/1800/2068. p.132. BH



Liberalism makes liberal regimes vulnerable to emergencies and must prefer the alternative.

McCormick ‘97 (John P. Professor of Political Science at The University of Chicago, Ph. D, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism; Against Politics as Technology) PG 151-152. AN

Liberalism's denial of the exception and avoidance of' the discretionary activity that was traditionally sanctioned to deal with it, not only makesliberal regimes susceptible to emergencies but also leaves them vulnerableto alternatives like the one eventually put forth by Schmitt. As Bernard Manin describes it, “once the notion of prerogative power was abandoned no possibility of legitimately acting beside or against the law was left.” The only apparent recourse available in this milieu to political actors confronted with a political exception is to act illegitimately and hope to pass off such actions as legitimate. Lack of constitutionally facilitated emergency prerogative may then provide the opportunity to those like Schmitt who would use this particular liberal deficiency as a ruse to scrap the whole legal order. In this sense, Schmitt’s deciding sovereign can be seen as a violent return of the prerogative represented by scientific liberalism.


Link – Modernity (Generic)Modernity is penetrating the political (weakening the state) – if we fail to act to end this imposition on political dictatorship it will become irreversible




Link – Peace

The end goal of peace is a form of depoliticization that denies the existence of enemies and refuses to make a distinction between friend and enemy




Link – Rights to Africans

The extension of liberal rights to aliens distorts the unity of the state


The liberal element proper demanded, first and foremost, 'theprotection of citizens from the abuse of state power' (p. 126).The state had to be seen as 'a strictly controlled steward ofsociety' (p. 125). This determined the two principles that found their way into every modern constitution: a recognition of funda-mental individual rights (principle of distribution) and a divisionof public powers (principle of political organization). As a liberalelement, the rule of law, the Kantian Herrschaft des Gesetzes(p. 127), did not entail any specific principle of political organi-zation. All that liberalism required in this respect was thelimitation and control of the state on behalf of individualfreedom. This relativization of the power and authority of thestate should count as the most essential ingredient in any attemptto define liberalism. Individuals were best served by closelydemarcating a domain of action free of political interference.The political element of the constitution was meant to securethe unity of the state. This quest;on, as Schmitt understood it, wasnot to be taken as a normative one, but factually and existentially.The unity of the state could not be rendered by the liberal elementbecause the tendency of liberalism was to confront the state andstand apart from it. This was what the distinction between civiland political rights presupposed. Civil rights, liberal rights parexcellence, belonged to individuals living in a state of nature, anextra-state situation of personal freedom. Their scope was unlim-ited in principle. Political rights, on the contrary, were privilegesthat could be held only within the state. They were limited in thesense that they could not 'be claimed by aliens. Otherwise thepolitical unity and community would cease, and the fundamentalpresupposition of political existence, the possibility of distin-guishing between friends and enemies, would disappear’ (p. 169). This concept of the political, as the possibility of distinguishing friends from enemies, placed Schmitt explicitly in the Hobbesian camp.


Link – Pluralism

When pluralism enters the state, party politics begin to deteriorate state power


The argument presented in this book has chronicled the devel-opment of Schmitt's pre-1933 theory of the state and theconstitution, the front line of a broader campaign aimed againstthe German democratic revolution of 1918-19 and the Weimarconstitution. According to Schmitt, classical liberalism was ableto maintain a clear line of separation between civil society and thestate, which had the effect of preserving the latter's independenceand autonomy. But the German democratic revolution meant anirreparable weakening of the state. By giving free rein to thepluralist tendencies buried in civil society it allowed the occupa-tion of the state by party politics and the consequent dissolutionof its unity. The Nazi destruction of the constitution in 1933 washailed by Schmitt as a reversal of that historical process. To thinkthat a piece of paper could personify the sovereignty formerlyheld by the representative figure of the monarch was, accordingto Schmitt, a dangerous illusion. Ascribing sovereignty to theconstitution and the ideal of the rule of law was the illusionpeddled by humanitarian liberals in their campaign to discreditthe state and the political. But it was simply a mistake to thinkthat a constitution could of itself warrant the realization of thejuridical (Recht). The realization of the juridical was first andforemost the achievement of the pouvoir constituant whose activ-ity, according to Schmitt, could not be contained within strictconstitutional bounds. The original pouvoir constituant wouldalways transcend the constitution, which ought to be regarded asa merely derivative pouvoir constitug.


Link – Rule of Law

The liberal rule of law seeks to limit sate power


Hayek also shared Schmitt's definition of the liberal rule of law as advancing the two general legal conditions required by a liberalpolity. On the one hand, Schmitt assumed that civil societyneeded to be regarded as a protected sphere where individualswere accorded the freedom to develop and launch forth in everndirection. As such, civil society was granted precedence over thestate, and the latter was taken as instrumental to the ends indi-viduals set for themselves.6 The liberal rule of law, then.presupposed a clear separation between civil society and the state.and, as a separate sphere, civil society was legitimated in itsdemands for the least possible interference in its internal affairs.On the other hand, Schmitt maintained that the liberal rule of lawpostulated that a state, limited in principle, should maintain aseparation of its powers and competencies as a guarantee that itwould remain within its own bounds. These two principles made-:p the heart of liberal constitutionalism. Accordingly, the struc-:ure of liberal constitutions reflected this dual condition. First,constitutions recognized the priority of individual rights. Theywere to be protected, but not established or generated, by thelimited legislative powers of the state. This corresponded to whatSchmitt called a 'principle of distribution' (1928: 126). Second, inorder to make sure that the state did not overstep its limitations,its powers and competencies were to be strictly defined and sep-arated. It was only in this latter function, as a 'principle oforganization' (ibid.), that the liberal rule of law had its propertask. The classical liberal formulation of the rule of law, we arereminded by Hayek, was given by William Paley: 'the first maximof a free state is that the laws be made by one set of men, andadministered by another; in other words, that the legislative andthe ludicial character be kept separate' (Hayek, 1960: 173).


Link – Technology

Technology links to liberalism

McCormick ‘97 (John P. Professor of Political Science at The University of Chicago, Ph. D, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism; Against Politics as Technology) Pg. 24-25. AN

It is my argument that Schmitt's derogatory references to what is "tactical" or is a reflection of some kind of narrow "functionalism," as well as hisdisdain for what he describes as an instrument or tool, are not merelyrhetorical. They are indications of a deep-seated connection withinSchmitt's political theory between liberalism and modern technology. Perhaps more productive avenues for understanding each of these important entities. The problem of technocracy has become a persistent issue inthe practical reality and public discourse of liberal democracies. A carefulstudy of Schmitt's work - where liberalism and technology inexorablyintersect - might provide some provisional insight into this problem.


Link – War on Terror

The War on Terror is a modernist version of the end of war that produces civil wars of annihilation


The first relationship arises from their joint location in a long line of thought and policy aiming to articulate an outlook and a political programme of the modern world in which violence and war dissipate, in which war is gradually replaced by mles and principled behaviour. 80 This, Hans Joas has eloquently called, 'the dream of a modernity without violence,.81 That cosmopolitanism seeks 'perpetual' peace, is often acknowledged through the debts that cosmopolitan thinking owes to Immanuel Kant's understanding of cosmopolitan law. 82 That the war on terror is located in this understanding of modernity is less apparent, but nevertheless becomes obvious in the apocalyptic-sounding framing of the Bush Administration's understanding of the fight on terrorism as a fight that will not be abandoned until terrorism is rooted out. The occurrence of September 11 th in the seat of this dream, the United States of America, was an unforgivable affront to this liberal modernist vision of perpetual peace.Therefore, both the war on terror and liberal cosmopolitanism are located within a modernist vision of the end of war. At the same time, however, the war on terror iscentral to the very paradox of liberal modernity and war which that has preoccupied realist, Marxist and poststructuralist thought. A recent articulation of this paradox is offered by Julian Reid who notes this disturbing paradox:[a] political project based concretely upon an ideal of 'peace' has continually produced its nemesis, war. Not only does the recurrence of war throughout modernity serve to underline its paradoxical character. But the very forms of war that recur are of such increasing violence and intensity as to threaten the very sustainability of the proj ect of modemity understood in terms of the pursuit of perpetual peace.83Schmitt's own assessment of prior liberal attempts to abolish war, as those undertaken by the League of Nations, is similar: 'any abolition of war without true bracketing [has historically] resulted only in new, perhaps even worse types of war, such as reversions to civil war and other types of wars of annihilation' (NE 246). And, how else can we understand the war on terror if not in a sequence of changing types of war, yet another evolution after the one noted by Mary Kaldor in the late 1990s?84

The War on Terror promotes the spread of subjectivity and liberal political institutions and skews the concept of who is with and who is against us


Outside of the liberal polity, the war on terror seeks to rid us of the scourge of terrorism, and the singular way of achieving this is to spread modern subjectivity and its attendant liberal political institutions (or vice versa). Recall the numerous speeches by George W. Bush on the desirability of a newly democratic Iraq, whose liberated citizens can participate in promoting a safer and more peaceful Middle East.94 Outside,the threat entailed in dichotomous determinations of 'with us or against us' is intended to shape peoples, only partly subjectivised through other means, into subjects. The second relationship of the war of terror to cosmopolitanism, then, pertains to the rise of modem subjectivity and the institutions that it makes possible, and their global exportation. When threatened, the apparatus of liberal cosmopolitanism responds by radicalising its normal mode of operation (which is the spread of modem subjectivity through commerce and cultural 'exchange ') and attempts to impose a liberal order by spreading modem subjectivity through logistical, biopolitical and military means. Dispensing with intemational law and norms of state action cannot be understood as serious obstacles to this kind of war, because, as Habermas notes regretfully, in the age of the war on terror the US sees 'wars that make the world better. .. need no further justification' 95




Link – We Demand

Impositions by the civil society on the state crumble its strength


The intellectual task attempted by Schmitt immediately after thepublication of Political Romanticism and prior to 1923, was a bidto reassert the juridical validity of notions such as sovereignty,authority and dictatorship. These non-romantic notions wereneeded to strengthen the state and keep it from drowning in thevortex of civil society. The rise of liberalism had depoliticizedpublic discourse to such an extent that the real nature of the statehad been obfuscated. Schmitt took the view that it was futilesimply to repress political life and attempt to cover it up with thelanguage of abstract legality. Hence, to read the Weimar consti-tution as a purely formal juridical document missed its truemeaning. Schmitt treated the constitution as a distinguishedpatient invited to lie on his couch and confess to its repressedpolitical intentions. Then its impeccable liberal facade wouldcrumble and the real proportions of its article 48 would come tolight (compare with Schwab, 1970: 37-43). This is what heachieved in the last pages of his Die Diktatur (Schmitt, 1921:201-3).


Impact – Civil War

A distinction of enemies and friends is needed to avert impending civil war – key to a strong state


Schmitt's emphatic affirmation of the sovereignty of the statewas due to what he saw as the weak state that had resulted fromthe revolutionary abrogation of the monarchical legitimacy inGermany. A convinced etatist and anti-monarchomachist,Schmitt followed Hobbes in judging that only the strongly decisive state could avert the possibility of a civil war. Its strengthcould be measured by the capacity to identify friends and enemiesand draw between them clear adversarial lines. Once order wasre-established and normality returned, the exercise of state sovereignty could again be juridically determined. The normativity ofa legislative state could replace the stark raison d'itat, the political reason of an absolute prince. Only contempt for the reality ofthe political would allow one to pretend that a system of legalitycould sustain itself and maintain no reference to a substantiveorder of things. If liberalism were to be identified with thisapolitical view, Schmitt was a unswerving critic; if liberalism wereto restrict its apoliticism to the sphere of civil society, andacknowledge the necessity of a sovereign state that retained themonopoly of the political, Schmitt would not object to conservative or authoritarian liberalism.8

Schmitt's conservative thought found in the critique of liberal-ism a continuous line of argument.


Impact – Dictatorship

Dictatorship is inevitable through the affirmative’s engagement in politics


All of politics becomes technical and dictatorial politics; correspondingly, both elements themselves change through the transformation: In a traditional framework, the technical was a means to a prior-sanctioned good, butin modernity it becomes an end in itself-, dictatorship changes from a "commissarial" phenomenon to a "sovereign" one. Civil war and foreign war traditionally considered exceptional circumstances that might occasionally call for a dictator, become something else in the writings of such statetheorists as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin. In line with these historicaltransformations, Hobbes, who will become Schmitt's intellectual hero, further inverts the relationship of a normal political situation and an exceptional one with his concept of the "natural condition" or the "state ofnature. For Hobbes, the present manifestation of 'War" is an exceptional circumstance that in the past, or more accurately beneath the veneerof the present, is actually a normal state of affairs, the "natural condition" or"state of nature." Thus, the exceptional circumstance is viewed actually as areturn to normalcy and the regular order as a kind of exceptional situation -the distinction becomes deliberately blurred. Hobbes's "sovereign" andstate are hence a kind of dictatorship that has as its sole task guarding overthe ever-present exception and, as such, is no longer commissarial butappropriate to its own name, sovereign. In this way is "the technical conception of the origin of the modern state directly related to the problem of dictatorship" (D, 10).13

According to Schmitt, this process is radicalized as sovereignty becomesincreasingly defined as popular sovereignty, as authority derives not from aspecific and definite individual person, like an absolute monarch, butr-ather from an amorphous and differentiated populace. As a result, emergency action becomes more extreme, because it is soon carried out by anelite whose actions are supposedly sanctioned by such "popular" sovereignty. Concomitantly, there is a historical justification for the violentdestruction of an old order and the creation of a new one out of nothing.Sovereign dictatorship becomes the power to perpetually suspend andchange political order in the name of an inaccessible "people" and aneschatological notion of history. Schmitt's chief examples of this development are the writings of the French revolutionary theorists, such as Mably(D, 115-16) and especially Siey6s (D, 143-5) and more immediately theBolsheviks.


Impact – Extinction

Without regular conflict in which our enemies are identified, the state of war goes beyond defeat - extinction




Universality fails – leads to exclusions and annihilation


Schmitt had argued vehemently against the 'spaceless universalism' that followed the jus publicum Europeaum. That this post-1914 order was spaceless was exemplified in the inability and unwillingness of major public actors to draw lines and spatial distinctions16 Schmitt's concem was that the ideal of universality and of a common oruniversal humanity that was first promoted by the League of Nations, and subsequently by the United Nations (despite the UN Charter's tense comprom.ise between human rights and the affIrmation of state sovereignty and the norm of nonintervention); would not rid the political world of exclusions. The unwillingness or inability to concretely draw lines and distinctions would definitely not entail their permanent erasure but rather m.ight signal the return of substantive conceptual distinctions that could lead to even more horrendous 'otherings' and exclusions. Schmitt's historical survey and analysis led him to argue that a certain '''dialectic'' of inclusion and exclusion' operated in each historical era and could not be ignored or easily rescinded in the post-19l4 era as was believed by the League of Nations. 17



The concept of a singular humanity inevitably finds enemies to oppose, and when this happens total extermination is possible


Thirdly, 'humanity is not a political concept, and no political entity corresponds to it. The eighteenth century humanitarian concept of humanity was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic feudal system and the privileges accompanying it. ,56 Outside of this historical location, where does it fmd concrete expression? The discourse of humanity finds expression in an abstract politics of neutrality, usually in the name of an international community which acts, we are assured, in the interest of humanity. James Brown Scott, a jurist and prominent political fIgure in the United States at the beginning of the 20th Century, wrote in the interwar years of the right of this international community to impose its neutral will:The "international community," Scott writes, "is coextensive with humanity-no longer merely with Christianity;" it has become "the representative of the common humanity rather than of the common religion binding the States." Therefore, the international community "possesses the inherent right to impose its will. . and to punish its violation, not because of a treaty, or a pact or a covenant, but because of an international need" (283). If in the sixteenth century it was the Christian Church that determined the content of this international need, in the twentieth centmy and beyond it must be the secularized "church" of "common humanity" that performs this all¬important service. 57Finally, and most importantly, there is the relation of the concept of humanity to the other, and to war and violence. In its historical location, the humanity concept had critical purchase against aristocratic prerogatives, but its utilisation by liberal discourses in the individualist tradition, Schmitt feared, could bring about new and unimaginable modes of exclusion. Rasch explains:The humanism that Schmitt opposes is, in his words, a philosophy of absolute humanity. By virtue of its universality and abstract normativity, it has no localizable polis, no clear distinction between what is inside and what is outside. Does humanity embrace all humans? Are there no gates to the city and thus no barbarians outside? If not, against whom or what does it wage its wars? 58'Humanity as such' Schmitt noted 'cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet'. 59 As Ellen Kennedy notes, humanity 'is a polemical word that negates hs opposite. ,60 In T71e Concept of the Political Schmitt argued that humanity 'excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human being,.6! In the Nomos, however, it becomes apparent that, historically examined, the concept of humanity could not allow the notion of Justus hostis, of a 'just enemy', who is recognised as someone with whom one can make war but also negotiate peace. Schmitt noted how only when 'man appeared to be the embodiment of absolute humanity, did the other side of this concept appear in the form of a new enemy: the inhuman' (NE 104). It is worth quoting Rasch's account at length:We can understand Schmitt's concems in the following way: Christianity distinguishes between believers and nonbelievers. Since nonbelievers can become believers, they must be of the same category of being. To be human, then, is the horizon within which the distinction between believers and nonbelievers is made. That is, humanity per se is not part of the distinction, but is that which makes the distinction possible. However, once the term used to describe the horizon of a distinction also becomes that distinction's positive pole, it needs its negative opposite. If humanity is both the horizon and the positive pole of the distinction that that horizon enables, then the negative pole can only be something that lies beyond that horizon, can only be something completely antithetical to horizon and positive pole alike-can only, in other words, be inhuman62Without the concept of the just enemy associated with the notion of non¬discriminatory war, the enemy had no value and could be exterminated. The concept of humanity, furthermore, reintroduces substantive causes of war because it shutters the formal concept of Justus hostis, now designated substantively as an enemy of humanity as such. In Schmitt's accomlt of the League of Nations in the Nomos, hehighlights that compared to the kinds of wars that can be waged on behalf of humanity theinterstate European wars from 1815 to 1914 in reality were regulated; they were bracketed by the neutral Great Powers and were completely legal procedures in comparison with the modern and gratuitous police actions against violators of peace, which can be dreadful acts of annihilation (NE 186).Enemies of humanity cannot be considered 'just and equal' enemies. Moreover, they cannot claim neutrality: one cannot remain neutral in the call to be for or against humanity or its freedom; one cannot, similarly, claim a right to resist or defend oneself in the sense we understand this right to have existed in the jus publicum Europeaum. As will examine below in the context of the war on terror, this denial of the self-defence and resistance 'can presage a dreadfhl nihilistic destruction of all law'(NE 187).When the enemy is not accorded a formal equality, the notion that peace can be made with him is unacceptable, as Schmitt detailed through his study of the League of Nations, which had declared the abolition of war, but in rescinding the concept of neutrality only succeeded in the 'dissolution of "peace'" (NE 246). It is with the dissolution of peace that total wars of annihilation and destruction become possible, where the other cannot be assimilated, or accommodated, let alone tolerated: the friend/enemy distinction is not longer taking place with a justus hostis but rather between good and evil, human and inhuman, where 'the negative pole of the distinction is to be fully and finally consumed without remainder. ,63 With this in mind, 1 turn in the next section to the war on terror and its relation to the discourse ofhumanity and cosmopolitanism.



Having enemies is necessary to ensure the containment of war – The alternative is extinction




With the implementation of values leads to naming enemy as worthlessness and lets extermination become a reality

Gottfied, 1990. [Paul Edward, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College] “Carl Schmitt: Policies and Theory” Global Perspective in History and Politics.PG 89-90. SD

It would not be stretching a point to recognize in Schmitt's modernpartisan an intellectual seeking desperately to carry through his "highest value [Hochstwert]." In the contemporary world partisans are losing theirattachment to homeland soil. Their dependence on great power and theiridentification with revolutionary ideals have turned them from nationalliberators into armed ideologues. Schmitt presents Lenin as a key figurein this process of change "who gave a new twist to the distinctionbetween friend and enemy." The Prussian military theorist Karl vonClausewitz had advocated total war during Prussia's struggle againstNapoleon. Clausewitz did so as an extraordinary, temporary measure in aEurope of established states. Lenin, by contrast, advocated total war asan instrument of raising the party above the state. He set out to turn thestate into a weapon of "world civil war" directed by the party, and his acthad irreversible significance: "Once the party became absolute, thepartisan too became absolute and was raised to being a bearer of absolutehostility. Today the absolutization of the enemy has become all the moredifficult to discredit, for it seems to be inherent in the reality of a nuclear age. Such statements are clearly related to the escalating war of valuesin which intellectuals damn the bearers of competing values, togetherwith the values being rejected. In The Tyranny of Valties Schmitt stressesthat the competition being discussed is not a mere academic exercise but adeadly confrontation: "For the highest value no price is too high to bepaid." Politics now centers on values and no longer on the definableinterests of established communities. Such politics demands just wars,"for any consideration of the enemy must vanish, must become anonvalue, when the struggle against this enemy is concerned with the highest value.” In this situation there are only two types of human beings, "the one who annihilates and the one who is to be annihilated." Inconclusion: "All categories of the classical military law of the jitspitblictim Europaelitium -- just enemy, just grounds for war, proportionality between the means and the intended purpose, reparation – must fall victim to this [judgment of] worthlessness. The drive toward theimplementation of values becomes here a compulsion toward their immediate realization.

Without the friend-enemy distinction any opposing view in the world will lead to war of all against all with new weapons of annihilation and extermination


The pure subjective freedom of positing values leads to the eternal struggle ofvalues and worldviews, to a war of all against all, to an eternal bellumomniurn contra ornnes, in comparison to which the murderous state of naturein the political thought of Thomas Hobbes is a true pastoral scene. The oldgods arise from their graves and continue to wage their old struggle, butdisenchanted ... with new weapons of annihilation and procedures ofextermination.

Liberalism emasculates politics allowing a war of all against all which can lead to extinction


The views that remain standing on the problematic character of liberal politics in Schmitt's work are the first two: (1) Schmitt criticized liberalism for emasculating politics; and (2) he feared that liberalism, by taking human aggressiveness too lightly, would produce the war of all against all. Though these interpretations clearly diverge, it is possible to cite supporting passages for either from The Concept of the Political.


Impact – Governance Fails

Liberalism fails as a organizing politic – creating enemies is a necessary framework for politics to function – only through the exception can the sovereign maintain order and power




Liberalism fails at governance because of the way it is limited from declaring emergencies – comparatively a politics based on friends and enemies is better




Impact – Internal Conflict

Failure to adhere to a strict friend/enemy dichotomy produces internal conflict – preemptive war is justified, civil liberties are destroyed, and the public is disciplined


The second relationship is that the war on terror is connected to cosmopolitanism in that it is a set of practices, which intends to produce and spread modem liberal subjectivity. Given the commitment to the individual - which sets into place norms and practices that prohibit the torturing of the subject's body, making physical violence in principle illegitimate (if sometimes inevitable) - war in the present stage of liberal modernity becomes an activity that spreads modern subjectivity and subjectivist socio-political practices. The type of violence that becomes possible in a liberal cosmopolitan age is that which promulgates modern subjectivity, which makes incrementally real the ideal of universal humanity; which abstracts human political diversity from its local constructions and retains only its cultural and aesthetic spectre88 The war on terror should be seen as the latest form of a longer project of subjectivising peoples who have only partially been subjectivised through colonialism, through the extensions of global capitalism, through the international biopolitical operations of the UN system in the last half of the 20th century and through other kinds of wars prominent since the end of the Cold War. 89As to the means of this war to spread the modern liberal subject, the war on terror contains what were traditionally recognisable as 'war practices', but also newly inserts 'peace practices' into its set of operations. Peace and War 'must be understood in accordance with a substitutive value that makes the two tenns absolutely contemporary with one another, starting with the inversion both of their functions and of their "classical" relations'. 90In one way, then, David Held is correct to claim that the war on terror (and the US's unilateralist foreign policy) is a return to the Hobbesian state of nature. If weunderstand the 'state of nature' to be an educational tool employed by Thomas Hobbes in order to discipline the unruly participants in the English civil war, then we can see its function as a disciplining device helping to convinceimperfectly domesticated subjects that they, in their present state, should consent to remain there and should commit themselves more fully to the habits and principles that ensure the stability of their condition, even though that condition does and mustcarry many ‘inconveniences’.Just as the device of the state of nature is able to achieve results for classical liberalism by exulting the need and desire for the sovereign, the war on terror can be understood to serve a similar purpose and to entail, therefore, a similar relationship with liberal cosmopolitanism. The war of terror is, in part, an environment which (re )creates fearful subjects inside liberal polities. It reminds citizens, as the state of nature did, that the sovereign is needed and ought to be made stronger92 Inside the polity, let us take the US as an example, the practices of the war of terror such as its constant raising of colour-coded terror alerts, its lessons of how citizens ought to cultivate readiness to deal with disaster, its general logistical manipulation of citizens,93 disciplines and controls the subjects of liberal societies by suggesting that the distinction between inside and outside no longer holds; that the danger, which the Hobbesian solution had banished to the outside, has retumed. Moreover, the internal disciplining of liberal publics is necessary in order to justify the undertakings of the war on terror on the world outside of liberal polities. As soon as liberal citizens stop being afraid, they may begin to seek justifications for pre-emptive wars, as they may start to question, more incessantly, the weakening of their civil liberties.



Modernity has created the depoliticized enemy – this is the enemy that results from having no external enemies in which case hatred turns inward into uncontrollable violence and hate


Without a sovereignty to name foe’s conflict turns in on the state and forges religious, economic, or cultural.


Moreover, Schmitt's insistence on the polemical and thereforepolitical potential of holding opinions strongly appears to lend credibilityto Sartori's question, whether an intellectual or parliamentary debatepresupposes the same degree of antagonism as that manifested in ashooting war. Sartori contends that Schmitt is making too much of theGreek word polemos (war) by extending it to essentially civil encountersamong oratorical or scholarly opponents. But Schmitt does not equatesuch encounters with shooting war. He is only calling attention to thecc ever present possibility of conflict" that can erupt in the internal politicsof weak states, in the form of civil war, as well as among organizednations.15 Where the state dissolves itself or renounces sovereignty,armed combat does not cease among organized units, even if the state nolonger directs it. Nonpolitical groupings can suddenly transformthemselves into violently antagonistic ones, a point forcefully made in anoften misunderstood passage from The Concept of the Political: "The realfriend-enemy grouping is existentially so strong and decisive that thenonpolitical antithesis, at precisely the moment at which it becomespolitical, pushes aside and subordinates its hitherto purely religious,purely economic, purely cultural criteria and motives.... Thatgrouping is always political which orients itself toward this most extremepossibility.



Impact – Solvency Takeout

Plan fails – policy implementation/advocacy by the individuals fail to create any changes in the state


The emergence of the modern sovereign state was thus the result of the triumph of the these royaliste, the assertion of absolute monarchical sovereignty over feudal seigneurial claims. The transition from monarchical absolutism to liberal constitutionalism and the rule of law presupposed that the challenge to the sovereign unity of the state posed by the aristocratic Frondes (these nobiliaire) had been met. If henceforth an individual or a group of individuals conspired to alter the public order, this was to be seen as a perfectly normal event, calculated and regulated in advance.13 The unity of the state could not thereby be placed in jeopardy. Classical liberalism acknowledged that the juridical value of absolutism lay in having definitely secured the unity of the state that had been menaced by the Frondes. Once that unity was attained, it became necessary to limit what liberals then inter - preted as royalist excesses and arbitrary rule. The notion of sovereignty could be safely dissolved or, even better, transferred from the monarch to each individual citizen. Liberalism presup posed the elimination of all social groupings, all intermediate associations, and the isolation of individuals. Condorcet was able to justify, according to Schmitt, switching his allegiance from monarchy to republicanism, in the following terms:“the time is past when there existed within the state powerful groups and classes. The associations puissantes have vanished. While they existed, un despotisme arme was required to contain them. Now individuals confront a unified totality. Thus, il faut bien peu de force pour forcer les individus a l'obeissance. (1921: 204)14”


Impact – War

Without a sovereign power the state can fall into “legal war of all against all”


Gray depicts the "new Hobbesian dilemma" that is developing out ofbad liberal doctrines and social democratic zeal for state-initiatedredistribution of services and income. In England, which is his test case,the "state has become the most powerful weapon in an incessantcompetition for resources" and entitlements. "Its power is sought byevery interest and enterprise partly because of the huge assets it alreadyowns and controls but also because no private or corporate asset is freefrom invasion or confiscating taxation." In contrast to the sovereign state,Gray describes an "anti-Hobbesian" one that is occupied by mutually antagonistic interests. Working through legislation and litigation andoften through human rights rhetoric, these interests create a "legal war ofall against all, with the ... state of nature being reproduced in thecontext of an over-extended government and a weak civil society.' Gray does not confuse this "over-extended government" with a trulysovereign state, which does not allow itself to fall victim to the "legal warof all against all." Only through the restoration of its political sovereignty,in the Hobbesian sense of maintaining public order against internal andexternal threats, can the state control its own destiny and protect itscitizens against each other as well as foreign enemies. Inherent in Gray'sanalysis are the three points of reference that define Schmitt's critique ofliberalism: sovereignty, the challenge of the exception, and humancontentiousness. The challenge of the exception is the assault on the state's sovereignty that has created Gray's "new Hobbesian dilemma," an occupied state that is also an "over-extended government." His wordsrecall Schmitt's critical remark made in The Concept of the Political thatliberals "transform the enemy from the viewpoint of economics into acompetitor and from the intellectual viewpoint into a debating partner.' Through such redefinitions of identities, Gray and Schmitt both maintain,the participants in this process work to hide, while actually spreading, dangerous political antagonisms.


Alternative – AgonismAgonism is essential to self development and politics. In a political system, decisions are made based on wins and losses and the loser is forced to become subordinate to the winner.


How can we begin to apply the notion of agonistics to politics in general and democracy in particular? First of all, contestation and competition can be seen as fundamental to self-development and as an intrinsically social phenomenon. Agonistics helps us articulate the social and political ramifications of Nietzsche's concept of will to power. As Nietzsche put it in an 1887 note, "will to power can manifest itself only against resistances; it seeks that which resists it" (KSA 12, p.424). Power, therefore, is not simply an individual possession or a goal of action; it is more a global, interactive conception. For Nietzsche, every advance in life is an overcoming of some obstacle or counterforce, so that conflict is a mutual co-constitution of contending forces. [End Page 134] Opposition generates development. The human self is not formed in some internal sphere and then secondarily exposed to external relations and conflicts. The self is constituted in and through what it opposes and what opposes it; in other words, the self is formed through agonistic relations. Therefore, any annulment of one's Other would be an annulment of one's self in this sense. Competition can be understood as a shared activity for the sake of fostering high achievement and self-development, and therefore as an intrinsically social activity. 10

In the light of Nietzsche's appropriation of the two forms of Eris, it is necessary to distinguish between agonistic conflict and sheer violence. A radical agonistics rules out violence, because violence is actually an impulse to eliminate conflict by annihilating or incapacitating an opponent, bringing the agon to an end. 11 In a later work Nietzsche discusses the "spiritualization of hostility (Feindschaft)," wherein one must affirm both the presence and the power of one's opponents as implicated in one's own posture (TI "Morality as Antinature," 3). And in this passage Nietzsche specifically applies such a notion to the political realm. What this implies is that the category of the social need not be confined to something like peace or harmony. Agonistic relations, therefore, do not connote a deterioration of a social disposition and can thus be extended to political relations.

How can democracy in general terms be understood as an agonistic activity? Allow me to quote from my previous work.

Political judgments are not preordained or dictated; outcomes depend upon a contest of speeches where one view wins and other views lose in a tabulation of votes; since the results are binding and backed by the coercive power of the government, democratic elections and procedures establish temporary control and subordination—which, however, can always be altered or reversed because of the succession of periodic political contests. . . . Democratic elections allow for, and depend upon, peaceful exchanges and transitions of power. . . . [L]anguage is the weapon in democratic contests. The binding results, however, produce tangible effects of gain and loss that make political exchanges more than just talk or a game. . . . The urgency of such political contests is that losers must yield to, and live under, the policies of the winner; we notice, therefore, specific configurations of power, of domination and submission in democratic politics. 12


The creation of antagonisms is necessary for the sovereign’s ability to create exceptions – this is necessary to reaffirm state power


Europe in 1848, Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1918 provedCondorcet to be wrong. Within the state there arose new powerful associations whose 'antagonist force' created exceptionalsituations. These required the development of totally new frameworks of reference. In particular, the Marxist notion of adictatorship of the proletariat went beyond the notion of commissarial dictatorship, which could still be placed within traditionalparameters. It represented an absolute dictatorship grounded ona revolutionary pouvoir constituant, very much the same powerthat was claimed by the National Convention in 1793, and whichSchmitt presented as an example of absolute dictatorship. Schmittconcluded his Die Diktatur with the thought that the Weimarrepublic, like the situation of Marx and Engels as described intheir address to the Communist League in 1850, had retrogressed, to the state of affairs of France in 1793 and was thus compelledto employ the same measures (1921: 205). Schmitt's self-imposed task was to bring to light what lay beneathWeimar's liberal facade. It was one thing to recognize the sovereignrights of individuals and quite another to attribute broad unlimitedpowers to the executive authority, powers that could even configurean absolute dictatorship. If conceived as an outlet for the pouvoirconstituant, the Reichsprisident would be empowered to go beyondthe limits set by the constitution itself. Schmitt sought to bring outthis repressed aspect of the constitution, its revolutionary stance, inorder to graft onto it his own counter-revolutionary programme, aprogramme he thought he shared with de Maistre, Bonald andDonoso Cort6s.16 Novalis's observation that Burke wrote arevolutionary book against the revolution could be extended to thework of these thinkers. It seems to me that it should be also extendedto Schmitt's Die Diktatur. Indeed it was by revolutionary means thatSchmitt intended to contest the revolutionary claims of theproletariat. The dictatorship envisaged by Marx was an extension ofthe enlightened rationalist dictatorship. The conservative reactioncontested the expulsion of the will from the constitutional empire ofreason. For the Enlightenment there could only be an administrationof things which left no room for ultimate decisions. The enlighteneddespot was a rational edifying dictator, who centralized control andadministered the state according to plan. To Burke, de Maistre andBonald this appeared repugnant. Schmitt notes their aversion to apriori constitutions, 'to "artifice" in political affairs, artificial consti-tutions based on the calculations of a clever individual, and thefabricators of constitutions and political geometricians' (1 925b: 95).Only a decisionist, non-constructivist way of thinking such astheirs could fully restore and bring to life the political eminence ofthe Reichsprisident. He alone would then decide on the livingexception. The notion of sovereign dictatorship developed by Schmitt in his Die Diktatur manifested his desire to keep alive what he sawas the foundation of the now disintegrated German monarchy,namely the monarchical principle. The French Charte of 4 June1814 constituted its paradigm. The monarchical principleallowed the monarch, in virtue of his pouvoir constituant, tostand above the constitution, so that from the monarch's point ofview the constitution appeared as something precarious and provisional. According to Schmitt, article 14 of the Charte meantan express manifestation of sovereignty, and not just a commissarial empowerment to deal with emergencies. The monarch wasictator, commissarial or sovereign. Like the sovereign dictator Schmitt modelled after him, the French monarch 'did notconsider it anticonstitutional to issue decrees that violated existing laws and even the constitution itself, when he alone judged itnecessary for the security of the existing order' (1921: 193).While the function of a commissarial dictator was the preservation of the constitutional order, the aim of a sovereign dictatorwas the elimination of 'the whole existing order' and the generation of a new constitution, the only true constitution. Accordingto Schmitt, in such circumstances an appeal was made to theconstitution that would be enacted, not to the one that actuallyexisted (ibid.: 137). This abrogation of the existing order was totranslate into the adoption of a revolutionary stance whereby asovereign dictator could place himself above the constitution.This could be seen prima facie as a purely political move, as some-thing completely 'devoid of juridical value' (ibid.). But whatabided above and beyond a constitutional system was not purelya Machtfrage. A sovereign dictator appealed to a power that,though not constituted, was definitely the 'foundation' of aconstitution. Here resided, according to Schmitt, 'the meaning ofthe pouvoir constituant' (ibid.). It allowed one to transcend thelimits of a legal system without trespassing the limits of the juridical (Recht). Schmitt's sovereign dictator fell within the bounds oflegitimacy and could thus borrow the juridical status that wasbestowed on traditional commissarial dictators.17 In sum, Schmitt formulated the notion of sovereign dictatorshipand adopted the related doctrine of the pouvoir constituant tohighlight the perceived disharmonies within the make-up of theWeimar constitution. The framers of the constitution hadattempted to accommodate a 'combination of a sovereign and acommissarial dictatorship' (ibid.: 203). By enhancing the role ofthe Reichsprisident as a bearer of pouvoir constituant and poten-tial sovereign dictator, Schmitt looked to exploit those perceiveddisharmonies in favour of a strong state. In view of the uncertainties of the new democratic course chartered by the Weimarconstitution, Schmitt's ultimate aim was to strengthen the state byreinforcing its unity. Later, in his Verfassungslebre, when circum-stances proved more auspicious for the state, the role of theReicbsprdsident would be de-emphasized. Even though Schmittstill recognized analogies between Reichsprilsident and Kaiser, theformer could not be presented as the Kaiser's heir 'because thejuridical foundation was not the same' (1928: 292). TheReichsprdsident was a plebiscitary figure, resting on the sovereignty of the people; the legitimacy of the Kaiser was based on themonarchical principle. If the monarchs of the Restoration periodhad recognized the Estates 'as representatives of the wholepolitically unified people' (1928: 52), this would constitute acontradiction. They would have surrendered the key element oftheir legitimacy - the monarchical principle. Equally contradictory would now be the attribution of constituent power to theReicbsprdsident as heir to the Kaiser. The juridical foundation ofthe Weimar republic was not a monarchical but a democraticlegitimacy.


Agonism can be healthy for establishing hierarchies.


Appel concedes that a political agon can be healthy and prevent the establishment of entrenched, permanent hierarchies (NCD, p.162). But he poses an important question, which is in the spirit of French neo-liberal critics of Nietzschean politics: Might not a radical agon all the way down in political life "debunk" important democratic "verities" such as universal suffrage, equal respect, and human rights? This is indeed a pressing question that many postmodern writers have not addressed adequately. Yet Appel, like many critics of postmodernism, simply assumes the truth and necessity of these traditional democratic notions, without much articulation of how agonistics threatens these notions, and without any defense of the viability of these notions in the wake of Nietzschean genealogical criticisms. Such criticisms have been effectively advanced by Foucauldian appropriations of Nietzsche that reveal how modern "reason" cannot help being caught up in what it presumes to overcome—namely regimes of power—and consequently cannot help producing exclusionary effects and constraints that belie the modern rhetoric of emancipation. 18 Nietzsche's genealogical critique of liberal democratic ideals, I think, is important and still relevant for political philosophy. The question at hand turns on two possibilities: Does the critique presume a refutation of these ideals or does it open up the possibility of redescribing these ideals in quasi-Nietzschean terms? Appel presumes the former possibility, I take up the latter, while agreeing that most postmodern appropriations of Nietzsche have not done much to address either possibility. We cannot assume the truth of universal suffrage, equality, and human rights by ignoring Nietzsche's trenchant attacks. My strategy has been to redescribe democratic ideals in the light of Nietzschean suspicions of their traditional warrants. Universal suffrage, equality, respect, and political rights can be defended by way of a postmodern via negativa that simply rules out grounds for exclusion rather than postulates conditions that warrant inclusion. Nietzschean perspectivism, [End Page 138] metaphysical suspicion, and agonistics simply destabilize politics and prevent even ostensibly democratic propensities from instigating exclusions or closed conceptions of political practice. In what follows I will briefly address two questions: How can a Nietzschean agonistics be extended to the body politic so as to be viably democratic? How can agonistics redescribe respect and political rights without the baggage of traditional egalitarianism so forcefully assailed by Nietzsche?



Alternative – Friends/Enemies

Policy Alternative: Use political will in order to recognize the enemy


The sovereign is needed to name the states enemies


Though in The Concept of the Political Schmitt purports to bediscussing political life in general, he defines "political antagonism" bylooking specifically at the sovereign national state. His paradigmaticfriend-enemy grouping is the one institutionalized by the sovereign statethat mobilizes citizens against collective rather than personal enemies. It is the state and its sovereign who take charge of this antagonistic relationship; private citizens and civil society, by contrast, participate in politicalconfrontation only under the state's aegis. While Schmitt is willing toconsider the "political" defined as a "friend-enemy antithesis" in variousother situations, proper normative political antagonism is linked for himwith the operation of sovereign states. George Schwab notes that "thereturn of the foe," a situation based on absolute rather than legal enemies,is at least implicit in Schmitt's picture of the end of the sovereign state.War would no longer be viewed as limited combat, but as a total struggle, as in medieval crusades, against a criminalized and thus dehumanized enemy.


Decisions to make enemies are of utmost importance.



Distinguishing between friend and enemy is a cornerstone of the political – it is up to us as individuals to make these representations


In order to provide philosophical underpinnings for thisretrieval of the notion of a status mixtus, Schmitt related thecommunity and diversity of state-forms to two polarly oppositepolitical principles, concretely embodied in every state: the prin-ciple of identity and the principle of representation. Schmitt wrote(p. 2 14):The state rests, as a political unity, on the combination of two opposed principles: the principle of identity (namely the presenceof the people as a political unity ... when capable of distinguish-ing between friend and enemy) and the principle of representation,by virtue of which the political unity is constituted by the govern-ment.On the one hand, the people was capable of unified politicalaction. This could happen when the people attained a full real-ization of its identity and homogeneity (Gleichartigkeit). Theability to distinguish between friends and enemies became thecriterion for the existence of political consciousness. The Weimarconstitution acknowledged that the people was the true subject ofpouvoir constituant and the principle of identity determined thepeople's political unity. In truth, there could be no state withouta people and a people would always be present and make its pres-ence felt in the constitution of the state. On the other hand, theprinciple of representation was based on the fact that the politicalunity of a people could never attain full and permanent presence,it could never be present as a actual identity. It needed always tobe represented personally by individuals.The status mixtus was not an ideal notion. It could not claimthe conceptual rank of the principles of identity and representa-tion. Only stark acceptance and recognition of the reality of thepolitical was able to validate it. For the truth was that no actualstate could entirely give up the principle of identity, just as nonecould wholly renounce representation. The principles of identityand representation were but theoretically opposed points of refer-ence, which excluded each other only when considered in theabstract. In reality they jointly configured the diversity of existingpolitical unities. There could be no state without some kind ofrepresentation. The need for it would seem superfluous in caseswhen direct democracy was rigorously exercised, when, forinstance, active New England citizens met in the proverbial town-hall. But in truth, even in such cases, only adult members werepresent and their democratic encounter lasted only while theywere present together in session. At the same time, no state coulddispense with the structural principle of identity. Representationcould never be implemented absolutely and in a pure fashion. Thepeople could not simply be ignored because, as a matter of fact, itwould always retain a presence. In sum, Schmitt formulated the contrasted principles of identity and representation, not with aview to hinder the status mixtus, but better to explain its poten-tial.


Alternative – Rejection

Reject aff - Interventions by the state must be limited – key to a strong state


In the 1932 edition, he maintained basically the same view, but dropped and added crucial terms which confirmed his rapprochement to the neoliberal standpoint. The same text now read:For the liberals, by contrast, the goodness of humankind signifiesnothing more than an argument by means of which the state ismade to serve society; it only means that society has its own orderin itself and that the state is only its distrustingly controlled subor-dinate, bound to precise limits (1932b: 60)A comparison of these two texts shows, in the first place, a substi-tution of the phrase 'society has its own order in itself' for the phrase 'society is good'. This change coincided with what Schmitthad advanced in his Der Hiiter der Verfassung. There he haddeveloped a conception of a strong state, strong enough to main-tain its independence with respect to the free development of theforces that constituted civil society. Only a strong state couldrestrict its social interventions to a minimum and allow 'thatsociety and the economy could adopt in their respective spheresthe necessary decisions according to their immanent principles'(Schmitt, 1931: 78). This view of the state coincided with require-ments demanded by German neoliberals and Schmitt had noreservations in complying with them. Second, he added the phraseland bound by precise limits', defining in this way a conditionthat the state ought to respect. This again conformed with hisconception of a strong state, a state that would stay within itsown limits and would not invade, in quantitative totalitarianfashion, the domain of society.


Alternative – Sovereignty

The sovereign’s capacity to make political decisions is the essence of the unity of the state


In his Political Theology, which was published shortly after Die Diktatur, Schmitt explored the notion of sovereignty, so maligned by liberal thinkers and rescued from oblivion by the Catholicconservatives.“De Maistre spoke with particular fondness of sovereignty, whichessentially meant decision. To him the relevance of the state restedon the fact that it provided a decision, the relevance of the Churchon its rendering of the last decision that could not be appealed.Infallibility was for him the essence of the decision that cannot beappealed. (1922b: 55)”For Schmitt this meant that the foundations of a legal orderrested on a transcendent source: a subject who had the will todecide politically. The capacity and willingness to make politi-cal decisions defined sovereignty. Sovereignty in turn secured theunity of the state, and the state was henceforth in the positionto generate a system of law. Liberal constitutional theories, likethe one developed by Kelsen, reversed this order of generation..A, supreme underived basic norm, Kelsen's Grundnorm,grounded a legal order whose central point was the sovereignstate. There was no transcendent subject of pouvoir constituant,no natura naturans, no eminent legislator to which the state'shighest authority could be traced. 'The basis for the validity ofa norm is only a norm' (ibid.: 19). According to Schmitt, 'Kelsensolved the problem of sovereignty by negating it ... This [was]in fact the old liberal negation of the state vis-a-vis law (Recht)and the disregard of the independent problem of the realizationof law (Recht)' (1922b: 21; compare with Schmitt 1921: 194).Kelsen drew no distinction between state and law (Recbt) andidentified the state with the legal order (Recbtsordnung)(Schmitt, 1922c: 27).18 He thereby eliminated authority merelyat the level of definitions. It was easy for Schmitt to prove that this was simply a cover-up. The living authority of the state, putto sleep by liberal enchantments, would of necessity wake up atthe slightest invocation.


Strong sovereignty is needed to combat bad stuff in the world




Alternative Solvency – CompromiseSchmitt’s alternative provides compromises for international cooperation


The sovereign and (still in Europe to some extent) national state maybe the only sound alternative to those largely empty hopes that have beenraised against it. The sovereign state defended by Schmitt does not rejectinternational cooperation but remains wary of encroachment on itsinternal governing power. Above all, it avoids the irreversible surrenderof the right of war. In view of the foreign balance of power that has controlled Europe since 1945 and the current international problems of terrorism and drug-related crimes, it may no longer be possible for all western governments to be as sovereign as the states that reconstructedthe European map after the Napoleonic Wars. Still, it may be warrantedto distinguish between military cooperation and the turning of military dependence into the subversion of another state's sovereignty. At the end of the Second World War, the United States imposed on Germany and Japan a reeducation plan and a preferred regime, by right of conquest. Such a project by now has become paradigmatic for many architects ofAmerican foreign policy who approach military alliances looking foropportunities for further conversions. Those who promote such politicsresemble the Persian Emperor as depicted by Isocrates, who treatedGreek allies as slaves by another name.


Alternative Solvency – Extinction

Eliminating conceptions of enmity results in them reemerging in worse ways – a return to recognizing a concrete, external enemy is needed to preclude the rise of an exterminationist ethic that seeks annihilation







Alternative Solvency – Economy

A strong state is key to a successful economy


The fact that he was Schleicher's legal adviser and member o-his clique influenced some contingent aspects of Schmitt'sLangnamverein speech. But its overall argument marched inunison with what he had first developed in Der Hiiter.atVerfassung, published the year before. There he sought to reiforce the authoritarian tendencies he discerned in the Weimarconstitution by clearly demarcating the realms of the state a-Zof civil society. He blamed party politics for weakening state authority and espoused a strong state to provide the necessary protection for the development of a free economy. In hisLangnamverein speech, he used the formula 'qualitative total40m m opposed to the 'quantitative total state' of totalitarianism, which he saw as a weak state) to refer to this strong state. Despite the anti-liberal resonances conjured by the notion of a state described as both strong and total, it was well-received in liberal circles, where his views were interpreted favourably. A noted neoliberal economist, Alexander Riistow,40 did not hesitate to confirm the liberal ancestry of Schmitt's conception of the total state (1932: 69).In this conference, Schmitt deployed many of the principles andessential elements of his theory of the state and the constitution. Hesummed it up by adopting the conference's striking motto - only a strong state6 can preserve and enhance a free-market economy.Schmitt’s address began by reviewing three epochal events inrecent history: first, the establishment, on 28 March, of a presidential regime, instigated by Schleicher andsupported Juridically and ideologically by Schmitt's interpretation of article 48 of the Weimar constitution; second, the Prussian coupJune 1932; and third, the enigmatic decision handed down byme supreme court at Leipzig on 25 October of that same year which appeared to confirm the legality of the government's decision that led to the Prussian coup. Schmitt did not hide, first of all, disappointment with the results shown by the presidentialSince its inauguration in 1930. One could not avoid 'the general impression that the state has grown weaker and the circumstances have worsened and become more chaotic' (Appendix: p. 214. But he was still prepared to defend 'the practical usefulnessAnd energy of article 48' in the face of a campaign to discredit andDefame it. Second, he was also willing to credit that failed regime, in his view, crucial achievement: the Prussian coup of 20That decision went to the core of 'the Weimar constitution'sworst design defect - the dualism between the Reich and Prussia'p. 214). Third, that sole achievement had been, in turn, compromised by another decision, the one handed down thepreceding month by the supreme court at Leipzig. Schmitt noticedthat when a strong state asserted itself, it sparked an immediatereaction that brought together a vast coalition of the most unlikelyconfederates. Despite his disappointment with that decision,Schmitt was still hopeful that a strong state would prevail in theface of a number of opposing forces.


Alternative Solvency – Empowerment

The delineation between friends and enemies empowers individuals within a political community



The task of the political is to provide experience and nourishment. The decisions regarding friends and enemies are placed at the center of the political which provides life with increased meaning.



Alternative Solvency – Freedom

The alternative protects freedom through spontaneous market mechanisms and monopolization of protection


The first text was a conservative plea that decried party factionalism and appealed for a further strengthening of state authority.could be read as an anticipated agenda for Schleicher's stint asChancellor. Schmitt's strong state was not meant to interfere inany way with the affairs that properly belonged to civil society.His conservatism was combined with a liberal view that sought to leave civil society to a large extent free of state regulation and ruled mainly by spontaneous market mechanisms. The strength ofthis state was dependent on its ability to remain neutrall6 anddepoliticize society. This it could do by monopolizing the political and assuming the full scope of its protective function. Schmittreferred to this authoritarian state as 'qualitative total state' andcompared it to the stato totalitario of Italian fascism. The twotexts that he published shortly after Hitler rose to power showedSchmitt's enthusiastic support for a new revolutionary statewhose strength was bolstered by the absence of an essentialliberal ingredient, the separation of the executive and legislativepowers. Schmitt was personally responsible for advancing aninterpretation of the enabling act of 24 March, the Instrument ofGovernment of Hitler's regime, as the revolutionary abrogationof the Weimar constitution. Implicit in his argument was anappeal to the notion of constituent power, an appeal that had theeffect of destroying the Weimar constitution and placing in itsstead the enabling act as a provisional constitution.


Alternative Solvency – Individual Effort

culture has been exhausted, it is up to individuals to affirm national integrity


If Schmitt's critique of liberalism put him within the conservative camp, the existentialist tone of this hard decisionism wasmore akin to a conservative revolutionary outlook. Other conser-vative revolutionaries, like Spengler, also gave up any claim tolegitimacy, monarchical or democratic. They saw that the preser-vation of traditional ways of life and past institutions wasillusory. Their pessimism led them to think that their present wasbeyond redemption, that history had passed its verdict: Westernculture was exhausted, its soul had perished. Traditional con-servatives thought that the past retained its vivifying force;revolutionary conservatives, on the contrary, stoically gave upany efforts to revitalize tradition. When the cultural soul of anation died nothing could revive it. National integrity, in theabsence of spiritual forces to sustain it, ought to be affirmed bythe decisive will of one single individual.


Alternative Solvency – Internal Conflict

A strong state is needed to crush factions that oppose it and ensure individual freedom


Much of what appears bewildering and contradictory inSchmitt rested on the metaphysical symbiosis of dynamicity andstaticity, pluralism and unity. This was the complexio opposito-rum that separated and brought together the state and civilsociety. Around the distinction between the juridical and the real-ization of the Juridical, and that between the substance of powerand its exercise, likely to be dismissed as 'scholastic subtleties' (Schmitt, 1921: 194), Schmitt built his last line of defence. Onthese rested a string of other axiomatic distinctions which shapedthe architecture of his theory of the constitution (pouvoir consti-tuant and pouvoir constitu6, law and measure, absolute andpositive constitution) and his theory of the state (the polarltvstate/civil society, the separation of executive and legislativepowers). This metaphysical appurtenance of dynamicity andstaticity, pluralism and unity was meant as the conceptual struc-ture that would ease the inevitable transition to a substantivelyliberal society. According to Schmitt, a well-ordered liberalsociety was one founded on substantive values like private prop-erty and individual freedom (Schmitt, 1928: 8 and 130).3 In thecourse of history, other national communities had been able toentrench and institutionalize a substantive liberal order that didnot dissolve into factions. To attain such an order Germanyrequired a strong state, one that could crush the powerful factionsthat menaced it from within. Only a strong state could be trustedto minimize the power to be exercised over individuals. AsCondorcet acknowledges, once those associations puissantes aredismantled, 'll faut blen peu de force pour forcer les individusl'obeissance' (Schmitt, 1921: 204).


Alternative Solvency – Protection

Politics are dependant on “friends,” who make decisions on who “enemies,” are. “Friends” are willing to risk their lives to defend communities against “enemies”



Alternative Solvency – Respect for the OtherThe sovereign is the only way to preserve differences in an international system





Alternative Solvency – State Collapse

Individuals must unite to view enemies collectively, preventing the state collapsing in on itself



A2 Agamben

The rule only exists as a result to the exception. Without the exception, rules could never derive.

McCormick ‘97 (John P. Professor of Political Science at The University of Chicago, Ph. D, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism; Against Politics as Technology) PG 226-227. AN

Exactly how does this natural-scientifically tainted constitutionalism hamper the ability to deal with the exception? As we know from Chapter 3, according to Schmitt, any attempt to define the exception or to describewhat circumstances might constitute an exceptional case is a hindrance onthe ability to manage it when it in fact arises to threaten a regime. ForSchmitt, it is ridiculous to make plans or provisions for what one could notpossibly foresee (PT, 6-7). This could easily be taken as a call for a perpetualstate of "emergency," in which an authoritarian regime is required to standguard at every moment for the possibility of the sudden appearance of theexception.37 Any limit, legal or otherwise, to this government's functioningwould jeopardize its vigil and would necessarily require suspension. Schmitt seemingly attempts to allay such fears. Just as the exceptional case by definition cannot be predicted, by definition neither can it exist at all times. Because of this, the exception can be good for the legal order, for it confirmsits existence. There can be no "exceptional" situation without a normal one."'The exception appears in its absolute form when a situation in which legal descriptions can be valid must first be brought about. Every general norm demands a normal, everyday frame of life to which it can be factually applied and which is subjected to its regulations" (PT, 6-7). Schmitt asserts that the rule, in effect, defines the exception and that the exception, in turn, draws attention to the rule, hence, ostensibly restoring confidence in the importance and primacy of the norm-bound situation. Schmitt goes on, however, to suggest that the normal situation actually owes its legitimate existence, on the contrary, to the exception:The exception can be more important ... than the rule, not because of aromantic irony for the paradox, but because the seriousness of an insight goesdeeper than the clear generalizations inferred from what ordinarily repeatsitself. The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but its existence,which derives only from the exception. (PT, 15, emphasis added)


A2 Bad States

The internal standards that make up a group are irrelevant so long as there is some form of homogeneity of the group so that war will only be waged in self defense


Here it may be objected that Hegel's distinction between a legitimate state and a gang of courageous "robbers or murderers bent on crime" is valid. If so, does Schmitt's political theory allow him to recognize it? It does in so far as it distinguishes between a loosely organized group and one in which the sovereign authority is acknowledged by the citizenry to possess "the right to demand from its members the readiness to die." Whether a group of the latter sort is made up of thieves and murderers is beside the point. No doubt, some states have been largely concerned with the pursuit of murder and thievery. Such states are deplorable. But they are states nonetheless. Schmitt is attempting to provide "a definition [of the political] in the sense of a criterion,' one independent of the criteria that define the moral, aesthetic and economic spheres of human thought and action. It follows that he will acknowledge as political some forms of association that may be good or evil, beautiful or ugly, profitable or unprofitable.(n54) However, it is one thing to say that the internal standards of a group defy evaluation by universal rationalist standards, and quite another that the members of the group are incapable of guiding their own decisions by shared values or shared ideas of what constitutes a good reason. Schmitt commits himself to the latter as well as the former position. The first step toward this unwelcome conclusion is taken when he insists on the political irrelevance of the content of the "motives" that define any given political group. Schmitt argues that the political "is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on any one antithesis [such as good and evil, beautiful and ugly] or any combination of other antitheses, not can it be traced to these." Further, "it would be senseless to wage war for purely religious, purely moral, purely juristic, or purely economic motives."(n55) On what, then, will the solidarity of the group be based? What do they have in common if it is neither economic, aesthetic, religious, or moral? The answer is a shared identity, the homogeneity of the group. Hence the only "sensible" justification for waging war is the self-defense of the group.(n56) The homogeneity that defines the group may well have its origins in a shared religion or a shared set of moral values. But politically this content is irrelevant. This would seem to squash most public debate and deliberation. Moral, economic and even religious matters are things about which one can argue. But shared identity, if there is one, appears to be nothing more than a fact. Indeed, it is not even that because this identity is so formalized, so thoroughly drained of content, that is nothing more than a shared commitment. Like the sovereign decision, it is neither a fact nor a norm.(n57)


A2 Dictatorship Bad

Dictatorship is always going to be superior to liberalism. Without a dictator or sovereign, liberals are incapable of handing emergencies and are vulnerable to these very emergencies.


It is important to note that this purely technical aspect of dictatorship isat the very heart of the concept and the institution for Schmitt and that ithad much to do in his mind with the contemporary use, disuse, and abuse ofthe concept in the early twentieth century. According to Schmitt, the "bourgeois political literature" either ignores the concept altogether or treats it asa kind of slogan to be used against its opponents (D, xi-xii). Schmitt isalarmed that the concept seems to be taken seriously only by the Communists with their doctrine of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (D, xiii). TheCommunists have the concept partially right, according to Schmitt, for theyrecognize its purely technical and temporary characteristics: "The dictatorship of the proletariat is the technical means for the implementation of thetransition to the Communists' final goal" (D, xiv). The "centralizing machine" and "domination-apparatus" of the state seized by the proletariat is not, according to their ideology, "definitive" for the Communists, but rather.transitional" (D, xiv).Schmitt notes that one might then see the communist theory of dictatorship as simply a modern incarnation of the classical institution: a negationof parliamentary democracy without formal democratic justification (because the Communists are often a minority) and a replacement of thepersonal dictator with a collective one (the party) (D, xiii). But this obscuresthe truly fundamental transformation of the essence of the classical concept: The communist institution employs technical means to create a newsituation; the classical institution employed them to restore a previous inexisting one. This difference has important ramifications for the question ofjust how limited a dictatorship can be if it is legitimated and bound by afuture situation as opposed to being legitimated by a previously existingone.5 This difference also lays the groundwork for the theoretical-historicaldistinction that governs the whole of Die Diktatur.- the one between thetraditional concept of "commissarial dictatorship," which is bound by allotted time, specified task, and the fact that it must restore a previously standing order; and "sovereign dictatorship," which is unlimited in any way and may proceed to establish a completely new order.6 I will return to theseissues in greater detail in subsequent sections.So, if the Communists partially understand the essence of dictatorship.liberals, to the extent that they pay any attention to the concept at all, completely misapprehend it, according, to Schmitt.7 Liberals have completely forgotten its classical meaning and associate the idea and institution solely with the kind described by Schmitt as "sovereign" dictatorship: A distinction is no longer maintained between dictatorship and Caesanmmand the essential determination of the concept is marginalized ... thecommissarial char-acter of dictatorship" (D, xiii). Liberals deem a dictator tobe any single, individual ruling through a centralized administration withlittle political constraint, often democratically acclaimed, and they equate aunreflectively with authoritarianism, Caesarism, Bonapartism, military government, and even the papacy (D, xiii).8

But by corrupting the notion of this important technique for dealing withemergencies and subsequently banishing it from constitutional concerns..liberal constitutionalism leaves itself especially susceptible to emergencies. Its blind faith in the technical apparatus of its standing constitutions andthe scientistic view of the regularity of nature encourages liberalism tobelieve that it needs no technique for the extraordinary occurrence, be cause the regular constitutional techniques are assumed to be appropriateto a nature free of the extraordinary. Classical dictatorship is a wholly technical phenomenon that restores what is not wholly technical, the normallegally legitimated order. Liberal constitutionalism is an order become increasingly technical through its formulation of a conception of normalcythat excludes the extraordinary. Unlike the separation of powers that, according to Schmitt, despite its fixation on equilibrium, ironically, cannotensure stability, or despite legal positivism that, due to its mechanical nature, cannot distinguish between right and wrong and hence legality andlegitimacy, dictatorship has an end that is not simply the perpetual means toanother end. The classical dictatorship emphasizes the importance of theregular order - something that eludes the liberal positivism of Hans Kelsen,"for whom the problem of dictatorship has as much to do with a legalproblem, as a brain operation has to do with a logical problem. This is aresult of a relativistic formalism that misunderstands that dictatorship dealswith something else entirely, namely, that the authority of the state cannotbe separated from its value" (D, xix). Dictatorship emphasizes the importance of the regular order through the imperative to bring it to restoration.For Schmitt, the separation of powers and legal positivism defile it throughthe emphasis on uninterrupted processes and not what is substantively important about a regime.


A2 Exceptions Bad

Sovereignty is inevitable, but certain exceptions are necessary to momentarily confirm constitutional validity and protection


The recognition of the democratic political form and itsconstituent power had a price which Schmitt was eager to exact:the reintroducion of sovereignty as a legitimate theme for constitutional discussion. He now felt he could point withoutmisgivings to what he called 'apocryphal acts of sovereignty'.These sovereign actions set in motion the activity of constituentpower in the daily ordeal of constitutional business. They tookplace, for instance, when particular constitutional norms wereviolated. Of themselves, such violations did not imply the destruction or suppression of the constitution as a whole. On thecontrary, such cases confirmed constitutional validity. Accordingto Schmitt, particular constitutional norms were violated in orderto safeguard the substance of a constitution. Those violationswere only 'measures' (1928: 107) and not constitutional norms.They were justified by particular exceptional and abnormal transitory situations. What these situations demonstrated was the,superiority of the existential over mere normativity' (ibid.). Theyforced the recognition of sovereignty. Sovereignty manifesteditself when the legal order was violated. According to Schmitt,whoever had the faculty to violate, and thus relativize, the legalorder as a whole was sovereign. An absolute form of government,monarchical or democratic, implied a sovereign prince or a sovereign people who stood legibus solutus, above the law. Bycontrast, the purpose of the liberal ideal was, according to Schmitt, to subject the power of the state to the rule of law andexpel sovereignty from its domain. For Schmitt, this ideal ofabsolute normativity constituted a tenuous fiction. The politicaland the state could be erased by legal fabrications and methods ofavoidance. Acts of sovereignty would always occur. But 'theseacts of inevitable sovereignty' (Schmitt, 1928: 108) were betterjustified when they could be seen as grounded in the constituentpower of the people.


A2 Friends Bad

Friends are classified in as part of Aristotle’s “the good.” Friendship develops as a result of goodness




A2 Impacts Improbable

Even if war is only a tiny possibility, it reaffirms the need of a strong sovereign



A2 Liberalism Good

Liberalism is self defeating – it intensifies wars, disciplines political choices, and fails to promote peace


Of course, this latter endeavour is hardly new and it is important to acknowledge that such questions about the relationship between war and liberalism/liberal cosmopolitanism have been historically posed either from a traditional power-political (political realist) perspective or, alternatively, from a historical materialist perspective.76 The former disregards the liberal nature of these wars, suggesting that liberal values are often used to obscure a power political reality, thus paying scant attention to the ways in which liberalism, in seeking to disavow war, promotes it and intensifies the ways in which it is fought. The latter has customarily sought to interrogate both the ways in which the use of force is promoted within liberal zones of peace but also the ways in which liberalism involves a modernist disciplining of those political endeavours which contradict its key tenets or even seek to providealternatives to its worldview.71 More recently, moreover, poststructuralist accounts have suggested understanding liberalismas a strategy for the gradual dissemination of principles that derive from war within the power relations that pervade the societies it governs. Comprehending liberalism first and foremost as a strategy of power is, I argue, to deepen and broaden our understanding of the relations between war and modernity in ways that can help us make sense of the profoundly logistical orientation of liberal societies today. 78This section examines the claim that the war on terror does not indicate a crisis incosmopolitanism but rather is the quintessential liberal cosmopolitan war; but it pursues this claim in a different way than the critiques noted above. 79 It suggests that, despite the prominent sense in which the war on terror is portrayed as the antithesis of cosmopolitan orientations and achievements, there are strong relationships between cosmopolitanism and the pursuit of the war on terror. This section examines these in turn.



A2 Nazi

Nazism and Stalinism definitely had needs that had to be met, but until we understand these needs from the clear awareness that the alternative allows these types of movements will resurface without Democracy and Morality having a chance of stopping them


The appeal and the danger of Schmitt's political thinking largely derive from his twofold insistence on the primacy of the whole. Only if politics and experience can be imagined in a new way -- one that does not revolve around the attempt to regain unity and totality -- will it be possible to move beyond Schmitt's concept of the political. Liberalism, of needs it promises to fulfill. For it is simply not true that every Nazi or Stalinist was an evil, stupid, or morally retarded human being. As disturbing as it sounds, it follows course, tries to do this. But the mere assertion of liberal principles to those who seek something else from politics is clearly futile.(n68) Whether one finds Schmitt acceptable or not, it is undeniable that his concept of the political continues to apply today. If it is to be set aside, it should be done with a clear awareness of the from this that there were what appeared to be good reasons to believe that legitimate needs could be met by such movements. Until those needs are understood, it is difficult to meet them in other ways and to resist those movements that promise to meet them. As Jean-Luc Nancy and Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe(n69) note: "It is not possible to push [Nazism] aside as an aberration, still less as a past aberration. A comfortable security in the certitudes of morality and of democracy not only guarantees nothing, but exposes one to the risk of not seeing the arrival, or the return, of that whose possibility is not due to any simple accident of history."(*)

Using Schmitt’s Nazi affiliation to overshadow his important political contributions is problematic – we still must recognize the utility of his political theories


In order to rescue Schmitt's Weimar writings and politicalphilosophy, his apologists have explained his later behaviour asdue to a flawed moral character. According to Bendersky, forinstance, 'Schmitt's Nazi career definitely revealed a personalweakness so far as moral principles are concerned'; at the sametime, this collaboration with the Nazis ought not 'to overshadowall other aspects of his life and work' (1983: 282). If boundlessambition and lack of moral character alone could explain hissudden conversion in March 1933, which then led to an obsequious intellectual capitulation to the most perverse aspects ofNazism, this admission should be able to save the core ofSchmitt's conservative thought from Nazi contamination. Butwhile it is true that opportunism was an ingredient in Schmitt'sintellectual adventure, and his apologists have been right in pointing this out (Gottfried, 1990: 3), this does not necessarily absolvehis entire Weimar output. It is still possible to discern aspects ofhis conservative thought in his Weimar writings that may be saidto configure and predetermine his intellectual abdication toHitler's authoritarian figure.


Schmitt can’t be classified as a Nazi; Bendersky proves

Gottfied, 1990. [Paul Edward, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College] “Carl Schmitt: Policies and Theory” Global Perspective in History and Politics. Pg. 3. TJ

Bendersky not only provides a serious treatment of Schmitt's relationship to the Weimar Republic, but also undertakes to put into perspective his real and alleged involvement with Hitler's Third Reich. He conclusively demonstrates that Schmitt's support of the early Nazi regime was at most an opportunistic tactic. Though charged by his critics with being "Hitler's Crown Jurist," Schmitt expounded a modified traditionalist view of the state that had little in common with Nazi theory or Nazi practice. Bendersky's judgment, that Schmitt could be "neither nazified nor denazified," was an attempt to counter the accusation seen as having led to his intellectual ostracism in the United States.


A2 No Obligation to State

People must be willing to risk their lives for the sake of the state – these political communities transcend all other associations, the enemy wants to destroy us all and sacrifices must be made


Schmitt relies on the threat to the individual's own physical life to draw out the "existential" quality of the political. But this threat is hardly identical with the threat to the collectivity's "way of life" or "form of existence." In order to bridge the gap between the two, Schmitt must present the Lebensform as in some way prior to the individual. This is why Schmitt never acknowledges as his own the problem that bedevils Hobbes: if individuals merely enter into a polity to protect their lives, how can that polity ever demand that they risk or sacrifice their lives? As Schmitt explicitly states, "the right to demand from its members the readiness to die" implies that the state has a priority over the individual.(n19) Indeed, this is one of the most important features of the Schmittian state. It is "by virtue of [its] power over the physical life of men [that] the political community transcends all other associations or societies."(n20) Since the enemy is defined as a threat to those relations of "friendship" internal to the state, it follows that the latter are not entirely a function of the external relation to the enemy.(n21) If Schmitt is at all coherent, then Wolin must be wrong in claiming that Schmitt's "existential definition of politics in terms of the primacy of the friend-enemy grouping necessitates the relinquishing of all claims to the 'good life' and instead to rest content with 'mere life' -- namely, existential self-preservation."(n22) If an often intemperate writer is also capable of subtlety, one might see Schmitt's dedication to The Concept of the Political as a clue to this. It reads "In memory of my friend, August Schaetz of Munich, who fell on August 28, 1917, in the assault on Moncelul." At this point, however, this may seem to be making extremely heavy weather out of a few turns of phrase. But Schmitt explicitly states that: "The political... does not describe its own substance, but only the intensity of an association or dissociation of human beings whose motives can be religious, national (in the ethnic or cultural sense), economic, or of another kind and can effect at different times different coalitions and separations."(n23) The plainest reading of this is as follows: groups define themselves in a variety of ways. The conflicts that emerge between these various groups are not political until they reach a certain level of intensity -- until they pose a threat to the group's existence. The sovereign decision is then made whether or not to go to war in order to resolve the conflict, at which point the conflict becomes political. What is distinctively political, then, is entirely a matter of the conflict with the enemy; the relation with the friend is only a pretext: for this conflict. If the final step of this interpretation were correctly taken, in view of Schmitt's claim that the political has an existential priority over all other forms of association, Wolin would be quite right to conclude that Schmitt is committed to the view that "all the energies of modern life stand in the service of war."(n24) How then can Schmitt assure his readers that "War is neither the aim nor the purpose nor even the very content of politics"?(n25) "In case of need," Schmitt writes, "the political entity must demand the sacrifice of life. Such a demand is in no way justifiable by the individualism of liberal thought."(n26) What does justify, such a demand? In the longer of the two passages just quoted, Schmitt is wholly unconcerned with the substance or motives of the association that enters into the political conflict. Yet something connected to these motives, which are said to have no specifically political substance, is strong enough to lead men and women to offer their lives for the group. More, it is strong enough that men and women ought to recognize as legitimate the "right" of the state to "demand" their lives. Given the political indifference of the content of the group's motives and beliefs, it can only be this recognition itself that makes the group political. When one, for whatever reason, prize the integrity of one's way of life over one's own lives, then he has become political. The threat to human life does not make one political, but serves only as a reminder of one's commitment, of the fact that one's way of life is valued above one's life. Compare, in this regard, the quotation at the beginning of this paragraph with Schmitt's previously cited claim: "If physical destruction of human life is not motivated by an existential threat to one's own way of life, then it cannot be justified." The decisive conflict is between political solidarity and apolitical, liberal individualism: "The negation of the political... is inherent in every consistent individualism."(n27)


A2 Perm

Combining the state with the legal order does not allow the state to be the highest force and will ultimately lead to the destruction of the state




A2 State Deconstruction Good

The idea of deconstructing the state is an “astonishing misunderstanding” and must be reject. Turning to the state leads to unrestricted participation in all social systems





A2 Schmitt War

War is not the aim or the purpose of the identity politics that Schmitt prescribes – it is democracy that seeks the eradication of the other


No doubt, this interpretation shifts the grounds of the debate on Schmitt in an important way. Too many of Schmitt's critics take him to task for war-mongering. If this were true, it would make him an easy target. It is far more uncomfortable to recognize his close relation to the currently fashionable identity politics. The assertion of identity need not follow from nor lead to a violent conflict. Schmitt is quite right when he insists that "[w]ar is neither the aim nor the purpose nor even the content of politics." But it would be naive or disingenuous to maintain that a politics that defines itself in terms of a shared identity did not raise this and other dangers. As Schmitt rather chillingly puts it "[D]emocracy requires ...first homogeneity and second -- if need arises -- elimination or eradication of heterogeneity."(n67)

Constant conflict is not necessary, but we must always be willing to recognize the enemy and realize that conflict is a real possibility – without the will to this political beyond physical existence life has no meaning – a loss of life contributes to something bigger


Compare this interpretation with Leo Strauss's reading of Schmitt: Strauss concludes that, in the absence of an independent moral affirmation of the political, "the affirmation of the political is the affirmation of fighting as such, wholly irrespective of what is being fought for."(n32) This still places too much emphasis on actual combat. As Schmitt put it: "The political does not reside in the battle itself... but in the mode of behavior which is determined by this possibility."(n33) That mode of behavior is a solidarity that makes possible both self-sacrifice and political authority. In a passage often quoted by his detractors, Schmitt insists that "The high points of politics are simultaneously the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy."(n34) "Simultaneously," because such high points of politics are not identical with the recognition of the enemy. It is not that groups need to be constantly at war with one another to be political,(n35) but that the people belonging to them see war and what it demands as a real possibility, i.e., that they are reminded of their commitments, of their willingness to give their lives when the sovereign demands they do so. The relation of friend is not defined by the emergence of the enemy, but it is brought into view in its true significance. This should make it plain why Schmitt suggests that a loss of meaning and significance attends the eclipse of the political.(n36) Life will lack meaning unless it contains commitments cherished above mere physical existence.(n37) Much of the drama and the danger of Schmitt's work is a function of this attempt to use politics to counter nihilism. Though Schmitt's polemical political theory sets itself against the presuppositions of what he finds to be today's "individualistically disintegrated society,"(n38) he is hardly a latter-day Tocqueville or a communitarian a la Michael Sandel. Where Tocqueville contrasts individualism with a public life of the sort that jury duty might encourage, Schmitt contrasts it with solidarity in the face of the potential enemy.(n39) If Tocqueville seeks to broaden personal interests and to temper "the habits of the heart," Schmitt seeks to change the concept of who one are.(n40) Politics paves the way for this in such a way that. it makes sense to sacrifice one's life, because of the awareness that there will be some other form of survival. Where Schmitt adds decisively to the analysis of Tocqueville et. al. is in his emphasis on authority (and hence commitment) and mortality. Schmitt aligns himself with the Greeks in his insistence that politics be a response to the fragility and futility of human life. He is hostile to individualism., not simply because of his authoritarian tendencies, but also because the form individualism has taken in contemporary society, manifest in the consumption of images, pleasures, and commodities, is simply incapable of addressing this issue.


The sovereign’s insistence on belligerence is justified given the external threats of the enemy


That all said, interpretations of Schmitt that center on his alleged "occasional" belligerence remain plausible, because of the stress he places on the threat of physical death implicit in the encounter with the enemy. It is this, he argues, that establishes the existential independence of the political: "The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy"; and, "The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing."(n12) Because of this structural configuration, he has far more to say about the enemy than the friend. Since The Concept of the Political understands the state in terms of the political, it characterizes the state primarily in terms of external conflict rather than in terms of specific internal social structures.(n13) Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to think that what Schmitt means by an enemy can be grasped without understanding what he means by a friend, however difficult this latter task may be. This is not merely true because, as the old saw has it, a valley cannot be imagined without a hill. It is also because some meaning must be given to the notion of the friend in order to make any sense of Schmitt's distinction between the private and the public.(n14)


A2 Totalitarian

Schmitt’s alternative does not embody totalitarian regimes, it emphasizes freedom and autonomy


The argument expounded in this book seeks to define the scopeand assumptions of Schmitt's theory of the state and the constitution and the pivotal task it addressed - securing the state'sautonomy and independence. Only this would shore up andstrengthen the power and authority of the state. A strong state,however, did not imply canceling civil society's own independence. If totalitarianism means that the state ultimately assimilatesand metabolizes civil society, at no point of his intellectual development did Schmitt espouse such a totalitarian view. On thecontrary, he thought that an autonomous state would prove itsstrength by affirming the freedom and autonomy of civil society.This is a keystone of Schmitt's theory of the state and the constitution. At one point during the Weimar republic, Schmitt publiclystated his dual affirmation of a strong state and a free economy,which neatly encapsulates the aim and scope that defined histheory of the state and the constitution.7 My choice of the motto’strong state and free economy' as the subtitle of this book is intended to highlight this. In order to adjudicate between theopposing claims of a sovereign state and a free civil society andharmonize their interests, Schmitt appealed to the distinction. between the substance and the exercise of sovereignty, developedby medieval philosophers like D'Ailly and Gerson (Schmitt, 1921:44, 193). This distinction, mentioned only in his early Weimarproduction, provided him with the definitive model for the operation of a strong state. Normally, the exercise of state sovereignty was juridically ordained and was thus limited. But thesubstance of its omnipotence was unlimited and remained in a stateof latency, waiting to be roused in exceptional circumstances.

Schmitt is not totalitarian – the friend enemy distinction does not always lead to war and is actually a response to nihilism


This reading of The Concept of the Political is unwarranted. While some might not be surprised that Schmitt put his intellectual powers in the service of the Nazi Party when it came to power, although most of his colleagues and students were shocked, it does not follow that Schmitt's concept of the political is itself necessarily totalitarian.(n6) Schmitt's attempt to characterize politics in terms of friendship and enmity is both more complicated and more interesting than his critics suggest. In particular, his provocative formulations of the friend/enemy distinction should not lead to the conclusion that he reduces politics to a function of war. Schmitt's theoretical position requires a prior substantive commitment to relations of "friendship" and social solidarity. His account of political authority, in particular, rests on an almost Hegelian understanding of the individual's relation to the community and one's own mortality. The friend/enemy criterion defines a particular form of life, one in which group identity is valued above physical existence.(n7) To properly understand Schmitt's work it must be considered not as a rejection of an established moral order but as a response to a culture of nihilism in which meaning -- rather than value -- is ebbing away.


Aff – Destroys Debate

Schmitt’s emphasis on depoliticization is a de-democratization that destroys debate because it precludes movements from bringing people to the streets




Aff – Friendship BadThe reason to engage in friendship is purely selfish in that engagement in friendship is only for one’s own personal benefit, or to benefit the state



Aff - Nazi Turn

Schmitt’s arguments contributed to the rise of the Nazi party


When the Nazis rose to power at the end of January 1933,Schmitt's initial reaction was of dismay at realizing Schleicher'spolitical failure. After cautiously observing the turn of events hemade his move immediately after 24 March, the day the enablingact was promulgated by the Reichstag. The next day he completeda commentary on that piece of legislation which he then sent tobe published in the Deutscbe juristen-Zeitung. There he interpreted the enabling act as having somehow activated the notionof constituent power or pouvoir constituant,9 which meant that the Weimar constitution had been formally superseded. This Revolutionary action had cancelled the effects of the German revolution of 1918. The Nazis had attained in a few days what Schmitt had strived to defend during Weimar: a strong state. TheNazi regime acknowledged the great service Schmitt had rendered immediately invited his collaboration. This began on 1 April,scarcely two months after Hitler's rise to power. Installed asregime's Kronjurist, he soon climbed to prominent positionsWithin the government and his profession. In November 1933, forexample, he was appointed Director of the Association ofCierman National Socialist jurists, and in June 1934, he became The editor of the Deutsche juristen-Zeitung. Unforgivably, he alsobegan to adopt the most despicable aspect of Nazi doctrine, theirAnti-Semitism, of which one cannot find traces in any of hisearlier writings. The Nazis, however, who showed more interest.n strengthening the party than in strengthening the state, soonfound their Kronjurist was dispensable. In 1936 Schmitt lost-much of what he had gained politically and his ideas were no longer seriously considered by the Nazi authorities.


Aff - Nihilism Turn

Schmitt’s politics is nihilistic – it glorifies violence and reduces friendship to a common will to destroy the enemy


The main complaint: against this formulation is familiar enough: Schmitt allegedly emphasizes the limitations of law only to glorify the decision that exceeds the regulation of any law. Insofar as rights are defined and guaranteed by law, Schmitt's existential concept of the political makes these rights vulnerable to unregulated political decision. This is found to be all the more distressing, since Schmitt stresses the decision's role in the most extreme case, i.e., war, in the political identification of the existential enemy. As he puts it: "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."(n2) The bellicose nihilism this suggests is often seen as a causal factor in Schmitt's own active participation in the Nazi movement in the 1930s. His political theory, it is alleged, is opportunistic, with only one consistent commitment --to the irrational. Thus Richard Wolin claims that the central roles played in Schmitt's political theory by the political decision and the threat of war are both motivated by a "vitalism" and a "politics of authenticity," with the aim of overturning the vapid bourgeois order.(n3) The result is a glorification of violence.(n4) In the end, politics for Schmitt is a matter of conflict and war, and the true criterion of the political is the enemy. Who one's political "friends" are is determined only in the encounter with the enemy, and they are valued only insofar as they allow for success in the resulting war. As Martin Jay puts it, "the hated other [is] needed to create the solidarity of the homogeneous self."(n5)


Aff – PermPerm: do both, pass plan in order to recognize the enemy



Perm – A combination of liberalism and non-liberalist regimes is best to maintain the power of the sovereign – the impacts of the kritik are inevitable, so we should use the combination of the two alternatives because there are limits to both – get the best of both worlds





Perm - a combination of democracy and the politics of Schmitt is net beneficial, neither system works on it’s own – the perm is net beneficial because it ensures the legitimacy as a result of the people


Perm: agonism and democratic politics can overlap to allow for more creativeity.


Perhaps one could argue for a coexistence of a Nietzschean cultural elite and a democratic egalitarian politics. Some of Nietzsche's own remarks suggest as much (see HAH I,438 and KSA 10, p.244). One passage seems to imply that a fortified democratic egalitarianism would spur even higher forms of creativity ( BGE 242), which would be consistent with Nietzsche's overall agonistics, in the sense that part of creativity is a resistance to, and dissatisfaction with, the established norm. Nietzschean cultural creators could simply coexist with a democratic polity, even be given some honor, yet not be given unchecked political power. A restricted agon might be appropriate for the arts, let's say, but context is everything. The context of political practices and milieus is such that artistic genius seems out of place.

Such an interpretive outcome might be satisfying, but I would not want to establish it by separating the cultural and political spheres, as some would be happy to do in order to either preserve democratic ideals from Nietzsche's critique or rescue Nietzsche from reprobation by sidestepping his frightful political remarks or decoding them as simply metaphors for self-creation. I think that Nietzsche's attack on democracy ought to be challenged, but not by reasserting democratic traditions, but by showing that much of Nietzsche's cultural and philosophical outlook is compatible with, even constitutive of, much of democratic politics. So the distinction between cultural and political spheres allows us to challenge some of Nietzsche's political vision; but overlaps between the spheres show that Nietzsche's authoritarianism is weakened by his own philosophical orientation, and that democratic political life [End Page 141] can exhibit certain creative, nonegalitarian, and agonistic elements to a degree that may warrant calling it Nietzschean enough to support a democratic appropriation of Nietzsche (thus answering Appel's challenge).



Aff – Schmitt Dumb

Schmitt never concedes that conflict and the friend/enemy relationship is inevitable. He only talks about the possibility conflict and the formation of friend/enemy groups



War Turn

Politics is centered around the idea of friends and enemies, making it the most extreme source of friction that will eventually lead to war.

Wolfe 2004. [Alan, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and professor of political science at Boston College.] April 2. Chronicle of Higher Education: The Chronicle Review. “A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary Politics” Volume 50, Issue 30, Page B16. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i30/30b01601.htm. AN

In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt wrote that every realm of human endeavor is structured by an irreducible duality. Morality is concerned with good and evil, aesthetics with the beautiful and ugly, and economics with the profitable and unprofitable. In politics, the core distinction is between friend and enemy. That is what makes politics different from everything else. Jesus's call to love your enemy is perfectly appropriate for religion, but it is incompatible with the life-or-death stakes politics always involves. Moral philosophers are preoccupied with justice, but politics has nothing to do with making the world fairer. Economic exchange requires only competition; it does not demand annihilation. Not so politics."The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism," Schmitt wrote. War is the most violent form that politics takes, but, even short of war, politics still requires that you treat your opposition as antagonistic to everything in which you believe. It's not personal; you don't have to hate your enemy. But you do have to be prepared to vanquish him if necessary.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i30/30b01601.htm


Although war is not the purpose of politics, it is the most extreme result of friction between friends and enemies



FYI: Difference between commissarial and sovereign dictatorship



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