“Ultimately, Schmitt’s work serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of liberal institutions and the enduring power of the friend-enemy distinction in an increasingly fragmented world.”
I think of his perspective as an enduring obstacle to the friend-enemy paradigm
I've just been learning about political realism, and it seems like that this 'friend-enemy distinction' is quite a realist perspective...
I think because of this, a lot of liberals will of course find fault in the ideas you've talked about. But of course it is important to realise that liberal strategies often fall apart when sh*t hits the fan in inter-state relations, and when that happens concepts like the 'friend-enemy distinction' and 'the perpetual courtroom' will become very useful indeed!
This is well written and interesting, although from my perspective, this essay goes beyond practical reality when describing that framework as moving beyond “conventional ethical or economic considerations”, that makes Schmitt’s theory neater and more self contained than it ever was. In reality, such as Weimar and interwar times, where that Schmitt mostly operated within, political identity and friend enemy distinctions are not floating existential categories but are constituted through political economic architecture, there were credit regimes, cartelization, regulatory harmonization, capital mobility, and patterns of regional extraction that were deeply engrained within, and co-generating with the very antagonisms Schmitt then theorizes. And there was powerful special interests groups coordination, economic structuring, and legal administrative designs that were generating the very conflicts his framework was based around there
And if you follow Schmitt’s own work-path, its hints at this, his work-path is full of pivots that dont look like consistent analyst of “the political” and more like a jurist changing his concepts to whichever institutional project could concentrate authority. In the 1920s–early 1930s he develops the exception/decision framework and goes after parliamentary pluralism, while still operating in a Weimar setting where he argues about who should “guard” the constitution (his 1931/32 constitutional writings sit within that). But thens once the new order takes hold, Schmitt quickly commits himself to the regime, he joins the Nazi Party in 1933 and becomes deeply involved in its legal-institutional consolidation, ginning up juridical rationalizations for sidestepping constitutional constraints.
“Ultimately, Schmitt’s work serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of liberal institutions and the enduring power of the friend-enemy distinction in an increasingly fragmented world.”
I think of his perspective as an enduring obstacle to the friend-enemy paradigm
Love this...
I've just been learning about political realism, and it seems like that this 'friend-enemy distinction' is quite a realist perspective...
I think because of this, a lot of liberals will of course find fault in the ideas you've talked about. But of course it is important to realise that liberal strategies often fall apart when sh*t hits the fan in inter-state relations, and when that happens concepts like the 'friend-enemy distinction' and 'the perpetual courtroom' will become very useful indeed!
This is well written and interesting, although from my perspective, this essay goes beyond practical reality when describing that framework as moving beyond “conventional ethical or economic considerations”, that makes Schmitt’s theory neater and more self contained than it ever was. In reality, such as Weimar and interwar times, where that Schmitt mostly operated within, political identity and friend enemy distinctions are not floating existential categories but are constituted through political economic architecture, there were credit regimes, cartelization, regulatory harmonization, capital mobility, and patterns of regional extraction that were deeply engrained within, and co-generating with the very antagonisms Schmitt then theorizes. And there was powerful special interests groups coordination, economic structuring, and legal administrative designs that were generating the very conflicts his framework was based around there
And if you follow Schmitt’s own work-path, its hints at this, his work-path is full of pivots that dont look like consistent analyst of “the political” and more like a jurist changing his concepts to whichever institutional project could concentrate authority. In the 1920s–early 1930s he develops the exception/decision framework and goes after parliamentary pluralism, while still operating in a Weimar setting where he argues about who should “guard” the constitution (his 1931/32 constitutional writings sit within that). But thens once the new order takes hold, Schmitt quickly commits himself to the regime, he joins the Nazi Party in 1933 and becomes deeply involved in its legal-institutional consolidation, ginning up juridical rationalizations for sidestepping constitutional constraints.