Carl Schmitt

On Sovereignty and Liberalism

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985)
• Was a German legal and political theorist.
• Hiswork focused on the state and sovereignty, the nature of
politics, international law, religion and modernity and the
basis of law.
• He is a controversial thinker mainly because he accepted a
top academic post in Hitler’s Germany and wrote in support
of the Nazi regime.
Sovereignty and Dictatorship
•A sovereign leader according to Schmitt is according to
which the sovereign is he who decides on the state of
exception
• Its
authority to suspend the law does not stand in need of
positive legal recognition
• Sovereign dictatorship, in Schmitt’s view, is an eminently
democratic institution. It can exist only where it has become
possible to take a sovereign decision on the exception in the
name of the people.
The Friend-Enemy Distinction
• Politics
is fundamentally about the distinction between friends and
enemies according to Schmitt
• Allstates are based on a distinction between “them” and “us”,
between “friend” and “enemy”.
• Necessarilypositioning yourself on one side of a duality which from
your perspective will always look like your friends vs your enemies
• It
actively constitutes the political identity or existence of the people
and determines who belongs to the people. To belong one must
identify with the substantive characteristic, whatever it may be.
Critique of Liberalism and The Loss of
Political Identity
• Schmittclaims that liberalism has a tendency to deny the need for
genuine political decision.
• Sees liberalism as a mere illusion to disconnect themselves from the
political and that politics is a normalized, peaceful process of finding
ways to compromise with each other
• Describes a global hegemon might one day be able to enforce a
global de-politicization, by depriving all other communities of the
capacity to draw their own friend-enemy distinctions,
Hannah Arendt
On Totalitarianism, Plurality and Civil Disobedience
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
• Was a 12th Jewish-German Philosopher and regarded also as
an influential philosopher
• Her works focused thoughts span totalitarianism,
revolution, the nature of freedom and the faculties of
thought and judgment..
• She is especially known for her interpretation of the events
that led to the rise of totalitarianism in the twentieth century.
She is especially known for her interpretation of the events
that led to the rise of totalitarianism in the twentieth century.
Totalitarianism and the Loss of Public
Debate
• understands “politics” as public debate by a community
about meaningful aspects of their shared life together.
• Totalitarianism seeks to diminish public debate by making it
a criminal act to criticize the regime.
• Without public debate, the ruling regime is free to construct
a false narrative about “reality,” perpetuate that narrative,
and maintain power because there is nothing to compete
with it.
Plurality
• Plurality is an existential condition of human life: we are
equal insofar as we are human beings but distinct because no
human being is like any other.
• Politics then is the place and activity of shared
communication based on the distinct perspectives of equal
human beings.
• This public space was destroyed under totalitarian regimes
in the twentieth century.
Power through Civil Disobedience
• She defines power is when a group of human beings decides to act for a
specific political purpose, power exists between them as they collaborate
together to achieve a political aim where it holds them as a group and not
individuals
• To Arendt, an exemplary moment of power preserving the public space is
the act of civil disobedience
• Thepublic action to protest unjust laws is a manifestation of the public
space discussed above.
• Through enacting unjust laws, government has abused the legitimacy it
has been entrusted with: through civil disobedience, citizens try to
reclaim that legitimacy.