Carl Schmitt described the political in existential terms. The political consists in the distinction between friend and enemy, a distinction between collectivities that are existentially different. This led Richard Wolin to label Schmitt a “political existentialist” whose work relies on a specific cultural and philosophical climate of “vitalism.” Consequently, Schmitt’s thought is treated as ideology by Wolin. Instead of focusing on Schmitt’s underlying ideological affinity with a particular cultural climate, this paper attempts to conceptualize the notion of “political existentiality” as (...) a crucial element in Schmitt’s understanding of the political and defend it as a notion that reveals something about the political condition itself. In order to understand the meaning of existentiality, we will conceptualize it against the background of Max Weber’s disenchantment thesis and conclude that through the notion of political existentiality Schmitt conceptualizes the political sphere as a locus of meaning and values and thus reenchants the political. (shrink)

The paper addresses Giorgio Agamben’s affirmation of post-sovereign politics by analyzing his critical engagement with the Hobbesian problematic of the state of nature. Radicalizing Carl Schmitt’s criticism of Hobbes, Agamben deconstructs the distinction between the state of nature and the civil order of the Commonwealth by demonstrating the ‘inclusive exclusion’ of the former within the latter in the manner of the state of exception, which functions as a negative foundation of any positive order. Since the state of nature is no (...) longer cast as spatially external and temporally antecedent to the former, it cannot be escaped by the perfection of the legal order, nor can it itself be posited in an essentialist manner as a pre-political site uncontaminated by sovereign violence. While denying any way out of the state of exception, Agamben nonetheless argues for the possibility of its appropriation in the way that dissociates anomie from the locus of sovereignty and reclaims it as an attribute of free social praxis. The paper analyzes three central features of this ‘post-sovereign’ politics and concludes with a discussion of the differences between Schmitt and Agamben with regard to the fate of Hobbes ’s Leviathan in late modern politics. (shrink)

The concept of sovereignty is one of the central concepts of modern political philosophy. However, faced with processes of economic globalization as well as legal and political universalism, contemporary political theory struggles to account for the exercise of state power in terms of the traditional understanding of sovereignty. This survey article reviews the most influential conceptualizations of sovereignty in contemporary continental political philosophy. These include Schmitt’s defense of sovereignty and Agamben’s rejection of sovereign politics as well as a number of (...) theoretical attempts to account for the complexities of sovereignty and its adaptation to new political circumstances. (shrink)