The subject is the bearer of the sovereign decision, according to C. Schmitt. This decision grounds on certain situational pragmatics, yet mainly is born out of a ‘null’; as the decision forms the political normalcy that follows after, it displays its nature as an ‘event’. This subject is simultaneously a legal and a political one; it is the founder of the Nomos. This founding subject has been eclipsed in alignment with its post-modernly acclaimed ‘death’. The subject is deemed to have (...) been inherently divided, as long as its identity steadily postpones itself, is incessantly ‘differing’, according to the deconstructionist approach; or it is considered as fundamentally ‘passive’, meaning not so much ‘weak’, but rather dethroning the Western preoccupation with the active autonomous individual; or, it is maintained but intrinsically reversed, now held either as part of a fundamental ontological order and indirectly of the nature, or, opposite to Kantian assumptions, as primarily captured in a radical heteronomy, which constitutes it as a proper ethical subject. Crucial is how to develop a concept taking into account the eventfulness of the constitution of the subject, without effacing the political character of such constitution by reducing it to non-political discourses, i.e., to metaphysics, morals or economics; how to conceive of Derrida’s ‘democracy to-come’ as political event, namely both as secular act and in the same time as referring to extramundane fundaments ; how to go beyond the linearity of the liberalist ideology by equating the political event with a messianic miracle ‘without messianism’; how to ‘salute’ democracy? (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 45, Issue 2, pp 214 - 236 In the winter semester 1934–35 Heidegger used the occasion of an introductory seminar on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right as the context for a sustained confrontation with the legal theorist Carl Schmitt. In this paper, I establish the context for Heidegger’s confrontation with Schmitt from 1933 to early 1935; I explain why Heidegger chose Hegel as the context for his discussion; and above all, I demonstrate how their various attempts to make (...) sense of the seizure of power by the Nazis was combined with a systematic neglect of the pervasive violence of the times. (shrink)

Tärkeä ulottuvuus modernissa tavassa ajatella politiikkaa on erottelu politiikan ja talouden välillä. Tässä artikkelissa käsittelen tätä erottelua konservatiivisen oikeustieteilijä Carl Schmittin poliittisessa teoriassa ja varsinkin hänen talousliberalismin kritiikissään. Liberalismi rajasi Schmittin mukaan talouden omaksi autonomiseksi alueekseen pyrkimällä rajaamaan valtiovallan oikeutta vaikuttaa siihen. Tämä kuitenkin johti hänen mielestään poliittisen siirtymiseen valtiolta talouteen, eli taloudellisten suhteiden politisointiin. Artikkelini analysoi Schmittin kritiikin ohella myös hänen omaa teoriaansa vahvasta valtiosta. Schmitt vastasi liberalismin heikkouteen argumentoimalla, että vain vahva valtio voi ylläpitää talouden autonomisuutta. Argumenttini on, (...) että toimiessaan näin Schmitt ei lopulta ylitä modernille poliittisella ajattelulle ominaista erottelua valtion ja yhteiskunnan välillä. Päinvastoin, Schmittiä ja liberalismia yhdistää pyrkimys tavalla tai toisella erotella talous politiikasta. Artikkelini avulla voidaan monipuolistaa sitä kuvaa, joka poliittisessa filosofiassa ja teoriassa on talouspolitiikan ja -hallinnon historiasta. Argumenttini vahvistaa ajatusta siitä, että käsitteellinen erottelu talouden ja politiikan välillä on perustavanlaatuinen modernille poliittiselle ajattelulle. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article provides the first comprehensive and chronological analysis of Carl Schmitt’s reception of Carl von Clausewitz. While earlier scholarship has mostly stressed Schmitt’s shift from Clausewitzian ‘instrumentality’ to an ‘existential’ view of war, I note some inherent difficulties in this dichotomy and instead promote the parallel distinction between two argument types: those of containment and intensification. Schmitt theorized both limited political war and the intensification of war out of traditional bounds, and focusing on one should not eclipse the other. (...) Further, both elements are identifiable already in Clausewitz. I analyse Schmitt’s oscillation between containment and intensification arguments chronologically from the mid-1920s to the 1960s. Despite sometimes nominally rejecting Clausewitz’s famous thesis of war as the continuation of politics, Schmitt nevertheless affirmed the idea of war’s political nature. I conclude that Schmitt’s view can be read as a radicalized version of the Clausewitzian political theory of war rather than a strict deviation from it. This becomes evident as soon as we place Schmitt’s partly incoherent observations on Clausewitz in their argumentative contexts. (shrink)

In Reinhart Koselleck's history of concepts, the general orientation that concepts are to be understood in their proper contexts is intertwined with the assumption that they are manifestations of particular political conflicts. The essay shows that the dense compound of context and conflict in Koselleck's thought springs from Carl Schmitt's political theory and also forms an important point of continuity between Koselleck's early work and his later methodological writings. The formalized assumption of conflict, somewhat problematically, binds Koselleckian conceptual history to (...) a particular conception of politics, one that sees politics ultimately as struggle and conflict. Once the historical-theoretical contingency of this conception is recognized, it becomes both possible and necessary to reassess the role of conflict in the methodology of conceptual history. (shrink)

In the last years, a theological turn had a pervasive influence in the reception of Carl Schmitt’s writings. According to this view, his thought has a strong, substantial religious foundation. With regards to understanding not only Schmitt’s position but also his current influence in authoritarian countries, this essay argues that this interpretation is misleading and proposes a different and comprehensive analysis of Schmitt’s concept of political theology that replaces it in a political-legal framework. Against the theological reading, it argues that (...) Schmitt’s concept of “political theology” refers to his own conception of legal theory as an attempt to relegitimize authority in a secular context. As “political theology,” this legal theory is designed to overcome normativism and parliamentarism by “substantializing” the legal form. Using Schmitt’s post-1933 works as an example, the essay shows that, as theology translates faith into a written doctrine, legal theory must, according to Schmitt, substantialize the legal form by translating the political idea into jurisprudence. Hence, this article concludes that Schmitt’s theory might be described as “political theology” but only in a formal, ideological sense. It is part of an authoritarian theory that is not religious but uses theology to revive an appearance of absolute legitimacy. (shrink)