The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...
The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...
The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal ...
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
210 M. Ojakangas<br />
transcendent foundations <strong>of</strong> meaning and order, from theistic Revelation to<br />
deistic Nature and from Enlightenment Reason to romantic Tradition, have<br />
fallen apart. Hence, although in the 1960s <strong>Schmitt</strong> defined his concept <strong>of</strong> the<br />
political, the famous antithesis <strong>of</strong> friend and enemy, in terms <strong>of</strong> an openness <strong>of</strong><br />
order towards transcendence (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1963: 121–123), the transcendence in<br />
question, as <strong>Carl</strong>o Galli has also pointed out (Galli 2000: 1607), 5 is not to be<br />
understood as a substantial foundation <strong>of</strong> order. It should be understood as the<br />
very openness itself, as the very event that introduces a rupture in the closure <strong>of</strong><br />
order immanent to itself. All <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s central political concepts – including<br />
the sovereign decision, the constituent act <strong>of</strong> a people, and so on – denote this<br />
transcendence, transcendence not beyond but within immanence. <strong>The</strong>se concepts<br />
denote an event <strong>of</strong> resistance as regards the absolute closure <strong>of</strong> immanence.<br />
<strong>The</strong> event <strong>of</strong> the political, however, is not only a figure <strong>of</strong> resistance. It is<br />
simultaneously a foundation. <strong>The</strong> event <strong>of</strong> the political is the constitutive event<br />
<strong>of</strong> meaning and order. This is why <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s central concepts are not only<br />
counter-concepts (Gegenbegriff), signifying the intrusion <strong>of</strong> pure contingency,<br />
but simultaneously fundamental concepts (Grundbegriff). A good example <strong>of</strong><br />
the double function <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s central political concepts is the sovereign<br />
decision. From the perspective <strong>of</strong> domestic legal order, the sovereign decision<br />
‘emanates from nothingness’ (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1985: 31–32). It brings about a rupture –<br />
‘new and alien’ (ibid.: 31) – in the immanence <strong>of</strong> the system <strong>of</strong> norms and eventually<br />
in the legal order itself. According to <strong>Schmitt</strong>, however, the sovereign<br />
decision is also the foundation <strong>of</strong> legal order: ‘It is the decision that grounds<br />
both the norm and the order’ (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1993a: 23). <strong>The</strong> sovereign decision is the<br />
‘absolute beginning’ and the ‘ultimate origin’ <strong>of</strong> order (ibid.). In other words,<br />
the sovereign decision is not only a rupture in the immanence <strong>of</strong> order, but it is<br />
also the event that founds the order. It is simultaneously both, that is, a founding<br />
rupture. In <strong>Political</strong> <strong>The</strong>ology, <strong>Schmitt</strong> expressed this double meaning in one<br />
concept: Grenzbegriff, the borderline concept.<br />
This also explains why <strong>Schmitt</strong> continuously emphasizes exceptions and<br />
extreme cases. <strong>The</strong> extreme case ‘exposes the core <strong>of</strong> the matter’ (<strong>Schmitt</strong><br />
1996a: 35). <strong>The</strong> exception – that which is taken out (excipio) – transcends the<br />
closure <strong>of</strong> immanence, because it is something that ‘cannot be anticipated’<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1985: 6), something absolutely new and alien. <strong>The</strong> exception is a<br />
rupture within a system. However, the exception also founds the system. Every<br />
system is built on the ultimate origin <strong>of</strong> exception, which is not, from the most<br />
human perspective, an exception at all, but a rule, the rule <strong>of</strong> meaningful<br />
existence:<br />
A philosophy <strong>of</strong> concrete life must not withdraw from the exception and the<br />
extreme case, but must be interested in it to the highest degree. <strong>The</strong> exception<br />
can be more important to it than the rule, not because <strong>of</strong> a romantic<br />
irony for the paradox, but because the seriousness <strong>of</strong> an insight goes deeper<br />
than the clear generalizations inferred from what ordinarily repeats itself.<br />
<strong>The</strong> exception is more interesting than the rule. <strong>The</strong> rule proves nothing; the