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.
218 M. Ojakangas<br />
eagerly than ever. According to him, every nomos is ‘based on sacred orientations’<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 2003a: 70). What has disappeared is the belief that the sacred in<br />
the world can be restored by restoring the grandeur <strong>of</strong> Christ and especially by<br />
reawakening the memory <strong>of</strong> His sacrificial death, the event <strong>of</strong> the sacred for<br />
Christians. In other words, what has disappeared is his belief that revitalizing the<br />
memory <strong>of</strong> the death <strong>of</strong> Christ would be enough in the age <strong>of</strong> absolute pr<strong>of</strong>anity.<br />
To be sure, <strong>Schmitt</strong>, like a good Christian, seemed to believe that the sacred can<br />
only be an event. Only an event, a great event within the immanence <strong>of</strong> history,<br />
can elevate existence beyond the senselessness <strong>of</strong> absolute immanence and<br />
bestow order and orientation upon man. But his longing was for a new event, a<br />
new, violent beginning, that is, a new sacred – for only violence, as <strong>Schmitt</strong><br />
well knew, can re-establish the difference between the sacred and the pr<strong>of</strong>ane.<br />
This is, at least, a perspective that we cannot completely dismiss when we<br />
read <strong>Schmitt</strong> who, only four years after the most atrocious war ever experienced<br />
in world history, was able to write: ‘When culture comes, heroes come to<br />
an end, says Hegel. For us, this culture has become dull. This peace is getting<br />
foul for me. <strong>The</strong>refore, we call for heroes. And they will come!’ (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1988:<br />
249).<br />
This is not to say that the theological takes fundamental precedence for<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>, as Meier claims. Rather the fundamental precedence is an order in<br />
which the theological is not an autonomous sphere, as in Christianity, but pervades<br />
the whole society. In other words, as has been pointed out, we do not find<br />
a theological interpretation <strong>of</strong> politics in <strong>Schmitt</strong>, but, on the contrary, a political<br />
interpretation <strong>of</strong> theology. We find an attempt to reintegrate religion into politics,<br />
the two having been separated first by the Jews and subsequently by the<br />
Protestants. Late modern secularized society is a result <strong>of</strong> this separation, which<br />
is therefore also the origin <strong>of</strong> contemporary nihilism: ‘Our situation is completely<br />
rotten [zersetzt]’, <strong>Schmitt</strong> writes in <strong>The</strong> Nomos <strong>of</strong> the Earth (2003a: 71)<br />
– and it is rotten because the ‘original and natural unity <strong>of</strong> politics and religion’<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1996c: 10) was destroyed far too long ago, the unity which alone could<br />
endow men with meaningful order and genuine orientation. According to<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>, <strong>of</strong> course, such a unity should not be a worldwide unity. In fact, it<br />
could not be worldwide, because meaning and orientation are always a matter <strong>of</strong><br />
borderlines. Only if the solid ground <strong>of</strong> the earth is delineated by enclosures and<br />
boundaries, will the orders and orientations <strong>of</strong> human life become apparent:<br />
‘True and authentic fundamental order is based, at its essential core, on certain<br />
partitioning up <strong>of</strong> the earth’ (<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1997: 37). <strong>The</strong> unity <strong>of</strong> politics and religion<br />
can only take place in a pluralistic world, because in a worldwide unity,<br />
there is no room for politics, the constitutive borderline <strong>of</strong> which is, after all, the<br />
borderline between friends and enemies. This is why the question <strong>of</strong> the enemy<br />
always remained <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s own. 14