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 ...
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13 <strong>The</strong> ethos <strong>of</strong> insecure life<br />
Reading <strong>Carl</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s existential<br />
decisionism as a Foucauldian ethics<br />
Introduction<br />
Sergei Prozorov<br />
As the contemporary discourse on ethics is ever more suffused with answers to<br />
the question <strong>of</strong> what makes a decision or an action ethical, it appears timely to<br />
engage with the ethical thought <strong>of</strong> a philosopher who infamously affirmed the<br />
autonomy <strong>of</strong> the decision from any ‘ethical criteria’. In contrast to numerous<br />
contemporary studies that take <strong>Carl</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s political realism as the object <strong>of</strong><br />
criticism in the name <strong>of</strong> a variably construed ‘political ethics’, in this chapter we<br />
shall venture to recast the most controversial or even scandalous aspects <strong>of</strong><br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>’s thought as ethical in their own right. 1 Our contention is that rather<br />
than serving as an easy target <strong>of</strong> deconstructionist or genealogical criticism, a<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>ian political ontology functions as an irreducible limit <strong>of</strong> this criticism,<br />
serving as the ‘undeconstructible’ remainder <strong>of</strong> political realism. <strong>The</strong> argument<br />
<strong>of</strong> this chapter is that this remainder also marks a locus for an ethical discourse<br />
that is both commensurable with the ethical drive <strong>of</strong> current poststructuralist<br />
criticism and able to transcend its limitations.<br />
More specifically, the chapter seeks to explore the affinities between the work<br />
<strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong> and Michel Foucault. In his studies <strong>of</strong> <strong>Carl</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s philosophy in the<br />
context <strong>of</strong> the political thought <strong>of</strong> late modernity, Mika Ojakangas (2001, 2004)<br />
has argued that the approach <strong>of</strong> the two thinkers is marked by the same conceptual<br />
logic that locates the foundation <strong>of</strong> order in the founding rupture <strong>of</strong> the exception,<br />
a logic that we have elsewhere termed ‘ontological extremism’ (Prozorov 2004b).<br />
Nonetheless, there are also crucial divergences between <strong>Schmitt</strong> and Foucault,<br />
most notably regarding their relation to the principle <strong>of</strong> sovereignty. In contrast to<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>’s valorisation <strong>of</strong> sovereignty, Foucault has famously dismissed the very<br />
problematic <strong>of</strong> sovereignty in contemporary political theory with his call to ‘cut<br />
<strong>of</strong>f the head <strong>of</strong> the king’ and his argument for the decentred and immanent character<br />
<strong>of</strong> power (Foucault 1977b, 1990a). However, as we have argued elsewhere, it<br />
is both possible and fruitful to reintroduce the question <strong>of</strong> sovereignty, in its<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>ian ‘quasi-transcendental’ sense <strong>of</strong> the constitutive decision on exception,<br />
into the Foucauldian genealogical problematic. 2 Moreover, as we shall suggest<br />
below, <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s political ontology strongly resonates with the work <strong>of</strong> Foucault,<br />
particularly his writings on freedom, transgression and the aesthetics <strong>of</strong> existence. 3