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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232 S. Prozorov<br />
such as the truth <strong>of</strong> divine law, rationality or even pragmatic utility. <strong>The</strong> only<br />
mode <strong>of</strong> subjection that <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s ontology permits is what we have referred to<br />
above as existential decisionism, a commitment to a position in spite <strong>of</strong> the<br />
impossibility <strong>of</strong> its grounding. This stance can be described in Paul Veyne’s<br />
terms as a fulfilment <strong>of</strong> nihilism. Veyne approaches nihilism as ‘a name we give<br />
to periods <strong>of</strong> history when thinkers feel that truths are without foundation’<br />
(1992: 242). In this understanding nihilism is constituted by, first, a recognition<br />
<strong>of</strong> the absence <strong>of</strong> foundations <strong>of</strong> truth, morality and politics and, second, the<br />
desire to have such foundations. <strong>The</strong> properly nihilistic response to this existential<br />
condition may consist either in the hypocritical attempts to invent new<br />
foundations for judgement (‘incomplete nihilism’ in Nietzsche’s terms) or in the<br />
passive-nihilist abandonment <strong>of</strong> all judgement due to its necessary contingency.<br />
In contrast to such critics as Michael Walzer (1986) and Nancy Fraser (1995),<br />
Veyne interprets Foucault’s work as the ‘fulfilment <strong>of</strong> nihilism’ that accepts the<br />
first assumption <strong>of</strong> nihilism but rejects the second, claiming instead that it is the<br />
very impossibility <strong>of</strong> founding norms that makes possible ethical action. Similarly,<br />
Veyne suggests that the absence <strong>of</strong> secure foundations does not disable<br />
judgement, but merely disables giving one’s judgement the force <strong>of</strong> truth or<br />
moral law. ‘What remains is to live and to want what one wants without justifying<br />
oneself and saying that one is right’ (Veyne 1992: 243).<br />
It is important to distinguish this affirmation <strong>of</strong> decisionism from the deconstructionist<br />
understanding <strong>of</strong> the ‘impossibility’ <strong>of</strong> decision, highlighted in the<br />
‘ethical’ writings <strong>of</strong> the later Derrida (1992, 1996). Like <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s insistence on<br />
the decision emanating from nothingness, deconstructionist ethics affirms undecidability<br />
as the condition <strong>of</strong> possibility <strong>of</strong> every decision. In Derrida’s supplementary<br />
deconstruction <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s approach, any decisionism necessarily<br />
contains the ‘aporia <strong>of</strong> decision’, the passage through the ‘ordeal undecidable’,<br />
the experience <strong>of</strong> the ‘perhaps’ that is both traversed and effaced (but not<br />
annulled) in the act <strong>of</strong> decision (Derrida 1996: 67). It is this effacement that<br />
deconstruction seeks to restore to the decisions already taken in order to reassert<br />
their radically undecidable nature, irreducible to the procedure <strong>of</strong> derivation. As<br />
we have seen, <strong>Schmitt</strong> may be considered a devout Derridean in this aspect,<br />
given his insistence on the impossibility <strong>of</strong> grounding a genuine decision. It is<br />
rather in assessing the consequences <strong>of</strong> this originary undecidability that <strong>Schmitt</strong><br />
and Derrida part ways. In contrast to <strong>Schmitt</strong>, Derrida is characteristically hesitant<br />
to affirm the necessary effacement <strong>of</strong> undecidability in the very act <strong>of</strong><br />
making the decision. Instead, his deconstructed decisionism appears to be locked<br />
in a self-imposed suspension over the abyss <strong>of</strong> undecidability in the desire to<br />
refrain from the closure that every decision inaugurates, which makes it, in Derridean<br />
ethics, always inadequate and irresponsible.<br />
<strong>The</strong> deconstructionist ethics <strong>of</strong> (in)decision therefore remains suspended in<br />
irresolution and impotence, a deadlock which can only be broken via its supplementation<br />
with a <strong>Schmitt</strong>ian decisionism, <strong>of</strong> which it is allegedly itself a supplement.<br />
<strong>The</strong> insistence on the need to decide despite the a priori ‘ethical<br />
inadequacy’ <strong>of</strong> every decision is necessary for deconstruction not to appear, in