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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<strong>The</strong> ethos <strong>of</strong> insecure life 235<br />
differences does little more than subsume one’s existential singularity under its<br />
own teleological or procedural normativity. If truth is a thing <strong>of</strong> this world, then<br />
any consensus that emerges in discussion will be always already permeated by<br />
power relations; that is, it will always emerge as a result <strong>of</strong> an unfounded<br />
decision, however much the event <strong>of</strong> the latter is disavowed:<br />
[e]very consensus, even a ‘free’ one, is somehow motivated and brought<br />
into existence. Power produces consensus and <strong>of</strong>ten, to be sure, a rational<br />
and ethically justified consensus. Conversely, consensus produces power,<br />
and then <strong>of</strong>ten an irrational and – despite the consensus – an ethically<br />
repugnant one.<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1999: 202)<br />
Aware <strong>of</strong> the eradication <strong>of</strong> difference inherent in the drive for consensus, a<br />
decisionist ethics values difference without a liberal ‘safety mechanism’ <strong>of</strong> postulating<br />
the underlying identity <strong>of</strong> ‘humanity’, which in <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s astute observation<br />
merely serves to deny the enemy the existential status <strong>of</strong> being human,<br />
reducing him to a ‘total non-value’ (Freund 1995: 19), and has ‘incalculable<br />
effects [since] a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity’<br />
(<strong>Schmitt</strong> 1976: 54). Just as <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s political realism on the level <strong>of</strong> interstate<br />
relations affirms pluralism in the domain <strong>of</strong> the international, while privileging a<br />
minimal degree <strong>of</strong> domestic homogeneity, a decisionist ethics emphasises the<br />
maintenance <strong>of</strong> difference in intersubjective relations while simultaneously privileging<br />
a resolution <strong>of</strong> interdependence with the positive other via a clear act <strong>of</strong><br />
self-distinction and self-delimitation. In this manner, a decisionist ethics posits a<br />
telos <strong>of</strong> sovereign subjectivity.<br />
Telos: sovereign to oneself<br />
<strong>The</strong> telos <strong>of</strong> sovereignty is the final component <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>ian ethics. <strong>The</strong> ultimate<br />
goal <strong>of</strong> the art <strong>of</strong> making enemies that nurtures the ethical substance <strong>of</strong> real<br />
life by permanently returning to the originary void <strong>of</strong> the decision is ultimately<br />
to emerge from a state <strong>of</strong> unbearable gravity <strong>of</strong> epistemico-moral subjection into<br />
the condition <strong>of</strong> lightness, in which one assumes mastery over one’s own existence.<br />
This mastery marks a synthesis <strong>of</strong> <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s notion <strong>of</strong> sovereignty as the<br />
decision on exception and Foucault’s notion <strong>of</strong> transgression as an experience <strong>of</strong><br />
the limit. As we have argued elsewhere, in <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s approach sovereignty is<br />
irreducible to the affirmation <strong>of</strong> supreme authority within a positive order, but is<br />
rather exhausted by a negative operation <strong>of</strong> transgression, the capacity to<br />
suspend the normal functioning <strong>of</strong> order (see Prozorov 2005). <strong>The</strong> sovereign is<br />
simultaneously inside positive order as the source <strong>of</strong> its foundational principles<br />
and outside it as something that ‘can not be subsumed’ under these principles, a<br />
supplement that is always unfathomable, monstrous and obscene in relation to<br />
every positivity. We may then redefine the sovereign as the transgressor in relation<br />
to the order <strong>of</strong> his own creation and the transgressor as sovereign over his