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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From humanized war to intervention 65<br />
into an archetypically liberal notion: the political basis <strong>of</strong> decisions to use force<br />
that was characteristic <strong>of</strong> the jus publicum Europaeum is replaced by a legalistic<br />
and moralistic account <strong>of</strong> the justification for force.<br />
This is, I believe, a quite compelling argument, and it defines the task for<br />
anyone who wishes to continue to use Just War notions in thinking about international<br />
relations, which I do; effectively one must redraw the idea <strong>of</strong> the Just<br />
War so that it neither reflects a lost medieval Christian order, nor fits into<br />
contemporary, liberal, moral reasoning. This may seem to be a tall order, but I<br />
believe it is actually much less difficult than one might imagine, because<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>’s way <strong>of</strong> setting up the problem excludes or devalues a line <strong>of</strong> reasoning<br />
that is the product neither <strong>of</strong> the respublica Christiana nor <strong>of</strong> contemporary liberalism,<br />
a line <strong>of</strong> reasoning <strong>of</strong>ten termed ‘neo-Aristotelian’. Such reasoning<br />
follows the Aristotelian injunction, summarized by Stephen Toulmin, that<br />
‘sound moral judgment always respects the detailed circumstances <strong>of</strong> specific<br />
kinds <strong>of</strong> cases’ (1990: 32). Along with <strong>Schmitt</strong>, neo-Aristotelianism is critical <strong>of</strong><br />
the search for universal legal and/or moral rules, and, again following <strong>Schmitt</strong>,<br />
neo-Aristotelians associate this tendency with the characteristic moral theories<br />
<strong>of</strong> liberalism, in particular Kantianism and utilitarianism. However, unlike<br />
<strong>Schmitt</strong>, Toulmin at least locates the origin <strong>of</strong> this tendency not with the Anglo-<br />
American thought <strong>of</strong> the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but much earlier –<br />
in fact, just at the point where <strong>Schmitt</strong>’s jus publicum Europaeum is first established,<br />
in the early seventeenth century.<br />
This is when, Toulmin argues, the moral insights <strong>of</strong> Renaissance humanism<br />
and the classical world were put aside. Under the influence <strong>of</strong> Descartes and<br />
Hobbes, along with many lesser talents, formal logic came to displace rhetoric,<br />
general principles and abstract axioms were privileged over particular cases and<br />
concrete diversity, and the establishment <strong>of</strong> rules (or ‘laws’) that were deemed<br />
<strong>of</strong> permanent as opposed to transitory applicability came to be seen as the task<br />
<strong>of</strong> the theorist. Toulmin suggests that at this time moral reasoning became<br />
‘theory-centered’ rather than ‘practically-minded’ (1990: 34). Moral reasoning<br />
became a matter <strong>of</strong> following a theoretically validated rule, rather than <strong>of</strong><br />
making a practical judgement, and was impoverished thereby, losing the<br />
emphasis on cultivating the facility for the making <strong>of</strong> moral judgements which,<br />
as Bernard Williams has maintained, was characteristic <strong>of</strong> older, pre-modern or<br />
classical moral philosophies (1985, 1993). Toulmin and Williams are not, <strong>of</strong><br />
course, alone in holding this position; in recent years, there has been a revival <strong>of</strong><br />
interest in Greek moral theory, and, in particular, in the notion <strong>of</strong> the ‘virtues’ –<br />
those qualities <strong>of</strong> mind that human beings can cultivate in order to enable them<br />
to be more effective moral agents. (Anscombe 1958; Nussbaum 1993: Crisp<br />
1996; Statman 1997).<br />
Neo-Aristotelian thought places Just War theory in a new light; if we return<br />
to the set <strong>of</strong> questions outlined on p. 57 we can see that they are actually not best<br />
understood as comprising a set <strong>of</strong> rules that invite a yes/no answer, a tick in a<br />
box. Rather, they invite the exercise <strong>of</strong> different kinds <strong>of</strong> political and moral<br />
judgement. <strong>The</strong> existence <strong>of</strong> a ‘just cause’ for action calls for precisely the kind