Dans Politiques de l’amitié (1994), Jacques Derrida déconstruit l’opposition entre amis et ennemis que Carl Schmitt présuppose au fondement de sa conception polémique de la politique en 1932. La déstabilisation des distinctions de l’axiomatique schmittienne (public / privé, guerre / révolution, extérieur / intérieur) permet de contester l’existence prétendument objective d’un ennemi purement politique. Derrida éludant la démarcation schmittienne entre ennemis effectif et absolu, il faudra montrer le caractère fictif de cette ultime stratégie de Schmitt pour justifier en 1963 sa (...) politique d’hostilité. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to consider both Schmitt’s polemical and his analytical claims in dealing with a concept which is central to his theory and yet strangely overlooked by the secondary literature: the concept of friendship. The essay proceeds in three steps; first it makes some textual claims about the meaning and role of friendship in Schmitt’s writings; secondly its puts forward an interpretation of the significance of friendship in Schmitt’s political thought; finally, it tries to disentangle polemics (...) from diagnostics in Schmitt’s discourse and draws some tentative conclusions. (shrink)

The subject is the bearer of the sovereign decision, according to C. Schmitt. This decision grounds on certain situational pragmatics, yet mainly is born out of a ‘null’; as the decision forms the political normalcy that follows after, it displays its nature as an ‘event’. This subject is simultaneously a legal and a political one; it is the founder of the Nomos. This founding subject has been eclipsed in alignment with its post-modernly acclaimed ‘death’. The subject is deemed to have (...) been inherently divided, as long as its identity steadily postpones itself, is incessantly ‘differing’, according to the deconstructionist approach; or it is considered as fundamentally ‘passive’, meaning not so much ‘weak’, but rather dethroning the Western preoccupation with the active autonomous individual; or, it is maintained but intrinsically reversed, now held either as part of a fundamental ontological order and indirectly of the nature, or, opposite to Kantian assumptions, as primarily captured in a radical heteronomy, which constitutes it as a proper ethical subject. Crucial is how to develop a concept taking into account the eventfulness of the constitution of the subject, without effacing the political character of such constitution by reducing it to non-political discourses, i.e., to metaphysics, morals or economics; how to conceive of Derrida’s ‘democracy to-come’ as political event, namely both as secular act and in the same time as referring to extramundane fundaments ; how to go beyond the linearity of the liberalist ideology by equating the political event with a messianic miracle ‘without messianism’; how to ‘salute’ democracy? (shrink)

Este artículo teoriza la transición del régimen global geopolítico (es decir, la política de la tierra) a régimen piropolítico, o la política del fuego. En base a filosofía política de Carl Schmitt, la tesis es que la certidumbre, estabilidad y orden arraigados en la tierra están desplazados por la anomia del fuego, como un símbolo y dominio concreto de lo político hoy.

Utilizando como referencia la Carta política escrita por el general Pedro Alcántara Herrán a Bartolomé Calvo, en el contexto de la guerra civil colombiana de 1859-1862, en este artículo se analizan las relaciones existentes entre la negociación de la paz, la justicia y la regulación de la guerra. Se pretende mostrar que en el siglo xix las iniciativas políticas para evitar, suspender, limitar o terminar la guerra fueron tan abundantes y plurales como los levantamientos y las confrontaciones armadas. Además de (...) presentar la especificidad anómala del caso colombiano, donde históricamente coexisten y se entremezclan los llamados a la guerra con los propósitos de la reconciliación, el artículo rescata, para la actualidad, un documento histórico que sintetiza el lenguaje de la paz, la concordia y la reconciliación en una de las más largas y crueles guerras civiles decimonónicas. (shrink)

This article provides a framework for understanding post-truth politics by employing the ideas of Nietzsche and Schmitt. It posits pre-moral and pre-economic guilt and debt, relating human non-self-sufficiency, at the heart of social and political existence and alleges that guilt and debt are the hey bonds that hold human groupings together. Following Schmitt, romantic attitudes to politics are seen as negating this underlying reality, opting instead for escapist fantasy of self-mastery and unlimited creative potential. The author claims that these promises (...) in particular are picked up by post-truth politics, placing the human person and their preconceptions at the heart of the world and handing over to them prime creative power at least as a matter of fantasy. Nevertheless, this escapism merely hides the persistence of guilt and debt. However, despite being an inadequate way of perceiving the world, the post-truth fantasy still constitutes a severe challenge to political bonds. (shrink)

In The Leviathan in the state theory of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt puts forward the claim that there is a ?barely visible crack? in Hobbes's theory of the state that opened the door to liberal constitutionalism. This essay claims that Schmitt's ?thesis of the crack? is composed of two elements: first, Schmitt argues that Hobbes makes a concession to individual conscience in his discussion of miracles; second, Schmitt points out that Hobbes's individualism undermines his notion of the absolute state. As (...) Schmitt relies on an unconvincing critique of Hobbes's discourse on miracles in order to justify his more general claim against Hobbes's authoritarianism, this essay suggests that Schmitt's ?thesis of the crack? is untenable in the form that Schmitt presented it in 1938. An attempt, however, is made to salvage ?the thesis of the crack? by turning to concepts found in Schmitt's Concept of the political and in Political theology. Although Schmitt openly approved of the so?called protection/obedience principle, this essay claims that there are a number of crucial differences between Schmitt's formulation of that principle and Hobbes's own version; an examination of these differences enables us (i) to appreciate the consequences of Hobbes's individualism on his theory of the state and (ii) to shed new light on Howard Warrender's famous claim that Hobbes's sovereign is inherently weak. The essay concludes that in spite of Schmitt's fallacious formulation of the ?thesis of the crack? of 1938, his political theory affords us a rare vantage point from which we can clearly see a case against the association of Hobbes with authoritarianism. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to consider both Schmitt’s polemical and his analytical claims in dealing with a concept which is central to his theory and yet strangely overlooked by the secondary literature: the concept of friendship. The essay proceeds in three steps; first it makes some textual claims about the meaning and role of friendship in Schmitt’s writings; secondly its puts forward an interpretation of the significance of friendship in Schmitt’s political thought; finally, it tries to disentangle polemics (...) from diagnostics in Schmitt’s discourse and draws some tentative conclusions. (shrink)

The article focuses on a passage from Carl Schmitt?s Ex Captivitate Salus - a book famously written in a Nurnberg prison in 1946 - in which he draws, from memory, on a story derived from Serbian epic poetry, to justify his understanding of historiography, victory, and the figure of the hero. Analyzing the entire Serbian epic poem from which Schmitt extracts the vignette in question, we show how the text of the poem presents a significantly more complicated and messy picture (...) of the figures of victor, victory, and hero, heroism. The anonymous Serbian poet, addressing himself to his contemporary audience, with which he is intimately familiar, really subverts simplistic expectations regarding the heroism and victory of the Serbian hero, Marko Kraljevic. Finally, the article contrasts these complex and at times paradoxical figures of victory and the hero in the poem with their presentation in Carl Schmitt?s writing. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in finding stronger means of securitising identity against the various risks presented by the mobile globalised world. Biometric technology has featured quite prominently on the policy and security agenda of many countries. It is being promoted as the solution du jour for protecting and managing the uniqueness of identity in order to combat identity theft and fraud, crime and terrorism, illegal work and employment, and to efficiently govern various domains and services (...) including asylum, immigration and social welfare. In this paper, I shall interrogate the ways in which biometrics is about the uniqueness of identity and what kind of identity biometrics is concerned with. I argue that in posing such questions at the outset, we can start delimiting the distinctive bioethical stakes of biometrics beyond the all-too-familiar concerns of privacy, data protection and the like. I take cue mostly from Cavarero’s Arendt-inspired distinction between the “what” and the “who” elements of a person, and from Ricoeur’s distinction between the “idem” and “ipse” versions of identity. By engaging with these philosophical distinctions and concepts, and with particular reference to the example of asylum policy, I seek to examine and emphasise an important ethical issue pertaining to the practice of biometric identification. This issue relates mainly to the paradigmatic shift from the biographical story (which for so long has been the means by which an asylum application is assessed) to bio-digital samples (that are now the basis for managing and controlling the identities of asylum applicants). The purging of identity from its narrative dimension lies at the core of biometric technology’s overzealous aspiration to accuracy, precision and objectivity, and raises one of the most pressing bioethical questions vis-à-vis the realm of identification. (shrink)

This article, originally a preface to the French edition of Carl Schmitt’s book The Leviathan in the State theory of Thomas Hobbes, displays a critical analysis that not only puts the above work in context, but also raises a question about Schmitt’s appropriation of Hobbes, an author who was considered a beacon of light by the former during his whole lifetime. Thus, the article undertakes a reconstitution of Schmitt´s relevance for Political Theory and Philosophy in recent years, and then develops (...) the way Hobbes was analysed in Schmitt´s essay. The interpretation of the Jurist is not innocent at all, and the propinquity to the English author in some issues could have allowed the former to reinforce his own arguments by using the latter as a mere strategic tool. The key question the article tries to elucidate is whether this re-appropriation was successful or not. (shrink)

Reading the work of Max Stirner usually it is found conditioned by the critique of Marx and Engels. His texts are however rich in theoretical subtleties and nuances. One of the guidelines developed by Stirner and not sufficiently discussed by the authors of La ideología alemana is its conceptualization around love as a key to understand the political association of Men. As part of a conceptual constellation in which notions such as interest or property play a fundamental role, love appears (...) in El Único y su propiedad as a key passion from which different types of relationships between them are explained. Stirner attempts to answer why men alienate their individuality in their own creations from an approach to the sensitive materiality of the desire of men distancing from each other. In this paper I propose to take up this dimension of analysis of Max Stirner in order to highlight the importance of a political reading of his work beyond Marx’s and Engel’s critique. (shrink)

Schmitt and Strauss are often discussed in literature as if their conceptions of political had nothing in common. But, as the author shows, Heinrich Meier careful study of the relation between Schmitt and Strauss tells us that the three editions of Schmitt’s «Concept of political» and Strauss’s «Comments» on it may be seen as largely overlooked «hidden dialogue», in the course of which Strauss’s 1932 critique had significant if unacknowledged impact on Schmitt and political and theological foundations of his thought.