Abstract

This chapter will focus on Macht und menschliche Natur, Plessner’s last book of the Weimar period, published just two years before the collapse of the Republic and the content of which is related to another two major figures of German intellectuality during this epoch of upheaval: the author of Sein und Zeit, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. I will examine the affinities and discrepancies which may be found between Schmitt and Plessner regarding the meaning which the conceptual pair friend-enemy acquires according to both authors. Schmitt understood it as the difference which determines human groupings, whereas Plessner comprehended it as a relation which does not institute identity and has not only to do with groups, but also with individuals.