The real enmity of Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political
| Author | Gavin Rae |
| Published date | 01 October 2016 |
| Date | 01 October 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1755088215591301 |
Journal of International Political Theory
2016, Vol. 12(3) 258 –275
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088215591301
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The real enmity of Carl
Schmitt’s concept of the
political
Gavin Rae
The American University in Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
Carl Schmitt’s use of the friend–enemy distinction to define the political is intimately
connected to the question of how to define who is a friend and who is an enemy. This
article shows that Schmitt bases it on the perceived threat posed by another. Because
the political is social, this means that the political decision is intimately connected to
war, which leads Schmitt to offer a tripartite analysis of war grounded in different forms
of enmity called classical, real or absolute. While a number of commentators have
suggested that Schmitt’s insistence that the political is the most intense antagonism
should lead him to connect the political with absolute enmity, I show that the Schmittian
political is and must be located against a real enemy. This not only clarifies an issue in
Schmittian scholarship but also provides insights into how warring states should treat
their enemy.
Keywords
Enmity, political, Schmitt, war
The distinctive trait of the Schmittian conception of the political is the friend–enemy
distinction, with this distinction arising due to a political decision regarding a perceived
existential threat to the (way of) life of the political community. According to Schmitt,
what is distinctive about the political is that it entails a reaction to a perceived violence
that has been or is about to be committed against the community. If there is a lack of
perceived violent threat, the other will be thought of as a political friend; if there is a
perceived threat of violence from the other, the other will become a political enemy
Corresponding author:
Gavin Rae, Department of Philosophy, The American University in Cairo, AUC Avenue, P.O. Box 74, New
Cairo 11835, Egypt.
Email: gavinrae@aucegypt.edu
591301IPT0010.1177/1755088215591301Journal of International Political TheoryRae
research-article2015
Article
Rae 259
(Schmitt, 2006: 35). The purpose of this article is to engage further with the role that
violence plays in the Schmittian political through an analysis of his account of enmity.
To do so, it takes seriously Schmitt’s (2007) claim that ‘the theory of the partisan flows
into the question of the concept of the political’ (p. 95) to turn from his The Concept of
the Political, the text most often consulted for Schmitt’s views on the political, to his
later Theory of the Partisan. In particular, I focus on two strands of this book: first, the
notion of enmity developed therein, which will further delineate the notion of the politi-
cal and its relationship to conflict, and, second, the notion of the partisan, including its
difference from regular soldiers, pirates and thieves, which will show the political nature
of the partisan. The combination of both allows Schmitt to distinguish between classical,
real and absolute forms of war.
While classical war is based in and through clear lines of demarcation between com-
batants and non-combatants and is informed by specific codes of conduct, ‘real’ war
complements this by introducing a degree of irregularity to the field of combat. The
result is that classic and real warfare are, in different ways, bracketed, limited and
respecting of the enemy. Absolute enmity/war is different in that it moralises the enemy
and so turns ‘it’ into a criminal or monster with the consequence that the aim is no longer
simple victory but the physical annihilation of the enemy (Schmitt, 2007: 9, 52, 85, 89).
Schmitt (2007) is highly critical of the turn to absolute enmity seeing it as a consequence
of the depoliticisation process he is trying to halt and also one of the main contributors
to this process (pp. 92–95). The depoliticisation process does not lead to a more humane
existence, but rather it is opposite. A world without the political is a world in which the
enemy is thought in moral terms, which leads to ever more atrocious and brutal wars
(Schmitt, 2006: 142). Rather than turn away from war, it is to Schmitt’s credit that he
takes it seriously and tries to construct an understanding of the political that takes it into
account. This does not entail a glorification of war, but a delicate balancing act that, on
the one hand, recognises the inevitability of war and, indeed, the necessary role it plays
in the political and, on the other hand, the claim that the political does not lead to the
glorification of war but entails a bracketed real war based on respect for the enemy.
A number of commentators (Sartori, 1989: 71–72; Shapiro, 2008: 71; Slomp, 2009: 94)
have, however, argued that Schmitt’s insistence that the political is the most intense antago-
nism, in combination with his insistence that (1) warfare is intimately connected to the
political and (2) absolute warfare is the most intense form, means that (3) Schmitt must
advocate absolute war and the physical annihilation of the enemy. This reading is under-
pinned by two arguments: first, that Schmitt is wrong to use intensity to distinguish between
the various forms of warfare and, second, that Schmitt draws the wrong conclusions from
his use of intensity. In contrast, I argue that Schmitt’s theory of the political/non-political
relationship means, first, that he is correct to use ‘intensity’ as the criterion that distin-
guishes between the various forms of warfare and that, second, this does not mean that
Schmitt must advocate absolute war. Because the political requires a decision about the
friend and enemy, both must exist for the political to exist. For this reason, political warfare
must aim to defeat the enemy, but cannot aim at the physical annihilation of it. The
Schmittian political is and must be located against a real enemy not an absolute one. This
not only clarifies an issue in Schmittian scholarship but also provides insights into how
warring states should treat their enemy.
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