Challenge of Carl Scmitt (Review)

This will be the first book review i've done in quite some time, the last time i was in college over two years ago. I'm pretty sure that almost nobody reads this blog, not that it matters because i like to think that with this blog i keep myself sharp enough to return to college at some point, or maybe i'll just write books when i get old, not sure yet. But the truth is that i barely ever update this thing and all i really do besides reading is argue with my roommates and friends who have very different scholastic interests than myself. For example, the most critical topic of conversation in last nights discussion was whether or not class inequality could be considered a kind of slow or passive eugenics....as you can see from other posts, tis not really my forte'. I really need to find a critical discussion group, hopefully one where people have moved past talking about Foucaults concept of all-pervasive power and so forth. So... on to the Schmitt.

Was a great man. This book is a collection of articles edited (with one contribution) by Chantal Mouffe, including a first-ever published english translation of Schmitt's article Ethic of State and Pluralistic State. Scmitt's basic interest lies in how to think of order, or political unity. For him it is a normative or ethical concept, in the sense of he depicts unity as virtue, or the basis of virtue. As a political unity is the basis for the state or a normal situation, all personal and social freedoms emanate from it, and hence an ethic of state for him (as a realist) is the key to ethics in general. Consequently liberal rights take backstage in his theory, as do issues of participation or overt political freedoms. Does this sound reminiscent of a Hobbsian theory of the Leviathan? Thats because it is, but what separates Schmitt from a thinker like Hobbes most pointedly (other than the eras of these authors) is his commitment to a basis for legitimacy other than a guarantee of order, and his committment to politics which he deems neccessary and perminant to the social link. Indeed the political is constitutive of the social whole, and so legitimacy is a question of the sovereigns ability to represent or construct a substantive unity of the 'people'. This is what gives the ruler his appropriateness, or historical rightness which differentiates the dictator from the tyrant whos rule is arbitrary and not bound by normative elements (chapt 7). In this way his theory is prevalent with democratic aims, but not in the usual sense, because for him democracy is not found in a set of procedures nor-like in Plato or Marx-in the people themselves, but in a sovereign who realizes the spirit or substance of a people.

It would seem that many of the authors find his most valuable contribution to be his critique of liberal ambivalence towards political unity, and his clarification of the fact that universalistic ideals such humanitarianism and constitutionalism constitute no basis for such a unity. Chantal Mouffe indicates that such a theoretical stance leaves one without the ability to speak coherently about community, or a political ethic. Thus some of the authors are poised to use his critique to inform a theory of community, the status of which has been dominated in the last century by proponents of economic liberalism and technocrats where it is based on somewhat empty concepts like citizenship, or a negotiations of interests. And so goes the introduction.