De Ville - Constitutional Theory: Schmitt After Derrida

Viele zitieren den Satz des Heraklit: Der Krieg ist der Vater aller Dinge. Wenige aber wagen es, dabei an den Brgerkrieg zu denken.

( ECS 26)

Der hier genannte plemos ist ein vor allem Gttlichen und Menschlichen waltender Streit, kein Krieg nach menschlicher Weise.

(Heidegger 1983: 66)

As noted above, Schmitt in Constitutional Theory seeks to spell out the implications of his analysis in The Concept of the Political . In the latter text he contends that the concept of the political is to be understood with reference to the potential of a friend-and-enemy grouping, with war as the most extreme consequence of this grouping ( CoP 28, 33). The political has no domain of its own, unlike for example religion, morality, aesthetics or economics. It instead refers to the degree of intensity of an existential relationship, that is, of a union or a separation, association or disassociation ( CoP 26; Herrero 2015: 103). The political can consequently be reached from any domain ( CoP 62; Schmitt 2002d: 308). The political is moreover inescapable, due to the animality, drives and passions at the heart of human nature ( CoP 5868). Meaning itself is for Schmitt ( CoP 35/ BdP 36) dependent on this antithesis whereby men may be required to sacrifice their lives, and authorized to shed blood as well as kill other human beings.

Schmitts attempt at strictly defining the political in The Concept of the Political is motivated by the problem of depoliticisation, which he observes in the disappearance of the enemy in the twentieth century. In Constitutional Theory , Schmitt expresses a similar concern about depoliticisation, specifically insofar as the conception of the modern liberal constitution is concerned. He argues in this respect that the political component of the modern constitution, which is repressed by liberal thinking through its privileging of the rule-of-law component ( below).

turning against the self, which structures the political. This turning against the self of the political can, as Derrida shows, be understood with reference to the destructive drive in Freud, which is likewise preceded by a turning against the self. In placing Schmitt alongside Heidegger, we return to the (unified) concept of war in Schmitt mentioned above, with Heidegger seeking the originary sense of the Greek plemos . This involves a form of originary combat, not between human beings, but between the gathering of Being and its dissimulation. We also return here to phsis , which according to Heidegger is originally another name for Being and we look at Heideggers invocation of the philen (love, gift) of Being. Freud and Heidegger can in other words be read as pointing to that which gives rise to the friend-enemy distinction of Schmitts concept of the political, that is, to a force of self-destruction, or, translated in ethico-political terms, the gift, lovence, that is, a friendship beyond circular return.