Monday, February 28, 2005
(5:58 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology
After months of looking for the book in the title, I discovered these wonderful institutions where you can gain access to all manner of obscure books as long as you promise to return it to said institution within a defined period -- a "library," from the Latin for "book" (get it?). This particular library was run by Unitarians; I chose the Unitarian library because of the almost excessive irony of borrowing Carl Schmitt from the Unitarians. Anyway, here's a little chunk:De Maistre and Donoso Cortés were incapable of such "organic" thinking. De Maistre showed this by his total lack of understanding of Schelling's philosophy of life; Donoso Cortés was gripped by horror when he was confronted with Hegelianism in Berlin in 1849. Both were diplomats and politicians with much experience and practice and had concluded sufficiently sensible compromises. But a systematic and metaphysical compromise was to them inconceivable. To suspend the decision at the crucial point by denying that there was at all something to be decided upon must have appeared to them to be a strange pantheistic confusion. Liberalism, with its contradictions and compromises, existed for Donoso Cortés only in that short interim period in which it was possible to answer the question "Christ or Barabbas?" with a proposal to adjounrn or appoint a commission of investigation. Such a position was not accidental but was based on liberal metaphysics.I resist the reaction of many leftists, or disaffected liberals who want to get shit done, whereby Schmitt becomes a guide to how to assume power "realistically." What I do like about Schmitt, however, is his whithering scorn, his absolute intolerance of anything that is less than completely rigorous.
I eagerly await Žižek's next book, called The Universal Exception. My call: he will fully endorse Schmitt (ooh! daring and paradoxical!) and proclaim him a closet Hegelian. I just wanted that to be on record. (Earlier this year, I accurately predicted, almost word for word, that Derrida would proclaim that in a certain sense, there are no rogue states, and in another sense, there are nothing but rogue states. Academic prognostication is sadly not a growth industry; if it were, I would be filthy rich.)
