What relation is there between the commissary dictator and the katechon in Schmitt's writings? In this paper I argue that both the dictator of Dictatorship and the katechon of Nomos of the Earth are characterized by a specific conception of authority. This intermediate and limited form of authority, distinct from sovereignty and the regular office, was key Schmitt's attempts, in the 1920s, to save the administrative apparatus of the state from its subsumption to the "machine of government" typical of the theory of the Rechtsstaat.Oriented by a task arising from a concrete problem and supported by a hierarchical conception of dignity, Schmitt claims this limited personalist authority can preserve the 2 creative humanity of the civil service. Reconstructing this form of authority, informed by eschatological fragments from his Tagebücher, I argue that Schmitt's 1920s works are haunted by a kind of shadow of the katechon, which is only given body thirty years later in Nomos of the Earth. Although there shifts in the weighting of elements, parallelling his turn from "decisionism" to "concrete-order thinking", I argue that, at least in its dominant specificities, this form of authority returns in the doctrine of the katechon.

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Derrida’s engagement with Carl Schmitt, in Politics of Friendship, pursues multiple, intertwined deconstructive strategies. This chapter retraces the lines of approach made through the modal category “real possibility”, a modality that appears to lie in the space of spectrality, between the usual categories of possibility and actuality. Elaborating Derrida’s attempted “spectral inversion” of Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction, the chapter critiques a key moment in which Derrida equivocates between the exceptional and the improbable. Instead of the spectral, the chapter suggests that post-thermodynamic models of energy offer a better model for Schmitt’s use of the real possibility, based on his interest in Georges Sorel.

Introducing the collective volume Derrida’s Politics of Friendship: Amity and Enmity, this chapter sets the stage for the rich and manifold contributions that comprise the undertaking. ‘Welcome Friends’ begins by unfolding and contextualising the emergence of Derrida’s text, from the seminar room to its publication in 1994. This is followed by an outline of the structure of Politics of Friendship along with a discussion of its key notions, namely those notions that are decisive and specific to Derrida’s treatment of friendship: aimance, teleopoiesis and the perhaps. In turn, the introduction offers a sustained account of the reception and influence of Derrida’s text, within various fields and discourses, from deconstruction itself, to classics, feminism and political theory, with a particular emphasis on Carl Schmitt scholarship. The chapter closes by summarising the contribution of the collection and showcasing their relation to the themes and the reception of Politics of Friendship.

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