From the Body of Christ to Racial Homogeneity: Carl Schmitt's Mobilization of ‘Life’ against ‘the Spirit of Technicity’

Abstract

This article traces the semantics of ''life' ' and ''vitality'' in Carl Schmitt up to the 1930s. It shows that Schmitt deploys these vitalist elements against the modern ''spirit of technicity'' in his attempt to combat the lack of substantial ideas in modern politics. However, Schmitt himself cannot escape a fundamental political relativism. There remains an unstable tension at the heart of his thought between the quest for substance and the quest for order. The latter is relativist because it is a quest for order as such, any order. Although Schmitt's semantics of life and vitality is not drawn from a biological register, it adopted a völkisch meaning in 1933. Anti-Semitism becomes a form of life and racial homogeneity fills in for substance. The article concludes that, while there are good reasons for criticizing the modern ''spirit of technicity,'' Schmitt's critical model is fundamentally flawed. have engaged in dialogue with him, drawing on his conceptual equipment while also differing on key points. Since the 1980s, and particularly after his death in 1985, there has been a growing interest in Schmitt in the English-speaking world. 1 An increasing number of his writings have been translated into English, accompanied by a proliferation of books and articles, most of which come not from the conservative but rather from the liberal or, loosely, leftist range of the political spectrum. The reasons for this are as much contested as Schmitt himself was. Nevertheless, we can broadly distinguish two sets of motivations that drive the engagement with Carl Schmitt. One group of authors, mainly in the United States, is concerned about the rise of neoliberal, neoconservative, authoritarian or even fascist

Carl Schmittin viholliset : erottelu ystävään ja viholliseen individualismin ja universalismin kritiikkinä

“…(Meier 1994;Koenen 1995), hänen poliittista pluralismia puoltavaa kansainvälistä politiikka koskevan ajattelunsa keskuksena (Hooker 2009;Koskenniemi 2004; sekä ilmauksena Weimarin aikakaudelle tyypillisestä radikaalikonservatiivisesta ajatusmaailmasta (Mohler 1988;1989;Minca ja Barnes 2013). Joskus Schmittin poliittinen erottelu esitetään myös olennaisena osana fasistista ja rasistista ajatusmaailmaa, jonka todellinen luonne nousee selkeästi esiin vasta Schmittin liityttyä natsipuolueeseen (Wolin 1992;Gross 2000;Braun 2012). Tätä kommentaarien lähes loputonta moninaisuutta voidaan hahmottaa nostamalla esiin Nicolaus Sombartin (1997) erityisen omalaatuinen psykoana-lyyttinen tulkinta.…”

“…Kuten Mohler ja Wolin, myös Jacob Taubes (1987, 7-30) argumentoi, että Schmitt oli radikaali "vastavallankumouksen" teoreetikko. Samansuuntaisia tulkintoja esittävät myös esimerkiksi Braun (2012) sekä Barnes ja Minca (2013), kun taas esimerkiksi Bendersky (1987) ja Meier (1994) vastustavat tällaista tulkintalinjaa. 9.…”