Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty Paperback – January 15, 2006

Your gut reaction will be not to buy this because it was written by a Nazi. Ignore your initial reaction...I don't agree with this book in its entirety, but it makes some good claims about the nature of sovereignty.

Nice exploration of political thought.

It is such a cheap shot to pick on intellectual pretenses which fit so well the practices of Germany in the twentieth century that I am tempted to start with what was so frightening that the globe was expected to panic if people found out that peckerwood Wilson had a stroke on September 25, 1919, as he was trying to say:

We will not allow Germany . . .

A few years later, Political Theology by Carl Schmitt was published in the original German. An English translation was published in 1985, when there was less reason for Americans to panic. Then in 2005 Tracy B. Strong had some comments to add about key themes that make death camps one of the ideas which made Germans seem so weird to ordinary people. Understanding whiplash is easiest for those who can picture the collective thinking of millions of people weho profoundly hate anything that is not ordinary. At this point, the worst thing that could happen to this book would be a result of falling into the hands of readers who imagine that a confederacy will be able to make its way from Gettysburg to a green zone by clinging to a flassh bang gravy train monetary incestuality.

As a holy Samson anachronism, for a thousand years I have been resisting therapy whenever those who have been victorious in a political matter wish to turn my life around. I believe Carl Schmitt is concerned about the collective thiking of society when he considers a radical party taking over a government which attempts to have security and order by declaring that anyone who does not conform to the norms of a legal system is criminal and needs to be wiped out for domestic peace to prevail. Concentration camps were designed for millions of people within the lifetime of Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) and certain aspects of death camps have remained as an option for a pismire empire lurking in monetary incestuality over electronic financial transactions.

Character is fate, according to Heraclitus, or funny, if you can believe the aspects of Sex and Character (1903) by Otto Weininger that Freud attributed to the unconscious.

Sex and Character: An Investigation of Fundamental Principles

Psychopathology of Everyday Life

To update how weird law can become as a norm, ask yourself: who ever knows the reasons when we are having a war on drugs because being stoned is like sturdy turds flying standby?

Carl Schmitt was concerned about law as a norm that did not specify whose decision whould be competent on matters that have interesting exceptions. This book quotes Repetition by Kierkegaard on the intensity of these matters for those who do not drift helplessly on rivers of drivel:

Endless talk about the general
becomes boring. . . .
The exception, on the other hand,
thinks the general with intense passion. (Schmitt, p. 15).

Hollywood is a better indication of how people picture dynamic changes of circumstance for which no law has prepared society to render a competent decision. The Cranberries might even be considered political when they sing a song about Hollywood. The index of Political Theology does not mention Hollywood, which was not as important as Hobbes to Carl Schmitt in Germany in 1922, or later in November, 1933, when he added a few comments about the interests fully recognized within the law:

in addition to the normativist
and the decisionist types there
is an institutional one. (p. 2, Preface).

And whereas the normativist in
his distortion makes of law a
mere mode of operation of a state
bureauracracy, and the decisionist,
focusing on the moment, always runs
the risk of missing the stable content
inherent in every great political
movement, an isolated institutional
thinking leads to the pluralism
characteristic of a feudal-corporate
growth that is devoid of sovereignty. (p. 3).

The formless mixture, unsuitable for any
structure, was no match for any serious
problem concerning state and constitution. (p. 3)

I like finding comments in Political Theory about how Max Weber expected bureaucracy to take over all the things that could be directed as a matter of administrative routine, but secularization was whiplash when people were tired of hearing leaders talk about great things that never happened, as always came to mean never for actuality in place of virtuality.

Secularization of theology, trying to transfer a raging desire for psychotic multiplicity in all things into a rule that can govern hundreds of millions of people by exposing them only to information for home entertainment purposes, with heavy fines and jail time for individuals who copy and distribute files without owning the right to make the big bucks that are wished for with popularity, seems like a weird form of purity or unity for my holy Samson anachronism and the Martin Luther Stonehood of rock and roll. As a routine, law has become as ossiferous as the contrast between a person and an idea:

. . . all conceptions of personality were aftereffects of absolute monarchy. (p. 30).

In a few pages at the end, the rational kinds of thinking Max Weber promoted for American financiers and industrial technicians are considered a success. The free markets that make the marginal thinking of millionaires and billionaires what government can function as a lavatory cleaning up only surfs on waves of social splatology when the world is up against:

the biased rule of politics over
unbiased economic management be
done away with. There must no longer
be political problems, only
organizational-technical and
economic-sociological tasks. (p. 65).

I am still resisting therapy. The notion of legitimacy has been dissolved, and no exacting moral decision can ever be expected to be created out of nothingness.

Carl Schmitt was an early 20th century Jurist and legal scholar who developed a number of the most significant concepts of political theory. In Political Theology, Schmitt accomplishes two basic things: first, he develops the concept of Sovereignty which has come to dominate modern considerations of law and security. Namely, Schmitt articulates the Sovereign in terms of having the authority to decide on "the State of Exception." The State of Exception has come to be an extremely important concept among Critical Theorists today, particularly in the work of Agamben. Additionally, Schmitt argues that modern political concepts are ultimately "Secularized Theological Concepts," particularly the ultimate power of the Sovereign. Schmitt's politics is informed by the prioritization of security over freedom, and his Hobbesian world view permeates his specific interpretations of the legal and political World Situation in the difficult years of the Weimar period. Despite his nefarious participation in National Socialism, Schmitt's thought remains an important resource and reference point for contemporary political thought.

After many years, Carl Schmitt's works have finally reached the shores of the English-speaking world. Having been isolated by much of the scholarly community due to his complicity and support for Nazi Germany, it is only in recent decades that his works have garnered interest.

Ideas

Political Theology, like many of his most famous works, was written during a prolific period of his life in Weimar Germany. Indeed, this book bears the marks and concerns of the fragile political system in which he lived. Disenchanted with parliamentary democracy and the legal reasoning of his time, Schmitt develops in this book a devastatingly sharp critique of liberal democracy and legal normativism--a critque which has become very pertinent to our current political climate (2006).

In place of this, Schmitt probes into the historical and ideological framework of the state and politics so as to discover its essential characteristics, which he argues is defined and circumscribed by the exception. In short, the exception is a moment of true decision by a soveriegn, by which the legal norm is created. For, as the famous opening lines of the book proclaim, "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception."

Translation and Introduction

Now, George Schwab has done an excellent translation of this work so as to make it clear and readable. As such, I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in Carl Schmitt, early 20th century political theory, Weimar Germany, or recent political works by Giorgio Agamben and Chantal Mouffe. Moreover, I also recommend reading the foreword and introduction, which provide a clear and succint overview of Schmitt's political theory.

Lastly, Schmitt's works are not very accessible to a quick reading. I recommend going over this book very carefully and thoroughly--best not before bedtime. I would also recommend his other works. I have found Schmitt to be terribly and sometimes frightfully insightful and believe that his ideas are essential to understanding modern political institutions, practices, and ideology.