Philosophies of Concrete Life: From Carl Schmitt to Jean-Luc Nancy

Transcription

1 Philosophies of Concrete Life: From Carl Schmitt to Jean-Luc Nancy Mika Ojakangas Introduction In the numerous commentaries on Carl Schmitt published during the last ten years by English speaking authors there is no discussion about Schmitt s concept of the concrete. 1 This is strange given Schmitt s continuous emphasis on the concreteness of his approach. Already in Political Theology (1922) he defines his approach as a philosophy of concrete life. In addition, although Schmitt s thought is usually divided into two phases, the decisionist phase and the phase which begins approximately in 1933, the late phase too is characterized by an attempt to think concrete concretely, as evident even in the name he gives to his approach: a theory of concrete order. One aim of this article is to fill this gap, in other words, to examine the nature of Schmitt s concept of the concrete. The claim is that the concept or rather the non-concept of the concrete is the key to Schmitt s philosophy of law and politics in general. Another aim is to show that such philosophies of the concrete, especially because they identify the concrete with the exceptional event, seem to have a tendency to mythical and mystical thinking, which at least partly explains not only Schmitt s but also Martin Heidegger s involvement with Nazism. 1. See for instance John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitt s Critique of Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Renato Cristi, Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism. Cardiff: University of Wales Press 1998; David Dyzenhaus (ed.), Law as Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Chantal Mouffe (ed.), The Challenge of Carl Schmitt (London: Verso, 1999); William E. Scheuerman, Carl Schmitt: The End of Law (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999); Gopal Balakrishnan, The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (London: Verso, 2000). 25

2 26 MIKA OJAKANGAS At the end of the article, I examine Jean-Luc Nancy s alternative way of approaching the concrete, not as some exceptional event but as something very common, that is to say, as the event of everyday communication. The Closure of Immanence In order to understand Schmitt s philosophy of concrete life, and especially, the concept of the concrete in it, we need to know why he uses such a concept. Of course, the easiest answer would be that Schmitt is against all abstractions and the concrete is surely a counter-concept to the abstract. This also explains why he does not call his approach a philosophy of life, for instance. By adding the substantival adjective concrete he attempts to distinguish his approach from the abstractions of the metaphysics of life that was in vogue in Germany and especially in France at the turn of the 20th century, Henri Bergson being a model example. Admittedly, Schmitt too holds that there exists a metaphysical core in the work of every author: The thought and feeling of every person always retain a certain metaphysical character. 2 In Schmitt s case, however, this core is not life as such in its complete spiritual emptiness and mere dynamic, 3 but what he calls the concrete. The easiest answer, although true, is not necessarily a sufficient answer. To be sure, Schmitt opposes abstractions, but this does not yet disclose the meaning of his concept of the concrete. As a matter of fact, as Jacques Derrida points out, Schmitt s concept of the concrete can be itself considered a mere abstraction: It is always exceeded, overtaken let us say haunted by the abstraction of its spectre. 4 However, everything depends on what we understand by such words as concrete and abstract. According to Derrida, the abstract at least in Schmitt s case is something that is out of reach, inaccessible, infinitely deferred and thereby, inconceivable to the concept (Begriff). 5 In his view, Schmitt s concept of the concrete is such an abstraction and in a sense Derrida is right. Schmitt s concrete is out of reach, inaccessible and inconceivable to the concept. However, whether it is infinitely deferred is not a matter of self-evidence. At least according to Schmitt himself, this is not the case. However, in order to understand Schmitt s concept of the concrete, it is not enough to say that it is either an abstraction or that it is inaccessible. 2. Carl Schmitt, Political Romanticism (1919) (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), p Ibid., pp Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1977), p Ibid., p. 117.

3 PHILOSOPHIES OF CONCRETE LIFE 27 We need to know what kind of inaccessible abstraction it actually is. Therefore, we must widen our analysis. Firstly, we need to take into account Schmitt s intellectual-political strategy in which all political concepts, images, and terms are considered to have a polemical meaning: They are focused on a specific conflict and are bound to a concrete situation. 6 Therefore, they remain incomprehensible if one does not know exactly who is to be affected, combated, refuted or negated by these terms. 7 In other words, we should know who is to be affected, combated, and so on by Schmitt s legal and political concepts, including the concept of the concrete. This entails, secondly, that we need to take into account the context of Schmitt s usage of concepts. Obviously, this context consists of his contemporary political and intellectual adversaries, for instance, certain liberal politicians and such scholars as Hans Kelsen. However, for Schmitt s work there exists a more comprehensive politicalintellectual context which explains his usage of concepts better than these contemporary adversaries. This context, it seems to me, is the epoch of late modernity in general and especially what Schmitt calls the metaphysical image of the world in this epoch. 8 It is precisely against this image that Schmitt aims his principal conceptual weapons. It is only in this context that we can understand the meaning of Schmitt s concept of the concrete. What then is the metaphysical image of the world in the epoch of late modernity? According to Schmitt, an outstanding characteristic of late modernity is the tendency to rationalize and neutralize everything. He finds the primeval source of this tendency in the dominant natural-scientific dogma which forces human existence into rationalist schemes. 9 With these schemes, penetrating all the areas of human existence including politics, law, economy, and so on, 10 the whole world becomes like an ethically neutral automatically functioning absolutely rational selfenclosed system. 11 However, the dominant natural-scientific dogma is, according to Schmitt, a mere expression of a transformation in the sphere 6. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (1932) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p Ibid., p Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (1922) (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), p Ibid., p On a detailed analysis of these spheres as regards to the closure of immanence see Mika Ojakangas, A Philosophy of Concrete Life: Carl Schmitt and the Political Thought of Late Modernity (Jyväskylä: Sophi Academic Press, 2004). 11. See Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form (1923) (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 27. See also Schmitt, Political Theology, op cit, p. 65; Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, op cit., p. 57.

4 28 MIKA OJAKANGAS of metaphysics. This is a transformation from the metaphysics of transcendence to that of immanence. In late modernity, everything is increasingly governed by conceptions of immanence. 12 It is precisely the metaphysics of immanence the metaphysics of natural sciences that has paved the way for absolute rationalization and neutralization inasmuch as the concept of immanence entails, according to Schmitt, that everything is potentially under the control of human reason. 13 In other words, the metaphysical image of late modernity entails a possibility to control everything everything can be grasped (greifen), which also means, conceivable to the concept (Begriff). Founding Rupture It is precisely this context, the metaphysical image of late modernity characterized by ethically neutral and absolutely rational self-enclosed systems, in the light of which we should examine Schmitt s concept of the concrete. Firstly, Schmitt develops the concept of the concrete as a counter-concept (Gegenbegriff) to these systems, based on the metaphysical image of absolute immanence. However, although the concept is posed as an antipode to absolute immanence, it does not oppose it from the perspective of the traditional transcendence, that is to say, from the perspective of transcendence beyond immanence. Schmitt fully realized that late modernity is marked by a fundamental loss of such transcendence. It is characterized by the absence of gods which means that we are living in an epoch in which all transcendent foundations of meaning and order, from theistic revelation to deistic nature and from enlightenment reason to romantic tradition, have fallen apart. To be sure, it is possible to try to erect new gods, even in the epoch of absolute immanence. This was not, however, Schmitt s aim given his political-intellectual attitude according to which the task of the philosophy of concrete life is to create concepts out of the immanence of a concrete legal and social order Schmitt, Political Theology, op cit., p For Schmitt, the leading figure in philosophy advocating absolute immanence is Baruch Spinoza who developed an idea of God as the immanent cause of all things (Deus sive Natura). In him, Schmitt conceives the metaphysician who first paved the way for the rationalization and especially neutralization of human existence, and not without reason: If men were born free they would form no conception of good and bad as long as they were free. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (London: Everyman, 1989), p On the horrible dictum Deus sive Natura, see Carl Schmitt, Glossarium (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1988), pp , Carl Schmitt, Die Lage der europäischen Rechtswissenschaft (1944) in Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze aus den Jahren (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958), p. 427.

5 PHILOSOPHIES OF CONCRETE LIFE 29 Therefore, Schmitt s concept of the concrete should not be understood as a new transcendent foundation of order beyond immanence. What is it then? It is a transcendence within immanence. It is immanent to the degree that it takes place within immanence. However, it is transcendent inasmuch as it is inconceivable to the concept, in other words, it is not possible to appropriate within rationalist schemes. In other words, Schmitt s concrete takes place within immanence. As a matter of fact, the concrete is precisely something that merely takes place. It is an event (Ereignis) and more precisely, it is an event that perturbs the universe of absolutely rational self-enclosed systems. It introduces a rupture a void into the closure of order immanent to itself. It is from this perspective that we must understand Schmitt s definition of the concept of the political in the 1960 s. According to him, it signifies an openness of order towards transcendence. 15 However, the transcendence in question, as also Carlo Galli points out, is not be understood as a substantial foundation of order. It should be understood as the very openness itself, 16 as the very event that introduces a rupture into the closure of order immanent to itself. In Political Theology (1922), the sovereign decision stands for such an event. In Verfassungslehre (1928), the event becomes manifest in a people s existential decision concerning the constitution. In The Concept of the Political (1932), the event can be found in the figure of the enemy. And in The Nomos of the Earth (1950), although published after Schmitt s turn towards the theory of concrete order and, as I would like to say, towards a more immanent orientation, the event takes place in landappropriation. All these events are the events of the concrete, that is to say, events that introduce rupture in the self-enclosed rationalistic systems immanent to themselves. The sovereign decision signifies a rupture ( new and alien 17 ) in the self-enclosed legal system of norms. From the perspective of this system, the decision emanates from nothingness. 18 (No wonder, Schmitt identifies the concept of decision with a miracle, with the divine interruption of theology.) 19 A people s existential decision signifies such a rupture as well, but now in the context of democratic constitution 15. See Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1963), pp For Schmitt, transcendence means contingency. Carlo Galli, Carl Schmitt s Anti-liberalism: Its Theoretical and Historical Sources and Its Philosophical and Political Meaning, Cardozo Law Review (Vol. 21:1597) (2000), p Schmitt, Political Theology, op cit., p Ibid., p Ibid., p. 36.

6 30 MIKA OJAKANGAS inasmuch as the people s will precedes the constitution and is above it. 20 In the same way, the figure of the enemy and, thereby, war brings about a rupture, but in this case the rupture appears in the international order of peace which does not recognize any other and strange. The enemy is precisely such an other and strange. 21 Finally, also land-appropriation ( territorial mutation ) signifies a rupture, but this time it is a rupture in the global order of economic change, in the system of production and consumption, interrupting its smooth and self-sufficient functioning. 22 In this way, all these events indicate resistance to the absolutization of immanence. They function as antidotes to the self-propelling machines, as ever-present stumbling blocks for the rationalist schemes. However, Schmitt s event the event of the concrete is not only a figure of resistance. The decision does not merely resist the valid legal order, nor does the existential decision of the people merely perturb constitution. Similarly, the enemy does not destroy the possibility of peace, nor does land-appropriation lead to the collapse of what Schmitt pejoratively calls the system of mere production. In fact, these events exist as the foundation of every real legal order, of every democratic constitution, of sound peace and of authentic, that is, meaningful production. In other words, Schmitt s concept of the concrete does not only denote an event of resistance but also a constitutive event. It denotes the constitutive event (grundlegende Ereignis) of meaning and order. 23 This is why Schmitt s concrete is not only a counter-concept, signifying the intrusion of pure contingency, but also a fundamental concept, that is, an original word (Urwort) and a grounding concept (Grundbegriff). Thus, even if the sovereign decision brings about a rupture into the system 20. Carl Schmitt, Verfassungslehre (1928) (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993), p Schmitt, The Concept of The Political, op cit., p Carl Schmitt, Appropriation, Distribution, Production (1953), Telos 95 (Spring 1993). However, appropriation is not solely a reminder of the fact that only God can produce without appropriating, that is to say, to create something out of nothingness. It is also a reminder of the fact that the universal history is not concluded, as Alexandre Kojève had proposed, but remains open and fluid. It is a reminder that things are not yet set in stone, that men and peoples still have a future and not only a past, and that new forms of order will be born in the course of history. Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth (1950) (New York: Telos Press, 2003), p. 78. Admittedly, Schmitt, like Kojève, thought that the end of history is a real possibility today, but contrary to Kojève, Schmitt did not perceive this end in the satisfaction of the human desire for recognition. He perceived it in the real possibility of humanity to commit a suicide by means of the developed techniques of total annihilation: This death would be the culmination of universal history, a collective reality analogous to the Stoic conception according to which the suicide of an individual represents the culmination of his liberty. Carl Schmitt, L unité du monde II (1956), in Du politique: légalité et légitimité et autres essays (Paris: Pardès, 1990), p Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth, op cit., p. 83.

7 PHILOSOPHIES OF CONCRETE LIFE 31 of norms and, thereby, to the legal order, it nevertheless grounds the norm and the order. 24 In the same way, a people s existential decision, the existential total-decision of the people, 25 while preceding the constitution, is nevertheless the event which creates (herstellen) it. 26 Even the enemy, this other and strange, which calls into question the status quo of international order, introducing thereby a moment of transcendence a moment of openness into the immanence of world order, is a constitutive concept insofar as the existence of the enemy is the concrete precondition of the collective identity of the friends. It is the enemy which brings about the existential affinity of those who just happen to live together. 27 In other words, the enemy is not only a counter-concept of immanence but also a transcendent grounding concept. However, the enemy is not a substantial foundation of meaning and order, because the enemy has no substance but only a form, an empty form: An enemy is whoever calls me into question. 28 Moreover, the enemy calls me into question only at the moment in which the enemy comes into view, in concrete clarity, as the enemy. 29 The enemy is therefore an event, an event which founds meaning and order. Finally, also land-appropriation is such an event. To be sure, compared to Schmitt s writings during the Weimar period, the turn towards the theory of concrete order in the beginning of the 1930 s seems to signify a move in the direction of a more or even completely immanent approach. However, although the theory of concrete order emphasizes the historical continuity of institutions rather than abrupt events of the decision, Schmitt does not abandon the search for the origins. All continuity presupposes an origin and in the case of the theory of concrete order this origin is also an abrupt event, namely the primeval act (Ur-akt) of landappropriation. Therefore, the order closing upon itself in the gapless system of anonymous exchange finds a new opening in violent appropriation, which interrupts this process. Appropriation becomes an event of the concrete, that is to say, simultaneously a rupture in the old abstract order and the constitutive event of the new meaningful one (Raumordnungsakt), of the order bestowed with a name: What is most phenomenal about Nahme [appropriation] and name is that with them abstractions 24. Carl Schmitt, Über die drei Arten des rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens (1934) (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1993), p Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, op cit., p Ibid., pp , Ibid., p Schmitt, Glossarium, op cit., p Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, op cit., p. 67.

8 32 MIKA OJAKANGAS cease, and the situation becomes concrete. 30 Rationality of the Extreme Based on what is said above, it should be clear that we should not confuse that which Schmitt calls the concrete with the empirical reality of classical empiricism in which reality is understood to be a discrete given revealed in sensation. On the one hand, Schmitt s event of the concrete is not something given in ordinary circumstances but something which disrupts the ordinary. Therefore, in Schmitt s view, the event is a concrete event only if it is an exception, an extreme case. A good example of such an exceptional event is the sovereign decision. Although the sovereign stands outside the normally valid legal system, he nevertheless belongs to it. 31 He belongs to it as an exception. The same holds true for all of Schmitt s central political concepts. They are all exceptions, extreme cases. This is so because, according to Schmitt, only the extreme case can expose the core of the matter. 32 In fact, the extreme case is the core of the matter, which is to say that the event of the concrete is an empirical event only to the degree that experience is identified with the limit (extremitas), with the impossible experience of the limit of experience. On the other hand, the event of the concrete is not something given but something to be produced. Inasmuch as reason is not capable of producing but only of reflecting, it is not reason which produces the event. Rather, it is will, the sovereign s pure and irrational will to decide. It is precisely for this reason that Schmitt s philosophy of concrete life has been described as voluntarist and irrationalist. 33 Nonetheless, its voluntarism is only apparent insofar as for him the will is not a subjective faculty, but merely a conceptual substitute for the void at the foundation of the event. It is the event which reveals the subject of the event and not the other way round: The sovereign is whoever decides what constitutes an exception Carl Schmitt, Nomos, Nahme, Name, Appendix 2 in The Nomos of the Earth, op. cit., p Schmitt, Political Theology, op cit., p Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, op cit., p See for instance Richard Wolin, Carl Schmitt: The Conservative Revolutionary Habitus and the Aesthetics of Horror, in Political Theory, Vol. 20, Issue 3 (1992). 34. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1924) (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), p. 43. For this reason I cannot subscribe to Renato Cristi s claim that the continuity of Schmitt s thought before and after 1933 is due to his substantivist way of thinking and metaphysics of substance in which the metaphysical core of his meta-legal thought can be found. See Cristi, Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism, pp While Schmitt might have longed for substance and substantive grounds, but he fully realized that modernity is marked by a fundamental loss of such grounds. In addition, although Schmitt s turn to concrete order thinking entails a turn to a more substativist way of thinking, even in this latter phase the metaphysical core of his meta-legal thought does not lie there. Instead, it lies in the founding event of the concrete without a foundation, without substance.

9 PHILOSOPHIES OF CONCRETE LIFE 33 Moreover, although the event of the concrete negates and exceeds reason, Schmitt s philosophy of concrete life is not without certain rationality. It contains a specific rationality, or at least certain logic, namely that of the very same extreme: Everything must be forced to the extreme. 35 This is not only because the extreme case and the exception, the event of the concrete, is more interesting than the rule, but also because it is the concrete condition of possibility of every rule and order and thereby the ultimate foundation of all rationality, even that of abstract rationalism: A philosophy of concrete life must not withdraw from the exception and the extreme case, but must be interested in it to the highest degree. The exception can be more important to it than the rule, not because of a romantic irony for the paradox, but because the seriousness of an insight goes deeper than the clear generalizations inferred from what ordinarily repeats itself. The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception. 36 Besides, as all rationality, also this rationality the rationality of the extreme is based on the exclusion of certain irrationality. In Schmitt s view, all thought, which does not recognize that order is created out of disorder and that rationality is based on an irrational foundation, is itself irrational. Only thought which does not eschew the exception and the extreme case is genuinely rational. For this reason, Schmitt holds that his philosophy of concrete life aims at an even more subtle form of rationality than that represented by abstract rationalism. In Schmitt s view, it is more subtle because its rationality is human in the deepest sense. 37 The event of the concrete, for instance a definitive, disjunctive decision, 38 is not an irrational miracle but a real fact of human life. In Schmitt s view, genuine rationality, namely the rationality of meaning, consists of the recognition of this fact. All this is not to say that the event is after all included in the rationalist schemes as a negation resulting in a higher rationalist synthesis. According to Schmitt, the event is and remains outside all rationalist schemes. The sovereign decision, the people s constitutive will, the enemy, as well as land-appropriation all these events stay outside and 35. Schmitt, The Crisis, op. cit., p. 59. Schmitt refers here to Marx, but this methodological rule is valid in Schmitt s case as well. Contrary to Marx, however, Schmitt does not force the elements to the extreme for the reason that they could thus be historically overturned by dialectical necessity, but because the extreme exposes the core of the matter. 36. Schmitt, Political Theology, op. cit., p Schmitt, Roman Catholicism, op. cit., p Schmitt, The Crisis, op. cit., p. 56.

10 34 MIKA OJAKANGAS above the immanence of reason. In other words, there exists an insurmountable gap between the irrational foundation of order and the established order. Nevertheless, unlike in the work of Georges Bataille, for instance, negativity is not unbound in Schmitt s thinking, because in the final analysis it is subordinated to positive results, that is to say, to the service of meaning and order. Bataille s sovereignty refuses to submit to any ends: What is sovereign has no other end than itself. 39 Schmitt s sovereignty, instead, produces and guarantees a situation in its totality. 40 Hence, in place of Bataille s free negativity there emerges Schmitt s subordinated negativity although from Schmitt s perspective it would be precisely Bataille s negativity that is not free but tainted by romanticism and as a consequence, thoroughly servile. 41 However, this subordination of negativity at the service of meaning and order does not signify that Schmitt s negativity could be included within order. In fact, the event of the concrete can serve order only to the extent that it is and remains exterior to it. The issue is not about a higher synthesis, but about the insurmountable togetherness of the founding event and the established order, that is to say, the insurmountable togetherness of the decision and the legal order, the constitutive power and the constitution, the friend and the enemy, land-appropriation and social and 39. Georges Bataille, Sovereignty, in The Accursed Share, Vol. 3 (New York: Zone Books, 1993), p Schmitt, Political Theology, op. cit., p From Schmitt s perspective, Bataille s unbound sovereignty would be absolutely bound or servile inasmuch as Betaille defines sovereignty in terms of immediate moments of consumption: The sovereign individual consumes and does not labour. Bataille, Sovereignty, op. cit., p Although Bataille states that such moments are nonproductive, miraculous and remain outside all knowledge, from Schmitt s perspective there would be nothing miraculous in such a moment, because the individual who irrationally and immediately consumes truly enjoys the products of this life is not free from the system of production. On the contrary, he is an indispensable part of it, even though he can subjectively have whatever experiences he likes and even ultimately dissolve into NOTHING, as Bataille maintains (p. 203). In Schmitt s view, only a romantic, this metaphysical narcissist, confuses his moods whether or not they have content with reality and transforms it into a source for his imagination and satisfaction. For Schmitt, it would not have been a surprise that Bataille identifies sovereignty and sovereign consumption with the moments of laughter, tears, death, eroticism, and war even war becomes a mere stimulant of imagination for Bataille in addition to celebrating chance (occassio) and preferring play to seriousness in general. On the other hand, it would have been a surprise for Schmitt if Bataille had not withdrawn from political action into the sphere of the mystical precisely at the moment when the times WWII would have required the firmest of commitments. For in Schmitt s view, romanticism and political activity are mutually exclusive: Where political activity begins, political romanticism ends. Schmitt, Political Romanticism, op. cit., p. 160.

11 PHILOSOPHIES OF CONCRETE LIFE 35 political order. The decision creates the legal order, but it does not cease to operate even after the order has been created: That constitutive power has once been exercised does not abrogate or eliminate it. 42 It is always effectively present, resembling thus the psychoanalytical notion of trauma in the origin of the ego, insofar as trauma goes on marking the ego even after its formation. Besides, even though the event is put into the service of norm and order, there exists no previous or subsequent norm or order that could determine the nature of the event: Righteous measures are born and meaningful relations are formed, but only on the grounds of the unrighteous and meaningless event. 43 There exists no measure, which could determine the nature of the event of the concrete, because the event is the measureless original measure (Ur-Mass) of all measures. 44 The event is the extreme case, which determines all other cases including itself. The Non-concept of the Concrete Although English speaking authors have hardly paid attention to Schmitt s concept of the concrete, some continental thinkers have done so. As already mentioned, one of them is Derrida. Another is Heinrich Meier. According to him, however, Schmitt s original measure, the event of the concrete, is by no means a measureless event. Schmitt s event, exterior to human understanding, indeed has a measure, namely the commandment of God. 45 In other words, Meier sees in Schmitt a thoroughly religious thinker whose entire spiritual existence can be understood only in the light of Revelation: There can be no doubt of the fundamental precedence of the theological for Schmitt. 46 Without going into details of Meier s fine analysis, let us focus on his remarks on Schmitt s relationship with Hegel s philosophy because this relationship reveals the real status of Schmitt s concept of the concrete. Although Schmitt has been considered a Hegelian, 47 I nevertheless agree with Meier that in certain respects Schmitt was an anti-hegelian. I agree 42. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, op cit., p Carl Schmitt, Land and Sea (1942) (Washington: Plutarch Press, 1997), p. 59. Translation altered. 44. Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth, op. cit., p Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p Ibid., p As a matter of fact, Hegelianism was one of the reasons why certain Nazi s accused Schmitt of ideological impurity in the middle of 1930 s.

12 36 MIKA OJAKANGAS with him that Schmitt was an anti-hegelian because in Hegel s philosophy, at least in his construction of the philosophy of history, the other never enters from the outside into the immanence of development. 48 Schmitt indeed rejects Hegel s philosophy of history because the unending process of the Hegelian world spirit absorbs all interruptions into itself as immanent negations. However, I do not agree with Meier about the reason why Schmitt rejects Hegel. Namely, according to Meier, Schmitt rejects Hegel because Hegel s denial of the other entering from the outside entails the denial of God s sovereignty, that is to say, the transcendent command of God. To my mind, however, Schmitt does not abandon Hegel because he believes in divine Revelation but because the Hegelian absorption makes all interruptions counterfeit. In Hegel s philosophy, there is no genuine interruption and thereby no space for an event of the concrete: The essential point is that an exception, signifying the event, never comes from outside into the immanence of development. 49 On the other hand, Schmitt rejects Hegel s philosophy because for the latter that which remains outside the concept outside objective knowledge is identical to nothing. For Hegel, what does not make a difference in terms of objective knowledge makes no difference at all. 50 In Schmitt s view, however, that which is outside objective knowledge is identical to nothing only from the perspective of rationalist schemes. From the perspective of the philosophy of concrete life, that which comes from the outside constitutes the foundation of the collective existence of human beings. Therefore, Schmitt s notion of the concrete is not a concept at all, not at least in the Hegelian sense, but rather a non-concept, a name for that what cannot have a name, a name for the meaningless other, which nevertheless bestows existence with a meaning. Admittedly, especially in the case of the enemy, Schmitt appears to have an inclination to nullify this non-conceptual existence of the other. For instance, in the end of Ex Captivitate Salus he seems to affirm the Hegelian characterization of the concept absolutely: In the reciprocity of recognition of recognition lies the greatness of the concept. 51 Had this been Schmitt s last word, the enemy would be nothing but a reflected image of the real enemy, a mere simulacrum. However, Schmitt 48. Meier, The Lesson, op cit., p Schmitt, The Crisis, op cit., p See especially Hegel s critique of immediacy in G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp Carl Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus (Köln: Greven Verlag, 1950), p. 89.

13 PHILOSOPHIES OF CONCRETE LIFE 37 immediately adds that the objectivity of the enemy is not the objectivity of a concept, but that of power: The enemy is an objective power [objective Macht]. 52 The enemy is a power, not a metaphor or symbol. 53 As a concrete power, the enemy precedes all reflection. It perturbs the world of the reflecting self its otherness and strangeness calls the self into question. 54 The power of the enemy disrupts my identity and no amount of reflection can reduce its difference into an immanence of the same. Certainly, this power can, and in Schmitt s view, must become an object of reflection because the self is the result of such reflection, but this can occur only after the event, namely the appearance of the enemy, has taken place. Even then the intellect is not capable of exhausting it completely, because the event is not prior to reflection merely in a temporal sense but also and above all ontologically. 55 The event precedes and is above reflection in the same way as the people s constituent will precedes and is above constitution. The event of the concrete is the objective but unreflective and irrational foundation of all reflections and rationalizations. Therefore, it is no wonder that Derrida maintains that Schmitt s event 52. Ibid., p Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, op cit., p The enemy is a figure of our self-questioning. Schmitt, Ex Captivitate Salus, op. cit., p For this reason, it is not completely erroneous to claim that Schmitt s enemy occupies structurally the same place as the other in Emmanuel Levinas ethics. In the same way as Schmitt s enemy, this irreducible other and strange, also Levinas other is irreducible other and strange, transcendent. Moreover, in the same way as Schmitt s enemy which calls the self into question, also Levinas other calls the self into question. Finally, in the same way as Schmitt s enemy is constitutive in relation to the self, also Levinas other is constitutive in relation to the self, at least in relation to oneself as a moral self: To discover such an orientation, orientation to the for-the-other, in the I is to identify the I with morality. Emmanuel Levinas, The Trace of the Other, in Mark Taylor, ed., Deconstruction in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp Of course, Schmitt s and Levinas conclusions are absolutely different. According to Levinas, the otherness of the other does not pave the way for enmity, as Schmitt maintains, but for responsibility especially if the relationship between the self and the other is asymmetrical. In Schmitt s view, however, it is precisely the asymmetrical relationship which brings about enmity, namely the worst possible enmity, that is, absolute hostility. Although we cannot reduce the other into the same, we nevertheless can negotiate with him if we are able to create a symmetrical relationship with him, that is to say, to face the other as an other human being, as an equal. However, if the symmetrical relationship is transformed into asymmetry, the other is not necessarily regarded as the one which awakens my responsibility only but my hatred as well. He can become my god as happens in Levinas ethics, but he can also become less than a man, a sub-human as Schmitt fears. He is no longer my enemy in the sense of the enemy soldier. He becomes a felon, an absolute enemy that must be utterly destroyed. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, op. cit., p. 36.

14 38 MIKA OJAKANGAS of the concrete is out of reach and inaccessible, at least from the perspective of the concept (Begriff). Contrary to Derrida s claims, however, the event is not infinitely deferred and this is the difference between Derrida and Schmitt. 56 Schmitt s event takes place, here and now, but not in the modality of the concept. It takes place in the modality of event, although this event is inaccessible to rationalist schemes and ultimately, to the conceptual thinking as such. Despite this, however, it is there, it has been there or at least we have to suppose that it has been there. Why do we have to suppose that? We have to suppose it because if it is not there, then nothing would be here, nothing would happen. Rationalist schemes would already have taken over the whole human existence, signifying that there would no longer be human existence. Nothing new would take place. Humanity would already have been paralyzed, that is to say, deprived of freedom and change: Freedom is freedom of movement, nothing else. What would be terrifying is a world in which there no longer existed an exterior (Ausland) but only a homeland (Inland), no longer space (Spielraum) for measuring and testing one s strength freely. 57 In order to exist, the event presupposes such an exterior. As a matter of fact, the event is such an exterior, it comes from the outside. However, this outside is not Meier s absolute outside, not even outside as the opposite of inside it is an outside within inside, transcendence within immanence. It is, in other words, the same outside as Derrida himself time and again constructs in his own philosophy, although in Schmitt s case this outside is not infinitely deferred. The outside occurs here and now, or 56. For as we know, Derrida s all central philosophical concepts like différance, supplement, and writing are also non-concepts that bring about a rupture into the systems, especially those of metaphysics. However, they also bring about a rupture into the very same systems as Schmitt s concrete, especially if we take into account Derrida s openly political concepts including justice, democracy to come, the other, and gift. They bring about a rupture into the self-enclosed system of legal order ( justice ), into the institutional political order of liberal democracy ( democracy to come ), into the immanence of humanity (the other ) as well as into the self-sufficient system of exchange ( gift ). In other words, point by point they correspond to Schmitt s concepts although in the place of justice there is the sovereign decision, in the place of democracy to come there is people s will, in the place of the other, well, there is the other, namely the enemy, and in the place of gift there is appropriating violence. In addition, in the same way as Schmitt s concepts, also Derrida s concepts stand for the foundation or rather, for the condition of possibility, which is simultaneously the condition of impossibility to the extent that this foundation cannot present itself of legal order, democracy, humanity, and exchange, even though this foundation is always already out of reach, or more precisely, this always already unreachable and infinitely deferred is their very foundation. 57. Schmitt, Glossarium, op cit., p. 37.

15 PHILOSOPHIES OF CONCRETE LIFE 39 rather, this occurrence here and now is the very outside. Event and Myth Of course, it could be argued that contrary to Schmitt, Derrida leaves open and as unresolved the tension between inside and outside, whereas Schmitt repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of resolutions. Nevertheless, also in Schmitt s work this tension is ultimately left open for without this tension there would be no resolutions, that is to say, no decisions, enemies, or appropriations no events of the concrete. It is the very openness of order that makes it possible for the event to arrive. In Derrida s case, it is the very possibility of arrival of justice, democracy, the other, gift, and so on 58 that keeps the order open, because if already arrived, that is to say, if the event has already taken place, the gate for an event is closed. Therefore, the condition of possibility of an event is simultaneously its condition of impossibility. For instance, it is impossible for democracy to come, because if it has already come, if it has already become present, there would be no space for democracy-to-come. In Schmitt s case, however, it is precisely the event that keeps the order open. The event is not, in other words, something impossible but an ever present possibility, 59 becoming actual in extreme cases. For these reasons, it is no wonder that Schmitt s thought is considered radical. This also explains why even left radicalism has not been spared his influence: the possibility of revolution is not something infinitely deferred but something that takes place, here and now. As a person, however, Schmitt was not radical, far from it. He was a conservative through and through, a man of fidelity, obedience, discipline, and honour. 60 How then is it possible that all his political concepts are revolutionary rather than conservative? Why is he repeatedly emphasizing ruptures rather than structures? The reason is simple. Only by emphasizing the irrational origins of meaning and order, it becomes possible to legitimate irrational means of maintaining order. If the origins of meaning and order are irreducibly irrational, it is in vain to attempt to tame this irrationality by means of rationalist schemes. The power of real life always breaks through such schemes or through the shell of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition, as Schmitt puts it. 61 How then is it 58. See footnote 56 above. 59. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, op. cit., p Schmitt, Über die drei Arten, op. cit., p Schmitt, Political Theology, op. cit., p. 13.

16 40 MIKA OJAKANGAS possible to tame the irrationality of the event, the violent power of real life? Surely, it can be tamed by naked force which means that the order is maintained by the police and the military. However, Schmitt did not believe in the power of naked techniques of holding power: No political system can survive even a generation with only naked techniques of holding power. 62 Instead, what is needed is a spiritual power that is not tainted by the spirit of rationality. According to Schmitt, this power can be discovered in myth. Myth does not attempt to rationalize the irrational but merely to foster its ghost and to expose this ghost in a meaningful form in the same vein as the Roman Church exposes the ghost of Christ s irrationality in a meaningful form. 63 Indeed, it was precisely for his capacity for myth that Schmitt praised Mussolini who declared in his speech of October 1922 in Naples before the March to Rome: We have created a myth. This myth is a belief, a noble enthusiasm. Our myth is the nation, the great nation which we want to make into a concrete reality for ourselves. 64 However, Schmitt s solution to the problem of the irrationality of the event is by no means extraordinary. As a matter of fact, in their excellent analysis of Nazism, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy came to the conclusion that the desire for an event and the search for myth go always hand in hand. 65 We should ask, however, if every philosophy of the event is necessarily mythical? Or do philosophers of the event decline into mythical thinking because they usually these count only extraordinary events as genuine events? To my mind, this is precisely the case. For these philosophers, the truth of being, the core of the matter, can be found only in the extreme case in the extraordinary event through which the rest of the world becomes conceivable. For them, this case becomes the measure of being, although this measure itself remains beyond every measure. For them, the extreme case becomes the criterion of judgment, that is to say, the criterion according to which they can judge the world as it normally is. What then is the judgment they pass on the world as it normally is, on everyday life? The judgment is that everyday life is banal through and through and this banality is evil. This seems to be a logical conclusion of every philosophy of the event which identifies 62. Schmitt, Roman Catholicism, op cit., p It is from this perspective that we must approach Schmitt s opinion according to which we should make Christ s influence harmless in the social and political sphere. Schmitt, Glossarium, op cit., p Quoted in Schmitt, The Crisis, op. cit., p See Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, Le myth nazi (Paris: Editions de l Aube, 2003), p. 15.

17 PHILOSOPHIES OF CONCRETE LIFE 41 the event with an exception. This is Schmitt s conclusion but it seems to be Heidegger s conclusion as well. According to him, every true event is exceptional, so exceptional that when it happens and prepares itself man at first and for a long time thereafter fails to see it and fails to recognize it: This is because his vision is confused by habituation to the multiplicity of the ordinary. 66 This confused vision habituated to the multiplicity of the ordinary is the vision of the everydayness, and everydayness is, according to Heidegger, groundlessness and nullity. 67 Heidegger admits that people may think they are living concretely within the framework of everydayness, but this is a serious error. In everydayness there is nothing concrete. In the final analysis, those who live within the framework of everydayness live in an illusion. 68 Therefore, only the one capable of exception reaches the concreteness of the world because it is only in an exceptional situation that the world comes to be. 69 Moreover, as for Schmitt, also for Heidegger this exception is the event (Ereignis) of a decision: The manner in which the whole of beings is revealed, in which man is allowed to stand in the midst of this revelation, is grounded and transformed in such a decision. 70 And finally, although such a decision emanates from nothingness, as Schmitt would put it, it is not without meaning. On the contrary, it is a decision for meaning, that is to say, for a spirituality that is not tainted by the spirit of rationality. It is the spirituality of myth: The spiritual world of a Volk is not its cultural superstructure, just as little as it is its arsenal of useful knowledge and values; rather, it is the power that comes from preserving at the most profound level the forces that are rooted in the soil and blood of a Volk, the power to arouse most inwardly and to shake most extensively the Volk s existence. A spiritual world alone will guarantee our Volk greatness. For it will make the constant decision between the will to greatness and the toleration of decline the law that establishes the pace for the march upon which our Volk has embarked on the way to its future history Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), p Ibid., p Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p Heidegger, Basic Concepts, op. cit., p Martin Heidegger, The Self-Assertion of the German University, in Richard Wolin (ed.), The Heidegger Controversy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), p. 34.

18 42 MIKA OJAKANGAS In other words, for both of these thinkers, the exceptional event the event of the exceptional constitutes what is concrete. However, to the extent that this event is, at least from the perspective of rationalistic schemes, out of reach, the only way to render it comprehensible is to fall back to mythical language, to the language of myth. This holds true in the case of Schmitt, but it holds true in the case Heidegger as well. To be sure, Heidegger moved from the mythical to the mystical and finally to the poetical in the 1940 s and 1950 s. However, even then he saw the Western rationalism as a curse that we must get rid off and even then it was the event, the mysterious happening, that gave him the means for his efforts, as it did from the very beginning. What makes this solution problematic is not, however, that he opposes Western rationalism but rather that he identifies the event with the exception. In fact, it can be argued that it is precisely this solution which explains, at least partially, Schmitt s and Heidegger s enthusiasm with Nazism with its fascination of the event and myth and that even Bataille can be seen as working for it, as Walter Benjamin once noted, anticipating thus Jean-Luc Nancy s opinion according to which Bataille s ecstasy remained linked to the fascist orgy. 72 For also Bataille identified what is supremely important to us 73 with the extreme, with the ecstatic and sovereign moments of rupture that are totally alien to ordinary everyday experience. Although from the perspective of reason and knowledge these moments are out of reach and inaccessible, they nevertheless constitute the concrete reality of man, his true nature: It is by dying, without possible evasion, that I will perceive the rupture which constitutes my nature and in which I have transcended what exists. 74 Conclusion: Being as Meaning According to Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, the desire for an event and the search for myth go always hand in hand. This may be true but only to the extent that the event is identified with the exceptional. Instead, if we think that there is no longer difference between the normal and the exceptional, between the everydayness and authenticity, it is perhaps possible to develop a non-mythical concept of the event and thereby, a non-mythical concept of the concrete. As a matter of fact, it is precisely Nancy who has 72. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p Bataille, Sovereignty, op cit., p Georges Bataille, Inner Experience (New York: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 71.