/lit/ - Literature

I have a question about Heidegger. Strauss said of Heidegger's thought that it left no room for political philosophy. I take this to mean, roughly, that it left no place for criticism, questioning, or reflection of the political and social actions of the historically placed Dasein; maybe Heidegger's participation in and support for national socialism as it manifested in Germany can be understood as a natural consequence of this. This so far is all well and good, but does it not overreach when this is supposed then to be some sort of fatal flaw in light of the actions of the German state at that time? Criticism of, for example (and to be inflammatory), the Holocaust and the tyranny of Hitler's Germany universally entail a moral condemnation, but isn't that moral condemnation from the likes of people like Strauss and others with an understanding of his theologico-political contradiction of modernity (who I believe to be an increasingly large group today) itself coming from a place of ignorance of that contradiction, by appealing to some sort of universal moral code?

This might be made fairly clear to Strauss and those that subscribe to him by the gall of Athenians in the siege of Melos during the Peloponnesian War, and the complete lack of interest in expressing moral condemnation towards it. Maybe the compulsion to show this sort of outrage at an event like the Holocaust, etc, points to some sort of as-of-yet unknowable aspect of human nature or general truth, but isn't it just more likely that it is a merely a holdout of centuries of the imposition of Christian values over European thought?

>>21516865
Thanks.

>>21516882
>>21516843
I suppose this is what I'm asking. Here's a quote by Schmitt in one of those Junger threads, from his Political Romanticism:
>"To a great extent, all ecclesiastical and state institutions and forms, all legal concepts and arguments, everything that is official, and even democracy itself since the time it assumed a constitutional form are perceived as empty and deceptive disguises, as a veil, a façade, a fake, or a decoration. The words, both refined and crude, in which this is encompassed are more numerous and forceful than most of the corresponding idioms of other times; for example, the references to "simulacra" that the political literature of the seventeenth century employs as its characteristic shibboleth. Today the "backstage" that conceals the real movement of reality is constructed everywhere. This betrays the insecurity of the time and its profound sense of being deceived. An era that produces no great form and no representation based on its own presuppositions must succumb to such states of mind and regard everything that is formal and official as a fraud. This is because no era lives without form, regardless of the extent to which it comports itself in an economic fashion. If it does not succeed in finding its own form, then it grasps for thousands of surrogates in the genuine forms of other times and other peoples, only to immediately repudiate the surrogate as a sham."

Is Junger's anarch only the result of this mindset? To go further, if we apprehend Schmitt's body of work as an attempt to elucidate a path by which we can find our own form, what does that mean for the anarch? He seems open to a legitimate and deserving authority (whatever that means), but Schmitt is quite explicit, i.e. in his work on Hobbes, about the necessity of the destruction of the distinction between public and private thought, or put properly, about that distinction being the root of the problem to begin with.

In the University of Chicago Press publication of Concept of the Political, notes on the work by Leo Strauss are included. To Strauss, Schmitt fails to mount a convincing critique of liberalism because he stays within its "horizon." While this does seem to be a valid point to some extent, Strauss is famous for his working solution: a return to revelation as valid (primary) epistemological foundation. Maybe this does transcend the liberal framework but it seems about as realistic as the prospect of the invention of a time machine to take us back to the time Strauss seems to pine for.

Plainly, what Strauss advocates for is impossible without reverting to the shadowy mysticism or deceptive social engineering his detractors accuse him of; religious belief or faith (which, make no mistake, is what it amounts to) in the validity or correctness of revelation is not something that can be faked or half-assed, nor has it ever been. That's his own theological-political quandary, or whatever he calls it. No amount of studying of the ancients will resolve this because no ancients placed as high a value on the "scientific" validity or consistency that we do.

But what does Strauss mean by Schmitt failing to get past the "liberal horizon"? To me that seems besides the point entirely of Schmitt's analysis; he merely points out inconsistencies or contradictions inherent in the dominant tradition of the era, to me the same way Marx points out contradictions of capitalism (though without the weight Marx places on them).

>>20357303
>>20356962
China's fascination with Schmitt comes from his works' powerful critique of liberalism, which stems from two primary threads. China's favorite part relates to the ways in which the liberal state undermines its political identity by refusing to make a distinction between friend and enemy, instead positing that all internal conflict can be de-politicized, or solved via either organization or acceptable compromise (this represents liberalism's political theology).
While this is ostensibly a secular doctrine founded in reason, the notion that man can be placed in a state that will avoid politicization (formation into groups that exclude others and defend their way of life, violently if necessary) is at its core an essentially religious/axiomatic belief (hence Schmitt's use of the word "theology"). So political groups that form internally, on their own faith or axiomatic beliefs that run counter to liberalism, have no less right to exist, and will fight to defend themselves from the liberal's universalist proselytizing.
This opens into the second part of Schmitt's critique of liberalism, namely that it is a universalist political theology, but before that it is worth noting briefly that Schmitt probably believed the liberal theology to be too hollow and too milquetoast to ever be able to fully stamp out political group formation (which might be taken to be part of human nature to Schmitt), and without an appeal to a higher value beyond oneself would likely be doomed to deal with constant insurgency of this sort even if it achieved a global hegemony.
Anyway, as a universalist political theology, and less appealing to China (that follows its own version of a universalist political theology), ascendant liberalism (perhaps even its existence) negates the possibility of Schmitt's idea of a legitimate international order. Schmitt's legitimate order recognizes an international right to declare war (in order to protect the political group). This leads to the idea that no war is unjust, and so outside nations can approach these wars from a realpolitik framework (e.g., to maintain the balance of power and hence relative stability). To Schmitt this means that international conflicts will be short and relatively humane (e.g., separate civilian targets from military targets). Looking at the subsequent breakout and conduct of the WW2 might bring this into doubt, but it is probably arguable for Schmitt.
A universalist political theology, especially liberalism, will necessarily bring its theology into war; one side will be just and one will be unjust. This not only makes realpolitik impossible but enables total war as conflict becomes ideological rather than political.

>>18985796
The relevance of the Third Reich is primarily in aesthetics. Furthermore, the summary of Schmitt's theory of the friend-enemy distinction, in summary, appears to be a more Spirit-oriented approach (logos) to Hobbes' Father-oriented approach of the Leviathan.

>>12696002
the Greeks and the great Silver Age emperors had to do it tho, anon. when the Persians showed up they had to form a phalanx and protect a thing that was worth protecting. it's one thing to aesthetically glorify war, but it's another to pretend that it's not a part of human society.

read Clauswitz (and Girard's book on Clauswitz too). the business of statecraft isn't all about war, however much it was an aspect of policy and something the sovereign had to do. this is where people get too carried away associating the Germans with Hitler or Bismarck (or the Simpsons joke, 'we Germans are not a warlike people'). the idea was a healthy and secure state capable of offering a good life to its citizens. when you read too much of the French (or just watch too much Star Wars) you can come away with this idea that Empire Bad and that the only point of politics at all is revolution, which it isn't. the object of statecraft is to defend and preserve the lives of your citizens, so that they can lead the kinds of lives they want to lead. nobody had a problem with LKY for this reason, and the Austrian school theorists have a similar view. we can talk about Rand later, if you like.

but wars happen and they do suck. what Girard found was that the problem was not war itself but the question of escalation, mimetics and response. in the Cold War this nearly resulted in the destruction of the earth completely. and one of the great questions about 20C National Socialism was the nature of a *war economy* - after all, if you want jobs, mobilizing the state is a good way to do it. contemporary Wokeness isn't overtly militaristic, but on the ideological level it completely mobilizes the affects and the passions for similar ends, it's just that there is a kind of war of psychic conquest in place of a direct territorial one.

the reason to talk about war and understand its meaning is so that we don't fall in love with it, i think, so that we don't see it as being a kind of transcendental cure or hotfix for what ails. war isn't divorced from philosophy, and really shouldn't be - this is perhaps one of the worst things human beings can do, to say, well, *finally,* we can get rid of all of that useless intellectual stuff...war is too attractive, it satisfies too many psychological needs. my feeling is that everyone should read Klaus Theweleit or Schmitt, read the guys who were closely involved in Germany and German politics during those times so that the appearance of fascism doesn't strike us as being so utterly holy or unthinkable that we become unable to understand what it meant. for the same reason it is necessary to understand how Napoleon came to be also...

>proves that national socialism is more democratic than liberalism

pssh... nothin personnel... kid

>>10002999
The entire conservative revolutionary movement disagrees with you.

Read Schmitt. Concept of the Political and Political Theology a great at critiquing liberal democracy and left wing politics.

*demonstrates that national socialism is more democratic than liberalism*

psssh... nothin personnel... kid...

>>9879604
>The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship. The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the broader sense. As German and other languages do not distinguish between the private and political enemy, many misconceptions and falsifications are possible. The often quoted “Love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27) reads diligite inimicos vestros and not diligite hostes vestros. No mention is made of the political enemy. Never in the thousand-year struggle between Christians and Moslems did it occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks. The enemy in the political sense need not be hated personally, and in the private sphere only does it make sense to love one's enemy, i.e., one's adversary. The Bible quotation touches the political antithesis even less than it intends to dissolve, for example, the antithesis of good and evil or beautiful and ugly. It certainly does not mean that one should love and support the enemies of one's own people.

Where to start with Carl Schmitt?

>The romantic withdraws from reality. He does this ironically, however, and in a spirit of intrigue. Irony and intrigue do not constitute the state of mind of a person in flight, but rather the activity of a person who, instead of creating new realities, plays one reality off against another in order to paralyze the reality that is actually present and limited.
>He ironically avoids the constraints of objectivity and guards himself against becoming committed to anything. The reservation of all infinite possibilities lies in irony. In this way, he preserves his own inner, genial freedom, which consists in not giving up any possibility. By this means, however, he also defends himself against the objection that would necessarily destroy his pretensions: that all the promises and the grandiose projects he has opposed to the limited achievements of others are unmasked as a fraud by his own real production.
>For him, the concrete accomplishments that are actually at hand amount to nothing more than byproducts. He protests against having himself or any of his proclamations understood within the limits of current reality. This is not what he is. This is not his ego. At the same time, he is still infinitely many other things and infinitely more than he could ever be in any concrete moment or specific expression.
>He regards being taken seriously as a violation because he does not want the actual present confused with his infinite freedom.

I see a lot of parallels here to existentialism and the post-modern brand of radical individualism. I think this description fits a lot of the well-off urban young intellectuals that see such an appeal in existentialism.

What is there to be learned from Schmitt's observations today?