/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22418554]

I'm afraid I might've been filtered. What was the cental thesis of this book, aside from the obvious (LIBRULS SUCK)?

[Anonymous No.22418562]

>>22418554
Carl Schmitt's book "The Concept of the Political" is known for its exploration of the nature of political concepts, particularly the concept of "the political" itself. Schmitt's central thesis revolves around the idea that politics is based on the distinction between friend and enemy. He argues that the essence of the political lies in the ability to identify and confront an existential adversary, that is, an "enemy." He discusses the concept of sovereignty, the role of the state, and how political decisions are often made in opposition to others.

While Schmitt's work has been influential in political theory, it's important to note that his ideas have also been criticized for their potential to justify authoritarianism and exclusionary practices. The book's focus is more on the foundational aspects of political theory and the dynamics of power, rather than being specifically directed against any particular political ideology.

[Anonymous No.22418574]

>>22418562
fuck off robot I'm here to talk to flesh and bone creatures like myself

[Anonymous No.22419161]

>>22418554
Schmitt isn't some libruls suck /pol/faggot he takes liberalism (the political ideology not whatever woke dems believe) very seriously. Schmitt believes liberalism is de-politicizing. What does he mean by that? For him 'the political' is founded on the distinction between 'friend' and 'enemy' or 'insider' and 'outsider.' This distinction gives the political community meaning, a sense of purpose, and constitutes its identity. Liberals attempt to abolish this distinction with an appeal to a universal humanism (everybody is the same, we're all human beings, we can use reason to come to a common objective understanding and solve problems) while failing to comprehend the reality of social conflict and that appeals to objectivity and reason won't overcome it (we can't just talk it out and agree on the objective thing to do). In doing so, liberalism cripples the ability to make sensible political decisions and opens the door to extreme violence.

Take the rebels in Star Wars, they fight the evil empire, that is their identity and what gives them purpose. They can't just let anyone join because their engaged in a struggle for survival. They need people who are loyal to their cause and they can't solve every problem through diplomacy or by having a committee hearing on what to do everytime there's a crisis. If they functioned like a liberal democracy with stringent procedures to govern every damn issue, they simply wouldn't be able to get anything done and their enemies would crush them. For Schmitt, the enemy isn't someone to be hated outright but respected and valued even if you oppose them. Star Wars can also illustrate another Schmittian concept, the state of exception and the dictator. Schmitt argues that, in order to defend the democratic republic in a period of crisis, you need a sovereign dictator who can suspend the ordinary rules to take decisive action to resolve the crisis. The emperor Palpatine is almost Schmittian, he suspends the rules of the republic to defend and secure society.

Schmitt recognizes another serious problem with liberalism. Because liberals claim to fight for the good of humanity, but have a very specific notion of what it means to be human, the logical consequence is that anyone who opposes them is anti-human and an existential threat to humanity. Therefore, to defend the human race, pretty much anything can be done to them. You can nuke them, torture them, rape them etc. e.g. the War on Terror, where the US portayed Al-Qaeda as against humanity and liberal values, therefore the Geneva convention, human rights, and laws of war don't apply to them. It's perfectly fine to kill innocent people in drone strikes, rape and torture suspected terrorists and detain them indefintely, bomb villages to the stone age. Human rights are just cover for naked imperialism and savagery. In denying the relaity of conflict, liberalism creates the very problems it claims to solve.

[Anonymous No.22419173]

>>22418562
>While Schmitt's work has been influential in political theory, it's important to note that his ideas have also been criticized for their potential to justify authoritarianism and exclusionary practices.
Lel this is how you know it's chatgpt. Chatgpt always ends anything at all controversial with the same boilerplate "while X, it's important to recognize Y"

[Anonymous No.22419207]

The sad irony is that woke CNN liberals behave in a more Schmittian way than their alt right Trumper enemy. They'll happily suspend democratic norms to keep the Trumptards out and defend the community for liquidation and social collapse. While nat socs and far right believe some ideological doctrine will be the savior to fix society like a bunch of masturbating monkeys, the "libtards" they denounce know that ideology is less important than cold hard Machiavellian management of society and stamping out enemies. America is the kind of derranged society where the "left" behave like right wingers and the far right seem more and more like the far left but with an infinitely dumber meme based ideology instead of Stalinist economism and post-Hegelian dogma.

[Anonymous No.22419249]

>>22419161
Nice effortpost I've read a little of Schmidt, got about halfway through Crises of Parliamentary Democracy.
Right now I'm reading Fukuyama's End of History, which in certain, often unintentional ways compliments a reading of Schmidt.
Fukuyama is not, imo, a rigorous thinker but through reading him I can see more clearly some of the contradictions Schmidt describes. Namely Fukuyama rationalizes every non-liberal society as "historical", which is to say existing in a backward past whereas liberal democracies are described as post historical, which is to say rational, futuristic, peaceful, and beyond the judgment of the historical world. It's easy to see how this formulation makes violence directed to the non liberal world justified.
Which at the same time points to the contradiction contained within this universal humanism, that it receives its meaning by reference to this supposedly "historical" world

[Anonymous No.22419530]

>>22419207
It's funny how /pol/ types love incoherent lunatics and schizos but never bother reading actual Nazi intellectuals like Schmitt or rip off people like Nietzsche to justify what is basically old school American liberalism mixed with white idpol, antisemitism, hatred of immigrants, and pro-GWOT propaganda. /pol/tards are the kind of derranged threat to society that genuine conservatives like Schmitt thought liberalism would fail to protect us from.

[Anonymous No.22419670]

>>22419161
>Because liberals claim to fight for the good of humanity, but have a very specific notion of what it means to be human, the logical consequence is that anyone who opposes them is anti-human and an existential threat to humanity
Is this not an insertion of liberalism into the politicizing struggle? I think of the Enlightenment liberals and they also picked their enemies.
Also, does Schmitt say anything about atheists as the religious equivalent of liberals?

[Anonymous No.22419697]

>>22419670
>Also, does Schmitt say anything about atheists as the religious equivalent of liberals?

Yes, he wrote a whole book about it called Political Theology.

[Anonymous No.22420737]

>>22419161
>Take the rebels in Star Wars

[Anonymous No.22420768]

>>22419530
>pro-GWOT propaganda
Why would /pol/ advocate for pro-Zionist interventionism? That doesn't sound like the /pol/ I know.

[Anonymous No.22420813]

>>22419161
How are you supposed to take liberalism seriously if Schmitt's entire analysis of liberalism seems to be about liberals being dishonest and acting in bad faith, masking their cynical intentions behind humanitarian and globalist language and mannerisms? At that point you might as well become a full-blown marxist and just say that liberalism is just a rationalization of the interests of the elites.

[Anonymous No.22421083]

>>22419670
That's a fair point. Liberals can and do construct an enemy and will suspend democratic norms or use extreme violence to deal with them. I think Schmitt would point out that they fail to manage the relationship with the enemy effectively because they can't understand how people can have legitimate opposing viewpoints, that the enemy has his own interests that just so happen to run up against ours. Instead, jihadists in the Middle East or Evangelicals who refuse to cut gay wedding cakes are simply bad people motivated by bad beliefs and not acting out of legitimate self-interest. They are inhuman or homophobic, and so they take steps to violently eradicate them or exclude them from the public sphere. In each case, they end up creating more conflict or destabilizing society. Because they want to create a utopia without political conflict, without a friend/enemy distinctions, this entails eliminating social differences which makes liberalism extremely intolerant. If they succeed in flattening out society and making us all the same, they'll create a world of frustrated alienation and aimlessness where people have no purpose.

>>22419697
Schmitt was a staunch Catholic and didn't like atheists too much but he isn't a religious thinker or a theologian in a professional sense. By political theology he meant the religious and legal concepts that underpin sovereignty and give rise to the state. Schmitt believed modern concepts of the state are taken from religion and secularized. e.g. Hobbes Leviathan, the sovereign state as an all powerful God like entity citizens owe unquestioning loyalty.

>>22420813
Schmitt doesn't argue that liberals simply act in bad faith and apply their philosophy hypocritically. He's a Machiavellian realist so he has no real issue with that, backstabbing and dishonesty is part of politics and he participated in it himself. He opposed the Nazis, then joined them, then refused to apologize post-war. Schmitt's basically saying that liberals can't play the game of politics well. Liberalism as a doctrine is unsuitable and damaging to democracy and social stability.

[Anonymous No.22421110]

>claims that an ideal state should only concern itself with political issues (distinguishing friends and enemies, survival essentially) and stay out of the social aspects of life - art, commerce, ethics etc
>joins the nazi party which encroached upon all these institutions
Seems a bit hypocritical innit?

[Anonymous No.22421135]

>>22421110
You could say that he suspended his normal preferences in a time of crisis

[Anonymous No.22421412]

>>22421110
>claims that an ideal state should only concern itself with political issues (distinguishing friends and enemies, survival essentially) and stay out of the social aspects of life - art, commerce, ethics

I mean this sounds like asking someone to stay dry while swimming. These things are all part of the same spiderweb, you can't manipulate only one part of the web without pulling on all other parts of the web, and likewise if you wish to alter this web in a substantial manner, it must be a change that encompasses the entirety of the web. There is no such thing as unpolitical aesthetics, or unaesthetic politics. Politics and art are both about the act of distinction...liberals involve themselves in the arts, commerce and ethics all the time, it's just that we are forced to go along with their interpretation of this act which says that their brand of involvement is what not being involved means. And arguably this isn't really a liberal problem or a "bad" thing, because this kind of domination of the language and the way discourse is framed around political matters is a fundamental and inalienable element of politics, it can be changed no more than our need to breathe can. It's just how the game works.

[Anonymous No.22421433]

>>22421083
>a utopia without political conflict, without a friend/enemy distinctions

Would this truly be a desirable thing? What good would the police do in a world without crime? On what basis would liberal governments legitimate themselves if there were no anti-liberal elements to define themselves against and claim to protect society from? Politics can't ever be a game of one, it always takes at least two.

[Anonymous No.22421620]

>>22420768
He thinks neocon boomers are far right

[Anonymous No.22422948]

>>22421110
>claims that an ideal state should only concern itself with political issues
Schmitt didn't believe that at all. He never made the case that the state should be neutral outside of issues of hard policy. In fact, he identifies this as a weakness of secular liberalism. The sovereign state relies on theological concepts and it must intervene to prevent social conflict, it cannot remain ethically neutral and concern itself only with policy or economics. Schmitt's supporters generally agree he joined the Nazis out of cynical opportunism. ie "I did what I had to do to survive." His critics ask if he'd have done the same had the KPD took over Germany.

>>22421433
Schmitt claims it would be undesirable. Since an enemy is what gives a community it's sense of identity, without it life would be meaningless and there'd be no sense of social purpose or motivation. 90s America post-Cold War is a case in point. Putting aside Saddam, Ramzi Yousef or Milosevic, there was no great enemy for America to fight. The cultural zeitgeist was one of boredom, misery, and disatisfaction with consumerism (Fight Club, The Matrix, Columbine, Kurt Cobain blowing his head off with a shotgun).

>On what basis would liberal governments legitimate themselves if there were no anti-liberal elements to define themselves against and claim to protect society from? Politics can't ever be a game of one, it always takes at least two.
No idea. That's really a question for liberals to answer. After the Cold War, there was this idea that liberalism had triumphed (end of history) and the role of the US is to be a world police force intervening to prevent crime, defend democracy, and stop atrocities. The US military will go around like the good guys in Star Trek fighting criminals and keeping the peace. It was taken for granted that liberalism had won at home and (mostly) abroad, soon the last hold out "rouge states" would inevitably fall to the liberal tide. I think that's still the end goal for liberals but 9/11 and the War on Terror shook their faith. Now they assume that total liberal dominance isn't possible. That there'll always be dangerous elements, inside and without, trying to destabilize liberal values and democracy, so we have to be endlessly vigilant and "mow the lawn" once in a while. Post-Afghanistan War on Terror is basically that, an endless state of emergency and proxy war to secure the liberal state from foreign enemies combined with purging far right and far left dissidents within the homeland.

[Anonymous No.22423460]

>>22422948
>combined with purging far right and far left dissidents within the homeland
The US government is exclusively focused on purging the far right, it hasn't done a single thing against the far left since the 60s. Terrorists like the weather underground or looters like the 2020 rioters are exclusively painted as heroes for social justice. Even most liberals dabble in some sort of communism in college before "growing out of it" and becoming "good, responsible" liberal. And really, what difference is there between the liberal and the communist besides how fast they want to transform society? There's no clash of basic values and opinions between them in the same way they would both clash with the far-right.

If america has an image of what it actually fears the most, it would probably be something like McVeigh or Kaczynski, not rich, bored jews playing around with bombs and larping as revolutionaries or ghetto hoodlums looting and setting entire neighborhoods on fire.