Abstract
Carl Schmitt’s book The Concept of the Political (1932) argues that politics has its own distinct logic, separate from morality, economics, or aesthetics. His central claim is that the political is defined by the friend–enemy distinction: a political community comes to understand itself by identifying those who belong to it and those who represent an existential threat.
Schmitt treats conflict as unavoidable in political life. The enemy, in his sense, is not a personal rival but a public opponent whose existence can threaten the unity of a group. The article places these ideas in the crisis of Weimar Germany, when democratic institutions were unstable and authoritarian solutions gained ground.
Context
Historical context
The Great Depression of October 1929 severely affected Germany's tenuous recovery after World War I. High unemployment and subsequent social and political unrest led to the collapse of Chancellor Hermann Müller's grand coalition and the beginning of the presidential cabinets. From March 1930 onwards, President Paul von Hindenburg used emergency powers to elect different chancellors: Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher and in January 1933 Adolf Hitler, (though the Nazi Party held only two out of ten cabinet seats). Von Papen, as vice-chancellor and Hindenburg's confidant, was to serve as the éminence grise who would keep Hitler under control. These intentions severely underestimated Hitler's political ambitions.
The 1930s politics in Germany quickly turned into the the dismantling of democracy. In February 1933, just after Adolf Hitler had come to power, the Parliament (Reichstag) was severely damaged by fire. That particular event wasn’t supposedly planned by the Nazis, but they took advantage of it.
Following the Reichstag fire the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State (February 1933) was passed. By it the communists were excluded from Parliament. Hitler had also been empowered by the Reichstag fire decree, which gave him emergency powers and meant he could enact and pass laws himself. He no longer had to worry about President Paul von Hindenburg using Article 48 of the constitution to suppress all laws of the land under a state of emergency.
Hitler's regime then put the Enabling Act before Parliament. This legislation, passed in March 1933, was basically asking the parliament to vote itself out of existence. Hitler was able to get the Act passed because he had a majority with the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People's Party) and then managed to win over the Catholic Centre Party – Zentrum.
On 14 July 1933, Hitler passed a law that meant that only the Nazi Party could exist in German society. So from that point on, he had a dictatorship on paper except for President von Hindenburg, the only person left standing in his way. When Hindenberg died of cancer in 1934 Hitler combined the roles of chancellor and president into something that he called the “führer”, thus investing in himself the full power of the nation.
The evolution of Carl Smitt's thinking in his writings
From 1912 to 1922, Carl Smitt (1888-1985) was mainly a jurist concerned with the problem of legal order and sovereignty. In Political Theology (1922), he states his most famous idea: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception." That marks a shift from seeing law as a self-contained system to seeing it as dependent on a decisive political act. His thought here is strongly anti-liberal in the sense that he thinks normal legal rules cannot ultimately explain who really holds power.
By 1923, in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, he turns more openly against liberal parliamentarianism. He argues that liberal institutions rely on discussion and compromise, but real politics rests on public division, collective identity, and decision. In this phase, his thinking becomes more explicitly political. Democracy, for Schmitt, is not mainly procedure but the expression of a people’s unity.
In 1932 with The Concept of the Political, he gives his most durable definition of politics as the distinction between friend and enemy. This is a major development: politics is not economics, morality, or aesthetics, but the domain where groups define themselves against other groups. The book deepens his earlier decisionism and makes conflict central to his theory.
In the 1930s, Schmitt’s work becomes more tied to power, state authority, and concrete political struggle. In 1933 Schmitt joined the Nazi Party and used his legal and political theories to provide ideological justification for the regime. He writes about dictatorship, constitutional breakdown and leadership. His theory becomes even more anti-parliamentary and anti-pluralist. This is also the period when his political involvement severely shapes how his ideas are received.
After 1945, his focus shifts again. In The Nomos of the Earth (1950), he develops a historical-geopolitical view of international order, asking how legal and political space is organised globally. Here Schmitt is less focused on the state’s internal sovereign decision and more on the structure of world order and the collapse of the old European system.
Schmitt’s thinking moves from constitutional legal theory to decisionist political theology, then to a critique of liberal parliamentarianism and later to geopolitics and the “nomos” of world order.
Download The Concept of the Political
Commentary
1. The Essence of the Political
In The Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt begins by asking what makes something political in the first place. His answer is that politics cannot be reduced to morality, economics, or aesthetics. Each of those realms has its own logic, but the political has a distinct essence.
For Schmitt, that essence is the friend-enemy distinction. A political community defines itself by separating those it regards as friends from those it regards as enemies. This is not the same as judging people good or evil, useful or useless, or beautiful or ugly. It is an existential distinction tied to collective identity and survival. So, for Schmitt, the political appears whenever a group can name an enemy and recognise itself through that opposition.
According to Schmitt, an enemy is not just a competitor or private opponent, but a public adversary whose existence threatens the collective identity and survival of a political entity. Recognising the enemy is both an act of political self-assertion and the basis of political unity and decision.
Central to Schmitt’s account of the political is sovereignty. He defines sovereignty through the power to decide, especially in relation to the friend-enemy distinction. The sovereign is the one who has the ultimate authority to declare the state of exception, revealing the true locus of political power. This emphasis on decision-making shows the primacy of the political over other spheres: the sovereign decision helps define the identity and survival of the political community.
In essence, the political for Schmitt is a sphere of human life marked by the ever-present possibility of conflict arising from the friend-enemy distinction. It is this confrontation with existential challenges that crystallises the political and lends it its distinctiveness.
2. The State in Political Identity
Schmitt posits that the state fundamentally embodies the political unit within a given territory, and it is through the state that the political nature of human associations is made manifest. The state serves as the ultimate decider and enforcer of the friend-enemy distinction, which Schmitt identifies as the core criterion of the political.
The state, according to Schmitt, is not merely an administrative entity but the concrete organisational form of a people who distinguish themselves from others based on this primary political distinction. The state exists to make decisions about friends and enemies and to act upon these distinctions. This role is fundamental to the identity and unity of the political community it represents.
The capacity to distinguish friends from enemies underpins the concept of sovereignty, which for Schmitt, is the highest authority within a given territory. Sovereignty involves the power to make decisive actions that preserve the political community's existence and interests. It is this aspect of decision-making that separates the sovereign state from other forms of association. Sovereignty is expressed not only in the realm of external politics — relations with other political entities — but also in domestic affairs, where the state's authority acts to maintain internal order and coherence.
Internally, the state’s sovereignty is demonstrated through its monopoly on legitimate violence and its ability to enact laws and regulations that bind its citizens. The state distinguishes which internal groups or movements are aligned with its political identity and which threaten it, thus categorising them as potential enemies. Externally, the state must be vigilant in recognising and responding to threats from other states or entities that challenge its sovereignty and political existence.
The implications of state sovereignty are vast. Domestically, it means the state has the ultimate authority to determine the structure of society, the distribution of resources, and the limits of permissible behaviour. Externally, state sovereignty implies the necessity of readiness for conflict and the defense of the state's interests against foreign powers.
In 1938 Schmitt wrote a book called The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes influenced Schmitt in the idea that political order depends on a decisive sovereign authority. In Hobbes, people escape the insecurity of the state of nature by submitting to a power strong enough to enforce peace. Schmitt took up that basic insight and made it central to his own theory of sovereignty.
Schmitt emphasises the existential nature of the political, where the friend-enemy distinction is often a matter of collective survival. The political community, represented by the state, must be prepared to confront and, if necessary, combat those who threaten its existence. This existential perspective underscores the inherent seriousness and potential violence involved in political identification and action.
In conclusion, the role of the state in political identity, as narrated by Schmitt, is both foundational and pervasive. The state not only delineates the boundaries of the political but enforces these boundaries through a constant readiness to distinguish and act upon the friend-enemy criterion. By doing so, the state upholds its sovereignty and ensures the survival and identity of the political community it represents, highlighting the crucial and inextricable link between state sovereignty and political identity.
3. Liberalism's Approach to Politics
Schmitt critiques liberalism's approach to politics, which he views as fundamentally flawed. One of his primary criticisms is that liberalism attempts to depoliticise the political sphere by subordinating it to moral, economic, or humanitarian concerns. According to Schmitt, liberalism's emphasis on individual rights and its focus on consensus and rational debate undermine the inherently conflictual and decisive nature of the political. He asserts that the political is not merely about managing diverse interests but about making existential decisions that often involve distinguishing between friends and enemies.
In Schmitt's view, liberalism’s commitment to individual rights fosters an environment where collective political identity is diluted. Liberalism prioritises personal freedoms and rights above collective duties and responsibilities, thus weakening the unity and cohesiveness necessary for a robust political entity. By emphasising individual autonomy to the extent that it does, liberalism downplays the importance of collective identity and purpose. This undermines the state’s ability to act decisively in the interests of the collective, which is essential for maintaining order and stability.
Another significant critique Schmitt levels against liberalism is its paradoxical relationship with democracy. Liberal democracy, according to Schmitt, is inherently unstable and susceptible to crises. The liberal democratic model attempts to marry two contradictory principles: the liberal emphasis on individual rights and freedoms, and the democratic principle of majority rule. This tension creates inconsistencies and vulnerabilities within political systems. For instance, democracy presupposes a collective will that can make decisive political decisions, but liberalism’s focus on individual dissent makes it difficult to achieve the consensus and unity necessary for such decisions.
Furthermore, Schmitt argues that liberalism's reliance on rational discourse and procedural norms leads to a crisis of decision-making. The liberal democratic process often results in endless debate and negotiation, which can paralyse the political system in times of crisis when clear and decisive action is needed. In contrast, Schmitt emphasises the importance of authority and decision in the political realm. The ability to act decisively is a hallmark of sovereign power. Without this decisive element, Schmitt believes that liberal democracies are ill-equipped to deal with existential threats and are prone to internal fragmentation.
Schmitt’s critique of liberalism revolves around its depoliticisation of the political sphere, the weakening of collective political identity, and the inherent contradictions within liberal democracy. By focusing too heavily on individual rights and rational deliberation, liberalism neglects the fundamental nature of the political, which Schmitt argues is rooted in existential decisions and the friend-enemy distinction.
4. The Political as an Autonomous Sphere
Carl Schmitt asserts the necessity of preserving the political sphere's autonomy from other domains such as the economic and moral. He argues that the political is an autonomous domain because it is defined by a unique criterion: the friend-enemy distinction. According to Schmitt, conflicts within the political sphere are fundamentally different from those in other areas of human interaction and cannot be subsumed under economic, moral, or aesthetic categories.
Political conflicts are irreducible to other forms of conflict precisely because they revolve around existential questions of collective identity and survival. They involve decisions that have existential stakes for political communities, often demanding a clear determination of who belongs to the community and who is considered a threat. While economic or moral conflicts can often be resolved through negotiation, compromise, or legal adjudication, political conflicts need a more definitive and absolute resolution, as they pertain to the very existence of the state or political entity.
Schmitt provides examples to illustrate how political decisions override other considerations. For instance, in times of war or existential threat, a state may suspend certain economic activities or curtail individual moral and legal rights to prioritise survival and defense. These decisions underscore the primacy of political imperatives over other interests. Economic policies or moral principles might be tailored or even sacrificed to ensure the security and continuity of the political community.
In essence, the political sphere's autonomy is underscored by its role in making decisions that are not merely technical or administrative but are fundamentally sovereign acts. Such decisions often involve life-and-death stakes and determine the boundary between a community's friends and enemies. This unique characteristic distinguishes political actions and choices from those in other spheres, reinforcing Schmitt's argument that the political is an independent domain, driven by the imperatives of sovereignty and survival.
5. The Concept of the Enemy in Political Thought
In Carl Schmitt's political theory, the concept of the enemy occupies a central place within his larger philosophical framework. Schmitt posits that the enemy, in the political sense, is distinct from the adversaries one encounters in other realms such as personal life or economic competition. The political enemy is not simply someone with whom one disagrees or competes for resources, the enemy represents a fundamental existential threat to a collective's way of life, survival, and identity.
Schmitt delineates a clear boundary between private adversaries and political enemies. While private adversaries might engage in conflicts over personal matters, such as business disputes or moral disagreements, political enemies represent an existential challenge. The political enemy is defined in terms of a direct opposition that threatens the collective existence of a political entity, thereby necessitating a readiness for conflict that goes beyond ordinary forms of contention. This enemy is not chosen arbitrarily but emerges naturally as an entity against which the political unit must assert itself to preserve its integrity.
Furthermore, Schmitt emphasises the existential nature of political conflicts, arguing that these conflicts are inherently about the survival and continuation of a political entity. Unlike economic or moral disputes, which can often be resolved through negotiation or compromise, political conflicts are binary and absolute. They compel a definitive stance of either friend or enemy. This existential dichotomy underscores the high stakes involved in political decisions, where the failure to adequately identify and confront the political enemy can lead to the dissolution or subjugation of the political community.
The implications of this perspective are profound for national unity and survival. In Schmitt's view, the recognition and identification of the enemy are pivotal to the cohesion and solidarity of the political unit. It is through the demarcation of the friend-enemy divide that a political community can foster a sense of common purpose and unity among its members. The enemy, by posing a tangible threat, serves to rally the political unit, thereby reinforcing internal bonds and establishing a clear sense of collective identity and mission.
Schmitt’s concept of the enemy also has implications for the broader structure and dynamics of political life. According to Schmitt, the inability or unwillingness to recognise and address the presence of a political enemy leads to a dilution of political energy and a weakening of political resolve. This, in turn, can render a political entity vulnerable to external threats and internal fragmentation. Therefore, the enemy not only defines the boundaries of political action but also sharpens the political awareness and resolution necessary for the maintenance of sovereign power.
6. Conflict and Politics
Schmitt’s view on armed conflict is clear: it stands as the ultimate test of political entities, serving as the most extreme and definitive expression of the friend-enemy distinction. For Schmitt, the very essence of the political rests not merely on abstract principles or diplomatic negotiations, but on the concrete reality of conflict. War, in this sense, is not an aberration but an inherent aspect of political life. It sharpens the boundaries between friend and enemy in a way that nothing else can, bringing the latent potential for conflict to the surface and demonstrating the seriousness of political existence.
According to Schmitt, the legitimacy and necessity of conflict are rooted in the existential nature of political communities. A political entity — typically the state — establishes its identity through its capacity to distinguish friend from enemy, and ultimately its ability to defend itself against the latter. In doing so, it embodies the notion of sovereignty, which for Schmitt is fundamentally about the capacity to make decisive judgments, including the declaration of war. The decision to engage in conflict is the ultimate manifestation of political action.
Schmitt is critical of ideologies that seek to eliminate or undermine this aspect of politics, particularly pacifist ideologies. In his view, pacifism fails to grasp the intrinsic nature of political reality, which is premised on the ever-present possibility of conflict. By advocating for an absolute peace, pacifists misconstrue the political sphere as something that can be sanitised of its inherent dangers and contestations. He argues that such perspectives are dangerously naive and ignore the fundamental truths of political existence, that enemies exist and that conflict, whether we desire it or not, is an inevitable part of human society.
Moreover, the shortcomings of pacifist ideologies become apparent when they face real-world political dilemmas. The insistence on peace at all costs can lead to a paralysis of political decision-making, rendering a political entity incapable of responding adequately to threats. This, Schmitt posits, could ultimately lead to the dissolution of the political unit itself, as it becomes unable to perform the critical function of defining and defending its own existence. To avoid this, a sober acknowledgment of the necessity and legitimacy of conflict is essential.
In Schmitt's framework, the willingness to engage in war is not an endorsement of violence for its own sake but a recognition of the serious nature of political life. Conflict, under this lens, is a tool through which political communities negotiate their most profound existential questions. It tests loyalties, fortifies bonds among members of a political entity, and ultimately reaffirms the sovereignty and integrity of the political unit. Thus, for Schmitt, understanding war and conflict is crucial to understanding the reality of the political, which cannot be reduced to mere economics, morality, or legal formalism.
7. The Political Future
In exploring the future of political entities, Schmitt expresses concerns about the evolving landscape of global politics. He questions whether traditional notions of sovereignty and the state can withstand the pressures of internationalisation and the increasing influence of non-state actors. The emergence of supranational organizations, global economic interdependence, and transnational ideologies challenges the conventional boundaries of political entities. He suggests that the stability and authority of sovereign states could be undermined or transformed by these developments.
Schmitt's perspectives on the future are grounded in his belief in the enduring nature of political conflicts. Even as the forms and actors of political struggle evolve, the fundamental need for decisions that affirm collective identity persists. Schmitt posits that the political sphere cannot be eradicated, as attempts to depoliticise, either through liberalism's emphasis on individual rights or through pacifist ideologies, ultimately fail to address the intrinsic nature of human societies to engage in friend-enemy distinctions.
The author argues that regardless of changes in the global order, the need for sovereign decisions and the demarcation of political identities will remain constants. Schmitt's reflections encourage a reevaluation of contemporary political structures and a recognition of the fundamental truths about sovereignty and conflict.
Critiques of Smitt's concepts
Liberal and Constitutional Scholars
The critique that Schmitt’s work justifies totalitarianism and undermines the rule of law is most strongly associated with liberal theorists. Hans Kelsen, a contemporary of Schmitt, famously clashed with him over the nature of law. While Schmitt emphasized the "exception" and the will of the sovereign, Kelsen argued for a "pure theory of law" based on a hierarchy of norms and legal consistency, viewing Schmitt's approach as an invitation to lawlessness.
Later thinkers like John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas in The Theory of Communicative Action (1981) represent the argument that politics should be based on communicative rationality and deliberative consensus rather than the friend-enemy binary.
Moral Philosophers and Human Rights Advocates
Those who argue that Schmitt’s decoupling of politics from morality is dangerous often come from the tradition of universal human rights. Critics in this vein argue that by creating an "amoral" political sphere, Schmitt justifies the suspension of ethics during states of emergency. This critique is central to the work of scholars who analyse the Holocaust and the rise of the Third Reich, pointing out that Schmitt’s theories provided the intellectual architecture for the Nazi regime's designation of "enemies of the state."
Post-Structuralists and Post-Colonial Theorists
The argument that Schmitt's framework is reductive and exclusionary is often championed by thinkers who examine power, identity, and "the other." Giorgio Agamben, while heavily influenced by Schmitt, critiques the "state of exception" by showing how it leads to "bare life", where humans are stripped of political rights and reduced to biological existence. Post-colonial scholars argue that Schmitt’s insistence on the homogeneity of the political unit mirrors the logic of colonial erasure, where the coloniser defines the colonised as the "enemy" or the "other" to justify domination.
Feminist Theorists
The critique regarding the "masculine" nature of the friend-enemy distinction is found in feminist political theory. These scholars argue that Schmitt's definition of politics focuses exclusively on aggression and boundary-maintenance, ignoring the "politics of care," social reproduction, and cooperation. They argue that the "existential struggle" Schmitt describes is a gendered construction of power that excludes non-dominant forms of political engagement.
Chantal Mouffe attempts to "tame" Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction. She argues for replacing "antagonism" (enemy/destruction) with "agonism" (adversary/competition), a move that aligns with feminist goals of transforming conflict from a struggle for elimination into a struggle for recognition.
Judith Butler, critiques the reliance on rigid binaries (Man/Woman, Public/Private, Friend/Enemy). From this perspective, Schmitt’s entire project is an attempt to enforce a "violent binary." Feminist theorists argue that the "political" is not found in the sharp line between friend and enemy, but in the "gray zones"—the overlaps, the ambiguities, and the relationships of care that Schmitt’s theory ignores.
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