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Carl Schmitt and his Critic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Piotr Nowak
Affiliation:
Bialystok University
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Summary

1.

Political Theology, one of the earliest books of Carl Schmitt, begins as follows: “Sovereign is who decides on the exception.” And next: “Sovereignty is the highest, legally independent, underived power.” As we see from the opening, this small book is dedicated to the problem of sovereignty, hence of power. Each power in its foundation has to be sovereign that is independent and free. It means, the real test for any new power as well as for the traditional one is the borderline, extreme situation when the power makes the final decisions without any external advice or suggestions. The borderline situation according to Schmitt is “(…) a case of extreme peril, danger to the existence of the state,” or simply to existence, to the life of human being. The sovereign not only recognizes the situation as an exception; he also matches up the means that allow him to bring back the normal situation. Here the first ambiguity arises: would not the sovereign tend to create exceptions that would confirm by definition his sovereignty? If so martial law rather than situation of normalcy would constitute the sovereign's natural environment; whereas each period of “normality” would be some kind of degeneration. “For a legal order to make sense, a normal situation must exist, and he is sovereign who definitely decides whether this normal situation actually exists (…) The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Modernity and What Has Been Lost
Considerations on the Legacy of Leo Strauss
, pp. 125 - 134
Publisher: Jagiellonian University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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