Carl Schmitt: Politics

Carl Schmitt was German jurist, political theorist and professor of law. Explore interesting quotes on politics.
Carl Schmitt: 72 quotes5 likes

“Political thought and political instinct prove themselves theoretically and practically in the ability to distinguish friend and enemy. The high points of politics are simultaneously the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“War as the most extreme political means discloses the possibility which underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction of friend and enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“As long as the state is a political entity this requirement for internal peace compels it in critical situations to decide also upon the domestic enemy. Every state provides, therefore, some kind of formula for the declaration of an internal enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

Source: The Concept of the Political (1927)

“A definition of the political can be obtained only by discovering and defining the specifically political categories.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“That the state is an entity and in fact the decisive entity rests upon its political character.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy. The political does not reside in the battle itself, which. possesses its own technical, psychological, and military laws, but in the mode of behavior which is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby being able to distinguish correctly the real friend and the real enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“The equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each other.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“The inevitable lack of objectivity in political decisions, which is only the reflex to suppress the politically inherent friend-enemy antithesis, manifests itself in the regrettable forms and aspects of the scramble for office and the politics of patronage. The demand for depoliticalization which arises in this context means only the rejection of party politics, etc. The equation politics = party politics is possible whenever antagonisms among domestic political parties succeed in weakening the all-embracing political unit, the state.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“To be sure, Protestant theology presents a different, supposedly unpolitical doctrine, conceiving of God as the "wholly other," just as in political liberalism the state and politics are conceived of as the "wholly other." We have come to recognize that the political is the total, and as a result we know that any decision about whether something is unpolitical is always a political decision, irrespective of who decides and what reasons are advanced. This also holds for the question whether a particular theology is a political or an unpolitical theology.”

Carl Schmitt

Political Theology (1922), Preface to Second Edition (1934)

“The political entity presupposes the real existence of an enemy and therefore coexistence with another political entity. As long as a state exists, there will thus always be in the world more than just one state. A world state which embraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization.”

Carl Schmitt

Political Theology (1922), Ch. 3 : Political Theology

“The state as the decisive political entity possesses an enormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposing of the lives of men. The jus belli contains such a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from its own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“What remains is the remarkable and, for many, certainly disquieting diagnosis that all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil, i. e., by no means an unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)