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In The Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt famously defined the political in terms of the friend-enemy distinction. For Schmitt, it is the presence of the enemy which makes politics both possible and necessary. Since, as Schmitt claims, all “authentic” political theories presuppose a man essentially “evil,” “dangerous,” or a “dynamic” and “problematic” being, the political can be stripped to the bare distinction of friend-enemy. The enemy is the other, the foreigner, the one we are to hate and kill. Hatred and conflict is integral to politics, according to Schmitt; without conflict, politics would no longer be needed. A politics minus enmity, without the enemy, is impossible. Cessation of hostility is the end of the political.

Writing nearly a century earlier, Søren Kierkegaard urged in Works of Love that the other, the stranger, is not the enemy we are to hate, but the neighbor we must love. Kierkegaard bases his argument on the “Great Commandment” (found in Hebrew and Christian texts as well as, in some form, other world religions) that one is to love one’s neighbor as oneself, as well as Jesus’ teachings to love our enemies. Who is one’s neighbor? Kierkegaard refers to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan to respond that the neighbor is the other; any other one may meet; every other. Most significantly, loving a neighbor is not merely a feeling or something one says, it is something one does. A politics of love means deeds of compassion.

For millennia, one of the most paramount of religious (and thus ethical) duties, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or other religious tradition, has been to act with compassion toward the stranger, the other, the neighbor. Most have some version of the “golden rule”: to treat others as you would yourself want to be treated. The other includes the enemy. As Kierkegaard states, “he who in truth loves his neighbor loves also his enemy” (Works of Love, 78). Enemy-love is not only a religious or ethical obligation, it is a political responsibility.

Schmitt also addresses the Great Commandment in The Concept of the Political, but interprets it more narrowly. Jesus, he says, is concerned only with the private enemy; the political with the public enemy. Schmitt seeks to cleanse politics as a concept from all dimensions other than the crucial friend-enemy distinction, seeking a pure residue that defines the political in its essence; the first non-essential to go is the private. The enemy, Schmitt insists, is a public enemy.

Is the political defined by the enemy? Can it still be thus defined if the enemy, the other, is our neighbor, the object of our love rather than our enmity? Schmitt rightly observes that nation-states do group themselves according to the friend-enemy antithesis: “This is an ever-present possibility for every people existing in the political sphere” (CoP, 27).

Yet, as our experience (and Schmitt’s theory) confirms, defining the political in terms of the friend-enemy distinction makes war not only a real possibility, but an inevitability. “An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity” (CoP, 28).

If we are weary of war and the wearying politics that accompanies it, weary of being fearful that an “enemy” might attack, weary that we might identify yet another “enemy” we will need to attack in order to “defend” ourselves, then perhaps we are weary of conceiving of the political in the terms offered by Schmitt. Perhaps we are ready to alter our conception of the political in terms of compassion, forgiveness, and love.

The Concept of the Political as Paradox: Schmitt, Kierkegaard, and Enemy-Love

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Commandment
http://www.targetofopportunity.com/
http://www.toppun.com/Martin-Luther-King/Buttons/Love-is-the-only-force-capable-of-transforming-an-enemy-into-friend-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-BUTTON.html