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CARL SCHMITT AND WAR: ON THE NOMOS OF THE EARTH Y AMADA H IROAKI - Tran lated (rom Japanese by /0 hua Young The Nomos of the Earrh, how does one describe this book? Published in 1950, it is seen as Schmitt's representative work from the post-war era. Should we therefore consider this text 10 be the great compilation of Schmitt' thoughl ext nding over several d cades? Or should we look at It as a sign of his a commodation to the situation in which it was written, asign of his new apostasy in what is said to be his repeated hanges of thought, or even look at it as a book of self-vindi ation or self.ju tification in a scholarly disguise. Whatever answers one give to the e question , of the following at I a t we can be certain: The omos ofthe Earth contains a great number of ideas that thical, aesthetic, and economic spheres of consideration, he also strongly resi IS the rarefaction of that concept in symbolic or metaphorical under randings. He ays that the concept of the n my necessarily contains the possibility of real conllict. The concept of the enemy always already includ the real possibility of physically killing the opponent and destroying their existence. "The fri nd, enemy, and ombat concept receiv their real meaning precisely becau e they refer to the real possibility of phy ical killing. War follow from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.· Ocr Kreig folgl aus der Feind ch'lfl, denn diese isl seinsmliSige Negierung eines anderen eim (BP 33/ 26, CoP 33). The strong tension - pannung - that is imposed on people's daily lives by thi real possibility of negating exi tence i what Schmin sees as th e sential nature of politics, and when that disappears, both the concept of the enemy and the oncept of politics disappear along with it. But who after all i this enemy? For what reason can thos people become our enemy1 Or why can we Ollr Ives become seen a an enemy? Schmitt's thinking on this in The Concept ofthe Political confuses the re, der: Mlhe political enemy need not be morally evil or ae thetically ugly; h need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transaction . But he is, nev rthel 55, the other rder andere), the tranger Ider Fremde) ; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially int nse way, existentiilily omething different and alien" (BP 27/15-16; CoP 27). Just what is the meaning or this· ufficienr" - genugl - in the phrase "it is sufficient for hi nature that he i existentially som thing different"? Docs il mean lhat our others, our strangers, are all lat ntly our enemies? If so, we can say lhat it is the other side of the M()biu trip of hmitt's logic wher he mphasizes " the indivi ible homogeneity" of the national people that is the fundamental condition of democracy. However, we should probably see this definition of the enemy as a kind of exorcism for Schmitt, a kind of projection. By projecting antagonism onto the other or the stranger, he sets aside the most dangerous antagonism, that is the possibility of antagonism between the same people, between (amiliar , between TR ACE 4----I 22S V.m.d. H i,o.ki brothers. What makes this later antagonism 0 dangerous in comparison With the antagonism toward th other i that in this the enemy becomes undefined and so the self itself cannot be regulated. And in such a situation the rai ing of the antagonistic relationship to the absolute antagonistic relationship can no longer be constrained. In a , 947 memorandum Schmitt writes the following. Were FranL Kafka 10 h,wc wrinen a tome called "Enemy", il is clear Ihat it would have been aboul giving rise 10 Ihe nxiely of !he uncontrolled nature of the enemy (th ~ xiSls no other anxiety worth calling so. The essenc of anxiety is the indication of an enemy whose proper shape is nOI known.) To use reasoning againsl Ihis (and Ihus reasoning mean th high level of politics) would be to clearly define the en my (and Ihis is always al Ihc same lime to define o~If). With Ihis ad of definition f1xiety - Angst would cea e, bUllear- Furchl- would remain. However, il we do nOI share Ihe same...

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