The Partisan and the Philosopher

The search for clear concepts, precise distinctions, and un-ambiguous criteria are a hallmark of Carl Schmitt's legal and political theory. Yet, as Jacob Taubes has noted, "Schmitt fought against one thing: the pure science of law. Indeed, pure legal science consists in a doctrine that does not take real history into account" (1987, 57). Rather, it is an abstract science, based on pure concepts, concepts which Schmitt considers the prerogative of philosophy. It follows from this, however, that though sharp, Schmitt's distinctions are not "pure," or philosophical distinctions. Indeed, as we will see, in Schmitt's attempt to define a set of clear and distinct criteria in order to circumscribe, within the admittedly ambiguous phenomenon of the partisan, the figure of the genuine or authentic partisan, these criteria not only mutually contaminate one another but also contain the reasons why the partisan can become either a mere criminal or a world-revolutionary fighter with little or no resemblance anymore to his true—that is, political—figure. Yet, the fact that these criteria can undermine what they are supposed to achieve does not, therefore, invalidate them. In spite of all the references to precision, clarity, unambiguity, the goal of Schmitt's criteriology regarding the partisan is not to produce pure concepts. Rather, it is a question of wresting by means of these criteria a well-circumscribed figure of the partisan from a phenomenon that represents a challenge to any political order, and to any theory of the political, and which could secure a possible political status for the irregular fighter. Partisanship, for Schmitt—and, as we will see, not least because of its proximity to (a certain) philosophy—is a concept that implies absolute enmity, and hence the end of the political as Schmitt understands it. To ward off this threat, TheTheory of the Partisan develops a set of differential marks that are nothing less than the conditions under which partisan war can alone be contained, and under which the partisan can be raised to a political figure in view of a new nomos of the earth, following the ending of the political order based on sovereign nation-states by a phenomenon—partisan war—that represents also a challenge to any political order and any theory of the political. However impure and imperfect they may be, the criteria in question are seen to be the only possibility of mastering theoretically a historical phenomenon that jeopardizes all political distinctions by precisely making distinction absolute.

Although subtitled an "incidental remark on the concept of the political," Carl Schmitt's Theory of the Partisan is anything but a casual contribution to the concept in question.¹ The study not only raises the theory of the partisan "to be the key to recognizing political reality" (1975, 65), it construes the partisan as a new, and possibly last, figure of the political. Schmitt's consistent efforts at defining the partisan according to a set of four strict criteria—irregularity, mobility, political engagement, and telluric character—are essential to this project in which, as said, nothing less than the possibility of the political itself is at stake. Without a successful delimitation of the partisan, the latter, rather than being a figure of the political, risks reverting to a figure of the destruction of the political. Let us recall that the intention of The Concept of the Political was to establish an "ultimate distinction" and a "simple criterion" for the political that "as such can speak clearly for itself" (Schmitt 1976, 26). This special interest in sharp and unambiguous differences in political theory is intimately linked to the clear distinction between friend and enemy in the jus publicum Europaeum, a distinction that is instrumental to containing war. Schmitt's concern with precision is thus part of his effort to secure, in the aftermath of the dwindling autonomy of the states, another political order in which enmity and war can again be fenced in. If the fascination with the figure of the partisan in Schmitt's study goes well beyond any occasional concern, it is because the partisan does not easily lend...