World War II
I was really interested in the ideas the Schmitt proposed, especially when considered in the light of his later Nazi collaboration. He suggested that the only way to justify one man killing another is in a war against an enemy. He also said that in war, the enemy need not be evil or immoral, that it is sufficient to be simply "the other". States, in his view, have the ability to justify the use of war against an enemy because they are political.
Is it therefore fair to postulate that Schmitt may not even have believed that the Nazi's war was justified? Could he have thought that the war was morally wrong and still gone along with it because the real question, for him, is one of political emnity, not moral disapproval. Furthermore, how would he justify the extermination of the Jews (homosexuals, Gypsys, etc.) within the German state? In one way, that is a civil war, to which he seems to give less credence, and in another it is not a war at all because the victims are unable to fight back. If it is not a war, how can such violence be justified?
Finally, I think it is interesting to note that in pre-World War II Germany we see all the categories that Schmitt discusses becoming political. The economic is political, because Hitler came to power by promising bread to the people. The moral is political because he was able to blame the Jews and make them out to be evil people. The religious is political because he could call for the extermination of another race, etc. And all of this political power was turned to the perpetrating one of the most horrific genocides and wars that the world has ever seen.
posted by lennearb @ 9:30 AM
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