Carl Schmitt between Technological Rationality and Theology

Hugo E. Herrera

Description

Carl Schmitt, one of the most influential legal and political thinkers of the twentieth century, is known chiefly for his work on international law, sovereignty, and his doctrine of political exception. This book argues that greater prominence should be given to his early work in legal studies. Schmitt himself repeatedly identified as a jurist, and Hugo E. Herrera demonstrates how for Schmitt, law plays a key role as an intermediary between ideal, conceptual theory and the complexity of practical, concrete situations. Law is concerned precisely with balancing the extremes of theory and reality, and in this respect, Schmitt associates it with philosophical thinking broadly as being able to understand and explain the tensions in human experience. Reviewing and analyzing prevailing interpretations of Schmitt by Jacques Derrida, Heinrich Meier, and others, Herrera argues that the importance of Schmitt's legal framework is both significant and overlooked.
Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

1. Law and Technology

2. Law and Theology

3. Juridical Thought

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Philosophy of religion
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438478791
• Langue: English

Extrait

Carl Schmitt between Technological Rationality and Theology
Carl Schmitt
between Technological Rationality and Theology
The Position and Meaning of His Legal Thought
HUGO E. HERRERA
Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises , ca. 1910. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Herrera, Hugo, 1974– author.
Title: Carl Schmitt between technological rationality and theology : the position and meaning of his legal thought / Hugo E. Herrera.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019030528 | ISBN 9781438478777 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438478791 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Schmitt, Carl, 1888–1985. | Law—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC K230.S352 H47 2020 | DDC 340/.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030528
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Alicia Guzmán Valenzuela (September 19, 1926–December 17, 2012) and Bernardo Palau Oliver (February 3, 1925–December 17, 2011)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1 Law and Technology
Chapter 2 Law and Theology
Chapter 3 Juridical Thought
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
As is the case with any book, and especially with those that take years in the making, I have incurred many debts. First of all, I would like to thank my family. Then, Jorge E. Dotti (who unfortunately passed away in 2018), Michael Marder, Rafael Simian, Manfred Svensson, Daniel Mansuy, and Joaquín García-Huidobro, all of whom read and commented on parts of the book. Additionally, let me express my deep gratitude to my graduate students at Diego Portales University (Chile), who took the courses where I taught the ideas presented here. I am also grateful to everyone who attended the congresses, workshops, and seminars in Valparaiso, Santiago, Würzburg, Leiden, Curitiba, and Uberlândia, where I had a chance to discuss my views. I should like to thank the Chilean National Council for Science and Technology (CONICYT), which provided generous resources to bring the book to completion (within the framework of project no. 1190199). My gratitude extends to the Diego Portales University, where I could have enough time to do the research necessary to write this book. I must thank Rafael Simian for his translation work, and he and Cheryl Emerson for reviewing the manuscript. Finally, I should like to thank the State University of New York Press for accepting this work as part of its catalogue and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments.
Foreword
Carl Schmitt repeatedly understood himself as a jurist. In his own view, he thus situates himself between two disciplines: technology and theology. These disciplines hold two extreme positions. They do not sufficiently thematize their presuppositions. Given that, in Schmitt’s classification, juridical thought and the extremes of technology and theology exhaust the possible ways of human understanding, juridical thought is, for him, superior to the extremes. Schmitt identifies juridical thought with philosophy. This identification entails broadening the scope of this discipline in unusual ways, beyond juridical science strictly speaking, to include existence as a whole. Such broadening is doubly justified. Besides the fact that, for Schmitt, juridical thought is able to thematize and address problems that the two extreme disciplines cannot properly identify, existence as such is juridical for him. Existence may be described as a tension and a relation between general rules and particular cases. The law, broadly conceived, as a form of rationality that emerges with these original tension and relation in view, seems to be the most appropriate kind of understanding for elucidating existence in a hermeneutical radical manner.
Among the countless interpretations of Schmitt’s thought, some link it with technological rationality, while others see it as theologically determined. In a previous book, I attempted to clarify the relation between Schmitt’s thought and the tradition of practical philosophy ( praktische Philosophie ). 1 That study concluded that the bases of Schmitt’s work must be sought neither in his circumstances, nor in his religious motivations, but rather in a set of very sophisticated arguments and justifications. In the present book, I have restricted and at the same time broadened the scope of my research, to focus upon the interpretations linking Schmitt’s thought to either technology or theology. Through the discussion of both readings and the analysis of Schmitt’s texts, I will try to establish whether his self-description as a jurist, according to the use he makes of this latter term, is plausible, on one hand; and, if it is plausible, whether—and in what sense—his juridical thought is relevant for elucidating human understanding in general, on the other.
Introduction
Schmitt’s Self-Understanding
In his work, Carl Schmitt clearly understands himself to be a jurist. He goes so far as to claim the following: “I have always spoken and written as a jurist, and hence also genuinely only for and to jurists.” 1 The same self-definition appears in Political Theology, The Concept of the Political, The Nomos of the Earth, Ex Captivitate Salus, The Tyranny of Values , and Political Theology II . 2 But is Schmitt actually a jurist? Or is he rather a political theologian, or perhaps a thinker bound to a form of technological rationality, as some have said? And in what sense should one understand Schmitt’s words, namely, “being a jurist”?
In The Nomos of the Earth there is a strange thesis—repeated in “The Plight of European Jurisprudence,” Ex Captivitate Salus , and the Glossarium— namely, that the law lies between technology and theology. 3 Schmitt advances this thesis in the context of a threefold scheme comprising all available epistemological possibilities. Technology is inclined toward “complete functionalism,” whereas theology is inclined, says Schmitt, toward the extreme of a “complete substantialism.” 4 The law—and Schmitt as jurist—lies between them. The ideal of technology aims at a calculating and controlling rationality, in which knowledge is attained via the construction of the object or the subsumption of cases under general rules. 5 Theology, in turn, is bound to substantialism in the sense that it entails the wholesale acceptance of a transcendent reality. 6
The intermediate position held by Schmitt does not follow from a compromise between the extremes, but from a hermeneutical and epistemological consideration. Schmitt criticizes technology for ignoring the exceptionality and meaning of concrete existence. On the other hand, theology is criticized for favoring the “result” over “method”—in other words, for surrendering to an alleged substantial existence without exercising due epistemological controls.
The law’s superior position in relation to both technology and theology is what justifies the unusual identification Schmitt defends between the law and human understanding in general, on one hand; and between juridical thought and “a philosophy of concrete life,” on the other. 7 Juridical thought is held as the most fundamental way of understanding existence, because it is capable of thematizing existence including its “seriousness” and of reflexively considering the tension and relation between rule and case, the abstract and the concrete, the general and the exceptional. 8
Two Contemporary Interpretations
Schmitt’s thought has been understood either as bound to technological rationality or as theologically determined. Each of these readings bears further consideration. If either were correct, Schmitt’s characterization of himself would be false. He could not be understood as a jurist, and the hermeneutical scope of his thought would be restricted. As for the interpretation that links Schmitt’s thought to the rationality of technology, I shall concentrate on the works of Jacques Derrida; for the interpretation that sees Schmitt eminently as a theologian, I shall focus on the works of Heinrich Meier. Notwithstanding the fact that the theological interpretation has had earlier exponents, Meier has been particularly successful in placing it at the center of Schmitt scholarship. Because Derrida and Meier have been enormously influential in shaping current studies on Carl Schmitt, singling them out for discussion as representative authors of the interpretations that link Schmitt respectively with technology and theology rests on the paradigmatic character of their readings.
According to Jacques Derrida, Schmitt’s thought should be seen as bound to technology. Derrida believes that Schmitt’s thought is an expression of a form of rationality that depends on the modern distinction