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Political Theology and Modernity.

Is Carl Schmitt Useful for Post-Foundational Political Thought?

Matas Sirczuk

In his book Post-Foundational Political Thought,
1
Oliver Marchant maintains
that post foundational political thinking examines, from a critical perspective, the last
grounds of the social order. After the divorce from the metaphysical tradition, the
question of grounds - a question that is responded to by tradition through the
affirmation that the social is constituted by an exterior principle brought
contemporary political theory to the radical questioning of its ontological status. In
Marchants view, post-foundational thought aims to account for the problem of the
foundation of order while renouncing the existence of the ultimate ground of the
social: what becomes problematic from now on is not the existence of a plurality of
grounds, but the socials ontological status, which has come to be exclusively
contingent.

In the introduction to his book, Marchant recognises Carl Schmitt to be one of
the precursors of this intellectual trend; a trend that developed in France after the
Second World War. Originally formulated in relation to his reflections on The
Concept of the Political,
2
the distinction between politics and the political has
become, in Marchants view, one of the central elements on which this trend builds its
arguments.
3
But does Schmitt's thesis constitute a break with the prior comprehension
of the ultimate ground and an opening to the contingency of politics?

In this paper, I propose to approach this problem from the critical study of the
polysemic meaning of the concept of political theology. Firstly, I will present the
ambiguities that ensue from the concept developed by Schmitt in 1922. Secondly, I
will present the way in which Schmittian political theology may be interpreted as the
result of the break with tradition, and for the most part, as a theory that depends
exclusively on the political condition of modernity.
4
Finally, I will critically

University of Buenos Aires University of Barcelona. Supported by the Programme Alban, the
European Union Programme of High Level Scholarships for Latin America. I wish to thank Anabella
Di Tullio, Claudia Hilb, Fina Biruls, Facundo Vega, Camil Ungureanu and Clare Sheppard for their
helpful comments and their critical insights.
1
Marchart, Oliver, Post-Foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou
and Laclau (Taking on the Political), Edinburgh, Edinburgh University press, 2007.
2
Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press,
2007. Translated by George Schwab.
3
Marchart maintains that [i]t has become a commonplace to trace back the invention of the notion of
the political to Carl Schmitts seminal 1932 book on The Concept of the Political. What he tries to find
there is a specific criterion which would guarantee the autonomy of the political against different social
domains and, as is well known, he locates the specificity of the political in the particular distinction
between friend and enemy. See Marchart, Oliver, Post-Foundational Political Thought, op. cit., p. 41.
See also pp. 41-48.
4
Among the reference texts that could be mentioned for this understanding of political theology are the
following: Duso, Giuseppe, Carl Schmitt: teologia politica e logica dei concetti politici moderni,
Daimon, Revista Internacional de Filosofa, N 13 (Julio-Diciembre, 1996), pp. 77-98; Esposito,
Roberto, Cattolicesimo e Modernit in Carl Schmitt, in Racinaro, Roberto (A cura di), Tradizione e
Modernita nel pensiero politico de Carl Schmitt, Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1987, pp. 119-
136; Galli, Carlo, La teologia politica in Carl Schmitt: proposte per una rilettura critica, in Duso,
Giuseppe (a cura di), La politica oltre lo stato: Carl Schmitt, Arsenale, Venezia, 1981, 127-137; Galli,
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interrogate this alternative from the ontological significance of Schmittian political
theology.
5



1) The Original Claim: Historical Evolution and Structural Analogy of Concepts.


At the start of the third chapter of Political Theology
6
one finds the well-
known statement in which Schmitt maintains that

[a]ll significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized
theological concepts not only because of their historical development in
which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby,
for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver but also
because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for
a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence
is analogous to the miracle in theology. Only by being aware of this analogy
can we appreciate the manner in which the philosophical ideas of the state
developed in the last centuries.
7


This claim suggests that political theology seems to indicate two distinct
problems. In the first place, the problem of transfer: modern political concepts are

Carlo, Il cattolicesimo nel pensiero politico di Carl Schmitt, in Racinaro, Roberto (A cura di),
Tradizione e Modernita nel pensiero politico de Carl Schmitt, op. cit., pp. 13-25; Galli, Carlo, Carl
Schmitt on Sovereignty: Decision, Form, Modernity, in G.M. Cazzaniga, G.M., y Zarka, Y. Ch., (sous
la direction de), Penser la Souverainet l'poque moderne et contemporaine, Pisa - Paris, Edizioni
Ets - Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2001, vol. II, pp. 463-477; Galli, Carlo, Lo sguardo di Giano.
Saggi su Carl Schmitt, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008; Marramao, Giacomo, Poder y secularizacin,
Barcelona, Ediciones pennsula, 1989; Marramao, Giacomo, Cielo y tierra. Genealoga de la
secularizacin, Buenos Aires, Paidos, 1998.
5
The following reference texts can be mentioned with regard to this dimension: Altini, Carlo, La
fbrica de la soberana. Maquiavelo, Hobbes, Spinoza y otros modernos, Buenos Aires, El cuenco de
Plata, 2005; Howse, Robert, From Legitimacy to Dictatorship and Back Again: Leo Strausss
Critique of the Anti-Liberalism of Carl Schmitt, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Vol. X,
N 1 (January, 1997), pp. 77-103; Meier, Heinrich, Carl Schmitt & Leo Strauss. The Hidden Dialogue,
Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1995; Meier, Heinrich, The lesson of Carl
Schmitt. Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy,
Chicago & London, The University of Chicago Press, 1998; Strauss, Leo, Notes on Carl Schmitt, The
Concept of the Political, in. Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political, op. cit., pp. 99-122.
6
Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, Chicago, The
University of Chicago Press, 2005. Translated by George Schwab.
7
Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, op. cit., p. 36. This passage was the subject of great controversy
during the 20
th
Century debates about the secularisation. According to Blumberg it represents the
strongest form of the secularisation theorem, not only because the factual assertion that it contains
but also because the consequences that it inaugurates. See Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the
Modern Age, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1983, p. 92. Let us clarify here that we do not propose to
inquire directly about the problem of secularisation or its specific arguments, nor will we question the
concept of political theology in its historical and conceptual variability; this would exceed the aim of
our work. The really interesting question is the specific relationship between political theology,
secularisation and modernity as is evident in the thinking of Carl Schmitt. Each of these elements
acquires a specific shade within his theoretical framework. For a reconstruction of the debates about
secularisation and the part Carl Schmitt placed in them one can refer to the studies of Monod, Jean
Claude, La querelle de la scularisation. Thologie politique et philosophies de lhistoire de Hegel
Blumenberg, Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2002 y Marramao, Giacomo, Cielo y tierra.
Genealoga de la secularizacin, op. cit. Also, for a general reference to the concept of political
theology see Scattola, Merio, Teologa poltica. Lxico de poltica, Buenos Aires, Nueva visin, 2008.
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secularised theological concepts because they historically stem from theological
concepts. In the second place, that which refers to the thesis of structural analogy:
political concepts are secularised theological concepts because they share with
theological concepts, the same analogical place in the structuring of the social.
Therefore, the concept of political theology that emerges from the book in 1922 seems
to establish a relationship between theology and politics in a double manner: historical
and structural. The first perspective can shed light on the origin of concepts or, in any
case, aims to question what happens to them once they are removed from the area in
which they were originally developed; but the second has a much greater universal
claim. The thesis surrounding the analogy between theological concepts and juridical
concepts supposes that reality is structured in a determined manner and from this
structuring of reality there are definite places historically filled by typical
religious figures, and which in modernity are filled by political mundane ones.
8


Thus, argues Schmitt, political theology aims to analyse the correspondence
between juridical-political concepts of a specific epoch and the metaphysical concepts
of the same age which are taken for granted by this very epoch.
9
Yet his analysis does
not centre solely in the historical or sociological processes of secularisation, but it
seeks to reveal the very structure of reality, a structure that inevitably brings into play
an absolute, a centre, a supreme authority.
10
Therefore in the passage from tradition
to modernity that Schmitt observes, political theology assumes the dislocation of the
transcendent figure, the God of tradition, as the ultimate source of the legitimacy of
order, but reveals at the same time its necessity. Whereas beforehand God occupied
the place of absolute source, of unconditioned focus, now that place should be filled
by a worldly figure. But if the God of tradition was dethroned, the place it occupies in
the organisation of the social structure was not. As an example of the analysis that
derives from this hermeneutical method, Schmitt displays a series of parallel
dislocations between metaphysical images of the world and forms of political
organisation that have occurred in modern history, with the aim of maintaining the
argument according to which the connection between sovereignty and a transcendent
God, deism and liberalism, atheism and anarchism, does not respond to a historical
contingency, but complies to the nature of the political itself. However, does

8
One of the clearest declarations of this second dimension can be found in the prologue written by
Schmitt for the 1924 republication of Political Romanticism. Here Schmitt maintains that any political
movement is based on a specific metaphysical stance towards the world, a stance that presupposes at
once a representation - not always explicit - of an ultimate instance, of an absolute centre: [t]o a great
extent, it holds true that different and, indeed, mundane factors have taken the place of God: humanity,
the nation, the individual, historical development, or even life as life for its own sake, in its complete
spiritual emptiness and mere dynamic. This does not mean that the attitude is no longer metaphysical.
() What human beings regard as the ultimate, absolute authority, however, certainly can change, and
God can be replaced by mundane and worldly factors. Schmitt, Carl, Political Romanticism,
Cambridge, The MIT Press, p. 17. Translated by Guy Oakes.
9
The presupposition of this kind of sociology of juristic concepts is thus a radical conceptualization, a
consistent thinking that is pushed into metaphysics and theology. The metaphysical image that a
definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to
be appropriate as a form of its political organization. () It proves that in fact, as Edward Caird said in
his book on Auguste Comte, metaphysics is the most intensive and the clearest expression of an
epoch. Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, op. cit., p. 46. The italics are mine.
10
In this sense, as noted by Nicoletti, [l]a secolarizzazione non [for Schmitt] la caduta di ogni
riferimento ad una sfera sacrale, ad un centro trascendente ordinatore, invece la rivelazione nella
sua mutazione e trasformazione storica della struttura permanente del reale. Nicoletti, Michele,
Trascendenza e potere. La teologia politica di Carl Schmitt, Brescia Morcelliana, 1990, p. 96.
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Schmitts development of these particular analogies simply have a descriptive
character that is limited to enumerating the displacements at work in modernity or
does it suppose, on the contrary, the priority of one mode of political organisation
over others?

Schmitt is elusive in his response to this question. On the one hand, it seems
that the descriptions of modern transformations are limited to be an analogical
knowledge surrounding the dislocation of transcendence to immanence, of
sovereignty to democratic identity, of the theological to the technical; on the other
hand, it is clear that that which Political Theology deals with is the danger of the
dissolution of sovereignty. The point in short consists in interrogating whether, from
the analogies formulated by Schmitt, there emerges a sort of priority of understanding
politics or if this equivalence is itself subject to relativism and polytheism of values.
That is, we must examine whether the pattern of correspondences is merely to
describe the "logic of modernity", from the emergence of the concept of sovereignty
(and its analogy with the understanding of a transcendent God) until its demise in
anarchist theories. Or if, added to this genealogical description an argument is
established by Schmitt about the superiority of the model of personal sovereignty, in
which case it would be necessary to question how this superiority is founded.
11


In the description that Schmitt formulates in the third chapter of Political
Theology the great evolutionary line of modernity tends towards the disappearance of
all the ideas of the transcendence, and therefore, towards the disappearance of the
very idea of sovereignty. This first descriptive reading seems to offer an interpretation
of political theology as a radical hermeneutical method that serves to question the
dislocations made in modern thought, and reveal that every political trend responds to
a metaphysical kernel.
12
Yet towards the end of the same chapter this approximation
does not appear to be so clear: as we will see, Schmitt seems to understand here that
the necessity of sovereignty and the meaning of political theology do not respond to
an historical contingency but rely on a specific understanding of human reality. His
argument, therefore, has two dimensions, one that aspires to realise the historical
evolution of modern politics and another that points towards the ontological research
surrounding the grounds of the political. I will now proceed to develop these two
dimensions.


2) Political Theology as a Genealogy of Modernity.


In the work of Schmitt, the understanding of political theology as a clue
towards the interpretation of modernity supposes a settling of scores with the problem
of secularisation. Does this mean a departure from the religious world, a passage from

11
The question could lead us to interrogate whether the sovereign/God model is a subjective
preference of Schmitt, or whether - according to Schmitts suggestion itself - it is a more adequate
expression of the nature of the political activity itself. As Portinaro has observed, it is difficult to decide
on what basis the claim of such superiority is supported: it seems that this constitutes the central dogma
of political theology. See Portinaro, Pier Paolo, La crisi dello Jus Publicum Europaeum. Saggio su
Carl Schmitt, Milano, Edizioni di Comunit, 1982, p. 49.
12
See Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, op. cit., pp. 46-51.
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the sacred to the secular a radical break? Or does it better signify the understanding
of a break with the substance of theology and a continuity of its form?

Secularisation is one of the central concepts in the comprehension of political
philosophical debates in the 20
th
century. It has adopted the range of the genealogical
category that is capable of explaining the historical development of modernity from
its theological roots. As an interpretative category of modernity, secularisation
represents, starting from Webers reflection on it, a real breaking point: the pivotal
question of the debate must proceed to investigate to what extent there exists a
continuity and to what extent there exists a rupture between tradition and modernity.
In this sense, and in spite of the charge put forward by Blumenberg,
13
the category of
secularisation does not function in the work of Schmitt simply as a conceptual
instrument that serves to delegitimize modernity, but within the framework of his
theory it acquires a specific productivity: if on the one hand the category permits
Schmitt to challenge the understanding of modernity as an absolute beginning then,
on the other hand, the secularisation theorem is used by Schmitt against the very
processes of secularisation that are understood as the closure of all political
theology.
14


Secularisation means, for Schmitt, that the institutions and the concepts of
modernity derive in some way, from the sphere of the sacred, in its Christian form:
this supposes, as is evident, that modernity is not fully autonomous, as claimed by the
legitimizing discourse of the Enlightenment and modern discourse in general. It
supposes, in short, that modernity does not represent a new beginning but a translation
and a relocation of the traditional theological institutions and concepts. However, this
displacement at times reveals itself as a breakage: outside the substantialist tradition,
secularisation, even when looked at from this perspective, constitutes a break, if not
with the form, then with the substance that supported political order in the pre-modern
tradition.
15


From this perspective, political theology is only made comprehensible if one
thinks that there exists a discontinuity at the level of the substance (God does not
function as an ultimate ground of the security of order, the order is not a given, it
should be a construct of will and human artifice), but at the same time, a continuity at
the level of form. As Galli observes, it seems that the thesis, according to which all

13
Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, op. cit., pp. 89-102. The positions that seek
to dismiss the possibility of political theology have passed through various stages, from Petersons
classic book to the recent attempt by Zarka, through to Blumenberg and the denunciation of the concept
of secularisation as a category of the illegitimacy of modern times. See Zarka, Yves Charles, Para
una crtica de toda teologa poltica, Isegora. Revista de filosofa moral y poltica, N 39 (Julio-
Diciembre, 2008), pp. 27-47.
14
See Monod, Jean Claude, La querelle de la scularisation. Thologie politique et philosophies de
lhistoire de Hegel Blumenberg, op. cit., p. 159.
15
The reading of Weber, according to this interpretation, would have supposed for Schmitt a radical
break surrounding the possibilities and limits of modern politics. The change in perspective from a
substantialist understanding of order (as found in The Visibility of the Church) towards the recognition
of the impossibility of it (which starts in Political Romanticism and has its peek during the years of
Weimar) would have been the result of this influence. In this regard see, Galli, Carlo, Il cattolicesimo
nel pensiero politico di Carl Schmitt, op. cit., p. 13. See also Schmitt, Carl, The Visibility of the
Church: A Scholastic consideration, in. Schmitt, Carl, Roman Catholicism and political form,
Greenwood press, 1996, pp. 45-60. Translated by G.L. Ulmen.
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the significant concepts of the theory of the State are in fact secularised theological
concepts, leads us to understand that modern politics are dominated by a dual logic.

Firstly, the theorem reveals the non-substantive nature of the modern political
order. This is not founded in transcendence, it is not grounded in the traditional sense
of the word; in it, authority and power do not meet any longer their reassurance in the
other worldliness. Political theology would mean, therefore, that there is only politics
on the basis of the absence of theological grounds, and that this absence is relevant for
modern politics, because it makes impossible a well founded political order. However,
secondly, the theorem leads us to believe that political modernity, even when it has
renounced a traditional foundation of order, maintains a strong continuity with the
theological tradition: even in modern society the construction of political order can
only exist around an absolute centre.
16


In this interpretation, political theology does not constitute a code by which
we may understand the political in general, but it illustrates the specific mode of being
of modern politics.
17
It expresses the historical and conceptual context of the origin of
modern political categories and of the coercion to order that has dominated the
political regime since Hobbes. However, if this Schmittian perspective recognises that
political theology supposes the break with tradition in one dimension it also discovers
that political order itself seems to need an absolute ground. Where is this necessity
established then? And depending on this, what are the limits of Schmitts break with
tradition?


3) Political Theology as Ontology of the Political.


In the historical and conceptual reconstruction of modernity that Schmitt
discussed in Political Theology, we noted the existence of a sort of tension.
18
This
tension existed between an exclusively descriptive reading that limited itself to
establishing correspondences between metaphysical image and political form, and a
reading that understood the Schmittian description of modernity as a closure, from a
form of organisation more in agreement with the nature of the political towards a
gradual denial of the political. So, if at first, Schmitt seems to position himself in an

16
See Galli, Carlo, Carl Schmitts antiliberalism: Its Theoretical and Historical Sources and Its
Philosophical and Political Meaning, Cardozo Law Review, vol. 21, N 5-6, (may 2000), p. 1605. See
also Galli, Carlo, Carl Schmitt on Sovereignty: Decision, Form, Modernity, op. cit., p. 472 and Galli,
Carlo, Lo sguardo di Giano. Saggi su Carl Schmitt, op. cit., p. 23.
17
This seems to be the sense that Schmitt seeks to give his 1922 book when in 1970 he makes a self-
interpretation of the said work in Political Theology II: The book [Political Theology] does not deal
with theological dogma, but with problems in epistemology and in the history of ideas: the structural
identity of theological and juridical concepts, modes of argumentation and insights. Schmitt, Carl,
Political Theology II. The Myth of the Closure of any Political Theology. Cambridge, Polity press,
2008, p. 42. Translated by Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward. In this text Schmitt seeks to refute the
argument that is found at the end of Petersons 1935 book, in which he tried to show "the theological
impossibility of any political theology. Peterson's argument referred specifically to the relationship
between monotheism and monarchy at the beginning of the Christian era. Against this attempt of
theological closure of all possible political theology with a Christian base, Schmitt sought to define the
content of his political theology to modernity and thus to a post-theological era as well.
18
See Supra p. 4.
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analytical and descriptive dimension,
19
towards the end of the third chapter he seems
to suggest that the ability that the regimes founded on immanence have to establish
order and organise the political space is not as effective as those founded on
transcendence. In effect, the progressive elimination of transcendence does not bring
Schmitt to describe the way in which social structure can spring up from immanence.
On the contrary, this disappearance leads him to propose, through the figure of
Donoso Corts, the simultaneous inability to appeal to traditional sources of
legitimacy and the need to vindicate dictatorship as the only possible solution to the
problem of order.
20


A displacement similar to this from description to prescription is repeated
in the fourth chapter of Political Theology. Schmitt seeks to analyze the importance of
the question of decision for the counterrevolutionary philosophy. He tackles this issue
with the apparent intention of presenting the parallelism of authoritarian and anarchist
theories by reference to the question of government. These two theories affirm or,
respectively, deny the necessity of the government on account of a metaphysical
perspective which involves, in the last resort, taking a stand on the question of human
nature.
21
The anthropological question seems to be, therefore, the code that permits a

19
To the conception of God in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries belongs the idea of his
transcendence vis--vis the world, just as to that periods philosophy of state belongs the notion of the
transcendence of the sovereign vis--vis the state. Everything in the nineteenth century was
increasingly governed by conceptions of immanence. All the identities that recur in the political ideas
and in the state doctrines of the nineteenth century rest on such conceptions of immanence: the
democratic thesis of the identity of the ruler and the ruled, the organic theory of the state with the
identity of the state and sovereignty, the constitutional theory of Krabbe with the identity of
sovereignty and the legal order, and finally Kelsens theory of the identity of the state and the legal
order. Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, op. cit., pp. 49-50.
20
If viewed from this perspective of the history of ideas, the development of the nieteenth-century
theory of the state displays two characteristic moments: the elimination of all theistic and
transcendental conceptions and the formation of a new concept of legitimacy. The traditional principle
of legitimacy obviously lost all validity () Since 1848 the theory of public law has become
positive, and behind this word is usually hidden its dilemma; or the theory has propounded in
different paraphrases the idea that all power resides in the pouvoir constituent of the people, which
means that the democratic notion of legitimacy has replaced the monarchical. It was therefore an
occurrence of utmost significance that Donoso Corts, one of the foremost representatives of
decisionist thinking and a Catholic philosopher of the state, one who was intensely conscious of the
metaphysical kernel of all politics, concluded in reference to the revolution of 1848, that the epoch of
royalism was at an end. Royalism is no longer because there are no kings. Therefore legitimacy no
longer exists in the traditional sense. For him there was thus only one solution: dictatorship. It is the
solution that Hobbes also reached by the same kind of decisionist thinking, though mixed with
mathematical relativism. Autoritas, non veritas facit legem. Ibid., p. 51-2.
21
De Maistre spoke with particular fondness of sovereignty, which essentially meant decision. To him
the relevance of the state rested on the fact that it provided a decision, the relevance of the Church on
its rendering of the last decision that could not be appealed. Infallibility was for him the essence of the
decision that cannot be appealed, and the infallibility of the spiritual order was of the same nature as
the sovereignty of the state order () To him, every sovereignty acted as if it were infallible, every
government was absolute a sentence that an anarchist could pronounce verbatim, even if his
intention was an entirely different one. In this sentence there lies the clearest antithesis in the entire
history of political ideas. All the anarchist theories from Babeuf to Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Otto Gross
revolve around the one axiom: The people are good, but the magistrate is corruptible. De Maistre
asserted the exact opposite, namely, that authority as such is good once it exists. Ibid., p. 55. The
italics are mine. The anthropological question related to the problem of evil is present in the work of
Schmitt, above all, during the inter-war period. See for example, Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, op.
cit., pp. 55-6; Schmitt Carl, The Concept of the Political, op. cit., pp. 58-68; Schmitt, Carl, Roman
Catholicism and political form, op. cit., p. 7; Schmitt, Carl, La dictadura. Desde los comienzos del
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definitive response to the question about the superfluous character of government or
its necessity. Here, however, the tension between the descriptive and the prescriptive
dimension is even more evident, and can be expressed in the apparently neutral
affirmation, according to which [e]very political idea in one way or another takes a
position on the nature of man and presupposes that he is either by nature good or
by nature evil.;
22
and the prescriptive one, which assumes that only one of these
positions is commensurate with the nature of politics.
23


In order to make this point clearer, we shall shift our view for a moment
towards The Concept of the Political. Here the interrogation into the anthropological
question is formulated by Schmitt in the context of the argument about the
possibilities of the disappearance of the political pluriverse and its possible
supersession into a cultural, ideological, or otherwise more ambitious
24
unity.

In this context the question arises; for what do men remain free? This, Schmitt
argues, could be responded to by optimistic or pessimistic conjectures, all of which
finally lead to an anthropological profession of faith.
25
The interrogation of a world
that is not politically organised, of a world that knows neither state nor kingdom nor
empire, neither republic nor monarchy, neither aristocracy nor democracy, neither
protection nor obedience
26
leads therefore to the anthropological question and
authorises the passage from the sixth to the seventh section of The Concept of
Political, in which Schmitt will directly tackle this problem.
27


Schmitt initially argues that the question of anthropological presuppositions
can elicit conclusions about the political in general, regardless if one asserts natural
goodness or badness. However, I wish to emphasise the way in which this initial
claim, though neutral in character, is shifted through a series of movements that will
make evident the necessity of assuming a particular type of conduct in relation to
the question of human nature. These movements operate as follows: at the beginning
of the chapter Schmitt affirms that political ideas and theories of the State can be
analysed by dividing them according to the assumption that man is either evil by
nature or good by nature.
28
A few pages later he argues that the need for an
understanding of the problematic nature of the individual is posited by the very nature

pensamiento moderno de la soberana hasta la lucha de clases proletaria, Madrid, Editorial Alianza,
1999, p. 40 y pp. 145-165. Translated by Jos Daz Garca.
22
Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, p. 56. The italics are mine.
23
It should be noted also that, unlike what happens in chapter three in which the shift from
transcendence to immanence can be read at key historical developments, in the fourth chapter, the
opposition does not seem to be understood as a contingent issue, of the development of the history of
modern political ideas, but a structural issue, that questions more clearly the necessary or superfluous
character of government.
24
Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political, op. cit., p. 57.
25
Ibid., p. 58.
26
Ibid., p. 57.
27
As Strauss maintains, the anthropological question arises in view of the question whether the
government of men over men is, or will be, necessary or superfluous. Accordingly, dangerousness
means need of dominion. And the ultimate quarrel occurs not between bellicosity and pacifism (or
nationalism and internationalism) but between the authoritarian and anarchistic theories. Strauss,
Leo, Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, op. cit., p. 113.
28
Schmitt, Carl, The Concept of the Political, op. cit., p. 58.
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of the political,
29
and concludes by arguing that this relationship is analogous in
political and theological thought.
30
As such, if at the beginning of the paragraph it
seems possible to think politically in terms of preserving an impartial stand with
regards to the question of human nature and to that of theology, Schmitt's argument
moves to the assertion of the necessary correlation between human evil and genuine
political thought
31
and to postulate the "methodological" connection between the
assumptions of theology and politics.
32
Having these elements in view, we come now
to the fourth chapter of Political Theology.

29
Because the sphere of the political is in the final analysis determined by the real possibility of
enmity, political conceptions and ideas cannot very well start with an anthropological optimism. This
would dissolve the possibility of enmity and, thereby, every specific political consequence. Ibid., p.
64.
30
The fundamental theological dogma of the evilness of the world and man leads, just as does the
distinction of friend and enemy, to a categorization of men and makes impossible the undifferentiated
optimism of a universal conception of man. In a good world among good people, only peace, security,
and harmony prevail. Priests and theologians are here just as superfluous as politicians and statesmen.
Ibid., p. 65.
31
What remains is the remarkable and, for many, certainly disquieting diagnosis that all genuine
political theories presuppose man to be evil. Ibid., p. 61. The italics are mine.
32
A subsequent question that arises in Chapter 7 of The Concept of the Political refers to the theoretical
status of human evil. This question is not directly answered by Schmitt, at least not in this text, and an
attempt to answer it would exceed the limits of my presentation. However, I must stress that an answer
to this question must follow, without doubt, the path suggested by Leo Strauss in his 1932 review of
The Concept of the Political (recently cited). Here Strauss critically interrogates the status of man's
wickedness in Schmitt in order to delineate the differences between it and the position of the early
modern thinkers. In relation to this problem it is necessary to clarify two issues. In the first place, we
must distinguish, as Strauss maintains, that the way of understanding the evil nature of the early
modern theorists and that of Schmitt, is not entirely identical. If they placed natural evil in the
innocence of a problematic spontaneity, in order to be consistent, Schmitt, in Strausss interpretation,
had to place it, not in this type of evilness but in other type of evilness understood as moral perversity.
The early modern philosophers, Strauss argues, understood evil as innocent evil because they denied
sin. They refused sin because they did not recognize any obligation of individuals prior to their
membership in any particular community, prior to their demands as individuals. But Schmitt, to the
extent that he aims at a radical critique of liberalism, and thus a critique of liberal individualism that
understands that the right is prior to any obligation, must renounce the view of human evil as animal
and thus innocent evil, and to return to the view of human evil as moral baseness. Strauss, Leo, Notes
on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, op. cit. p. 115. Secondly, what is noteworthy, in the
context of this discussion about human nature, is Schmitt addition of the Hobbes-Kristall footnote to
the 1963 edition of The Concept of the Political. The footnote elaborates three considerations
surrounding the problem of natural evil in Hobbes that culminate in the question about whether or not
there can be an inter-changeability of the maxim "Jesus is the Christ." Thus, although no definitive
answer is given on the subject, Schmitt redirects the discussion from the anthropological point to the
theological question and to question of the very ground of order. In this regard, and with regard to the
analysis that Strauss conducted on the problem, Meier maintains that it is clear for Strauss that the
thesis of dangerousness has by no means the status of a mere supposition, nor did it escape him that
Schmitts talk of an anthropological confession of faith sets the tone for a chapter in which the real
intention consists in anchoring the political in the theological () In the center of the seventh chapter
(devoted to anthropology) of the Concept of the Political Schmitt attempts to demonstrate that
politics is founded on theology or, to choose a formulation that more appropriately expresses his
strategy, to induce the reader to believe in such a foundational relationship. Meier, Heinrich, Carl
Schmitt & Leo Strauss. The Hidden Dialogue, op. cit., pp. 51. As a counterpoint to this argumentation,
these questions concerning of the nature of evil are answered by those who interpret Schmitt in what
we called a genealogical perspective, as a theoretical fiction or working hypothesis. In this sense,
Nicoletti maintains that to consider evil as a hypothesis and not as a certain and definitive knowledge is
consistent with the Schmittian epistemological approach, which is oriented towards pragmatism; since
human nature in its essence is unknowable, it must act as if the man was bad. Nicoletti maintains here
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As has been pointed out, the anthropological question arises here in relation to
the contrast between authoritarian and anarchist theories. While the former, on the
premise of human evil, argues the need for government, the latter founded on a
contrary premise, declares its superfluous character.
33
However, in the light of the
analysis of displacement described in The Concept of the Political, is clear that this
contrast cannot be read as equivalent. In Schmitts interpretation, if all genuine
political thought rests on the premise of human evil, the contrast between anarchic
and authoritarian theories cannot be interpreted as a neutral description of different
modes of understanding politics. On the contrary, it seems that - on the assumption of
Schmitt himself - only one of these theories can be true, according to the nature of the
political, while the other cannot.

This is, we understand, the key to interpreting the ultimate meaning of the
fourth chapter in Political Theology. If at the end of the third chapter Schmitt seemed
to suggest that dictatorship was the only possible conclusion for those who, like
Donoso Corts, had realized that legitimacy in the traditional sense no longer existed,
the conclusion of the fourth chapter has a much greater claim to universality. Here
Schmitt argues that dictatorship is the necessary conclusion for those who affirm the
need for government as well as for those who believe themselves to deny it.
34
In this
way, the claim of equality or parallelism, the plurality of options regarding the ground
of the political, is reduced to unity. According to Schmitt, even the most radical
denier cannot renounce this necessary conclusion, at least in its form of absolute
inversion; even he must resort theoretically to theology and, in practice, to
dictatorship.

In this sense, if the removal of the figure of God as a ground of order allows an
interpretation of Schmitts political theology as a theory of modernity, then the
affirmation of human evil as the inner core of all true political theory and as the
ultimate ground for the necessity of government does not seem to favour such a
reading. Understood in this way, political theology seems to be much closer to
theology than to the political.


* * * * *

As I pointed out in the introduction, post-foundational political theory stems
from the recognition of a crisis as to the ultimate ground of the social. Schmitt

that it speaks about a fiction; a fiction that is conscious and one that is of practical use. Nicoletti,
Michele, Trascendenza e potere. La teologia politica di Carl Schmitt, op. cit., pp. 123-4, n. 17.
33
Authority and anarchy could thus confront each other in absolute decisiveness and form a clear
antithesis: De Maistre said that every government is necessarily absolute, and an anarchist says the
same; but with the aid of his axiom of the good man and corrupt government, the latter draws the
opposite practical conclusion, namely, that all governments must be opposed for the reason that every
government is a dictatorship. Every claim of a decision must be evil for the anarchist, because the right
emerges by itself if the immanence of life is not disturbed by such claims. Schmitt, Carl, Political
Theology, p. 66.
34
This radical antithesis [between anarchy and authority] forces him [the anarchist] of course to
decide against the decision; and this results in the odd paradox whereby Bakunin, the greatest anarchist
of nineteenth century, had to become in theory the theologian of the antitheological and in practice the
dictator of an antidictatorship. Ibid., p. 66.
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recognises an inevitable turning point in the passage from tradition to modernity. The
break with the transcendence, the impossibility of resorting to God as the ultimate
ground of the social, is for him a fact, a harsh reality that has to be realised by
political theorists. But this recognition does not lead Schmitt to support the idea of the
problematic status of the legitimising process nor to assert its pluralist nature. The
reintroduction of the necessity of government through a dogmatic affirmation of
human evil as the profound arcanum of all true political theory and practice does not
appear to give rise to a contingent conception of political order. On the contrary, it
seems to denote the heteronomous condition of the political, its dependence on an
incontrovertible principle, rooted in tradition. In this sense, and to the extent that
Schmitt still views the problem of evil and the need for government under the political
theological model, its retrieval by means of a type of thinking that claims to inherit
the break with the thread of tradition and the end of metaphysics is, at least,
controversial. It may be necessary to go beyond the Schmittian thought in order to
consider the problematic character of the ground of political order.
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