Conceptual Wars

I’m going to preface this reflection by saying that much of our discussion from this class focused on concepts that I don’t know much, if anything, about (ex. European history, which I have never studied, and other political theories or conflicts that I’ve not heard of). Because of this, I can’t really comment well on our discussion, so instead I’m going to bring up in more detail one of the points I found interesting in the text.

As Sarah mentioned, our society has become much more likely to declare war on an idea than on a group of people, for example, the war on terror, or the war on drugs. I think this relates back to Schmitt’s discussion of a pacifist movement gaining enough hostility toward war to declare a war against war on page 36. Long quote, bear with me:

If pacifist hostility toward war were so strong as to drive pacifists into a war against nonpacifists, in a war against war, that would prove pacifism truly possesses political energy because it is sufficiently strong to group men according to friend and enemy. If, in fact, the will to abolish war is so strong that it no longer shuns war, then it has become a political motive, i.e., it affirms, even if only as an extreme possibility, war and even the reason for war.…This war is then considered to constitute the absolute last war of humanity….[the enemy] must not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed. In other words, he is an enemy who no longer must be compelled to retreat into his borders only.

Though practically, this would be a war between pacifists and nonpacifists, the war would be more accurately described as a war against war, and in order for war to be defeated, the pacifists must utterly destroy anyone who is not a pacifist so that no possibility of another war could exist.

The same could be said of any of the wars we have declared on concepts. The war on terror will never be complete until we have completely annihilated every terrorist in the world. Simply pushing them back into their “borders” would not work both because we would have to determine what constituted the border of a terrorist organization, and also because once pushed to that border, the remaining terrorists would be unwilling to admit defeat, and continue to participate in terror acts. Similarly, the war on drugs is in all practicality impossible to complete unless all drugs, and people involved in the manufacturing and distribution of illegal drugs were destroyed.

I liked it, at any rate.

Personally, I found Schmitt’s essay to be a fascinating read. I get that most people seem to have been bored by repetition, both internal and external, or galled by oversimplification (Andrew’s post seems to be an example of both). Perhaps it’s just that as a generally apolitical person, I haven’t run across these ideas before, but I thought that Schmitt’s essay was really fun and interesting, both in the general ideas he discusses, and as a period piece. *Acknowledges general grumbling and disagreement.* I do agree that the way he boils down all political action to the ability of a group to declare war, whether it chooses to do so or not, is an oversimplification of the way we view the “political,” however using the definition of the political that Schmitt provides, his theories have an internal consistency. Schmitt says that, “The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping” (29). Because this is his definition of the political, it makes sense that he continually comes back to conflict, war, and the enemy as defining factors in what makes a state, the political entity. This definition of the political comes across well in his description of party politics. He says

The equation politics = party politics is possible whenever antagonisms among domestic political parties succeed in weakening the all-embracing political unit, the state. The intensification of internal antagonisms has the effect of weakening the common identity vis-à-vis another state. If domestic conflicts among political parties have become the sole political difference, the most extreme degree of internal political tension is thereby reached; i.e., the domestic, not foreign friend-and-enemy groupings are decisive for armed conflict. (32)

Thus, Schmitt argues, “party politics” can exist without being “political” because the conflict between the two parties would have to escalate to the level of civil war in order for them to be political entities, or groups that have acquired the power to wage war, whether they exercise that power or refuse to exercise it.

Like Liz, I found that I couldn’t help comparing some of what Schmitt said with concepts we discussed in Ender’s Game. Beginning with Schmitt’s concept of the “other” as “existentially something different and alien” (27). I found it interesting, however that only a few paragraphs later, Schmitt argues that “An enemy only exists when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity” (28). So, despite our finding something completely alien about our enemies, in order for them to be enemies, something similar must exist between “us” and “them.” Unfortunately, this point comes across in the middle of his differentiation between the private and public enemy, so he does not go on to describe what is similar, only that a similarity exists.

Another concept I found spoke well to our discussion of Ender’s Game is Schmitt’s idea of who can legitimately judge the validity of a conflict. He says

Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent’s way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence. (27)

Therefore, as outsiders to the conflict, we cannot judge the legitimacy of the IF’s decision to fight the buggers because we are not actual participants in the conflict. Since the IF believed that the buggers “intend[ed] to negate [their] opponent’s way of life,” they were justified in going to war. Further, Schmitt says, “The justification of war does not reside in its being fought for ideal or norms of justice, but in its being fought against a real enemy” (49). Since the IF viewed the buggers as a “real enemy,” their war is also justifiable, according to Schmitt.

There are a couple of other quotes that I found interesting, but since you're probably getting tired of reading this post by now, I'll spare you. From reading other posts, you all know much more than I do about political theory, so feel free to correct any misapprehensions on my part.