Carl Schmitt and the Global Age

Schmitt's thought is the deconstruction of modern political theory. This is true both in internal politics, for the exception/decision theory and for the theory of the "political" (Schmitt, 1972d), which is a genealogy of the Hobbesian rational state theory, and in international politics, for the theory of nomos and the theory of the partisan (which are genealogical complications of geopolitics and state-based international right). Thus, the conflictual element in Schmitt's political thought—the enemy has an ineradicable role in the creation of order, both in the theory of the "political," in the theory of decision of the secularized theologico-political matrix, as well as in the theory of constituent power—is not an apologia for absolute conflict, but serves the orientation of order and the political unity inherent in modern political theory, not to mention Schmittian thought. In Schmitt, this functionality is never completely instrumental to the conflict of order, nor completely subordinate to it. Rather, it is the perpetual disturbance of that order by originary, [End Page 1] internal conflict, as well as the perpetual indeterminateness of order through the conflict that originally determines it.