Carl Schmitt – Political Theology
(5)
“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”
“Only this definition can do justice to a borderline concept. Contrary to the imprecise terminology found in popular literature, a borderline concept is not a vague concept is not a vague concept, but one pertaining to the outermost sphere.”
“This definition of sovereignty must therefore be associated with a borderline case and not with routine.”
“It will soon become clear that the exception is to be understood to refer to a general concept in the theory of the state, and not merely to a construct applied to any emergency decree or state of siege.”
(6)
“The decision on the exception is a decision in the true sense of the word. Because a general norm, as repressed by an ordinary legal prescription, can never encompass a total exception, the decision that a real exception exists cannot therefore be entirely derived from this norm.”
“The exception, which is not codified in the existing legal order, can at best be characterized as a case of extreme peril, a danger to the existence of the state, or the like. But it cannot be circumscribed factually and made to conform to a preformed law.”
“It is precisely the exception that makes relevant the subject of sovereignty, that is, the whole question of sovereignty.”
(7)
“The most guidance the constitution can provide is to indicate who can act in such a case.”
(8)
“This is what is truly impressive in his definition of sovereignty; by considering sovereignty to be indivisible, he finally settled the question of power in the state” – referring to Jean Bodin
(9)
“Sometimes the people and sometimes the prince would rule, and that would be contrary to all reason and all law. Because the authority to suspend valid law – be it in general or in a specific case – is so much the actual mark of sovereignty
“But sovereignty (and thus the state itself) resides in deciding this controversy, that is, in determining definitively what constitutes public order and security, in determining when they are disturbed…”
(10)
“Whether God alone is sovereign, that is, the one who acts as his acknowledged representative on earth, or the emperor, or the prince, or the people, meaning those who identify themselves directly with the people, the question is always aimed at the subject of sovereignty, at the application of the concept to a concrete condition.”
(12)
“What characterizes an exception is principally unlimited authority, which means the suspension of the entire existing order. In such a situation it is clear that the state remains, whereas law recedes.”
“The existence of the state is undoubted proof of its superiority over the validity of the legal norm. The decision frees itself from all normative ties and becomes in the true sense absolute.”
(13)
“All law is “situational law”. The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision. Therein resides the essence of the state’s sovereignty, which must be juristically defined correctly, not as the monopoly to coerce or to rule, but as the monopoly to decide. The exception reveals most clearly the essence of the state’s authority. The decision parts here from the legal norm, and (to formulate it paradoxically) authority proves that to produce law it need not be based on law.”
(14)
“It would be consequent rationalism to say that the exception proves nothing and that only the normal can be the object of scientific interest.”
(15)
“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: it confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception.”
“In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.”
(32)
“A point of ascription first determines what a norm is and what normative rightness is. A point of ascription cannot be derived from a norm, only a quality of content.”
(34)
“Mathematical relativism and nominalism also operate concurrently.”
“What matters for the reality of legal life is who decides.”
(35)
“In contrast between the subject and the content of a decision and in the proper meaning of the subject lies the problem of the juristic form. It does not have the a priori emptiness of the transcendental form because it arises precisely from the juristically concrete. The juristic form is also not the form of technical precision because the latter has a goal-oriented interest that is essentially material and impersonal. Finally, it is also not the from of aesthetic production, because the latter knows no decision.”
(42)
“When Kelsen gives the reasons for opting for democracy, he openly reveals the mathematical and natural-scientific character of his thinking. Democracy is the expression of political relativism and a scientific orientation that are liberated from miracles and dogmas and based on human understanding and critical doubt.”
(47)
“The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were dominated by the idea of the sole sovereign, which is one of the reasons why, in addition to the decisionist cast of his thinking, Hobbes remained personalistic and postulated an ultimate concrete deciding instance, and why he also heightened the state, the Leviathan, into an immense person and thus point-blank straight into mythology.”
(48)
“The image of the architect and master builder of the world reflects a confusion that is characteristic of the concept of causality. The world architect is simultaneously the creator and legislator, which means the legitimizing authority.”
“Since then the consistency of exclusively scientific thinking has also permeated political ideas, repressing the essentially juristic-ethical thinking that had predominated in the age of Enlightenment. The general validity of a legal prescription has become identified with the lawfulness of nature, which applies without exception. The sovereign, who in the deistic view of the world, even if conceived as residing outside of the world, had remained the engineer of the great machine, has been radically pushed aside. The machine now runs itself.”
(49)
“To the conception of God in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries belongs the idea of his transcendence vis-à-vis the world, just as to the period’s philosophy of state belongs the notion of the transcendence of the sovereign vis-à-vis the state. Everything in the nineteenth century was increasingly governed by conceptions of immanence.”
(49-50)
“All identities that recur in the political ideas and in the state doctrines rest on such conceptions of immanence…”
(50)
“The battle against God was taken up by Proudhon under the clear influence of Auguste Comte…”
“The main line of development will undoubtedly unfold as follows: conceptions of transcendence will no longer be credible to most educated people, who will settle for either a more or less clear immanence – pantheism or a positivist indifference toward any metaphysics.”
