Two duelists start with their backs touching; a position that represents, if only in the realm of form, the just grounds of the contest. It is assumed that each will take ten paces before a victor will be decided. All things external to the duel are disregarded, as an ostensibly equal starting point acts as the definitive originary occasion, initiating a course that will end in triumph or defeat. Both march ten paces. Their faces do not meet until the fatal blow – proximity absent immediacy. At ten, each turns to face his adversary - stepping onto an indeterminate plane between life and death. When they do meet, only the bullet has immediacy. Taken to its rational limit, conflict is resolved by the fatal blow. If the ecstasy of struggle provides life its vigor, the duel is the heightened state of Being. For the one who triumphs, he knows “the judgment of God” is, as it always has been, rendered in his favor. Although victory transgresses the ethical norms of society, the terms of the duel were agreed upon under divine purview – hence, any “sin” is absolved by the exception made by the judgment of God, expressed in result. And an act normally considered murder is but a simple ephemeral event, confirming the victor’s convictions and principles to be favoured by God – for now, until the next duel.
So why does Schmitt extrapolate the duel situation into the realm of political conflict? It is the most direct way to create the grounds for the heroic figure, the prophet-messiah, to emerge and redeem the political. The political for Schmitt, as we are reminded again and again, is defined by the sovereign decision regarding the exception. The otherworldly ability to decide can only inspire when taken to its rational limit and beyond: the decision over life and death. For this is a decision once ascribed to God, before his untimely death, now brought to bear by the great hero - a man apparently worthy of divinity. For a man who wrote a tract on the hazards of romanticism in politics, Schmitt's account of leadership is abysmally romantic.
He exploits Kierkegaard's (Constantin Constantius') comments in Repitition on norms and exception to substantiate a politics of conviction alone.
"Eventually one grows weary of the incessant chatter about the universal and the universal repeated to the point of the most boring insipidity. There are exceptions. If they cannot be explained, then the universal cannot be explained, either. Generally, the difficulty is not noticed because one thinks the universal not with passion but with a comfortable superficality. The exception, however, thinks the universal with intense passion." (Fear and Trembling/Repetition, p. 227)
But to think about the exception is much different from a sovereign decision over the exception. Thinking about exceptions is part of the task of dealing with the paradoxical nature of life. These paradoxes cannot be coated over with the veneer of existing normality, and discarded. To do so would align oneself to Cephalus - attending to the normal rituals of life, i.e. sacrifices, while leaving Socrates and the others to tackle more indeterminate matters. But Schmitt decides that such a confrontation of "real" situations requires the unified will of the people to be expressed in the will of the sovereign, insofar that it is this character who can address the situation politically. The romantic notion of a homogenous people is central to this. How can one bring to bear a homogenous people or Volk? Possibly a purge of all elements repugnant to homogeneity. The destruction of internal and external enemies alike? Does Schmitt take the individual modern subject to its extreme, providing it with the illusion of divine power? Is it better to worship an ass rather than no god at all? Oddly, there may be striking similarities between Schmitt's existentialism and Sartre's, which escape me at this moment - and may be entirely erroneous.
