Well, the election is only a short time away. And lest you felt that political campaigning couldn’t get any more base, you were wrong. Over the last year, descriptors of opponents have ranged from“fascist” to “communist,” from “bigot” to “existential threat,” and from “Hitler” to “Jezebel.”
Ah, Democracy.
Clearly, in politics, we have a bright line separating “friends” from “enemies.” But this is nothing new. A political philosopher named Carl Schmitt unpacked these phenomena nearly one hundred years ago.
Carl Schmitt was a conservative German constitutional theorist who made his name penning his famous 1932 work The Concept of the Political. In it, Schmitt articulated a paradigm of “the political” that has been fervently debated ever since. Schmitt explained,
In contrast to the various relatively independent endeavors of human thought and action, particularly the moral, aesthetic, and economic, the political has its own criteria which express themselves in a characteristic way. The political must therefore rest on its own ultimate distinctions, to which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced. Let us assume that in the realm of morality, the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetics beauty and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable. . . The specific distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.
In his thesis (and in subsequent works), Schmitt spared no criticism of liberal democracy. He suggested that, in championing plurality and individualism, liberal democracy failed to recognize the foremost (and base) reality of human nature: we are broken, we are scared, and we make existential distinctions about who and what scares us. Liberal democracy, he argued, waters down the values and cultural bonds that unite a people and the sense of who is “friend” and “enemy.” In so doing, Schmitt warned, such a system allows in enemies (who themselves keenly and unapologetically recognize the friend-enemy distinction) who will destroy society. In other words, by white-washing the friend-enemy distinction, liberal democracy allows the clear-sighted, devious fox into the dreamy, befuddled hen house. The consequence, Schmitt warns, is catastrophic.
Furthermore, Schmitt contends, liberal democracy cannot ultimately avoid the friend-enemy distinction. It only obscures the reality and impairs the ability of a people to see clearly amidst feel-good processes and false safeguards, rhetorical flourishes, and cynical obfuscations. In the end, Schmitt contends, this blinkered approach leaves the people imperiled until it is too late.
Schmitt pulls no punches on just who the enemy is:
The political enemy need not be morally evil, or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specifically intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Schmitt worried that “If a people is no longer willing to decide between friend and enemy the most likely result will not be eternal peace but anarchy or subjection to another group that is still willing to assume the burdens of the political.”
If some of this seems hauntingly familiar, it may not surprise that the Nazis took a shine to Carl Schmitt. The nascent National Socialist Party brought Schmitt on, for a time, as the “crown jurist of the Third Reich” offering legal justification for many horrible acts including Hitler’s bloody 1934 purge of scores of his enemies in “The Night of the Long Knives.” Within a few years, however, Schmitt would fall out of favor with Hitler’s regime due to a philosophical divergence and, quite simply, because he ceased to be useful to them. In 1985, Carl Schmitt died, an unrepentant National Socialist and legal scholar. And now, modern thinkers are reckoning with his work and asking themselves if he was, in fact, on to something.
Lest one dismisses Schmitt’s ideas as bigoted ideas from a bygone age, consider our harsh modern reality. Whether we like it or not, our world does, in fact, operate more or less on a “friend-enemy” distinction. Not unreasonably, everybody desires community and craves safety, security, and success within that community. As such, people are drawn to like-minded enclaves, whether they be physical communities or associations within civil society. Conservatives are drawn to conservatives and liberals to liberals. The religious commonly congregate with fellow religious. Friendships flourish between parents whose children play on the same team while childless adults may gather at the latest opera, museum, or nightclub. Enthusiasts for football or golf enjoy their fellow sports fans. The list of like-associates-with-like goes on and on. Not surprisingly, friendship and common interests (faith, family, and values) guide people to deep and somewhat protective relationships.
To be sure, Carl Schmitt put his finger on a human tendency to be “wary of the other,” but he goes too far. He fails to recognize that life, thankfully, isn’t that neat. There is immense intermixing of political persuasions, demographic groups, and value sets across the wide expanse of social engagements. And, pace Carl Schmitt, the world does not fall apart. To be so binary about human relations by dividing all relationships into “friend or enemy” is akin to the unthinking modern binary injunction to define all relationships between “oppressor or oppressed.” It just isn’t that simple.
Even more, contra Carl Schmitt, most people want to live in peace and not in conflict. Most people recognize that life, society, and the people we meet are complex. In encountering others, we are not confronted with either the monochromatic of bright benevolence or dark malevolence. Rather, we encounter Shakespearean figures of a deep variegation.
So, returning to our current election year malaise, the temptation to abide by Schmittian “friend-enemy” distinctions is mammoth. But I think many of us are tired of it all. I know I am. That is why I was so heartened by a story I read from 1973—a story that illustrated the facile nature of Schmitt’s ultimate conclusions.
At the time, George Shultz was President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury (Shultz would ultimately become Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan). With Cold War tensions nearly three decades old and the Vietnam War still raging, there was little debate whether the Soviets were America’s enemy. During this feverish time, Shultz found himself in Leningrad engaged in tedious meetings with a particularly crusty, old-school Soviet Communist counterpart named Nikolai Patolichev. As luck would have it, their schedule lightened giving them some time to tour. Asked what he might like to see, Shultz hoped to take in the art at The Hermitage or the architecture of Peter the Great’s Summer Palace. Instead, the dour Patolichev insisted that their first visit should be to the Leningrad cemetery. As George Shultz remembered it:
We entered and looked down upon a long path between huge mounds where tens of thousands of Soviet citizens who died in the [Nazis’] Siege of Leningrad were buried. I carried a wreath and we walked slowly down the path toward a memorial as funereal music played. As we walked, Patolichev described the fighting and the number of people who were killed. “Every Russian family has some member who fought, died, or suffered as a result of the Siege of Leningrad,” he told me. As he spoke, I noticed that the Soviet interpreter had dropped out and had been replaced; she had moved back with the rest of the party and was openly sobbing.
The tough old guy, Patolichev, had tears streaming down his cheeks. When we were about to leave the cemetery, I said to him, “I, too, fought in World War II and had friends killed beside me.” Then I went to the middle of the terrace above the cemetery, raised my hand in a long salute, dropped it smartly, as an old marine, turned about-face, and left. The Soviets were moved by this salute far more than the wreath.
Ostensibly, George Shultz and Nikolai Patolichev were not friends. For all intents and purposes, as men from profoundly divergent backgrounds, systems, and worldviews, they could, according to Schmitt’s clean construct, be deemed enemies. And yet, in a moment of deep poignancy and unexpected intimacy, Shultz and Patolichev were stripped of all but their common humanity—a humanity deeply rooted in the duty of steadfast soldiering and the pain of searing loss. Shultz and Patolichev were not friends, per se. But they were no longer enemies.
Perhaps Carl Schmitt was right—up to a point. Out of sheer survival, we can find some advantage in an almost unconscious tendency to identify our friends and enemies—to draw bright, if not bitter, lines—and arrange our lives accordingly. But is this how we want to live?
Not me.
This election season and beyond, let’s embrace the complexity of our neighbor (and ourselves). Let’s find those untravelled paths of poignancy and intimacy that wend their way, imperceptibly, through the Sturm und Drang of politics. Let’s be charitable. Vigorous in defense of principles, but resolved in defense of comity.
This season let’s prove Carl Schmitt wrong.
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Meh. Christ calls us friends. His grace is all we need to forgive our enemies. But we forgive them because they are our enemies.
How many millions died under Stalin in the 30’s while Patolichev rose in the ranks of his beloved Communist Party? Good for Patolichev and his comrades for defending a city they renamed for Lenin instead of St. Peter. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” in Luke 6:32
Since it is the silly season of Synodaling, I will “embrace the complexity of our neighbor” by recommending an amazing novel about an even bigger battle, the siege of Stalingrad. It is an amazing 1,000 pages:
https://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-Vasily-Grossman/dp/1681373270
I really appreciate your comment because I’m not versed enough about this history and people, but I felt the same when reading it. Thank you for the book recommendation.
“Francisco. Stand, ho! Who’s there?
Horatio. Friends to this ground.”
Hamlet.1.1
Well, I suppose the important factor left out of Schmitt’s equation and that of liberals, socialists AND conservatives, is that political considerations, which are in an order of their own (which is not religion), are ultimately subject to the otherwordly ends of societies’ members. Secular societies, unlike the Church, are merely moral unities of persons – body/soul composites that exist in their own right.
Why can’t we all just get along? Ask Lucifer.
Exactly Mr. Marshall. That’s the real enemy.
Carl Schmitt’s analysis of politics, particularly Liberal Democracy as the ‘enemy’ must be assessed in context of the political turmoil during 1932 Germany. Author Worner correctly addresses Nazism and Schmitt. Although it was 1932 that the last real election was held, the Nazi party winning 196 seats although at a loss from the previous election benefiting the Communist party. Hitler made his move that year against the Communists. Schmitt saw the danger to society of communism similar to how we in the US perceive the danger of liberal democracy in America. The analogy is virtually an equal comparison.
Can we benefit from a modified definition of the enemy as simply another human, but described by Schmitt as inexorably alien and prone to conflict – as suggested by Dr Worner? Certainly. Indeed as Christians, and patriotic to the Constitution we must. There is ‘across the aisle’ cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. Nevertheless what Schmitt understood per force of logic regarding communism as the enemy, Democrats have evolved dramatically, assuming similar to communism [as well as Nazism] oppressive features of division and control, the political empowering of the judiciary that are a perceivable threat to a true democratic way of life.
Compounding our dilemma are the similarities in ends of the Left [liberal democracy] and Catholic social teaching regarding the poor, the economically oppressed migrant. Catholicism in the US is caught in a tight place. Social justice policy requires a comprehensive analysis acknowledging national rights, a safe environment, secure borders, and managed immigration/migration. America’s difficulty is also compounded by a papacy that seems contemptuous of Americans, likely due to a questioning, recalcitrant posture toward Vatican policies, likely reflected by the dearth of appointments to cardinalate. The American Catholic Church, also deeply affected by government policy, is a virtual combatant fighting war on two fronts. I would add we have Justice on our side.
It all, that is the issue of diversity, that separates and begs for cohesion separating friend from enemy alluded to by Schmitt addressed by Worner brings us to the question of unity within the Church. As Christ’s Mystical Body we may question what truly unites us? Is it consistency in Apostolic doctrinal witness, or is it conformity to a prescribed reevaluation of that doctrine or doctrines within a process called Synodality?
If we are debating settled doctrine, revelation made to the Apostles what can we claim as the unifying principle other than the process of debate? Whereas the Church as a unified body is infinitely more, different from a debate process, or any process, since process is a discovery journey toward acquiring knowledge of an end. A unified Body already possesses knowledge of its end, those principles which cohesively bind it toward achieving its end. The Synod on Synodality is in
effect a process that conflicts with what it claims to represent.
Yes to the “deep poignancy and unexpected intimacy of our common humanity”…
…but as for “unity within the Church” and even unity beyond the Church…the alternative estrangement of “enemies” is as far from our common humanity, as “fraternity” alone is from the whole Christian anthropology.
The insider-outsider thing, today, is manifested in myopic Modernity (Secularism vs faith & reason), Islamic fideism and insularity (the House of Islam vs the House of War), and atheistic class warfare (Marxism and Sinicization).
Or, even vanguard/insider Synodality vs outsider “backwardists” and “special cases” (expert “study groups” vs dissenters from Fiducia Supplicans: all continental Africa, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Peru, parts of Argentina, France and Spain, and all of G.K. Chesterton’s inclusive “democracy of the dead”).
SUMMARY: in building bridges and fraterity, maybe we don’t have to carry personal repentance and the Incarnation/Redemption on our shirtsleeve day-in-and-day-out….but what, still, about “in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2)?
Dr. Worner concludes with, “Is this how we want to live? Not me.”
We all may not want to live this way, but circumstances may require it. Many decades ago (but in my lifetime) political differences may have consisted of issues such as one party wanting to spend 10 billion dollars on road construction and the other party wanting to spend 15 billion dollars. They might (in a friendly way) compromise on 12.5 billion.
That is no longer the situation today. We have one side wanting to kill even more than the one million unborn babies a year that we now have, and the other side opposing that. You cannot compromise on that. The same with those in favor of mutilation of minors for so called sex change, men participating in women’s sports and locker rooms, so called same sex marriage, and on and on.
With the upcoming anniversary of the Fatima appearance and miracle, I just read an article on correspondence between Sister Lucia and a Cardinal. He reported that Sister Lucia said that the battle was going to between Satan and God over the family. And the Cardinal said that with the current abortion issue and so called homosexual marriage the battle was on.
We cannot take the position that, “Can’t we all just get along?” We are in a battle, a spiritual battle. If you don’t even recognize that you are in a battle you are going to lose.
I am sure that Dr. Worner has good intentions, but I don’t see them as corresponding to our current situation.
Let’s all get along and sing Kumbaya. Nauseating.
I thought the story about the Russian cemetery was a moving example of our common humanity. We are all God’s children and imagine how He must grieve to see us destroy each other?
It’s not naive to appreciate what we have in common or to seek common ground. Blindness to sin is something entirely different. There’s a balance needed. Serpents and doves come to mind.
Well, one party in the U.S. is now definitely against Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. See the mockery of communion by the Democrat governor of Michigan:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/12/michigan-bishops-protest-gov-whitmers-mockery-holy-communion/
Michigan Bishops Protest Gov. Whitmer’s Mockery of Holy Communion
The interest in political theology arises from the need to find a transcendent point that can inspire the solidarity essential to democracy. This is the perspective of Habermas. However, while political theology tends to blur the lines, the theology of politics preserves the relationship while maintaining the distinction between directions.
Similarly to political theology, there also exists an economic theology, an Enlightenment-era, secularized version of Providence, regulating the free market. This is Adam Smith’s idea that the common good arises from the sum of individual selfish interests. Opposed to this is the restraining force of Schmitt’s theological-political *katechon*, which, though temporarily subdued in 1989, returned to the fore after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, prompted by the need to transcend the immanent horizon of globalization.
In the phrase ‘political theology,’ it is the adjective that subsumes the noun, a critique made by Jan Assmann, the late German historian, of Carl Schmitt’s view that politics was either a product of the secularization of theology or the sacralization of the political. In the West, theocracy is an exception, whereas ‘Caesaropapism,’ the throne-altar or Church-State alliance-, is the norm. Politics becomes theological when it must unite a people against another, or one part of the people against another. Political theology, therefore, is the ideology of wartime.
A key historical distinction necessary for understanding the relationship between theology and politics is that between the Edict of Milan in 313—which belongs to the Christianity of the first four centuries, seeking religious freedom for all and challenging the political theology of Rome—and Theodosius, who reintroduced the model of the ‘Sacrum Imperium,’ now Christian-Roman, which remained in place until Vatican II.
Erik Peterson emerges as a key figure in opposition to Schmitt. Peterson left Nazi Germany for Italy, where he lived from 1933 until his death in 1960. Though not widely known, he stands at a significant crossroads of intellectual exchange. His 1935 work, “Monotheism as a Political Problem”, drawing from Augustine, constitutes a direct critique of Schmitt, by then the leading jurist of the Third Reich, and of the ‘German Christians’ fascinated by Hitler.
Schmitt was obsessed with chaos—whether the aftermath of Germany’s defeat in World War I or the chaos unleashed by the October Revolution. The exception, he argued, is the metalegal and political element that establishes the norm and halts chaos, much like Hobbes, who saw the principle of order in a sovereign who stands outside the order itself.
With Peterson, we see, for the first time in the 20th century, a critique of political theology. Christianity, as Joseph Ratzinger—Peterson’s student and later theologian—would later affirm, has a political ethos but no political theology. The kingdom of Caesar is not the kingdom of God. Peterson insisted that Christianity is fundamentally incompatible with political theology. Christian dualism—God and Caesar—severs the bond between religion and politics. In fact, democracy begins with Christianity.
The critique, formulated by some, of this dualism is deeply indebted to deconstructionism, and its outcome is a form of naturalism, radically immanent, in line with the juridical neo-positivism of the globalized era. Critical thought, as Horkheimer understood, presupposes a vanishing point, a transcendent horizon. Historically, Christianity, outside its political-theological distortions, has represented this point.
In particular, St. John Paul II, who strongly opposed the war in Iraq and prevented the conflict from taking on the form of a crusade, a clash between Christian West and Islam, followed the letter and spirit of Vatican II in this dissociation between the theological and the political. It was in this Council that the Church definitively abandoned the medievalist model of the ‘Sacrum Imperium’ and consciously returned to the pre-Theodosian paradigm, affirming the distinction between Church and State, the principle of religious freedom for all, and the martyrdom so dear to Peterson. This dynamic belongs to virtue ethics, rooted in the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and reaching its pinnacle in the work of Thomas Aquinas, especially in his “Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics” and the Second Part of his famous “Summa”, as a response to the limitations of Kantian normativism and the reductive vision of humanity and the person typical of liberalism.
Human mercy, however, is always secondary, always preceded Augustinianly by grace—a fundamental tenet of the present Pope’s magisterium. His critics, who have accused him of Pelagianism, Molinist Jesuitism, or modernism, claiming he prioritizes praxis, not only reveal their bad faith but also a profound ignorance.
The issue of Pelagianism remains highly relevant today, understood as the risk of a blind optimism regarding the limits of human nature, well embodied by the paradigmatic position of Yuval Noah Harari.
Touching first on the profane, and then moving to the divine, I would note that as to political speech and behavior, the person doing this admirably is J.D. Vance. The people at the top of the ticket (neither Trump nor Harris) do not and cannot do what Vance does, in making an intelligent appeal to fellow citizens.
As to what matters most, the divine, the difficulty of being a Christian man or woman is not a matter of fact, but instead a matter of intentions.
As Jesus himself reminds us, we have enemies (it’s just a fact, that by being a follower of Christ, we will have enemies). This is an unavoidable consequence of being a Christian, which means putting on the mind and heart of Christ, a sign which will be opposed.
The primary thing that makes a difference is how Jesus commands us to respond to those who oppose us: “I say to you: love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
We are not to behave with our enemies as the world bids us behave, and seek to alienate and destroy them, as Schmitt (etc etc etc) would advise.
We are not to obey the mind and voice of violent men and women …we are to obey the mind and voice of Jesus.
As to those in our very own families who oppose us, that is among the great challenges. But we should all remember the warning of Jesus and his apostles: “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We are to love and appeal to the truth until the end of our days. That is our duty we owe to Christ and to all those we love, who are yet beloved of God.
Or as God would surely put it: “Is it too small a thing for you to love your enemies, as I love them?”
My friend, she *is* a communist. Or at least a Marxist. She isn’t “like” one; she is one.