SCHMITT’S AND CLAUSEWITZ’S VIEWS ON THE CONCEPT OF WAR

In any sense, submerging into the concept of the war might straightforwardly be understood as a reflection on the structure of decision-making process of the political entity. According to Schmitt, the war should absolutely be considered through the distinctive feature of the political entity, through that that which is the decisive character of the political entity is nothing but the jus belli of it. In this context, the jus belli directly refers to the decisiveness of the political entity in regard to determining the limits of the concept of the war. Literal explanation of the jus belli is the law of the war and peace (jus belli ac pacis). Thus, when we think about the concept of the political entity, then, we have to focus much more on its decisive act than any of its approaches to the world, or better, of its relations with the world. That which might barely be found as gory as the death is absolutely the power, or right, of the political entity to have its citizens to call for a war in regard to its realistic structure. As Schmitt (1995, p. 47) does frankly announces, “The authority to decide, in the form of a verdict on life and death, the jus vitae ac necis, can also belong to another non-political order within the political entity, for instance, to the family or to the head of household, but not the right of a hostis declaration as long as the political entity is an actuality and possesses the jus belli. If a political entity exists at all, the right of vendettas between families or kinfolk would have to be suspended at least temporarily during a war.”[1] The structure of the war is, therefore, directly bound up with political entity’s explanation of ‘the state of exception’.[2]

Schmitt and Clausewitz are prone to take the condition of the war as one of the possible ways of politics seriously. It is totally about the condition in which the political entity has to retain its existence. As Schmitt (1995, p. 53) clarifies it, “If a people no longer possesses the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear.”[3] This kind of understanding turns out to be the common view of Clausewitz and Schmitt. Their views on the war seems to be likely to follow Hegel’s views on this issue, that is, that the war cannot mean the end of enmity implying the grouping of political entities regarding the political. Kardeş (2015, p. 78) asserts that the common approach of Schmitt and Clausewitz is nothing other than the concept of the war as a means of the political. In this sense, as Clausewitz (2007, p. 13) clearly puts it, “War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”[4] What it does mean is actually nothing but that the political root of the war is the political friend-enemy grouping of political entities. Moreover, it is quite reasonable to think that the war is the continuation of the political decision-making in the battlefield, that is, that the war does not need to comprise a rational or idealist thought, rather, what it involves in itself is obviously nothing but the ontological and necessary condition of the political entity, a condition which plainly derives from friend-enemy grouping of those entities. According to Kardeş (2015, p. 80), this politicalisation of the war does definitely serve for the common views of those political thinkers.

REFERENCE

Clausewitz, C. v., (2003), Vom Kriege, Erftstadt: Area Verlag.

Clausewitz, C. v., (2007), On War, [Tr. Michael Howard & Peter Paret], Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kardeş, M. E., (2015), Schmitt’le Birlikte Schmitt’e Karşı – Politik Felsefe Açısından Carl Schmitt ve Düşüncesi, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları.

Schmitt, C., (1979), Der Begriff des Politischen, Berlin: Dunkel & Humblot.

Schmitt, C., (1995), The Concept of the Political, [Tr. George Schwab], London: The University of Chicago Press.

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[1] “Die Befugnis, in der Form eines Strafurteils über Leben und Tod eines Menschen zu verfügen, das jus vitae ac necis, kann auch einer anderen, innerhalb der politischen Einheit bestehenden Verbindung, etwa der Familie oder dem Familienhaupt zustehen, nicht aber, solange die politische Einheit als solche vorhanden ist, das jus belli oder das Recht der hostis-Erklärung. Auch ein Recht der Blutrache zwischen den Familien oder Sippen müßte wenigstens während eines Krieges suspendiert werden, ween überhaupt eine politische Einheit bestellen soll.” (Schmitt, 1979).

[2] Der Ausnahmezustand.

[3] “Dadurch, daß ein Volk nicht mehr die Kraft oder den Willen hat, sich in der Sphäre des Politischen zu halten, verschwindet das Politische nicht aus der Welt. Es verschwindet nur ein schwaches Volk.” (Schmitt, 1979).

[4] Der Krieg ist also ein Akt der Gewalt, um den Gegner zur Erfüllung unseres Willens zu zwingen.” (Clausewitz, 2003, p. 14).

SCHMITT’S CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL – 2 (cc. 4-8)

Schmitt’s conceptualisation of the political is obviously rooted in the ontological conflict between the dichotomic distinction of friend and enemy. That which should clearly be considered as having an ontological basis does oddly enough derive basically from the dialectical reciprocity of what the political is as such. According to Schmitt (1995, p. 37), “The political does not reside in the battle itself, which possesses its own technical, psychological, and military laws, but in the mode of behaviour which is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby being able to distinguish correctly the real friend and the real enemy.” This explication of Schmitt directly gives us some tips about the question of durability of the possibility of war and, moreover, the inquiry of the durability or stability of the distinction between the friend-enemy grouping. The point is, according to Schmitt’s vantage point, neither the infinity of the friend-enemy grouping, nor does it settle itself in depoliticalisation of the modern understanding of the state as a reflection of the era. In this context, Schmitt baldly follows the traces of earthly ‘sedentarisation’ of the oncept of the political, which does mainly afford to found itself as a semipermeable limitedness, and, not to appear as an absolute. It seems, therefore, to turn out to be that which appears in any sphere might easily be ended in sphere of the concept the political referring to friend-enemy grouping. Thus, being ontological for the concept of the political does never mean that it is unattainable (unerreichbar) and unchangeable in terms of its running away from political orientation. Other spheres such as economic, religious, cultural, scientific, legal etc. cannot become the political itself, as it is almost never encompassed by them; rather than this, what we should put in this claim on this occasion is that which is nothing other than the political is the absolute destination of those other spheres. As far as we understand Schmitt’s point of view, political entity is doubtlessly the decisive entity for the friend-enemy grouping, and it is probably the total state defining the way in which society inevitably gets embedded in the political, in which the state does eventually becomes an authoritative state reigning over its area. As Schmitt (1995, p. 43) realistically claims, “The political entity is by its very nature the decisive entity, regardless of the sources from which it derives its last psychic motives. It exists or does not exist. If it exists, it is the supreme, that is, in the decisive case, the authoritative entity.”

Liberalists, according to Schmitt’s terminology, are those who easily propound the neutralisation and depoliticalisation of the state in regard to its role of being deciive entity. What it does mean is basically that liberalists’ views in general destroys the decisive position of the state and throws it into the abyss of indeterminatedness in which friend-enemy grouping of the concept of the political crucially turns into the possibility of private war, or better, it is again and again transferred to the political absolutely.

Another feature of the state is its being entitled to decide jus belli (law of war), as Schmitt (1995, p. 46) depicts, “The state as the decisive political entity possesses an enormous power: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposing of the lives of men. The jus belli contains such a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right to demand from its own members the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enemies.” This sentence seems to be affected by Hegel’s realistic political philosophy. Declaration of war does necessarily imply the freedom of the state, giving the norm its concrete content, deciding for itself in terms of givenness of it in the concrete case, and the approval that the war cannot altogether be outlawed.

Schmitt defines two types of plurality which are differentiated through the effectiveness of the state. On the one hand, the liberalist understanding conceives of the state as a negative organisation and strives to limit it to an organisation protecting merely the individual interests; however, the state does, on the other hand, refer to at least two different states around the world. Unlike liberalist conceptualisation of the concept of plurality, Schmitt poses the plurality of states as the necessary condition of the political; otherwise, that is, in the absence of plurality of states, it is impossible to think of the friend-enemy grouping as the essence of politics, as the necessary result of being ‘human’ having by its nature the evil.

REFERENCE

Schmitt, C., (1995), The Concept of the Political, [Tr. George Schwab], London: The University of Chicago Press.

SCHMITT’S CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL (cc. 1-3)

Schmitt’s political philosophy concretely presents us the vantage point of the political understanding of philosophical concepts. Obviously, it does not mean that the concepts which are already philosophical become political in Schmitt’s style of philosophising; rather than this kind of approach, Schmitt’s view denotes that spring of the political cannot, even a little, be submerged in the realm of the philosophy or in other subfields, that is, that the political clearly derives from the very beginning of what the political scope includes in itself as its very possibility. In this sense, it is quite plausible to consider Schmitt’s concept of the political as conceptualisation of ontology of the politics. However, even if it seems to be the general conceptualisation of thought in politics, it should be better to think of the concept of the political (der Begriff des Politischen) as the concept of modern political approach which have arouse with the appearance of the concept of modern state. In this context, Schmitt (1995, p. 19) begins his essay (The Concept of the Political) with his famous statement: “The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.”[1] What it does imply is nothing, but the modern state established upon the top of the bureaucracy, legitimate power to reign over the society (die Gesellschaft), and apparently, to perpetrate violence to its enemies proclaimed before. As it is blatantly mentioned before, the concept of the political does clearly refer to the ontological establishment of the political sphere. By doing so, Schmitt implicitly posits that which can be defined by an in itself should rather be independent of other related subfields such as religious, cultural, economic, legal and scientific (1995, p. 23). According to Hegelian point of view, the state is the peak point of the social organisation, and thus, clearly superior to the society. If it is necessary to interpret Schmitt’s approach compared to that of Hegel, then, probably, the main concern of this comparison should basically turn out to be to and fro reciprocal views of these thinkers in regard to constitution of their political philosophies, in other words, whereas Hegel understands the state as the most superior power of society, Schmitt considers of it as the main ‘apparatus’ of decision making, or better, as the most decisive organ and the appearance of the political. In this context, the concept of the political is rooted in nothing, but its self-proclaimed being of the state. As Schmitt (1995, p. 26) depicts, “The political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”[2] That is the ontological basis of the concept of the political because of the fact that this sentence defines the political field as being independent of others. In addition to this, Schmitt (1995, p. 28), in the footnoteof given page, indicates that “In his Republic, Plato strongly emphasises the contrast between the public enemy (πολέμιος) and the private one (έχυρός), but in connection with the other antithesis of war (πολέμος) and insurrection, upheaval, rebellion, civil war (στάσις). Real war for Plato is a war between Hellenes and Barbarians only (those who are by nature “enemies”), whereas conflicts among Hellenes are for him discords (στάσεις).” He rather seems, therefore, to be on the track of the dialectical understanding of Hegel in terms of that which has affected the realistic political philosophy of Hegel has clearly been influencing that of Schmitt. As a consequence, political decision making, which is based on the distinction between the public enemy and friend, is much more different than one’s private decisions on the person with whom he/she might have positive or negative relations. Moreover, positions of the friend and enemy should not be taken for granted because of that, when doing so, namely crystallising friendenemy grouping as a distinction eternal, it might turn into abstraction consisting in nothing in reality and punishing the decision maker, or the state, severely. The friend-enemy grouping rests completely on situations which might be exposed to alteration. However, this never means that the grouping is reasonable without its appearance, and, that it does not encompass the possibility of physical killing. Hence, the concept of the political directly refers to the danger of killing or being killed by the enemy: this is the absolute point which turns it into being an ontological and eruditely constituent category in political philosophy. As Schmitt (1995, p. 35) clearly emphasises, “War as the most extreme political means discloses the possibility which underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction of friend and enemy.”[3]

REFERENCES

Schmitt, C., (1979), Der Begriff des Politischen, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Schmitt, C., (1995), The Concept of the Political, [Tr. George Schwab], London: The University
of Chicago Press.

1 “Der Begriff des Staates setzt den Begriff des Politischen voraus.” (1979)
2 “Die spezifisch politische Unterscheidung, auf welche sich die politischen Handlungen und Motive
zurückführen lassen, ist die Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind.” (1979)
3 “Der Krieg als das extremste politische Mittel offenbart die jeder politischen Vorstellung zugrunde liegende Möglichkeit dieser Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind.” (1979)

NEGATİF YÜZ

Üstümde yıldızlı gök demişti Königsbergli
içerimde ahlâk yasası.
Yasa mı? Kimin için? Neyi berkitir yasa?
İster gözünü oğuştur, istersen tetiği çek
idam mangasındasın içinde yasa varsa.

İsmet Özel

En son anlam üzerine yazmıştım ve anlam arayışının durduğunu, bu durmanın da insan soyunu belirli bazı riskler altında bıraktığını ifade etmiştim. Kısaca bakacak olursak, anlam verecek olan zeminlerin yıkılışından ve elbette bunun yerine konulacak bir şey olmamasından kaynaklanıyor sorun. Yani anlam temel olarak bir hayat sistematiğini ifade ediyor. Bugünün insanının buna tahammülü yok. Hayatın bu bölünüşü ve artık takip edilemez kadar ufak parçalara ayrılmasının bir diğer sonucu da unutma pratiklerinin hayatımıza çok daha fazla yayılması ve hızlanması. Unutmak tüm insanlar için olağan bir süreç, yeni girdilerin, tecrübenin dönüştürülmesinin, belki de kısaca insan olmanın bir sonucu ve yine bir nedeni. Ancak bugünün unutması çok daha hızlı ve güçlü. Nazım Hikmet şöyle yazmıştı: “En fazla bir yıl sürer / yirminci asırlılarda / ölüm acısı.”[1] Yirminci asırda bile bu kadar kısa sürede gerçekleştiği düşünülen unutma edimi, yirmi birinci yüzyılda nasıl? Konuya dönelim; bugün yoğunluğun, teknolojinin ve metropolün getirdiği ikinci bir unutma türüyle karşı karşıyayız. Dediğimiz gibi, unutma da bir ansıma biçimi olarak algılanabilir, bunda yanlış bir yan yok. Ancak bizim unutmayı sorgulamamızın en önemli nedeni unutma ediminde değişenin ne olduğunu ve bu yeni unutmanın nereden kaynaklandığını bulmak.

Psikanalizin bastırılanı bilince getirme ve bir farkındalık yaratma yaklaşımı olduğunu düşünürsek, aynı zamanda onun bir anlamda unutulanı geri getirmek gibi bir amacının olduğunu da ifade edebiliriz. Bu şekilde bir iddiaya devam edersek, şunu da eklememiz işten bile değildir: o halde unutulan tanrısallaşmıştır. Bugünkü unutma edimi de bu noktada bir özne sorunudur.

Saffet Murat Tura şunları yazıyor: “Freud, yasakçı ve bütün kadınların sahip ‘baba’ ile oğullar arasındaki mitik mücadelenin, ‘baba’nın öldürülmesi ile son bulduğunu, ancak babanın ölümünden sonra doğan kaos ortamının Babanın Yasası’nın yerleşmesine yol açtığını savlar. Nitekim Freud, ‘Musa ve Tektanrıcılık’ta da aynı temayı işler ve Musa’nın Tanrısının, Musa, kavmi tarafından öldürüldükten sonra Tanrı konumuna tam olarak yerleştiğini söyler.”[2] Babanın öldürülmesi ile baba nasıl yasa haline geliyorsa, unutma da bir bakıma küçük bir yasa yaratma edimi haline geliyor. Unutmayla ölümün doğrudan doğruya birbiri ile ilişkisinin olduğunu iddia etmiyoruz, ancak böyle bir ilişkinin bilinç düzeyinde kurulmasının bu çok kolay ve bir o kadar da zor durumun bilincin kör noktalarında daha işlevsel olmasını sağlıyor olabileceği aşikâr.

Buna yönelik iki sonuç çıkarılabilir: ilki unutmanın tanrısallaştırdığı yasanın kabullenilişi; ikincisi de elbette unutmanın anımsamayla birlikte okunabileceği.

Öznenin görece toplum içerisinde eridiği ve kendini ayırt etme gücünün zayıflığından dem vurulduğu dönemlerde elbette bu unutma daha toplumsal bir edimdi. Toplumsal edimler hala devam etmekle birlikte, günümüzde unutma pratiğinin öznelleştiğini düşünüyoruz. Eskiden baba toplumsal olarak öldürülmüş ve onun yerine bir ‘baba yasası’ konulmuş olabilir, fakat günümüzde bunun daha öznel ve küçük unutmalarla sağlandığını söylemek yanlış olmaz. Parçalanmış durumda olan ve bunun ayırdında olmayan özne kendine yeni yasalar yaratır; aynı zamanda bu yasaların, veya onun bir başlangıcı olarak unutmanın da, vardığı yer tam olarak onun özgürlük sanrısıdır. Bu da kendi sonluluğunu görmeyen öznenin, veya bunu görmekten artık sonsuzluğu sonluluğa sığdırabileceğini düşünen öznenin, en büyük problemidir. Bu, onun kırılganlığıdır. Bu paramparça olma halinde özne kendiliğine yeni yamalar arar: akışkan hayat. İşte, “anlam nasıl yok oldu?” sorusuna belki bir cevap çıkar buradan. Özne-toplum ilişkisi, yani kültürün kendini dayatmasındaki farklılaşmalar da belki buradan keşfedilebilir. Ancak bu bizim konumuz değil şu an için.

Diğer yandan, unutmanın bir yasa ortaya çıkarması belki de onun anımsamayla okunmasına olanak sağlayabilir. Elbette unutma ancak anımsamayla vardır. Yasayı en iyi bilen, babanın yerine geçen yeni-babadır, yani babayı öldüren oğul, yani babayı öldüren baba. Mutlak bir unutmadan bahsedemeyiz, o ancak ölüm olurdu (yine de buraya bir ‘belki’ koyalım). Bu, tıpkı bilimlerde olduğu gibi bir unutmadır; bir varlığın ancak bir yanlarının görmezden gelinmesiyle, bir kısmının unutulmasıyla ele alınması.

Buraya kadar bıkmadan okuyanlar için not: Konu hakkında daha düzenli ve sistematik bir düşünce geliştirdiğimde elbette yazacağım. Ancak mümkünse bile bu, ne zaman olacağını bilmiyorum.

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[1] ‘Karıma Mektup’ şiirinden.

[2] ‘Freud’dan Lacan’a Psikanaliz’ kitabından.