Carl Schmitt Quotes & Sayings

If the assumptions underlying the legislative state of the parliamentary-democratic variety are no longer tenable, then closing one's eyes to the concrete constitutional situation and clinging to an absolute, 'value-neutral,' functionalist and formal concept of law, in order to save the system of legality, is not far off. The 'law,' then, is only the present decision of the momentary parliamentary majority. — Carl Schmitt

In general, it would be a peculiar type of 'justice' to declare a majority all the better and more just the more overwhelming it is, and to maintain abstractly that ninety-eight people abusing two persons is by far not so unjust as fifty-one people mistreating forty-nine. At this point, pure mathematics becomes simple inhumanity. — Carl Schmitt

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. — Carl Schmitt

The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion. — Carl Schmitt

How did Kirchmann understand the worthlessness of jurisprudence ? The answer lies in the aphorism: "Three revisions by the legislator and whole libraries became wastepaper." With a sharp alteration this answer became a slogan:"A stroke of the legislator's pen and whole libraries became wastepaper." Another aphorism in the same vein made the point even more brusquely and less politely: "Positive law turns the jurist into a worm in rotten wood." Kirchmann meant that jurisprudence could never catch up with legislation. Thus our predicament becomes immediately obvious. What remains of a science reduced to annotating and interpreting constantly changing regulations issued by state agencies presumed to be in the best position to know and articulate their true intent? — Carl Schmitt

The basic outline of the philosophy of the Buribunks: I think, therefore I am; I speak therefore I am; I write, therefore I am; I publish therefore I am. — Carl Schmitt

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. — Carl Schmitt

Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second - if the need arises elimination or eradication of heterogeneity. — Carl Schmitt

All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development - in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent god became the omnipotent lawgiver - but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. Only by being aware of this analogy can we appreciate the manner in which the philosophical ideas of the state developed in the last centuries. — Carl Schmitt

Every fundamental order is a spatial order. One speaks of the constitution of a country or a piece of earth as of its fundamental order, its Nomos. Now, the true, actual fundamental order touches in its essential core upon particular spatial boundaries and separations, upon particular quantities and a particular partition of the earth. At the beginning of every great epoch there stands a great land-appropriation. In particular, every significant alteration and every resituating of the image of the earth is bound up with world-political alterations and with a new division of the earth, with a new land-appropriation. — Carl Schmitt

The most brazen humiliation ever inflicted upon God and mankind, justifying all the curses of the synagogue, is to be found in the 'sive' of the formula Deus sive Natura. — Carl Schmitt

The motorization of law into mere decree was not yet the culmination of simplifications and accelerations. New accelerations were produced by market regulations and state control of the economy - with their numerous and transferable authorizations and subauthorizations to various offices, associations and commissions concerned with economic decisions. Thus in Germany, the concept of "directive" appeared next to the concept of "decree." This was "the elastic form of legislation," surpassing the decree in terms of speed and simplicity. Whereas the decree was called a "motorized law," the directive became a "motorized decree." Here independent, purely positivist jurisprudence lost its freedom of maneuver. Law became a means of planning, an administrative act, a directive. — Carl Schmitt

In the temporal sphere, the temptation to evil inherent in every power is certainly unceasing. Only in God is the conflict between power and good ultimately resolved. But the desire to escape this conflict by rejecting every earthly power would lead to the worst inhumanity. — Carl Schmitt

What did they live on," said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking. "They lived on treacle," said the Dormouse, after thinking a moment or two. "They couldn't have done that, you know," Alice gently remarked. "They'd have been ill." "So they were," said the Dormouse, "very ill." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland — Carl Schmitt

Modern technology easily becomes the servant of this or that want and need. In modern economy, a completely irrational consumption conforms to a totally rationalized production. A marvelously rational mechanism serves one or another demand, always with the same earnestness and precision, be it for a silk blouse or poison gas or anything whatsoever. Economic rationalism has accustomed itself to deal only with certain needs and to acknowledge only those it can "satisfy." In the modern metropolis, it has erected an edifice wherein everything runs strictly according to plan - everything is calculable. A devout Catholic, precisely following his own rationality, might well be horrified by this system of irresistible materiality. — Carl Schmitt

The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition. — Carl Schmitt

The concept of progress, i.e., an improvement or completion (in modern jargon, a rationalization) became dominant in the eighteenth century, in an age of humanitarian-moral belief. Accordingly, progress meant above all progress in culture, self-determination, and education: moral perfection. In an age of economic or technical thinking, it is self-evident that progress is economic or technical progress. To the extent that anyone is still interested in humanitarian-moral progress, it appears as a byproduct of economic progress. If a domain of thought becomes central, then the problems of other domains are solved in terms of the central domain - they are considered secondary problems, whose solution follows as a matter of course only if the problems of the central domain are solved. — Carl Schmitt

All law is situational law. The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision. — Carl Schmitt

Tell me who your enemy is, and I will tell you who you are. — Carl Schmitt

The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression of Proudhon's: whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat. To confiscate the word humanity, to invoke and monopolize such a term probably has certain incalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being human and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity. — Carl Schmitt

The crisis of European jurisprudence began a century ago with the victory of legal positivism. — Carl Schmitt

In the nomadic age, the shepherd (nomeus) was the typical symbol of rule. In Statesman, Plato distinguishes the shepherd from the statesman: the nemein of the shepherd is concerned with the nourishment (trophe) of his flock, and the shepherd is a kind of god in relation to the animals he herds. In contrast, the statesman does not stand as far above the people he governs as does the shepherd above his flock. Thus, the image of the shepherd is applicable only when an illustration of the relation of a god to human beings is intended. The statesman does not nourish; he only tends to, provides for, looks after, takes care of. The apparently materialistic viewpoint of nourishment is based more on the concept of a god than on the political viewpoint separated from him, which leads to secularization. The separation of economics and politics, of private and public law, still today considered by noted teachers of law to be an essential guarantee of freedom. — Carl Schmitt

A world state which which embraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist. The political world is a pluriverse, not a universe. — Carl Schmitt

Legality has become a poisonous dagger, with which one party stabs the other in the back. — Carl Schmitt

When will we learn that childhood is in a great sense not simply a preparation for adult life but a thing unique and complete in itself - a masterpiece of God. — Carl Schmitt

By claiming to be something more than the economic, the political is obliged to base itself on categories other than production and consumption. To repeat: it is curious that the capitalist entrepreneur and the socialist proletarian are of one accord in considering the political's assumption a presumption and, from the standpoint of their economic thinking, regarding the dominance of politicians as immaterial. — Carl Schmitt

True law is not imposed; it arises from unintentional developments. ( ... )Law emerges ( ... ) as something not merely legislated but given. The later positivism knows no origin and has no home. It recognizes only causes or basic norms. It seeks to be the opposite of "unintended" law. Its ultimate goal is control and calculability. — Carl Schmitt

Hauriou, became a crown witness for us when he confirmed this connection in 1916, in the midst of WWI: The revolution of 1789 had no other goal than absolute access to the writing of legal statutes and the systematic destruction of customary institutions. It resulted in a state of permanent revolution because the mobility of the writing of laws did not provide for the stability of certain customary institutions, because the forces of change were stronger than the forces of stability. Social and political life in France was completely emptied of institutions and was only able to provisionally maintain itself by sudden jolts spurred by the heightened morality. — Carl Schmitt

Intelligence and rationalism are not in themselves revolutionary. But technical thinking is foreign to all social traditions: the machine has no tradition. One of Karl Marx's seminal sociological discoveries is that technology is the true revolutionary principle, beside which all revolutions based on natural law are antiquated forms of recreation. A society built exclusively on progressive technology would thus be nothing but revolutionary; but it would soon destroy itself and its technology. — Carl Schmitt

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 specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party. — Carl Schmitt

The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization. — Carl Schmitt

Today nothing is more modern than the onslaught against the political. American financiers, industrial technicians, Marxist socialists, and anarchic-syndicalist revolutionaries unite in demanding that the biased rule of politics over unbiased economic management be done away with. There must no longer be political problems, only organizational-technical and economic-sociological tasks. The kind of economic-technical thinking that prevails today is no longer capable of perceiving a political idea. The modern state seems to have actually become what Max Weber envisioned: a huge industrial plant. — Carl Schmitt

I want to paint a canvasthat will be nothing but harmonious tone. — Carl Schmitt