What in the hell …

It’s an essay by Schmitt. Luke posted a link to a PDF copy of it in his contribution to the LS Schmittfest. I’ve been reading and taking notes on it.

“That all historical knowledge is present knowledge, that such knowledge obtains its light and intensity from the present and in the most profound sense only serves the present, because all spirit is only present spirit, has been said by many since Hegel, best of all by Benedetto Croce.” (130.)

And “much of historical representation and construction if fulfilled by naive projections and identifications. Thus we must first be aware of our own historical situation.” (131.)

Schmitt decries the Soviet “anti-religion technicity” (131) coupled with an intense statism.

4 stages of European history in the last four centuries from the theological to the metaphysical to the humanitarian-moral to the economic. Schmitt doesn’t take this as a law of history, simply a description of what happened in Europe. It’s not a matter of progress either upward or downward. Also in each change there was also a plurality of “already spent stages co-existing” (132). “People in the same age and the same country, even the same family, live together in different stages.” (132.) What is at stake, then, in the stages is the center of intellectual life, the “intellectual vanguard.” This vanguard changed, and “its convictions and arguments continued to change, as did the content of its intellectual interests, the basis of its actions, the secret of its political success and the willingness of the great masses to be impressed by certain suggestions.” (132.)

The transition from the metaphysical and moral to the economic occurred via aesthetics, specifically via romanticism - “a vehicle of confusion” - which was “a transition which precipitated the aestheticization of all intellectual spheres.” The aesthetic sphere served as “the surest and most comfortable way to the general economization of intellectual life and to a state of mind which finds the core categories of human existence in production and consumption.” (133.)

Schmitt accuses Marxism of “technicism,” which aided economism, because of Marxism seeing the economic as determining humanity and the technical determining the economic. At the time of the piece’s writing Schmitt’s speculates that the 20th century may the technical age, but isn’t sure - it is only one tendency.

“All concepts (…) are pluralistic and can only be understood in terms of concrete political existence. Just as every nation has its own concept of nation and finds the constitutive characteristics of nationality within itself, so every culture and cultural epoch has its own concept of culture. All essential concepts are not normative but existential. If the center of intellectual life has shifted in the last four centuries, so have all concepts and words. It is thus necessary to bear in mind the ambiguity of every concept and word. The greatest and most egregious misunderstandings (from which, of course, many impostors make their living) can be explained by the erroneous transfer of a concept at home in one sphere (e.g., only in the metaphysical, the moral, or the economic) to other spheres of intellectual life.” (134.)

“The specific concepts of individual centuries also derive their meaning from the respective central spheres. One example will suffice. The concept of progress, i.e., an improvement or completion (in modern jargon, a rationalization) became dominant in the 18th 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 sphere of thought becomes central, then the problems of other spheres are solved in terms of the central sphere - they are considered secondary problems, whose solution follows as a matter of course only if the problems of the central sphere are solved.” (135.)

“Another socological example of the plurality of such concepts is the cleric - the typical representative of intellect and publicity - whose specific characteristics are determined in every century by the central sphere. The theologian and preacher of the 16th century was followed by the scholarly systematizer of the 17th century, who lived in a true scholarly republic and was far removed from the masses. Then followed the authors of the Enlightenment in the still aristocratic 18th century. As regards the 19th century, one should not be dissuaded by the intermezzo of romantic genius and the many priests of private religion. The cleric of the 19th century (first and foremost Karl Marx) became an economic expert. The question is how readily economic thinking will permit the sociological type of cleric and whether political economists and refined economic syndicates are able to constitute an intellectual elite. In any case, it appears technical thinking can no longer accommodate a cleric.” (135.)

This reminds me of the Taubes quote about apocalypticism and Marxism, and it reminds me of Foucault. I’m told Foucault compares religion and political economy, and the stuff on changing intellectual vanguards might be interesting if compared with Foucault on the universal vs specific intellectual.

I also wonder about the relationship of marginal to cental sphere(s). If different spheres co-exist and the central sphere defines the century then does the definition of concepts Schmitt lays out form a common ground between different positions, or do different concepts, indexed to different contending locations, contend with one another (and thus form situations of political conflict)?

Schmitt writes that all concepts “derive their concrete historical content from the situation of the central spheres and can only be grasped therefrom.” (136.) Does this mean that the concrete content was in common between central and marginal spheres, or does it mean that what we have left today conceptually are the tools of past victors? Also, is this a historical law like the one Schmitt did not want to posit in his description of stages, or is it simply what happened? (That is, will this necessarily continue to be the case in the future or might it end?) Maybe the defining nature of the center is something like hegemony, the dominant ideas of the dominant class?

“Above all the state derives its actuality and power from the given central sphere, because the decisive disputes of friend-enemy groupings are also determine by it.” (136.)

Schmitt notes that 19th century liberal states held themselves to be neutral and agnostic, and this formed precisely “its existential legitimation.” This forms part of “a general tendency of intellectual neutrality characteristic of European history in the [19th] century.” (136-137.) This forms “the historical explanation for what is called the age of technology” (137.)

Despite his insistence that the shifts from stage to stage is not a form of progress, Schmitt holds that the changes are “a series of progressive neutralizations of spheres whose centers have shifted.” The most important one for Schmitt is that from Christian theology to science, in the 17th century. This shift “determined the direction of all further development” until the present of Schmitt’s writing. “At the core of this astounding shift lies an elemental impulse that has been decisive for centuries, i.e., the striving for a neutral sphere.” (137.)

“Following the hopeless theological disputes and struggles of the 16th century, Europeans sought a neutral sphere in which there would be no conflict and they could reach a common agreement through debates and exchanges of opinion. Thereafter one no longer espoused the controversial concepts and arguments of Christian theology and instead constructed a “natural” system of theology, metaphysics, morality and law. (…) the essential point for me is that theology, the former central sphere, was abandoned because it was controversial, in favor of another - neutral - sphere. The former central sphere became neutralized in that it ceased to be the central sphere. On the basis of the new central sphere, one hoped to find minimum agreement and common premises allowing for the possibility of security, clarity, prudence, and peace. Europeans thus moved in the direction of neutralization and minimalization, whereby they accepted the law which “kept them in line” for the following centuries and constituted their concept of truth.” (137.)

“the process of neutralization finds its classical formula” when it manages to grasp “what is most decisive: political power. But in the dialectic of such a development one creates a new sphere of struggle precisely through the shifting of the central sphere. In the new sphere, at first considered neutral, the antitheses of men and interests unfold with a new intensity and become increasingly sharper. Europeans always have wandered from a conflictual to a neutral sphere, and always the newly won neutral sphere has become immediately another arena of struggle, once again necessitating the search for a new neutral sphere.” (138.)

Schmitt sees a tendency to see technology as neutral, “the absolute and ultimate neutral ground (…) since apparently there is nothing more neutral.” “[T]here is a tendency to take refuge in technicity from the inextricable problems of all other spheres. Here all peoples and nations, all classes and religions, all generations and races appear to be able to agree because all make use of and take for granted the advantages and amentities of technical comforts.” (138.)

The neutralization involved with technology, however, is different. “Technology is always only an instrument and weapon; precisely because it serves all, it is not neutral. No single decision can be derived from the immanence of technology, least of all for neutrality. Every type of culture, every people and religion, every war and peace can use technology as a weapon.” Technology for Schmitt “remains culturally blind. Consequently, no conclusions which usually can be drawn from the central spheres can be derived from technology as such and nothing but technology - neither a concept of cultural progress, nor a type of cleric or intellectual leader, nor a specific political system.” (139.)

I’m not convinced of the cultural blindness of technology. The point seems rather to be that technology’s political content is underdetermined such that it is always subject to re-determination, no final content is given or fixable (except as an index of political power). “No significant technical invention can ever calculate its objective political results. (139.) This seems to be true as such, though, for Schmitt - any distinction can become political after all. “Objective” is an interesting word choice as well.

The important point for Schmitt is that the political doesn’t go away but rather is retained in the technical - neutralization is not really depoliticization, it’s a move in a political conflict. Hence there are not purely technical social questions, purely technical political leadership (Schmitt here disses on the Saint-Simonians).

“Neither a political question nor a political answer can be derived from purely technical principles and perspectives.” (140.) Can the political derive from any purely nonpolitical resource? Other spheres can become political, but in that becoming then can it be said that the political as such - rather than moments or instantiations of the political - derives from anything but itself? (Question of relative vs absolute political.)

Schmitt writes that anxieties over technology, technocracy, a soulless mechanical society, are responses to the process of neutralization prior. “Once everything has been abstracted from religion and theology, then from metaphysics and the state, everything appeared to have been abstracted above all from culture, ending in the neutrality of cultural death. Whereas a vulgar mass religion predicated on the apparent neutrality of technology awaited human paradise, the greatest sociologists felt that the tendency which had dominated all stages of the modern European spirit now threatened culture itself. (…) But the anxiety was ultimately nothing more than the doubt about the ability to control and utilize the marvelous instruments of the new technology.” (140.)

This sounds like technology’s appearance as abstracted from culture is not actual, merely ostensible. If so, then this suggests technology is less culturally blind than Schmitt previously suggests. Control and utilize are interesting terms here too. Is this control contested by the object or user - such that the issue is one of mastering technology which one might either use badly or that might escape one’s control - or is this an issue of monopolizing, keeping control out of the hands of others?

“A result of human understanding and specialized knowledge, such as a discipline and in particular modern technology, also cannot simply be presented as dead and soulless any more than can the religion of technicity be confused with technology itself. The spirit of technicity, which has led to the mass belief in an anti-religious activism, is still spirit; perhaps an evil and demonic spirit, but not one which can be dismissed as mechanistic and attributed to technology. It is something gruesome, but not itself technical and mechanical. It is the belief in an activistic metaphysics - the belief in unlimited power and the domination of man over nature, even over human nature; the belief in the unlimited “receding of natural boundaries,” in the unlimited possibilities for change and prosperity. Such a belief can be called fantastic and satanic, but not simply dead, spiritless or mechanized soullessness.” (141.)

“The fear of cultural and social nothingness sprang more from an anxiety-ridden panic over the threatened status quo than from a cool-headed knowledge of the peculiarity of intellectual processes and their dynamics (….) every genuine rebirth seeking to return to some original principle (…) every return to pure, uncorrupted nature appears as cultural or social nothingness to the comfort and ease of the status quo. It grows silently and in darkness, and a historian or sociologist would recognize only nothingness in its initial phases. The moment of brilliant representation is also and at once the moment in which every link to the secret and inconspicuous beginning is endangered.” (141.)

“The process of continuous neutralizations of various spheres of cultural life has reached its end because technology is at hand. Technology is no longer neutral ground in the sense of the process of neutralization; every strong politics can make use of it. For this reason, the present [era] can only be understood provisionally as the [era] of technology. How ultimately it should be understood will be revealed only when it is known which type of politics is strong enough to master the new technology and which type of genuine friend-enemy groupings can develop on this new ground.” (141.)

“life struggles not with death, spirit not with spiritlessness; spirit struggles with spirit, life with life, and out of the power of an integral understanding of this arises the order of human things.” (142.) All politics is biopolitics, then?