Shmitt's Theory Of Friend-Enemy Interaction

The friend-enemy distinction is perhaps the most well-known contribution from Schmitt to political theory. To be specific, the distinction is Schmitt’s overarching understanding of the political realm. Despite potential economic trade or other everyday dealings with the "other" (The “other” being a rampant outsider, whose preparedness for bloodshed and violence threatens the idea of a sound state), Schmitt states that the due to the inherent differences of the "other," the possibility for a conflict exists. Making the true number of conflicts between two groups irrelevant. Simply the potential for a violent event to occur is enough for the friend-enemy scenario to become a reality. Schmitt makes his point known that an enemy can lead almost …show more content…
For Schmitt, words take on their true meaning so when utilizes friend, enemy, and conflict; he 's referring to a true possibility of fighting and bloodshed. From a political standpoint, he admits the link between state and political as being an “unsatisfactory circle,” the friend-enemy distinction sheds at least some light on these terms. He notes that “conflict” seems to be the primordial type of condition that designates the term “political,” and then “order"- the formation of the state. There is a potential parallel with Hobbesian political theory, especially between Hobbes’ ‘state of nature’ and the sense of order that should arise from such a scenario when a leader takes control. However, Schmitt’s approach differs in several ways. He asserts that the point that the classic model of the state of the early modern historical period in Europe …show more content…
The central focus of the liberal political model rests simply on how to respond to the state in the position of power, but the purpose is never to explain, much less justify, how it got there to begin with. Schmitt’s political theory renders liberal models essentially irrelevant right from the beginning because either the idea of how the state began is not covered in the model at all, or any serious proposal to answer that question would have to necessarily involve his concepts to justify the existence of any type of state. A connection, then, arguably exists between external and domestic factors in justifying the existence and purpose of the state. Regardless of how liberals of Schmitt’s time would construe what the ideal model of government would be for the inner workings of society within the territory in question, the presence of a reasonably powerful state, powerful enough to ensure the continued stability of the society under discussion, must be existentially present prior to a domestic scene that meets the liberal ideal popular in that