Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt was a 20th century German philosopher. His most famous work, The Concept of the Political, was originally published in 1927. In this work Schmitt asserts that the state is a manifestation of the political realm of life. Importantly, Schmitt argues that the need for the state to govern the political is due to the existence of political enemies. Schmitt describes friends, foes, and enemies within the political realm and differentiates such terms from their personal analogues. In fact, Schmitt defines the term political as the distinctions among political friends, political foes, and political enemies. Much is made of Schmitt’s opposition to liberalism as well.

Importantly, Schmitt sees enemies as having the potential of being wonderful, beautiful, and quite superior, and yet enemies nonetheless.

Schmitt ran into some issues during his career, due to his membership in the Nazi Party, but his philosophical constructs were rigorous and form the basis for much of today's international political economy, and war.

What would be interesting, and I haven’t yet found, is an analysis the differences between friend and foe in both the internal and external realms. For example, Schmitt was a Nazi for a while, but obviously the German Jews were, well, German, so there were intra-national enemies and foes, which in fact often took precedence of external enemies, such as the Soviets. This is reminiscent to internal struggles within companies, which can often overshadow the very real threat from a company’s competitors. As a timely issue, this is also something happening in the Republican Party. For many within the party who would call themselves paleoconservatives, there is a really attraction to laying siege to the party, essentially killing any chance for a GOP victory in '08. In this case, again, internal enemy-hate trumps external enemy-hate, and you have the paradox of Rightists supporting Sens. Clinton or Obama.