(longer version of a comment left at a typically impossible discussion of Carl Schmitt at the Crooked Timber blog.)
the single most interesting question he raises, if not uniquely, then signally, is the constitutional paradox of the constituting/constituted power. That still deserves consideration.
I agree with this observation, and I've read all of JCH's comments on this thread with interest, while recognizing the difficulty and perhaps the impossibility of what he's trying to do here - among other things trying to defend an interest in "the enemy" to the enemy's committed enemies. (THE ENEMY was the title that Gopal Balakrishnan gave to his very useful intellectual biography of Schmitt, published in 2000[ (( The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt
It is just a bit more than merely ironic that those perplexed by the theory of the primacy for politics of the friend-enemy distinction so frequently and perhaps universally operate from friend-enemy presumptions in their discussion, or most typically in their refusal of actual discussion, of the same concept. That this problem would tend to recur is one strong implication of the theory underlying Schmitt's "Concept of the Political." A second or corollary implication is that this concept of the political implies a politicization of the concept, and finally collapses into or is revealed to rely upon, is an argument or the argument on, the concept of concepts at all. The question of the sovereign decision ex nihilo turns out to be a form of the more general and more basic question of existence ex nihilo - another form of the "why is there something and not nothing?" and another form of the "why am I bothering to offer a comment on a blog thread?" or "why am I declining to continue this discussion?"
(At CT I ended the comment there, but I'll choose here to continue a bit further:)
The explicability of the (any) decision (including the omission or refusal of decision) is inherent in the decision as a potential, but its not being entirely known or knowable, its character not yet having been determined, is what differentiates the decision as decision, or subjective experience/experience of subjectivity or of freedom of the will in the moment of decision (presence as self-presence at all), from that which is to be decided upon and the moment of decision, as concretely the result (result of results) of all decisions already made. "Who has not sat in suspense before his heart's curtain?"
The poet implies that we all have had that experience. One might suggest further that "to be at all as a 'who'" means to be in such suspense. It is in that moment that who one is or we are or we are/always were/are-going-to-be-henceforth is revealed to us, that we reveal ourselves to ourselves, as though from nothing - applying Schmitt's formulation regarding the sovereign decision. Only afterwards, precisely as in the judgment of a crime or in the larger "court of history," the individual's or society's or blog-thread-commenter's or the universe's true character having been revealed, does explanation including causal explanation become possible, though satisfaction, or the decision to be satisfied, necessarily and without exception takes a similar form (as necessity, as the exception). As was quite apparent to Kant and as we all know, but as we always eventually decide to suppress precisely in order to get on with life , the full explanation of the criminal's or the enemy's or our own conduct would eventually vacate the notion of any meaningful decision at all. My bad childhood produced my bad behavior. My bad education produced this incoherent blog comment. My loneliness and self-destructive tendencies explain why I am leaving why I did not leave this comment in full at this that forum full of mainly unsympathetic and even hostile interlocutors. Such totalities of explanation/explanatory totalities, or the position of complete determinism, eliminates subjectivity. They tell us that there never was nor ever is or can be a meaningful decision at all: There was the effect of causes, and the illusion of volition and meaning. Things did things to things, that is all (determinism as physicalist reductionism/eliminationism).
Naturally, inevitably, we or I refuse to accept this concept that has no meaningful spot for us or me, or, to say the same thing, we or I may at most pretend to accept this meaninglessness as meaningful: Either way, the origin of the self appears to be its own self-origination as though from nothing, in this instance in direct confrontation with the thought of its/my own nothingness: I insist on myself, on this now as not yet explicable, as still to be determined. For example, I might take the decision, and make what seems to me a fully reasonable decision, and what may turn out to be or to seem a fully explicable one, but without offering or being able to offer reason or explanation to myself or others, to stop here.
On “Open Thread”
Scott's not a lout!
have a care, sir. have a care
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thanks for the good news. perhaps Scott will be heartened by Sterling's getting a lifetime ban from the Clips.
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I watched Garrett Richards pitch very well for the Angels yesterday and it made me think of Scott
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accessorize very carefully
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not complicated a tall
read the essay and was a tiny bit surprised. happily.
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I can't imagine that you would require any aid in going to his blog, reading the thing, and reacting
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did you read and develop an opinion of Slater's "The Debate Over BDS"?
On “The sanity of Chait’s “complete insanity” (race in contemporary American politics)”
heck, I spent my first dozen years living in a project.
but, yeah, I do, thx.
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thanks, bob
things have been a bit rough and I've been at a loss.
On “Open Thread”
fer as I know
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Saudi Prince Bandar promised a victory he could not deliver..... and now he gone
On “Standing athwart themselves”
almost every minute godless savages and idolaters crash through our borders, borders that a cowardly incompetent bloated and socialist administration barely pretends to defend, and seize innocent and blonde Christian women and children and in pagan cruelty, hurls these innocent souls over the edge of the Earth.
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the inner empire of reagan idolatry
On “Tod Kelly, Ta-Nehisi Coates, et al. vs. Richard Cohen”
Coates on Baldwin, anyone?
On “The Iran Deal Concretely”
I'm nothing if not non-sarcastic
On “Open Thread”
It was after that night that Yossarian realized that the fish dreams were indicative of a real problem.
On “Israel’s “Wig-Out””
I would think that an Israeli strike in Iran in defiance of the US government's expressed wishes would probably be concurrent with Israel launching nuclear attacks on Washington and New York.
This would serve to confuse and silence people likely to disapprove and criticize the strike on Iran.
On “Tod Kelly, Ta-Nehisi Coates, et al. vs. Richard Cohen”
feel free to point out the pieces of peanut among the mass...
On “Open Thread”
I was just gonna fire up twitter and thank you..... but this is far more convenient.
gotta say that the chap in the pic sure knows have to sit a beetle....
On “Tod Kelly, Ta-Nehisi Coates, et al. vs. Richard Cohen”
did your discussion involve .......
(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.
(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.
On “Open Thread”
lord knows that I enjoy teasing miggs, and he gets up your nose far more than mine.
but you guys seem not to be overdoing it at all.
On “Tod Kelly, Ta-Nehisi Coates, et al. vs. Richard Cohen”
it was a false, silly and needless controversy
On “Open Thread”
here's one Frankfurt book that fits you here.....
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Groucho: He died too soon, too soon!
Chico: Yeah, an hour too soon.
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with the NFL lately drafting German nationals, I was trying to envision it on a jersey, but I'm guessing that even the hardiest and experienced equipment managers, guys who went through and weathered Fuamatu-Ma'afala and Houshmandzadeh will pull out