Publication:
Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss

Thumbnail Image
Date
2019
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Abstract
This contribution presents an attempt to get to the roots of a phenomenon that the author denotes as the ambiguity of the attribution "political". Current political science debates dealing with the term "the political" mostly revolve around the delimitation of the political against either the state or the society. They seem therefore not to capture two essential connotations attached to describing something as political - two connotations which are, as the author argues, pervading all theoretical as well as commonplace reflections. These systematic meanings or suggestions are recognisable independently from what kind of definition of the political is being put forward. Therefore, an inquiry dealing with, primarily, the way the attribution "political" is being applied and not with the explicit definitions themselves is what is undertaken in this article. The author uses the term "ambiguity" to manifest the fact that it is not instantaneously clear which of the two meanings is implied when the word "political" is used - moreover, these two stand in a tense relation to each other. To denominate this tension, the author suggests the designation "polemical-normative". She illustrates her proposition by analysing a selection of texts of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. The inquiry leads to two main insights. First, that the common denominator "polemical-normative" is of quite a limited explanatory value. It is so because both parts of it carry a set of attributes within them which, on their own, describe the way Schmitt and Strauss used the word "political" more precisely than the common denominator itself. Nevertheless, the idea of a structural ambiguity inherent to the ways we denote something as political does not lose its ground. Second, a fundamental connection of theoretical nature between the two meanings comes to sight. This suggests that we, when thinking about the political, cannot avoid the contradiction inherent to this term - a contradiction which revokes itself partly, but never completely.
Description
Keywords
Political, polemical, Normative, political philosophy, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss
Citation
Ieva Motuzaite, "Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss" in: "Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics (2019) XXI/3", EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, Trieste, 2019, pp. 143-167