Carl Schmitt's Nomos of the Earth and the evolution of his thought
Carl Schmitt's Nomos of the Earth and the evolution of his thought

Summary/Abstract: Carl Schmitt’s definition of the political as distinction between friend and enemy has received a lot of attention and has been justly criticized as a normative theory that erases intermediate and borderline identities while privileging the figure of enemy at the expense of the figure of friend. The article analyzes the reproaches to Schmitt made by some of the greatest contemporary philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. However, an attentive reading of Schmitt’s later work, particularly Nomos of the Earth, shows that the German thinker rethinks his concept of politics by giving it a historical turn. Distinction between friend and enemy depends on the existence of a sphere of indistinction between them, of a state of emergency which is provided by a historical event. The book should be read as an experience of self-criticism. Its argument is still pertinent today: it emphasizes that the ‘state of emergency’ is not simply a false imposition of order upon chaos but a provision that requires law to pay attention to reality instead of closing in itself and sanctioning anomie throughout the world (as Agamben justly sees it happening now). This anomie is a product of the abstractness of law, and emphatically not of a state of exception.

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