The Auron MacIntyre Show - November 18, 2024


Clarifying the Friend⧸Enemy Distinction ｜ Guest： Michael Millerman ｜ 11⧸18⧸24


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 3 minutes

Words per Minute

184.88599

Word Count

11,741

Sentence Count

591

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary

In this episode, author and political scholar Michael Millerman and I discuss Carl Schmitt's concept of the "friend and enemy distinction" and how it relates to our understanding of the world and our political world. We also take a look at the notes that Leo Strauss had on the topic.


Transcript

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00:00:30.000 Hey everybody, how's it going?
00:00:31.400 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.
00:00:33.040 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.
00:00:37.700 Carl Schmitt is a political theorist who has become more and more visible.
00:00:43.660 His works have become more popular among people as we've moved into this time of conflict
00:00:50.520 where it feels like liberalism might be breaking down,
00:00:53.480 where the edges of kind of polite society and the idea that we can just kind of remove any conflict
00:01:01.120 from our political process.
00:01:02.940 That has kind of come under fire and his ideas have moved into the fore.
00:01:07.380 But many of them, including the friend-enemy distinction, have become low resolution.
00:01:12.360 These things get discussed on Twitter.
00:01:13.880 They turn into memes.
00:01:15.040 And ultimately, sides both for and against end up characterizing his ideas in ways that I think
00:01:21.000 aren't ultimately very productive.
00:01:23.700 And so helping me to unpack this concept today is Michael Millerman.
00:01:28.940 He's an author.
00:01:29.940 He is a political scholar.
00:01:32.580 He is a philosophical scholar.
00:01:33.920 And he also has his own school where he does courses, the Millerman School.
00:01:37.400 Michael, thank you for coming on today.
00:01:39.240 Thanks for having me.
00:01:41.100 Absolutely.
00:01:41.620 So you and I have discussed Carl Schmitt a good bit on our own.
00:01:45.820 We've each done work on his videos.
00:01:48.100 You've obviously got entire courses discussing Schmitt's ideas.
00:01:52.360 But today I want to do two things.
00:01:54.100 First, I want to unpack the friend-enemy distinction and get a real fleshed out sense of what this is.
00:02:00.860 How does it apply?
00:02:01.560 Is it just we can do whatever we want to our friends and whatever we want to our enemies and it doesn't matter at all?
00:02:06.260 Or is there a deeper understanding of this?
00:02:08.580 And then the second part of today's show, I want to look through the notes that Leo Strauss had on Carl Schmitt's work.
00:02:16.940 Because obviously you are also somebody who's very familiar with the work of Strauss.
00:02:20.860 And I thought it would be helpful to bring his thoughts into the work and help us better understand Carl Schmitt from a couple different angles.
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00:03:56.960 All right, so the friend-enemy distinction, again, is something that features prominently.
00:04:03.420 It's what Carl Schmitt is known for, I think, for a lot of people who aren't familiar with his larger body of work.
00:04:09.680 But when people hear, you know, the political, I think a lot of people say, oh, well, friend and enemy in the political,
00:04:15.440 that means that people just think we should be, like, breaking out knife fights in the middle of parliament, right?
00:04:20.720 Like that at the end of the day, you can't actually do what a lot of people think of as kind of TV politics
00:04:27.300 and that everything ends up kind of just being this war of friend where you can do anything on the side of the friend.
00:04:34.120 It's all morally justifiable or enemy.
00:04:36.480 That's kind of the encapsulation I think most people get from the meme.
00:04:39.740 So maybe we can start from the beginning.
00:04:42.380 What is the political for Carl Schmitt?
00:04:45.600 Is it the same as we use it in the common parlance?
00:04:49.940 No, not quite.
00:04:51.100 So everybody knows there's politics.
00:04:53.460 Politics, you have political parties and operatives and agents and all of that, making deals, compromises, whatever the case may be.
00:05:01.120 But Schmitt is interested in the, you could say, the background framework that makes all of that possible in the first place,
00:05:08.100 that there's a constituted political order as such, within which you can have these smaller, lesser activities and operations.
00:05:16.740 And at a time of apparent global unipolarity, it could seem like you take that for granted
00:05:21.920 because there's no longer any serious opposition calling it into question.
00:05:25.800 People are more aware of the fact that there's a constituted political order when it's threatened
00:05:31.220 or when there's some sort of competitor.
00:05:33.400 So not like Democrats versus Republicans, but like other countries or other blocs or other civilizations or other groups
00:05:41.580 that pose something like what is important for Schmitt, an existential threat to the whole game of politics as such.
00:05:48.980 So for him, the political has that deeper, more fundamental, more comprehensive character.
00:05:53.580 And there was a period, like many have examined, Alexander Dugan among them, you and I discussed, Dugan's analysis of this,
00:06:02.020 where it seemed like that fundamental contestation had been decided, it had been resolved.
00:06:08.680 It's the whole end of history idea.
00:06:10.680 But now, in particular, I would say, you know, there are many, many points where you feel the return of the political,
00:06:15.600 but Trump's victory was so significant and so decisive and so much of a rebuke in some sense to end of history, global unipolarity,
00:06:23.660 that now this concept even more so is being entrenched.
00:06:27.360 But what he means by it first and foremost is another organized group that wants to kill you and destroy your way of life,
00:06:34.380 which, again, not all party politics have that degree of existential group destruction implicit in them.
00:06:43.460 But for Schmidt, that's where we have to be looking.
00:06:46.220 In a way, it's bringing us, snapping us out of this kind of comfortable, warm idea that the world is just a very stable, safe, nonviolent place where no conflict exists.
00:07:01.300 You know, we'll get to Strauss's notes in a minute here.
00:07:03.980 But Strauss talks of it as a place of entertainment, right, where the world is simply for entertainment.
00:07:09.380 There are no real existential questions.
00:07:11.660 There are no real questions of true morality.
00:07:14.420 It's all kind of maybe these tiny technocratic adjustments.
00:07:18.600 That is the world that many people assume that politics takes place in.
00:07:23.600 And what Carl Schmidt is trying to do is pull us back and say, no, there's an entire order that underlies that,
00:07:30.080 that that thing that you assume is implicit.
00:07:33.000 Actually, no, there's another framework.
00:07:35.060 And if that's threatened, if that's in any way brought to any kind of existential threat, then ultimately those things fall away and we get to the real heart of politics.
00:07:45.240 So I guess the next question would be, is Carl Schmidt advocating for the elimination of what we think of as party politics only for this understanding of kind of existential politics?
00:07:59.840 Does he completely reject the idea that there could be a state or that the state of politics, as we understand it,
00:08:06.980 and just kind of being this TV debate-style politics, that's undesirable?
00:08:11.180 No, that's not Schmidt's view.
00:08:15.240 And there are works of his where he discusses some of these issues outside of the concept of the political.
00:08:21.380 So he doesn't love the idea of everything being turned into perpetual discussion.
00:08:26.280 So at some point, you do have to decide who are your enemies, what do you stand for, and when is it time to go to war?
00:08:35.060 Which, again, for him, the political has this essential reference to physical killing, to the possibility of physical killing.
00:08:42.760 You know, so it's a grave decision to make.
00:08:45.340 Who's our enemy and are we going to go to war or not?
00:08:47.420 But it doesn't mean for him that all of the lesser degrees of politics suddenly evaporate or disappear,
00:08:53.180 or that you have a single fascist state or something like that.
00:08:56.280 Not at all.
00:08:57.000 But you have to keep both of those things in their proper proportions.
00:09:00.560 I think one of the things that Schmidt was very against was the idea that you erase the notion of the superiority of the realm of the political.
00:09:10.260 And again, it's superior because it concerns the existential decision of life and death.
00:09:13.760 And you just make social order or social relations one type of association among many other.
00:09:20.660 So some people belong to a, you know, they belong to a, you know, whatever.
00:09:24.320 They belong to a Pokemon group or they belong to a bowling club or they belong to something else, sports team.
00:09:28.760 And some people belong to politics.
00:09:30.440 And these are just like, you know, equivalent social organizations lying on par with one another.
00:09:35.660 Schmidt said, absolutely not.
00:09:37.300 Rather, we always have to recognize the decisive nature of the political.
00:09:41.720 It's akin in some sense, although neither Strauss doesn't say this directly and Schmidt doesn't say this, but it's akin in some sense to Aristotle's view of the regime.
00:09:50.860 Again, a comprehensive ordering within which all of these smaller things can exist.
00:09:55.680 So the idea is not to get rid of the smaller ones.
00:09:57.940 It's just that we make a fatal error if we don't recognize the qualitative difference between the political association and all sub-political, social, economic, cultural, and other associations.
00:10:09.800 And he says that's a risk that we've increasingly fallen into under liberalism.
00:10:14.040 And one of the big things is that you dream of a pacified world and you dream of sort of unilateral disarmament or whatever it may be.
00:10:21.260 And you either get into hypocritical positions like a war to end all wars or, you know, you're either with us or against us because we're fighting for humanity.
00:10:29.140 That means you're what, right?
00:10:30.860 If you're not with us and we're team humanity, then you're basically, you know, some sort of mutant subhuman trash or garbage designed to be eradicated for the sake of humanity.
00:10:40.740 So he says, whenever you invoke humanity on your side, you've become really barbaric in the name of peace.
00:10:45.880 And we've seen, you know, we've seen examples of this in recent history.
00:10:49.120 So it's a category error that risks both extremely barbaric and dehumanizing wars on one hand, and this over-pacified, over-comfortable, over-peaceful world, which just gets destroyed by other people who haven't yet overcome the political.
00:11:07.160 So if you want to preserve your sovereignty, you want to preserve your independence, you want to preserve your strength, and you do not want to become dehumanizing barbarism in the name of humanity, then you have to recognize the fact of the political.
00:11:19.960 Yeah, I had a good laugh at this, not to dwell on this particular figure, but I have to bring it up because I just feel like it's relevant to this discussion.
00:11:28.140 James Lindsay was going on about the friend-enemy distinction, and he basically said, anybody who thinks the friend-enemy distinction is real is a fascist.
00:11:38.520 And what that means is they're not human, right?
00:11:41.740 And so if you, you know, he's creating his own friend-enemy distinction by naming the friend-enemy distinction and saying,
00:11:49.280 if you fall under the, if you recognize this is real, then you are in a camp that is opposed to me and opposed to humanity.
00:11:57.620 And I really love that point that you were making with, you know, that Schmitt's invocation of humanity, because it really does feel like we're in that moment, right?
00:12:05.820 Where it's an attempt to simultaneously deny identity, but also monopolize identity, right?
00:12:14.640 To say, well, all of these things are, you know, we have these buffet of identities.
00:12:19.500 Like you said, you could, you could, you know, your Pokemon group and your sports league and, you know, what political party you join.
00:12:25.620 Those are all the same thing, right?
00:12:27.000 They all have the same valence when it comes to identity.
00:12:31.380 And ultimately what we, what we really are looking at is this way to assemble a global order saying we have a unitary identity that is humanity.
00:12:43.600 And if you are outside of humanity, then we can really justify doing anything to you.
00:12:49.500 So in the name of eliminating conflict and, you know, authoritarianism and all these things,
00:12:54.840 we have to eliminate all possibility that you could identify outside of the group, the group that we have, this kind of liberal world order.
00:13:03.760 And ultimately that means that you are something we can treat without, with, you know, complete disregard.
00:13:09.900 We can use any tactic, tactic again, because you are threatening humanity as we understand it.
00:13:15.380 And so it's, it's, it's simultaneously saying identity is not important.
00:13:20.220 You can choose whatever you want.
00:13:21.720 There's this buffet of minor things and politics is just among them while also claiming a monopoly and saying, actually, but you have to do so with inside this order.
00:13:29.860 And if any point you disagree with this order, well, actually you're just completely expelled from what we understand as humanity and, and, and goodness.
00:13:37.540 And therefore we can take whatever action is necessary.
00:13:41.280 Yeah, that's right.
00:13:42.140 Right. And Schmidt's the best analyst of that phenomenon.
00:13:44.180 Cause there are so many examples of it from the COVID regime, you know, which out of kindness, basically want to kill them with kindness, right?
00:13:50.400 Whoever didn't get vaxxed was like completely dehumanized and sent out of society in that sense.
00:13:55.180 So the fun, the phenomenon itself is very fundamental.
00:13:57.840 It's very interesting.
00:13:58.880 Same with the diversity flag.
00:14:00.100 You know, they always have to include a new group in the diversity flag, but they can never, you know, that's always,
00:14:04.860 the more they include the sharper their exclusion is of the so-called, you know, centralized identities of the white European male or whatever the case is.
00:14:11.860 So everybody, I think is familiar with the phenomenon, though not everybody names it, calls it out, distinguishes it as clearly as Schmidt does.
00:14:20.860 And he also reminds us very nicely.
00:14:22.780 I mean, there's so much, even though it's quite short, it's 70 or so pages.
00:14:26.400 There's so much in it that is memorable and punchy.
00:14:28.760 I mean, when he says that whenever somebody talks about democracy or authority or fascism or anything else like that, equality, equity,
00:14:37.300 you have to understand who they're using this concept against, that all political language has this polemical character.
00:14:43.920 That's also very important, very helpful.
00:14:45.760 And once you see it, you can't unsee it.
00:14:48.080 So, yeah, he's spot on.
00:14:50.000 It's funny.
00:14:50.680 There are other analysts of so-called fascism, like I think it's James, what's his name, Stanley or something like that?
00:14:57.380 Maybe not James, but it's called fascism, why it works.
00:15:00.340 Jason, excuse me, Jason Stanley.
00:15:02.040 Same too.
00:15:02.540 It's the us versus them.
00:15:04.440 Fascism is us versus them.
00:15:06.040 Okay, that's just another way of saying friend and enemy.
00:15:07.820 Okay, fascism is us versus them.
00:15:09.980 But we're anti-fascists, so we're not like them.
00:15:12.660 And, you know, you can punch a fascist.
00:15:14.040 So it's either deliberate, they're either deliberately obscuring the point or they're showing how, no matter how much you try to suppress the political, it still operates.
00:15:23.800 Just either it's going to operate in a suppressed, distorted, alienated, sort of like, you know, in a psychological projection type manner, you know, like it comes out like a perversion because it's been suppressed.
00:15:35.880 Or we can identify it, acknowledge it, and build some attitude towards the world that's appropriate, accurate, and, you know, reflects the basic observation.
00:15:44.820 Now, I know we're going to talk about Strauss, but I just leave it here as a little asterisk, which is whether for Schmidt it does constitute an observation into the essence of human and political life, or, again, whether it is, which some people might legitimately still think it is, something that we can overcome.
00:16:00.880 Like, even if you say, yes, there is such a thing as the political, yes, there is such a thing as the vision of friend and enemy, yes, we've suppressed it and it operates in all these sort of perverse ways.
00:16:08.760 But nevertheless, you know, we should do everything in our power to overcome it.
00:16:13.460 And that could be, you know, that could be a position that people take.
00:16:17.060 But obviously, to overcome it, you have to go to war against the enemies of it.
00:16:21.340 Precisely, yeah.
00:16:22.060 And that's, I think, very interesting because, again, a lot of people, obviously, Carl Schmitt, complicated, you know, his history involved in the Third Reich and everything that comes with that in, you know, historical baggage.
00:16:36.220 And so a lot of people look at this assessment and they say, oh, well, this is Nazi politics, right?
00:16:42.860 This is fascist politics.
00:16:44.060 So this is politics that only exists if you're under, like, a fascist order or this is the way that they view politics.
00:16:50.800 But Schmitt, as you point out, is trying to grasp what might be, and we'll get to Strauss's evaluation of this and its accuracy later, what might be a core human truth, no matter who's wielding it, right?
00:17:03.460 Like, you know, it doesn't matter how you feel about the Third Reich.
00:17:07.780 Von Braun is right about how rockets work, right?
00:17:10.440 And so he's asking, is this true about human nature?
00:17:14.180 Is this a true understanding of the political that we can drill down and understand?
00:17:19.760 And that is not itself necessarily advocacy or being excited about that truth, right?
00:17:27.560 Like, is sin part of human nature?
00:17:30.720 Yes.
00:17:31.160 Am I excited, therefore, about sin?
00:17:33.380 Well, no.
00:17:33.980 But if I ignore that part of human nature and I try to turn everybody into some kind of perfect being, I will have missed something very important about humanity.
00:17:42.400 And I will do something terrible in my quest to eliminate something that is real about human nature.
00:17:49.340 And one could see the friend-enemy distinction in this way, just because you recognize the truth of sin doesn't mean you're advocating for it.
00:17:56.660 And just because you recognize the truth of existential conflict doesn't mean you're advocating for it.
00:18:02.500 It simply means you're recognizing that if we ignore this thing, if we treat it as if it doesn't exist and it's not real, and we construct our societies as if human nature is other than it is, we will make critical errors that will either cause us to do serious harm or perhaps even travesties to others, or we will make ourselves victims of those who do understand this aspect of human nature and plan accordingly.
00:18:29.100 We'll see you next time.
00:18:59.100 Yeah, that's right.
00:19:01.100 And if people need kind of permission, you know, like Elon Musk gave people permission to support Trump and stuff like that, if people need permission, so to speak, to study Schmidt, while they should know that he's been read by leftists, you know, there's a kind of left interpretation of Schmidt, which tries to move him in a different direction.
00:19:16.280 There's a liberal acknowledgement of Schmitt's importance, you know, because he shows the limitations of an overly apolitical or nonpolitical liberalism.
00:19:25.380 He guards against and cautions against its excesses.
00:19:29.020 So people across the political spectrum have read and benefited from reading Schmidt.
00:19:32.880 It's not like his only readers are on the right.
00:19:35.980 That's, I think, important.
00:19:37.340 People may find, for example, Chantal Mouffe has a book, I think, on the reception of Schmidt among the left-wing anti-liberals or leftists who are suspicious of liberalism.
00:19:47.040 So, yeah, that's right.
00:19:48.440 It's an analysis.
00:19:49.500 And there may be still some vested interest.
00:19:53.100 He may want to see, you know, it can be both, that there's an analysis, which is true, and that he buys into the return of the political as an important thing.
00:20:03.260 And that's an important ambiguity somehow in his work or that, you know, something we would have to see.
00:20:08.340 But at the very least, the first part of it is accurate.
00:20:11.020 Yeah, he lets us see something about the nature of politics that we had been increasingly blind to our own detriment.
00:20:18.700 I like to liken it to the realization for some people that force is, you know, a necessary part of the political.
00:20:28.620 A lot of people will kind of assume that we, because they've only lived in a peaceful society, that they're not actually being influenced by the monopoly on force that the state controls.
00:20:40.720 And they just assume that into then whatever order they have.
00:20:44.160 Well, the world is peaceful.
00:20:46.180 That's always how it is because of, you know, this reality that the state has a monopoly on violence and I don't have to endure a constant state of violence throughout my day.
00:20:55.660 And therefore they forget that this monopoly on violence underlies the legitimacy of the state.
00:21:02.760 And that's fine for the most part until you bring that to an extreme to where you think you can kind of do all kinds of things without ever being encountering violence.
00:21:13.900 Right. I guess to put this in the real world, people like to talk a lot of trash on Twitter because they know they're not going to get hit in the face.
00:21:20.580 But if you're in the real world, you better remember that you can't behave the way that you do on Twitter because there is a real consequence that could suddenly become available to the other person should you cross that line.
00:21:31.520 It's not a realm of infinite debate in real life.
00:21:34.140 Someone can actually strike you.
00:21:35.680 And I feel like a lot of people look at Schmitt's friend enemy distinction and they think, well, he's advocating for a world where you're just punching people in the face all the time or where violence is just constantly the only mode in which one addresses any political question.
00:21:50.860 And it's like, no, what he's trying to remind you is that while we can get very abstract and we can enter all of these political modes where we are doing lots of debate and there's no conflict and everything is very far removed from that deep down at the bottom of this, just like at the bottom of the state is always the monopoly on violence.
00:22:11.480 The bottom of this, you know, the existential threat is always at the heart of the political.
00:22:18.140 And if we forget that in the same way that if we forget the, you know, that violence exists in the world, we will always open ourselves up to these terrible situations.
00:22:26.700 So he's not against a politics of debate or discussion necessarily, though, like you said, there might be a vested interest in his return to the political in this area.
00:22:36.440 But but but we can refer to the friend enemy distinction without advocating for a politics of violence.
00:22:45.000 Yeah, I think that's right. In fact, I would go even further in some sense, which is that he is not in the text militaristic.
00:22:53.380 He does not say that you have, you know, he doesn't say like, fine, go start wars all over the place and there's nothing greater than a warrior.
00:23:01.100 So he's not championing the figure. I mean, there are other authors who do this.
00:23:04.440 They champion the figure of the warrior and they sing the praises of the splendor of war and all of this.
00:23:09.680 He says there's there's no cause really other than an existential threat to you that would even justify something like a war.
00:23:17.740 Like you shouldn't go to war for just any cause.
00:23:19.980 And there kind of even is no cause that justifies war except for the existential threat of an enemy.
00:23:25.960 So it's not it's not like a war positive or pro militaristic piece of writing in that sense.
00:23:31.700 And then two other things I want to say really quickly, which is that in developing the argument about the nature of the political, he does make useful distinctions that I think are good to reflect on, which is like when we treat some other domain like the economy as apolitical.
00:23:46.460 You know, he teaches us that, well, wait a minute, you know, just like Aristotle with the notion of the regime, we know that economic relations are embedded in a certain sort of order that is more than just economic.
00:23:56.660 Same with aesthetic principles or ethical or other principles.
00:24:00.600 He sort of reminds us that they're not necessarily autonomous, even though we may treat them as autonomous.
00:24:06.100 That's pretty useful.
00:24:07.320 And then one other thing that I think is helpful is when he pushes the thought experiment of a global order to its end, he says that even if we were to have something like a global order, there would still be the terrifying decision or something like that, as he puts it, of who's going to rule that order.
00:24:26.260 So he reminds us that, look, there's no such thing unless you make certain questionable assumptions as a self-governing global order, what you're going to have more likely is a global tyranny.
00:24:37.880 And so you shouldn't be so quick to want globalism as the disappearance of the political because you're still going to have this momentous decision resting on the fate of some people who may not necessarily have the best interests of all of humanity in mind if his analysis of the political is correct.
00:24:53.660 So, yeah, he opens some fundamental questions, he makes these relevant distinctions, and there's much more to the book than the notion of the friend-enemy distinction.
00:25:01.620 And so if anybody's listening to this and, you know, they should read it, it's not long, 70-something pages.
00:25:07.080 If you add in Strauss's commentary, an extra 30 or so, and incidentally, it's a great way to get into Strauss.
00:25:12.720 To read Schmidt and then to read Strauss's commentary is a wonderful one-two punch introduction to like a masterpiece of right-wing anti-liberalism, if you want to call it that,
00:25:20.760 and then to Strauss's absolutely incredible x-ray penetrating commentary on Schmidt's project.
00:25:27.440 Yeah, obviously a lot of Strauss's work really is in that, you know, in that mode of commentary.
00:25:34.180 And so if you want to get a feel for what it's like to read a larger work of Strauss, then this is a good way to understand.
00:25:41.340 In fact, this is the edition we're talking about for people who might not be familiar.
00:25:45.160 It has, like you said, about 70 pages of the original work, and it's also paired with Strauss's commentary.
00:25:55.080 So you're going to get both if you just buy it at all.
00:25:57.980 And so, like you said, it's a good way to kind of get those initial understandings of kind of how Strauss does things along with getting the basics of Carl Schmidt.
00:26:06.940 And, yeah, we're only pulling this one concept out because, like I said, this is the part that gets most memed on the Internet, and it gets used very sloppily.
00:26:16.860 I think, you know, all of us who make quick posts are guilty of this.
00:26:20.100 I probably am at some point or the other.
00:26:22.080 But we want to take the time to give people the reference point so they're not just throwing this phrase around and not understanding that there's a much richer definition to this.
00:26:31.860 I, like I said, I want to get into Leo Strauss's reflections on this work, but is there anything about the friend-enemy distinction itself you'd like to clarify before we move forward with that?
00:26:44.240 Yeah, let me say one thing that may be helpful just on that, which is Schmidt distinguishes between the public and the private enemy.
00:26:50.840 And it's important because he refers to the Christian notion that you should love your enemy, and he says never in the history of Christian political life did that phrase ever mean that you should let yourself be invaded by, you know, by the Muslim enemy, basically.
00:27:06.820 Not, again, not on an individual level, on a geopolitical, global, country-to-country, you know, block-to-block, civilization-to-civilization level.
00:27:14.240 So he said, if you, you know, if you collapse the distinction between the public enemy and the private enemy, and you take this idea of love your enemy too far, then basically what you're doing is you're opening up your political order to a wrong-headed political invasion.
00:27:30.120 So he makes it very clear.
00:27:31.860 Love your enemy means love your private enemy.
00:27:34.400 You know, and he distinguishes that, and that's important too, that that concept has that doubling.
00:27:39.620 You have to include the public-private division.
00:27:42.260 The enemy for Schmidt means the public enemy, and primarily it means the foreign public enemy.
00:27:48.160 It means the, you know, the other fighting collectivity that you're going to go to war with, although he does also have room in his analysis for civil war.
00:27:55.980 What happens when a single political entity gets split so radically that it's willing to take up arms against itself?
00:28:02.560 So I would say that those two things are important to just enrich the notion, the basic notion, right?
00:28:07.820 Us and them, yes, but, you know, on the public level, as distinct from civil war and as distinct from, you know, love your enemy, which is a different sort of thing.
00:28:16.740 Maybe one other observation here is that Schmidt, he says, look, in economics, you have profit and loss.
00:28:24.320 In aesthetics, you have the beautiful and the ugly.
00:28:26.460 You know, in morality, you have the good and the bad.
00:28:27.920 In politics or the political, you have friend and enemy.
00:28:30.400 But it doesn't mean that your enemy has to be the poor or the ugly or, you know, these are separate sort of categories.
00:28:38.320 So he kind of wants to make it clear that don't mix, don't necessarily mix your categories.
00:28:43.820 Like the decision about who's an enemy, it's kind of a sovereign existential decision.
00:28:49.500 It's not like you're going to hate.
00:28:51.460 It doesn't come pre-packaged who it is that you're supposed to, who it is that you're supposed to consider your public enemy.
00:28:58.420 In some sense, that's the act of the sovereign, you know, like if, if a new political power comes into force and says, we now declare that X, Y, and Z are our enemies.
00:29:07.720 Well, that's the prerogative of sovereign power.
00:29:10.680 That's in some sense, one of the key examples of the exercise of sovereign power, defining that relationship.
00:29:17.540 But yeah, so not collapsing it into the other categories, distinguishing it from the private enemy and seeing it that it's not necessarily the civil war.
00:29:24.920 All of that, I think, helps to give even more substance to that, that notion.
00:29:29.680 Yeah.
00:29:30.200 In fact, he clarifies that the enemy can be someone who you honor, who you thought was, you know, had impressive features, someone you were doing business with or trading with before, right?
00:29:41.440 Like, you know, they don't have to be the villain in even necessarily a moral sense to, to eventually, you know, become the enemy.
00:29:49.160 And I'm glad you pointed out that distinction between the public and private, because I have this discussion a shocking amount of times in, in, in real life where people still are confused about kind of basic biblical injunctions where they say, oh, well, you know, it said, love your enemy.
00:30:06.600 So, you know, so we can't go to war.
00:30:08.740 Like, I have this discussion with very intelligent people who are, who are Christians and it's confusing.
00:30:13.960 It's like, well, if you look at the church fathers, this was not the understanding, you know, throughout history of, you know, any Christian civilizations.
00:30:21.720 There was never part of Christianity that you had to be conquered, that you could never defend yourself, that there was, yeah, that, that Christianity is basically a civilizational suicide pact.
00:30:31.780 It didn't conquer the world by, by, you know, that understanding of, of the friend and the enemy.
00:30:37.940 And so it is amazing that that continues to survive, but I think it is often preached, unfortunately, in a very simple manner where it is not expanded and understood in any historical context, which, which is, which is dangerous.
00:30:51.380 Not that Schmidt needs to be your sole authority on that.
00:30:53.600 You don't have to say, well, you know, Carl Schmidt told me that.
00:30:56.180 So that's what Christianity means.
00:30:57.260 No, you, you can go to many, many different Christian theologians and philosophers and, and draw, who draw that same conclusion throughout, throughout history.
00:31:05.960 Uh, but we'll, we're going to move into the Leo Strauss portion.
00:31:10.700 And of course we'll still be referencing all of this as well, but, but focusing more on, on what he had to say about Carl Schmidt.
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00:32:21.440 All right, so like we were saying, Leo Strauss is, you know, however, you know, people have many, many, many opinions about his philosophy, most of them, I think, ill-informed.
00:32:33.860 But however you feel about that, he's undeniably a great scholar of philosophy and has great insights when it comes to addressing the works of others.
00:32:45.780 And his notes come prepackaged, as we point out, with this kind of expanded edition of the concept of the political.
00:32:52.300 So you don't need to go out and buy some different book or look for an essay somewhere.
00:32:56.240 You've got his thoughts on the essay right there when you read this, if you read this.
00:33:02.280 So to give people an idea from the beginning here, what is Strauss's approach to Carl Schmitz?
00:33:11.900 What's the context in which he's responding to the concept of the political?
00:33:18.620 Well, first thing I want to say is a lot of people have asked me where to start with Leo Strauss.
00:33:25.200 This is a great, great starting point, okay?
00:33:27.560 You get Schmidt, you get Strauss, and you see how beautifully he puts together his commentary.
00:33:30.760 And it had Schmidt's seal of approval, okay?
00:33:34.360 Schmidt said that Strauss saw through him like an x-ray.
00:33:37.680 In other words, this is, as it were, a sanctioned interpretation, okay?
00:33:40.940 So Schmidt approves of Strauss's insights here.
00:33:44.300 So Strauss has to identify several themes in Schmidt's work.
00:33:50.600 So one of them we alluded to, which is,
00:33:53.140 to what extent is Schmidt just observing that the political is a feature of human life?
00:33:58.380 And to what extent is he asserting that it's a good thing it is?
00:34:02.500 Does he believe that it always will be?
00:34:05.500 And if he thinks that it could be replaced, is he trying to protect it?
00:34:09.680 Because those are sort of different things.
00:34:11.760 If I just say the political needs to be observed, that's one thing.
00:34:15.640 If I say the political is at risk of disappearing and it needs to be defended,
00:34:19.800 that's another thing.
00:34:21.280 So Strauss analyzes the book from the perspective of its polemic against liberalism.
00:34:26.520 He tries to see its deeper tendencies and the horizon of Schmidt's criticism.
00:34:32.680 So it's actually pretty amazing because one of the many great take-home messages from Strauss's
00:34:38.160 essay, but the one that I think is kind of the most powerful encapsulation of a key point is this.
00:34:44.380 Strauss says that for Schmidt, liberals are neutral with respect to any political position,
00:34:51.320 so long as it is like tolerant and peaceful.
00:34:53.520 You know, like do whatever you want to do, just, you know, live and let live.
00:34:56.960 Just don't tell anybody else what to do, you know?
00:34:59.420 Just don't, just let them do their own thing.
00:35:02.460 And it doesn't really matter what it is.
00:35:04.240 You fill in the substance.
00:35:05.420 It's an empty formalism.
00:35:06.920 As long as it is peaceful and tolerant.
00:35:10.060 This is him paraphrasing this part of Schmidt's essay.
00:35:13.460 But what Strauss says is that Schmidt is liberalism with the inverse polarity.
00:35:18.400 Schmidt says,
00:35:19.040 as long as you're existentially serious enough to have an enemy that you're willing to kill
00:35:23.640 or possibly be killed by, then it's all good.
00:35:28.060 It doesn't matter what that thing is that you're standing for.
00:35:31.000 It's almost, it's almost like the empty notion of authenticity.
00:35:34.180 Be authentic.
00:35:35.420 Like, okay, but what's the substance of that authenticity?
00:35:37.880 We don't know.
00:35:38.680 So here, you know, if the liberals are be tolerant, Schmidt is like, be dangerous.
00:35:43.360 You know, be fully committed.
00:35:44.860 Be so committed that you're willing to kill and be killed.
00:35:47.060 Okay, but that is also an empty formalism.
00:35:51.180 And here Strauss makes the very beautiful and all-important point.
00:35:55.700 He says, what do people disagree about?
00:35:58.320 What legitimizes the distinction into friend and enemy groupings?
00:36:02.680 It's the question over the good, over the just, over the right way of life.
00:36:07.080 It's not an empty formalism.
00:36:09.120 It's a substantive dispute.
00:36:10.680 But within the confines of liberalism understood as this empty, empty, you know, emptiness, either
00:36:17.700 empty on the side of tolerance or empty on the side of risky commitment, we don't actually
00:36:22.360 get to the substantive question of the right, the good, and the just.
00:36:25.620 For that, Strauss says, we need to go beyond the horizon of liberalism, which he, in some
00:36:31.140 sense, accuses Schmidt of not doing successfully.
00:36:33.180 So, to put this in what I think is the best sort of way, like, Schmidt is known as, let's
00:36:39.120 say, an anti-liberal on the right.
00:36:42.040 He's known as a critic of liberalism from the right.
00:36:44.280 Okay, like you said, Nazism and all the rest of it.
00:36:46.420 And Schmidt, excuse me, Strauss is seen as pretty moderate.
00:36:49.500 In fact, there are people who defend Strauss as like, you know, a moderate liberal Democrat.
00:36:52.820 But in his notes, Strauss says Schmidt is still too liberal, and nothing is more important
00:37:00.340 than overcoming Schmidt's liberalism, which is really jaw-dropping stuff.
00:37:04.920 But it gives you the whole sort of like weird path of Strauss's further writings, his analysis
00:37:10.060 of Hobbes as the first liberal, and all the way back to Plato, whom he cites in that passage
00:37:16.480 about the disputes over the good, the just, and the right.
00:37:18.980 So, a lot of people have criticized Schmidt's analysis as basically just taking the Hobbesian
00:37:27.520 war of all against all and expanding it to groups instead of individuals, right?
00:37:32.680 So, instead of individual man constantly at war, you're just saying there are different
00:37:36.760 factions and they're constantly at war.
00:37:38.680 And the only thing that matters is being, you know, identifying who's on your side in this
00:37:43.100 war and then winning that war.
00:37:45.000 How would Strauss feel about that characterization of Schmidt's work?
00:37:49.780 Well, for Hobbes, the state of nature is something that we have to move away from.
00:37:55.420 So, yeah, in a state of nature, people know, solitary, nasty, poor, brutish, and short.
00:37:59.300 But that's the precondition for civil, for the civil state, basically, you know, getting away
00:38:04.720 from the natural and towards the constructed.
00:38:08.780 Political life as a construction designed to move us away from our state of nature.
00:38:12.240 So, Hobbes does not assert the superiority of war in a state of nature.
00:38:17.340 In fact, it's the precondition for civilization, for the process of moving away from that.
00:38:22.200 Whereas Schmidt, he is moving us back to the roots to remind us of this conflict, not primarily
00:38:28.880 in order to get away from it, but kind of to assert its positive significance, its primacy.
00:38:34.780 And I think Strauss has a nice line there.
00:38:36.980 I can't quote it from memory.
00:38:37.860 I could pull it up.
00:38:38.440 But yeah, Hobbes has the state of nature as the foundation for liberalism, but sort of
00:38:42.240 to undo the liberalism that we've gotten ourselves into, Schmidt brings us back to the state of
00:38:46.860 nature as a positive assertion.
00:38:49.060 So that's a huge, those are two very different directions, even if they happen to be starting,
00:38:53.060 let's say, you know, they have in common this idea of a natural state of war.
00:38:58.220 But one sees that as something that we should be reminded of, again, potentially in a good
00:39:02.580 way, and I'll go a step further, that Strauss, in effect, shows us that Schmidt does want
00:39:12.460 the political.
00:39:13.260 He doesn't just see it.
00:39:14.640 He doesn't just say it.
00:39:15.560 He also wants it.
00:39:16.860 And one of the reasons he wants it is because it gives depth to human existence, that a pacified,
00:39:24.000 apolitical or depoliticized neutral world is a world not fit for humans.
00:39:29.300 It's a world that's flattened out the depths of the human soul.
00:39:32.820 And therefore, Strauss picks up on Schmidt's use of the word entertainment.
00:39:36.560 Entertainment seems like something frivolous, you know, compared to the, you know, compared
00:39:40.960 to life and death struggles, compared to the great peaks of human existence.
00:39:45.820 So the political lens, dignity somehow to the human being through depth to be, to risk
00:39:53.860 your life is to gain a dimension of existence that you'd lack otherwise.
00:39:58.460 Whereas for Hobbes, you know, Hobbes didn't even want courage to be a virtue.
00:40:02.760 Hobbes has this polemical notion of the bourgeoisie, as Strauss puts it.
00:40:05.480 It's the riskless life.
00:40:07.120 You know, Hobbesian liberalism is the riskless life.
00:40:10.680 You want to get away from risk, away from danger, away from death, towards the fear of
00:40:16.440 violent death, comfortable self-preservation.
00:40:19.040 So there's a moral inversion here.
00:40:21.200 And Strauss makes that, I think, easier to see than it would be otherwise.
00:40:24.400 Yeah, Schmidt really has this fear of kind of the drive towards the last man, right?
00:40:30.320 Where there's just no, nothing's worth fighting for.
00:40:32.760 Everything is about small pleasures and comforts.
00:40:35.240 There can't, there can't be anything that drives us to risk.
00:40:37.960 It's, you know, that is something that he certainly thinks is, like you said, just flattening out
00:40:43.200 human existence, deriving it of meaning, ultimately of any moral content and not a great way to live
00:40:51.680 and certainly not a great way to calcify the world order in something that traps us in that
00:40:58.040 kind of very shallow existence and perpetuity.
00:41:01.240 What else does Strauss bring to the foreground?
00:41:07.180 What else does he think that Schmidt gets correct?
00:41:09.920 And what else do you think, does he think that he's lacking in?
00:41:13.640 So one of the things that I always found nice about Strauss' commentary that, again,
00:41:17.980 like with all of Strauss' commentary, is you may not see it the first time you read Schmidt.
00:41:22.200 But when Strauss points it out, it becomes very worth thinking about, which is that Schmidt
00:41:26.980 has two notions of evil.
00:41:28.420 One notion of evil is kind of like just animal vitality.
00:41:33.500 It's sort of just the imperfection that belongs to any, let's say, animal type being.
00:41:39.820 In other words, it's not primarily or fundamentally sin.
00:41:43.160 It's just sort of like a bear.
00:41:45.680 Innocent evil, I think he calls it.
00:41:47.180 Innocent evil, right.
00:41:48.680 And innocent evil can be overcome, maybe, through a process of education.
00:41:54.000 You know, maybe you can refine the beast over time and tame it.
00:41:59.000 But the other evil, you know, the other evil is something more, something deeper.
00:42:04.760 For example, you can't just educate sin out of existence.
00:42:07.860 You may be able to put boundaries on it.
00:42:10.220 You may be able to, you know, always fight the temptations or whatever the case may be.
00:42:14.320 But there are two different kinds of evil, one which, in principle, seems like it can
00:42:18.520 be overcome and it's sort of historical and evolutionary and biological, and another one
00:42:23.700 which has this deeper religious existential ontological dimension.
00:42:28.540 And Strauss points out, which, again, we may not make that distinction.
00:42:31.260 When we hear evil, we may just collapse the two of them.
00:42:33.480 And that there are different directions, different paths.
00:42:37.580 And moreover, something Schmitt says, but Strauss helps us to see, is just how much our political
00:42:42.180 theories are based on a, quote-unquote, anthropological profession of faith.
00:42:46.600 Do we think that man is fundamentally good?
00:42:49.600 Or do we think that man is fundamentally dangerous?
00:42:52.660 And this distinction, which Schmitt has, Strauss helps us see, well, what do these two different
00:42:58.560 starting points lead to?
00:42:59.880 What's the relationship between anarchism and the view that the human being is fundamentally
00:43:03.460 good and authoritarianism and the view that the human being is fundamentally dangerous?
00:43:07.780 Strauss also helps us to see that the dangerous character of the human being is fundamentally
00:43:12.220 related to the need for rule, you know, the need for authority.
00:43:16.540 So these are all great insights.
00:43:18.700 Again, a lot to think about in these comments that Strauss makes.
00:43:23.240 So that's one thing.
00:43:25.420 And another one that I would say is it's subtle, but it's extremely important for understanding
00:43:31.060 not only Strauss, but in my view, the problem that Strauss discusses, you know, the problem
00:43:35.320 that's at stake when we do political theory or political philosophy or political science
00:43:38.200 at all.
00:43:39.480 And what it is, is this, that Strauss says, look, on the surface, Schmitt is polemically
00:43:44.760 attacking liberalism.
00:43:46.300 That's true.
00:43:47.220 Liberalism is like the immediate enemy.
00:43:49.100 You have to get it off the table.
00:43:50.880 But it's somehow not the most serious enemy.
00:43:54.160 So Strauss makes us think about what does Schmitt want to direct our attention to once liberalism
00:44:01.320 is off the table?
00:44:02.620 What's the sort of new dyad that stands in its place?
00:44:06.540 So that's number one.
00:44:07.340 What's his like immediate polemical attention?
00:44:09.500 What's the next stage that he doesn't always necessarily point to openly?
00:44:12.940 And also Strauss picks up on and sort of only the way that Strauss would do that Schmitt
00:44:18.800 has an interest not only in the present day polemics against an actually existing enemy,
00:44:26.340 namely, as I say, liberalism with its depoliticizations, but also the more general question of the order
00:44:31.820 of human things.
00:44:33.240 In other words, Strauss distinguishes between present acts of polemical propaganda in some
00:44:39.700 sense, which still have their own merits, and the more truly philosophical question, what
00:44:44.940 is the nature of political order as such?
00:44:46.920 You know, this recurs in my view, if you don't mind my saying, in Dugan.
00:44:53.100 Dugan is also very polemically centered on present day post-modernity and liberalism and
00:44:58.280 things like that.
00:44:59.360 But there are other authors who are like this too, okay?
00:45:02.220 They want to take down the problem that stands right in front of them, but they still preserve
00:45:07.480 an interest in the much deeper, even though much harder to see, general question of the
00:45:14.340 nature of the human being as such, the nature of the political order as such, you know,
00:45:18.000 the nature of the divine.
00:45:19.260 Because all of these political questions, as we've suggested by talking about sin, by
00:45:24.060 talking about these topics, and you know, regardless of the fact that Schmitt has a book called
00:45:30.060 Political Theology and was deeply interested in this question, the divine and the theological
00:45:35.000 are always co-present in these questions.
00:45:37.260 You know, so I think that Strauss kind of alludes to that too, that once you get your
00:45:41.620 immediate enemy off the table, you're still left with the deep questions.
00:45:44.480 And that means deep questions about the place of the theological, as well as the philosophical.
00:45:50.460 Yeah, I always find it interesting to kind of read Schmitt and De Maistre in tandem, because
00:45:58.280 their works feel so related.
00:46:00.860 De Maistre writing on kind of the cusp of the liberalism, predicting much of what would
00:46:05.520 come, much of laying the work for what people would call decisionism by Schmitt, which I
00:46:11.380 hate that name, but it's the one that seems to have stuck for most people.
00:46:16.100 And then Schmitt being on the other side of this, right?
00:46:18.800 Like post this revolution, after these effects have come into place, they're both asking very
00:46:24.100 similar questions.
00:46:25.220 They're both coming to very interesting insights to the nature of sovereignty and rule and this
00:46:35.740 application, but they're coming at it at the different sides.
00:46:39.480 And so that's a way that I always enjoy approaching that.
00:46:43.000 I feel like that helps increase the insight between these two.
00:46:47.740 And of course, having Strauss's commentary to come back and pull those pieces out of Schmitt's
00:46:53.120 assumptions and some of the deeper questions is also very helpful, you know, because you
00:46:59.020 can read this and absorb it.
00:47:00.960 Like you said, it's only 70 pages, but it has so much insight into it.
00:47:05.160 But it's very easy because of Schmitt's very straightforward style to not understand the
00:47:12.520 issues stacked up behind it, right?
00:47:14.600 You can feel like you're seeing the entire thing, but Strauss helps you pull back and say,
00:47:18.640 oh no, there's about seven other layers here that are being addressed in a way, but are
00:47:23.940 not being put front and center.
00:47:25.420 And his style of kind of cutting to the quick makes you feel like maybe those things aren't
00:47:29.940 there, aren't being touched on, but they are.
00:47:32.480 And so it's good to have that totality of understanding, I think, across all of those different
00:47:38.420 viewpoints.
00:47:39.640 All right.
00:47:39.860 We've got some questions stacking up from the audience.
00:47:42.040 Is there anything about Strauss's insight into Schmitt that you wanted to make sure we talk
00:47:47.120 about before we move to those?
00:47:49.360 Well, I think that Strauss's commentary or his notes on Schmitt, they provide a blueprint
00:47:55.420 into the rest of Strauss's works.
00:47:58.220 Because the first thing he says is that, I mean, one of the main things he says is we
00:48:02.360 need to gain a horizon beyond liberalism.
00:48:04.440 Because remember, Schmitt is still too liberal.
00:48:06.760 So how do we gain access to something other than what's configured by the liberal horizon
00:48:14.160 through the proper study of Hobbes?
00:48:16.820 And Strauss has book-length studies of Hobbes.
00:48:18.980 Hobbes is an important figure.
00:48:20.420 He did a lot of work on him.
00:48:21.480 He's part of other books that he wrote, like Natural Right and History, has a great chapter
00:48:24.840 on Hobbes, not to mention, as I say, specific books that Strauss wrote.
00:48:28.500 So it's like, oh, okay.
00:48:29.660 Now we understand the study of Hobbes is very helpful for gaining a horizon beyond liberalism
00:48:34.060 by treating Hobbes as the first liberal.
00:48:35.380 And then the reference to Plato in that passage that I mentioned over the disputes concerning
00:48:41.720 the good, the just, and the right, which legitimate the friend-enemy distinction, reminds
00:48:45.280 us just how crucial Plato is for actually getting to the substantive problem of political order.
00:48:50.720 And Strauss, if people don't know, he spent a lifetime, in some sense, on the study of Platonic
00:48:55.680 political philosophy, which is the name of one of his books, and his commentaries on Plato
00:48:59.820 show just how crucial that study of those ancient texts are.
00:49:04.580 Now, they're very living, you know, they're old, but they're living texts because they
00:49:09.840 can figure the whole political question for us.
00:49:11.940 So it gives us right from Hobbes to Plato and everything in between, which is very, very
00:49:16.600 important.
00:49:17.240 And again, it also shows, you know, Strauss said, like, one of the most important things
00:49:21.300 we have to do now is to overcome the horizon of liberalism.
00:49:23.640 So that's, that is, that is so important because it, what does it mean to overcome the horizon
00:49:29.180 of liberalism?
00:49:29.700 Does that mean you're suddenly become a Nazi or a fascist?
00:49:31.740 Probably not because Strauss is not, is not well known as a Nazi or a fascist, you know,
00:49:36.680 and it's not obvious that studying Hobbes and reading Plato is like, you know, the two
00:49:41.100 signs of a Nazi and a fascist.
00:49:42.980 But it shows you the constraints that the horizon of liberalism put on the analysis of
00:49:47.280 political life and how important it is to overcome them without the accusation of being
00:49:52.200 a Nazi or a fascist.
00:49:53.220 In fact, so much so to repeat this amazing point that Schmidt, like the most famous Nazi theorist,
00:49:57.820 is still too liberal.
00:49:59.240 By the way, that shows you that you can still, you can be a Nazi and still be too liberal
00:50:03.180 and you can be not liberal and not be a Nazi.
00:50:05.980 So this is like, and the attention that Strauss, how Strauss reads, that's very important.
00:50:11.080 Because again, you will read Concept of the Political, you'll read Strauss's notes, you'll
00:50:14.600 be like, wait a minute, Strauss, Schmidt said that?
00:50:17.200 Oh, he said this and this and they all fit together so nicely.
00:50:19.560 How come I didn't see it?
00:50:21.180 You know, so Strauss is good teaching and how to read these things extremely carefully and
00:50:24.700 attentively, but yeah, I would say it's the path from Hobbes to Plato that's so amazing
00:50:28.620 and that's prefigured here in this commentary.
00:50:32.740 Excellent.
00:50:33.320 Well, before we move over to the questions of the people, guys, of course, once again,
00:50:37.600 if you want to read both of these, it all comes in the concept of the Political Expanded Edition,
00:50:43.040 so you can do that pretty easily.
00:50:45.900 But Michael Millerman, where can people find your work if they want to see what you're doing?
00:50:51.260 Is there anywhere you want to direct people before we head to the questions?
00:50:54.960 Sure.
00:50:55.360 So I'm youtube.com at Millerman.
00:50:57.700 I have a channel where I make all kinds of free videos on political theory, political
00:51:00.720 philosophy and political events, including the Trump electoral victory.
00:51:05.620 I also teach online, as you said at the start, millermanschool.com.
00:51:08.560 Those are my paid courses and I'm most active in social media on Twitter or X where it's
00:51:13.560 M underscore Millerman.
00:51:15.700 So feel free to join me in any of those places.
00:51:17.880 I'm happy to talk.
00:51:19.440 Yeah, I'm crawling my way through Heidegger, but I have a feeling that I'm going to have a
00:51:23.640 Millerman course in my future there because it's certainly a challenging climb.
00:51:28.140 All right, guys.
00:51:28.640 By the way, can I just say super quickly, in the introduction, I have a different edition
00:51:32.860 than you.
00:51:33.140 It also has Strauss's essay, but I don't think it has the neutralizations essay by Schmitt.
00:51:38.060 Oh, yeah.
00:51:38.300 He's got it.
00:51:38.620 But anyways, in the introduction here, there's a line that Schmitt is like the Heidegger of
00:51:44.460 political theory, given his importance across the whole political spectrum.
00:51:48.680 You know, so there are nice relationships between Schmitt and Heidegger there too, encapsulated
00:51:53.240 even by that sentence.
00:51:55.060 But it sure is a lot easier to read.
00:51:56.820 And man, do I appreciate that.
00:51:58.340 All right.
00:51:58.760 Let's move over.
00:51:59.520 That's for sure.
00:52:00.600 Let's move over to our questions real quick here.
00:52:02.760 Uh, Jeff says, uh, simply the friend enemy distinction is neither binary nor moral and
00:52:08.400 is, uh, context dependent is fundamentally about the survival of the group.
00:52:13.620 How do you feel about that statement?
00:52:15.720 So one of the things here is it takes the group as given, you know, so it says first you
00:52:22.160 have the group, but one of the things that Schmitt is interested in is it's a sovereign
00:52:27.100 to say who is included in the we and who's excluded.
00:52:29.440 And of those who are excluded, you know, who poses an existential threat enough to be regarded
00:52:33.980 as an enemy.
00:52:34.720 Those are sovereign acts of, I mean, it's, it's not, it is binary in some sense for him.
00:52:41.900 It's not exactly moral.
00:52:43.460 That's true.
00:52:44.340 But you can't take the group for granted at the outset because a person may think like
00:52:50.220 groups are given.
00:52:51.740 It's not, it's not so obvious to me the extent to which groups are given for Schmitt, you know,
00:52:57.160 obviously groupings are important, but what's the relevant grouping?
00:53:00.240 Is it the civilization?
00:53:01.280 Is it the culture?
00:53:01.940 Is it the state?
00:53:02.580 Is it the race?
00:53:03.280 Is it the people?
00:53:04.280 Is it the civilization?
00:53:05.340 Is it the block?
00:53:06.460 You know, so if you say it's fundamentally about the survival of a group, it is about
00:53:10.420 survival for Schmitt.
00:53:12.220 That's true.
00:53:13.160 Cause the whole political is, is, you know, your survival is that threat, the survival
00:53:17.600 of your way of life.
00:53:18.280 And again, your existential, uh, existence is again, it's always worth reference to the real
00:53:22.440 possibility of physical killing.
00:53:24.260 Um, and it is, I guess, context dependent, but don't take the existence of the group for
00:53:28.560 granted because we don't yet know in a very clear sense for Schmitt, who is the underlying
00:53:34.320 X, you know, is that just the fact, a natural fact is a biological fact is races are the players
00:53:40.480 again, cultures, groups, states, units, what are they?
00:53:44.140 So that may, that may vary.
00:53:45.940 Um, but it's binary in the sense, it is binary in the sense that like, I'm going to kill you
00:53:51.180 or you're going to kill me.
00:53:52.000 You know, our group is going to kill you or your group is going to kill us.
00:53:54.700 Uh, you can have many enemies, possibly you can have many friends.
00:53:57.060 So I guess it depends what exactly he's trying to say here, but those are the reflections
00:54:00.640 I would add.
00:54:01.660 Yeah.
00:54:01.980 I was going to say it, it, it, I think it is binary again, the whole point, I think
00:54:06.780 ultimately for Schmitt is like, there is a point at which this decision has to be made.
00:54:10.320 The switch is flipped where we do get to that ultimate, uh, decision where it might
00:54:14.660 be a context, all of these things, you know, the, like you said, the, the, which, which
00:54:18.880 identity is salient inside those coalitions and groups.
00:54:21.860 Those are, those are context dependent, but I do think ultimately does come down to that
00:54:26.500 kind of binary decision.
00:54:28.280 Uh, Archimedes says, thank you for having Millerman on.
00:54:30.940 Have you read Schmitt's land and sea?
00:54:33.160 It is pertinent to two great conflicts of our moment between NATO and Eurasia and between
00:54:38.240 middle America and the coastal elites.
00:54:41.260 Have you read that one, sir?
00:54:42.300 I have, but not recently enough to be able to draw on it from memory.
00:54:46.700 I can tell you that the division is important in geopolitics.
00:54:49.420 So in Dugan's foundations of geopolitics and other writings of Dugan's that recurs, you
00:54:53.000 know, you've got your Thassilocracies and your Telerocracies and so on, the land power,
00:54:56.900 sea power, and then the analysis of, you know, whether we need to take into account other,
00:55:01.100 uh, other divisions besides land and sea, you know, so what's the, what's the right lens
00:55:05.480 through which to think about cyberspace, you know, is it more land or more sea or is it
00:55:08.940 something else altogether?
00:55:09.940 Uh, but again, I couldn't go through the text because it's been too long since I've
00:55:12.820 read it.
00:55:12.960 I just don't have it, uh, on the tip of my tongue.
00:55:16.500 Sure.
00:55:16.860 Let me say, sorry, let me say, let me just say one other thing super quickly, which is
00:55:20.420 that, uh, the idea that different, uh, geographical factors will affect your political order in
00:55:27.580 crucial ways that is long attested to.
00:55:29.940 So even in Plato's laws, for example, the characters discuss whether the colony they're
00:55:34.080 going to be founding is going to be close to the water or not.
00:55:36.480 Is it going to be like a port colony or an inland colony?
00:55:39.460 Because if it's a port colony, you're going to have a lot of trade, a lot of different
00:55:42.600 peoples, and it's going to be harder to have a fixed moral order.
00:55:45.860 You know, if you live in a port where you have people coming and going all the time,
00:55:49.160 you're not likely to have a sort, sort like a Spartan type, uh, moral order.
00:55:53.380 You're not likely to have a fixed moral order.
00:55:54.740 So the idea that there's a, you can project different, um, like fluidity or stability
00:56:01.500 of moral order on the characters of land and sea is well attested to, uh, even outside of
00:56:06.200 Schmidt and it's carried through, obviously the commentary of the geo, uh, geopoliticians.
00:56:10.640 Amazing how those things that are amazing, how those things that are often characterized
00:56:15.260 as postmodern by, uh, by liberals are actually ancient and have been around for a very long
00:56:21.340 time.
00:56:21.600 Yeah, that's why there's no substitute for reading the ancient class, you know, the classical
00:56:26.000 political science or the ancient authors.
00:56:27.420 Cause then you see, well, wait a minute, this idea that I thought was modern or postmodern
00:56:30.480 of Plato wrote about it, then I got to rethink this.
00:56:33.340 Yeah.
00:56:33.980 Absolutely.
00:56:34.840 Guys, uh, you know, while I appreciate people watching the channel and I love to talk about
00:56:39.120 many different, you know, more modern thinkers.
00:56:41.500 If you don't have a foundation of guys like Plato and Aristotle, you're just, you're, you're,
00:56:45.680 you're robbing yourself of something, uh, very important.
00:56:48.660 Don't, don't skip to the end.
00:56:50.020 Not to say don't read things that you find interesting, but make sure you, you know, I,
00:56:54.540 I do this, you know, I read Dugan and now I've got to go back and read Heidegger because
00:56:57.580 I want to understand more about, you know, these things, but, but, you know, you don't
00:57:01.560 have to read everything in the exact canonical order, but don't rob yourself of those ancients.
00:57:06.500 Yeah.
00:57:06.620 Even just the, the recognition that there's something there.
00:57:08.780 I mean, speaking of the maestra, he refers to Plato's laws, you know, when he writes about
00:57:11.660 written and unwritten constitution.
00:57:12.860 So these things have roots.
00:57:15.860 Absolutely.
00:57:16.940 Uh, Charlemagne says, Carl Schmitt's state of exception is also routinely abused and
00:57:20.880 manipulating procedural outcomes are often incorrectly referred to as an exception.
00:57:25.700 Uh, yeah, I, I think you're mainly just talking about academic agent there.
00:57:29.900 There's a state of exception, uh, more than he should, but yeah, no, I, I agree.
00:57:35.220 That's another one that can easily be abused, uh, by, by those that are not taking the full
00:57:40.200 context of that understanding.
00:57:41.620 Uh, Chair of Cow says, great guests.
00:57:44.080 Millerman is a real one.
00:57:45.520 Absolutely.
00:57:46.160 Like I said, make sure you're checking out Michael's work.
00:57:48.920 If you are not subscribed, uh, tiny stupid demon says, if the presence of an enemy gives
00:57:54.440 rise to the political, what is the correct term for the state before this?
00:57:58.720 The ethical, the legal, uh, interesting question.
00:58:01.740 Yeah.
00:58:01.920 What, what would, does Schmitt even have the concept of, uh, an enemy list politics or an
00:58:08.620 existence that is pre-political because the enemy has not yet arisen?
00:58:13.480 So I don't think so.
00:58:15.960 And in fact, this is a little bit outside of my area of expertise, but I think that at
00:58:21.360 some point for Schmitt, enmity is from the very beginning.
00:58:27.540 In other words, God and the devil, you know, so if you have enmity, yes, if you, it's, it's
00:58:34.480 not, you know, he does not have an evolutionary account of the origin of political order.
00:58:39.440 I think for him, these divisions are laid into the fabric of existence from the beginning
00:58:45.440 and they are fundamentally theological.
00:58:48.820 And therefore it's not like they arise at some point.
00:58:51.080 They are, uh, they're embedded into the, into the order from the beginning.
00:58:54.740 But I will say on the second half or the other part of the question that the legal and the
00:58:58.860 ethical, those are for him attempts to paper over the division.
00:59:02.800 You know, if you become too ethical or too legal, now he doesn't say have no concern with
00:59:08.140 ethics or no concern with legality, but he says, if you have your ethical proceduralism
00:59:12.500 and legal proceduralism replace recognition of this fundamental opposition, then you are
00:59:17.560 off the mark.
00:59:18.600 Mark and, uh, Mark Conan, I guess is the way to say that, uh, Mike greetings from Ottawa.
00:59:26.280 Love your work and all of your insights here in a proper world.
00:59:29.940 Our right-wing parties would be seeking you out for how to ideologically challenge the liberal,
00:59:35.100 uh, demoralization in Canada.
00:59:37.540 Much love bike.
00:59:39.540 Actually.
00:59:40.160 Yeah.
00:59:40.420 Since we're near the end here, uh, what do you, how do you feel about the kind of current
00:59:45.700 situation with Canada?
00:59:47.180 We just heard that, um, Justin Trudeau is talking about, uh, turning down the amount
00:59:53.100 of immigration coming in.
00:59:54.440 I don't know how serious that is.
00:59:56.440 It's, you know, is it, is that in response to the Trump election?
00:59:59.120 Do you think he's, do you think he's responding to political realities in Canada?
01:00:02.740 Do you geopolitical realities, economics?
01:00:05.480 How do you feel that response is framed?
01:00:08.040 So to be brief about it, he's a fraud and he's grasping at straws.
01:00:11.420 All the polls show that he's going to be defeated in a historic loss.
01:00:14.380 And he's going to say anything at this point.
01:00:16.720 And it doesn't really matter because the next election that's called the conservatives are
01:00:20.260 going to take power.
01:00:21.020 And I hope that when they do, they can no longer have the stigma of being accused of, you know,
01:00:26.740 having a Trump like politics, whether they do or don't, that used to be an accusation that
01:00:30.300 came with a stigma.
01:00:31.160 Now I think that stigma is gone because Trump won a resounding mandate.
01:00:34.780 He gave, in some sense, the voters what they want.
01:00:38.160 It was a decisive win.
01:00:39.660 And it's, it's now should be a compliment and not an insult for a leader to be accused of
01:00:44.920 ruling in a Trump like way.
01:00:46.700 But at any rate, the conservative leader here, he's much more competent than Trudeau on the
01:00:50.460 basic issues, including just economic issues.
01:00:52.640 Obviously, once you talk about immigration, you're very much in the realm of the political
01:00:56.040 who's in, who's out in a crucial sort of way here.
01:00:59.800 And so, you know, I hope that it looks like a conservative is going to win in a big way.
01:01:04.420 Trudeau's, it's really embarrassing that he was selected as often as he was.
01:01:08.520 I mean, it should have been obvious from the beginning that he's a total buffoon, but
01:01:11.040 unfortunately, sometimes it takes a little while to learn these lessons.
01:01:14.300 And hopefully it's not too late by then.
01:01:16.320 Immigration politics are on the table now for all serious countries.
01:01:19.580 And Canada is not a serious country at the moment, but hopefully the conservatives can
01:01:23.340 turn that around.
01:01:24.440 By the way, if I can throw in one last observation here extremely quickly, which I think just think
01:01:27.900 is important on the Schmidt side, and I just want to state, is that he does say that sometimes
01:01:32.360 disputes can become political as a function of their intensity.
01:01:35.600 So that's just another important take-home message from Schmidt.
01:01:38.080 It's not just, it's division.
01:01:40.240 If your economic opposition is intense enough that you're willing to kill and die, if your
01:01:44.380 aesthetic opposition is intense enough that you're willing, if your religious gets intense
01:01:47.560 enough that you're willing to kill and die, it has become political through that intensity.
01:01:51.200 So clearly, you know, as issues become more salient, they become more political in that sense.
01:01:55.660 But yeah, Trudeau's days are numbered, and hopefully the conservatives can help turn the country
01:01:58.860 around.
01:01:59.460 Trump's given an example, and hopefully we can follow it in the way that a smaller, less
01:02:03.760 substantial country can do.
01:02:07.060 Yeah, to piggyback on that remark, my buddy Kevin Dolan, Bennett's phylactery on Twitter,
01:02:14.760 once said, politics is just religion you actually believe in.
01:02:17.900 Which I think, you know, some people would have blow their hair back with that statement
01:02:22.780 at first.
01:02:23.400 But it, like, as you point out, the intensity, the willingness to sacrifice, the reality of
01:02:30.620 conflict and martyrdom is ultimately the true decider of belief.
01:02:34.040 And then I think that there's a deep insight there from Schmidt as well.
01:02:41.000 Finally, last question here.
01:02:42.500 Jeff says, not binary in reference to the makeup of the group, i.e. a two single, i.e.
01:02:48.520 a two single tribes or frameworks.
01:02:50.920 Oh, okay.
01:02:51.220 He's clarifying his original statement on the binary nature of the groups.
01:02:55.320 Okay.
01:02:55.780 Well, thank you for that clarification.
01:02:57.240 All right.
01:02:57.860 All right, guys, we're going to wrap this up.
01:02:59.360 Once again, if it is your first time here, please make sure that you subscribe to this
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01:03:26.400 Thank you everybody for watching, and as always, I will talk to you next time.