Χρίστος > Χρίστος's Quotes

“The concept of progress, i.e., an improvement or completion (in modern jargon, a rationalization) became dominant in the eighteenth century, in an age of humanitarian-moral belief. Accordingly, progress meant above all progress in culture, self-determination, and education: moral perfection. In an age of economic or technical thinking, it is self-evident that progress is economic or technical progress. To the extent that anyone is still interested in humanitarian-moral progress, it appears as a byproduct of economic progress. If a domain of thought becomes central, then the problems of other domains are solved in terms of the central domain - they are considered secondary problems, whose solution follows as a matter of course only if the problems of the central domain are solved.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political

“The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“Humanity as such and as a whole has no enemies. Everyone belongs to humanity . . . "Humanity" thus becomes an asymmetrical counter-concept. If he discriminates within humanity and thereby denies the quality of being human to a disturber or destroyer, then the negatively valued person becomes an unperson, and his life is no longer of the highest value: it becomes worthless and must be destroyed. Concepts such as "human being" thus contain the possibility of the deepest inequality and become thereby "asymmetrical.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political

“Without wanting to decide the question of the nature of man one may say in general that as long as man is well off or willing to put up with things, he prefers the illusion of an undisturbed calm and does not endure pessimists. The political adversaries of a clear political theory will, therefore, easily refute political phenomena and truths in the name of some autonomous discipline as amoral, uneconomical, unscientific and above all else declare this- a devilry worthy of being combated.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political

“The remarkable and, for many, certainly disquieting diagnosis [is] that all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political

“The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“Karl Marx: bourgeoisie and proletariat. This antithesis concentrates all antagonisms of world history into one single final battle against the last enemy of humanity. It does so by integrating the many bourgeois parties on earth into a single order, on the one hand, and likewise the proletariat, on the other. By so doing a mighty friend-enemy grouping is forged. Its power of conviction during the nineteenth century resided above all in the fact that it followed its liberal bourgeois enemy into its own domain, the economic, and challenged it, so to speak, in its home territory with its own weapons. This was necessary because the turning toward economics was decided by the victory of industrial society.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“The process of continuous neutralization of various domains of cultural life has reached its end because technology is at hand. Technology is no longer neutral ground in the sense of the process of neutralization; every strong politics will make use of it. For this reason, the present century can only be understood provisionally as the century of technology. How ultimately it should be understood will be revealed only when it is known which type of politics is strong enough to master the new technology and which type of genuine friend-enemy groupings can develop on this new ground.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“Whoever knows no other enemy than death and recognizes in his enemy nothing more than an empty mechanism is nearer to death than life.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“The eighteenth-century humanitarian concept of humanity was a polemical denial of the then existing aristocratic-feudal system and the privileges accompanying it. Humanity according to natural law and liberal-individualistic doctrines is a universal, i.e., all-embracing, social ideal, a system of relations between individuals. This materializes only when the real possibility of war is precluded and every friend and enemy grouping becomes impossible. In this universal society there would no longer be nations in the form of political entities, no class struggles, and no enemy groupings.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“Humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“As long as a state exists, there will thus always be in the world more than just one state. A world state which embraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“If a people no longer possesses the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“It would be ludicrous to believe that a defenseless people has nothing but friends, and it would be a deranged calculation to suppose that the enemy could perhaps be touched by the absence of a resistance”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“We always live in the eye of the more radical brother, who compels us to draw the practical conclusion and pursue it to the end.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition

“If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.”
― Plato, Gorgias