Messianic Politics (ii): Neutralizations of Carl Schmitt

One of the characteristics of inflationary messianism is its totalizing propensity. It ruptures the status quo with an absolute division. The political field is split between those who are faithful to the messianic event and those who would deny or resist it. This is the nature of the messianic in its inflationary mode: it accounts for the resistance of the status quo and defines itself, in part, in opposition to it. Thus, the greatest danger to a messianic politics, it would seem, would come not from those who would resist it from without, but those who would neutralize it from within. At least this is the impression one gathers from the tradition I am dealing with here – Scholem, Benjamin, Taubes, Agamben. Alongside this tradition of inflationary messianism has emerged a critical sub-tradition: the one which seeks to cleanse messianism of its neutralizing elements. Each thinker not only articulates his own vision of messianic politics, but also identifies those elements that would defuse a messianic intensity. In the coming posts I will follow this critical line as it takes on various opponents. Here, however, I will offer, by way of context – historical and conceptual – some thoughts on Carl Schmitt’s critique of “neutralization.” Schmitt is clearly in the background of this tradition.

In his 1929 essay “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations” Schmitt defines the contemporary European political situation as reducible to a single formula: the “legitimacy of the status quo.” (131) In order to describe how Europe had gotten to such a point, he names a series of stages that conceptually capture Europe’s (theologio-)political development; which are really a “series of progressive neutralizations”. (137)

There are four great, simple, secular stages corresponding to the four centuries and proceeding from the theological to the metaphysical sphere, from here to the humanitarian-moral and finally to the economic sphere. (131)

With respect to these stages, Schmitt considers

the strongest and most consequential of all intellectual shifts of European history to be the one in the 17th century from traditional Christian theology to “natural” science [i.e. the shift from the theology to metaphysics]. Until now this shift has determined the direction of all further development…At the core of this astounding shift lies an elemental impulse that has been decisive for centuries, i.e., the striving for neutral sphere. (137)

The attempt to mediate theological disputes by way of a “neutral” secular sphere is criticized by Schmitt not on practical grounds – for certainly this mediation lead to a certain mitigation of violence. What is at issue here is the neutralization, thus nullification, of the political as such. The antagonism constitutive of the political (friends and enemies) cannot be negated without the consequent negation of the political itself. Schmitt says,

the essential point for me is that theology, the former central sphere, was abandoned because it was controversial, in favor of another – neutral – sphere. The former central sphere became neutralized in that it ceased to be the central sphere. On the basis of the new central sphere, one hoped to find minimum agreement and common premises allowing for the possibility of security, clarity, prudence and peace. Europeans thus moved in the direction of neutralization and minimalization, whereby they accepted the law which “kept them in line” for the following centuries and constituted their concept of truth. (137)

But is such a neutralization of conflict really a neutralization; or is it merely a displacement? What is the locus of neutrality? Who maintains the neutrality of the neutral?

In the 19th century, first the monarch and then the state became a neutral power, initiating a chapter in the history of political theology in the liberal doctrines of the pouvoir neutre and the stato neutrale in which the process of neutralization finds its classical formula because it also has grasped what is most decisive: political power. But in the dialectic of such a development one creates a new sphere of struggle precisely through the shifting of the central sphere. (138)

Antagonism is not overcome, it is simply shifted: “The religious wars evolved into the still cultural yet already economically determined national wars of the 19th century and finally into economic wars.” (138) No one is nostalgic for the days when one’s life could be taken for being baptized at the wrong age, however, the egalitarian and sanitized warfare of the guillotine or the smart bomb produce a corporeal remainder that no amount of quicklime can blot out. Is profit a more excusable pretense than dogma?

But the pinnacle of neutralization, for Schmitt, emerges in the 19th century’s religious faith in technology. The seeming blindness of its potential deployment, however, is a sign of a whole new breed of attempted neutrality.

The process of continuous neutralizations of various spheres 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. (141)

Technological “neutrality” is different in kind from the previous attempts at a neutral sphere in terms of the positivity of its attempt. While previous spheres, like the secular, attempted to rid itself of political content, thereby making itself less available for religious appropriation and particular hegemonies, technology functions more as a universality than a neutrality: it makes itself available to anyone. “Technology is always only an instrument and a weapon; precisely because it serves all, it is not neutral.” (139)

The details of Schmitt’s analysis are less important here than his overall criticism of neutrality, the attempt to develop a non-antagonistic consensus – i.e. a neutralization of the political as such. This criticism of neutrality, of political – or messianic – neutralizations will become important for Scholem, Benjamin, Taubes and Agamben.

Messianic Politics (i): Two Traditions

After a long hiatus, I hope to begin posting again on a semi-regular basis. It is always difficult to maintain the intensity of expectation once the one who is expected actually arrives. It was probably no coincidence that the series of posts that I had planned to compose on the theme of the messianic were more difficult to write while in the midst of my daughter's parousia.

There are at least two traditions of messianism; but I am not thinking here of the ones that correspond to the different Abrahamic faiths. The traditions I have in mind transcend and encompass, to some degree, those of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We can call the one an inflationary messianism and the other a deflationary. The former corresponds roughly to a "revolutionary" model while the later to a "reform" model; however, these names are imprecise enough to be abandoned. What is at stake in both the inflationary and the deflationary modes of the messianic is the status of law -- but again, this is not, fundamentally, the difference between Judaism and Christianity.

In the deflationary mode messianism represents a relatively minor alteration of the order of things. Here is the classic talmudic formulation of the messianic era:

"This world differs from [that of] the days of the Messiah only in respect of servitude to [foreign] powers." (Sanhedrin 99a)

The messianic era -- as distinct, it should be noted from redemption -- will differ for the Jews in one important respect: they will not be living under the power or law of any foreign nation. But law as such -- and this is the important distinction -- is not different. Torah will still be followed. Christian analogues can be found as well. For instance when Jesus says,

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill." (Matt 5.17)

This tradition of messianism continues up to the present day. The majority voice within both Judaism and Christianity is that of a deflationary messianism -- even if the church imagines itself to be beyond (Jewish) law, it persists, for the most part, in subjection to (state) law; this is due, no doubt, to a certain way of reading Romans 13 that favours the status quo. This is not to say, however, that deflationary messianism is commensurate with a reactionary politics or a rigid conservatism. Levinas and Rosenzweig, for instance, are thinkers of deflationary messianism.

Inflationary messianism, on the other hand, takes a different view of law in the messianic era. Agamben, borrowing heavily from Gershom Scholem's work on the messianic idea states the matter this way: "The Messiah is... the figure through which religion confronts the problem of the Law, decisively reckoning with it." (Potentialities,163).

Scholem saw the origins of this tradition less in the biblical literature -- which, in the Jewish tradition, according to Scholem, does not have a fully developed idea of messianism; it merely anticipates the messianic era -- and more in later messianic movements. Here the Sabbatian movement of 1648 is exemplary. This movement saw the messianic era as inaugurating a time where the Torah should no longer be kept; indeed, when the Torah should be overtly disobeyed. Other modern proponents of inflationary messianism would include Marx (in a disavowed form) and Benjamin (especially his "Critique of Violence" essay). Derrida is a figure who is slightly more difficult to place within this framework. His thinking of "the messianic without messianism" does not speak of a messianic era, only the messianic interruption of the present. To pursue the thought further would inevitably leave him too close to a "historical messianism" of one kind or another.

I preface my future posts on the messianic with this in order to show that messianism can be deployed in at least two modes. For now my focus will be on the inflationary messianism of Scholem, Benjamin, Agamben (and Taubes).