Introduction
In their essays “Politics as a Vocation” and “The Concept of the Political”, Max Weber and Carl Schmitt respectively shed light on what they conceive as constituting a political life. In this paper, I will attempt to compare and contrast their conceptions, drawing areas of similarities as well as highlighting the differences found in their writings. This is achieved in three parts. The first part is exploring and outlining how Schmitt defines the political in his “The Concept of the Political”. For the second part, the attention turns to Weber, as I will place his “Politics as a Vocation” under the same form of examination. The first two parts are necessary because a comparison between the two writers cannot be accomplished without first understanding their works. Subsequently in the third but no less important part, I will attempt to carry out the comparison central to this paper.
I. The Concept of the Political
The concept of the political is, in Schmitt’s view, an important concept that needs to be clarified, as it is necessary for the understanding of the state, since “the concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political” and is “incomprehensible when the nature of the political is misunderstood.” Even so, Schmitt believes that despite its importance, the definition of the political has seldom been clear and has often been employed in antitheses without giving it a specific understanding. For him, such a treatment of the political is only “justifiable” when the state “possesses the monopoly on politics” and he proceeds to give examples of the times when such conditions are available, in the eighteenth century and Germany in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
This condition ceased to exist in the twentieth century, a time that Schmitt terms as the “total state twentieth” where “the equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive” . In such a time, the state is no longer “distinct from society and higher from it” but the latter has “itself integrated into the state” and the state “no longer knows anything absolutely non-political” . Since the condition for a vague definition of the political is no longer present, it can be implied that a specific definition is required. This “definition of the political can be obtained by discovering and defining the specifically political categories” and it must “rest on its own ultimate distinctions” . This distinction, when reduced to its simplest and most empirical form, is for Schmitt, “that between friend and enemy.”
Since it is the most empirical form, the distinction of friend and enemy is not founded upon, nor motivated by other antitheses. As Schmitt puts it:
“The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions.”
This distinction denotes the presence of “the other” whose very nature is in a “specially intense way, existentially different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” In turn, in the most extreme case, the conflicts call for war to be waged against the enemy and war, in Schmitt’s understanding, is “to be understood in its existential sense” , which is to say the physical killing of human beings. It is important to note here that the political does not desire war, or necessary lead to war. However, war as a possibility cannot be denied. Schmitt also pointed out, “The definition of the political suggested here neither favours war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism” and “war is neither the aim nor the purpose nor even the very content of politics.” Its presence as a possibility, however, “creates a specifically political behaviour.”
Having defined the political, the friend-enemy distinction, as well as highlighted its result in the most extreme case, war, Schmitt also singles out the people that can make such a distinction. He explains that it is the people as a whole who make this friend-enemy distinction. The enemy, according to Schmitt, is “not the private adversary” of one individual. The enemy is instead the “public enemy” of the entire “collectivity of people” . This implies that the enemy cannot be determined by one person but has to be regarded as such by the whole group. To add on to that, since it is the collectivity of people that decides who is the enemy, it is by extension that only the people directly involved and no other outsiders who can determine the friend-enemy distinction. “Only the actual participants can correctly recognise, understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict.” In this sense, the distinction is autonomous.
In essence, the political, for Schmitt, is the distinction of friend and enemy, made only possible by an entity of people against another entity, without the judgement of outsiders, and the enmity between the two would in the most intense situation lead to the existential killing of one another.
II. Politics as a Vocation
From the outset, Max Weber establishes the perimeter of his discussion of politics as “the leadership, or the influencing of the leadership of a political association” , in other words, a state. Furthermore, Weber defines the state by its “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force” . Hence politics can be deduced to be for Weber “striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power either among states or among groups within a state” , brought about by the right to use violence. This right to violence is in turn legitimised in three ways, namely “traditional,” “charismatic,” and “legal” and it is the “charismatic”, that according to Weber we find the calling of politics due to its focus on the individual.
In support of the sustenance of power for the individual charismatic political leader, Weber postulates an “organised domination”, which “requires controls of the personal executive staff and the material implements of administration” needed as rewards for the followers of the charismatic leader. It is in the service of the charismatic leaders, among his followers, that one finds the “professional politicians” who make politics their vocation.
In order to make politics a vocation, for Weber, one “either lives for” or “lives off politics” . In basic terms, in living for politics, politics is an end in itself, while in living off politics, politics is a means to an end, namely, the end being economics well being. However, Weber says that the two are not mutually exclusive, and “the rule is, rather, that man does both, at least in thought and certainly he also does both in practice.” The reason for this undertaking is that only
“rentiers”, wealthy men who are not preoccupied with making a living can really live for politics without living off the latter. Even in this case, Weber believes that “there has never been such a stratum that has not somehow lived off politics”, as they would then “exploit their political domination in their own economic interest.”
Having explained the professional politicians, Weber proceeds to give examples the conditions and the sources of their emergence – “politically exploitable strata outside of the order of the estates” – and the roles that they play, and their development in the history of politics in America and Europe – in the formation of a “leaderless democracy, namely the rule of professional politicians without a calling,” as opposed to a charismatic leader. These are some examples, to name a few.
More importantly, Weber highlights “three pre-eminent qualities that are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.” These qualities are decisive and necessary in order to justify the huge influence that a political position allocates to the person occupying it. The first of the three, passion, is required as a “devotion to a cause” , providing an objective for the politician, while the latter two, a feeling of responsibility and a sense of proportion work hand in hand in keeping the politician in check, preventing the politician from losing sight of his objective. These qualities are necessary because the position of power also brings along with it great temptations, especially vanity, which Weber thinks is especially damaging in the field of politics as a result of the potential harm that it entails.
Also highlighted by Weber is the link between ethics and politics. Weber believes that politics, like other matters, cannot escape ethical examination. In the ethical examination of politics, Weber proposes down “two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims”, “the ethic of ultimate ends” and the “ethic of responsibility” as guide. The ethic of ultimate ends postulates that the ends justify the means while the ethics of responsibility concerns itself with the possible consequences of the means. These ethical paradoxes, as Weber calls them, are what he believes to be essential knowledge for anyone who wishes to engage in politics, especially as a vocation. Though initially claimed as irreconcilable, Weber believes that a man who possesses the two is a true man with the calling for politics.
In sum, Weber describes two main kinds of politicians in his essay. The first kind is the leader whose domination of politics is justified in three ways, namely the traditional, the legal and the charismatic authority. It is in the last one that he focuses on, as he believes that to possess “the calling for politics in its highest expression.” The second kind is the profession politician who developed concurrently with the first. For both of these kinds, Weber lays out the meaning of engaging politics as a vocation and the dangers of such an engagement and the qualities need to overcome these dangers.
III. Comparison of Weber and Schmitt
After summarising Carl Schmitt and Max Weber’s conception of the political, the third part of this paper will now proceed to carry out a comparison of the two and attempt to point out the similarities and differences present in their conception. First and foremost, both Schmitt and Weber understand the relation between politics and violence. For Schmitt, violence as war, in the sense of existential negation of the enemy, is the “most extreme political means (which) discloses the possibility which underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction of friend and enemy.” In a similar manner, for Weber, violence and politics are undeniable linked. For him, politics is about the strive for power within and outside a state and this power is based on violence since he stated that one of the main characteristics of the state is its monopoly of the legitimate use of violence.
Secondly, for Schmitt, the concept of the political is a domain of an entity of people, a collectivity. This is expressed in the way he theorises in “macro” terms, whereby the enemy must be confronted by a “fighting collectivity of people” as well as “in its entirety the state as an organised political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction.” Weber, on the other hand, looks at politics in “micro” terms, in terms of the individual, the leaders and the professional politicians, outlining the various aspects for the person who wishes to engage politics as a vocation. This difference in perspective is to influence heavily their views on different aspects of life such as economics and ethics.
Schmitt, in his essay, repeatedly emphasise the separation of economics and ethics, from the political. In his words, the political is “in any event independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on any one antithesis or any combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these.” On the contrary, Weber links politics to economics in the discussion of the potential rewards for engaging in politics and he further links politics to ethics, ethics of ultimate ends and responsibility based on religion, as guidelines for the conduct of politics.
Conclusion
Through the reading of Carl Schmitt’s “The Concept of the Political” and Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation”, we see two important and different takes on what distinguishes a political life. The first two parts of this essay give us a general understanding of each of their conception, while the third attempted to juxtapose the two in an effort to understand the similarities and differences present in the two essays. A closer look at the third part reveals that the two thinkers differ markedly in their conception of the political, with more differences than similarities having surfaced. These differences are in a way, shaped by the different position and viewpoint that they take in looking at politics. However, it is important to note that the list was but no means complete but could serve as a starting in understanding synthesising the Schmitt and Weber in a more holistic manner. As far as this is true, the two are not absolute contrast but rather supplements, which in unison allow us to better understand the political life.
References
Schmitt, Carl. (2007). The Concept of the Political. In The Concept of the Political. ed. George Schwab, 19-79. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Weber, Max. (1958). Politics as a Vocation. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. ed. H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills, 77-128. New York: Oxford University Press
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