Carl Schmitt and the Katechon

Friend and enemy in a multipolar world

Alexander Dugin on the crisis of the friend–enemy distinction in a multipolar world.

I have always approached Carl Schmitt with enormous interest and attention. I translated his works. Certain things—for example, his treatment of Hobbes’s Leviathan, his interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, or his critique of Political Romanticism—provoked some resistance in me. Yet overall, I considered, and still consider, the majority of his ideas and concepts to be highly relevant.

His definition of the Political as the distinction between friend and enemy is an indisputably classic doctrine. The main point here is the realist and Machiavellian division between two ontologies: the moral and the political. Friend/enemy is by no means the same as good/bad. The sphere of morality is absolute: evil cannot become good, and vice versa. The sphere of the Political is relative. In politics, yesterday’s enemy may become today’s friend; everything depends on interests.

This is the foundation on which the whole political philosophy of Carl Schmitt is based. Applied to international politics, and under a realist interpretation of sovereignty—and Schmitt adhered precisely to such an approach—it is entirely adequate. On this basis, Schmitt, and after him Alain de Benoist, built the theory of the Pluriverse. Here, friend/enemy broadly works, and the implicit critique of liberalism proves fully effective.

But if we apply the friend/enemy principle to domestic politics, we effectively provide a basis for radical democracy and parliamentarism, both of which Schmitt himself hated. In internal politics, recognition of the friend/enemy principle splits and polarizes society. This means that Schmitt’s definition, when applied internally, divides society into opposing halves.

The ontology of friend/enemy in foreign policy also, upon closer examination, proves less convincing than it seems. It is perfectly suited to realism and to the Westphalian system. But with the transition to a multipolar world—to the state-civilization—the realist tendency to downplay ideology, even while recognizing civilizational sovereignty, no longer seems convincing. The civilization of the Katechon cannot relate to the civilization of the Antichrist in a neutral, purely formal way, as the ontology of the Political in the friend/enemy model formally requires.

The applicability of Schmitt’s general model is thus called into question, despite all its relevance and persuasiveness.

This deserves more thorough reflection.

(Translated from the Russian)