Wolfgang Palaver (University of Innsbruck)
War and Politics:
Clausewitz and Schmitt from the Perspective of Mimetic Theory
Both, Clausewitz and
Schmitt, reflected throughout their lives on the relationship between war and
politics. With the help of René Girard’s mimetic theory I will first show how
both these thinkers understood that war and politics are deeply interconnected.
At the heart of war we can find a duel (“Zweikampf”) that is characterized by mimetic violence
easily escalating to the extreme of total destruction. Schmitt’s understanding
of politics shows, on the one hand, how politics stems from war and, on the
other, that it aims at the containment of war at the same time. Politics
contains war in both meanings of the term contain. A second step focuses on
Schmitt’s complex relation to theology and religion. His concept of the
political consists in an attempt to de-theologise war without, however, giving
in to a complete profanation
of it. Schmitt tries to connect
the political as closely as possible to the pagan sacred in order to strengthen
its capability to contain violence. In a third part I will show how Schmitt’s
attempt remains futile due to the growing influence of the biblical revelation.
The more the pagan sacred disappears from our world the less Schmittian politics
is able to contain violence. This development explains the apocalyptic stage of
our contemporary world that necessitates new answers to the age-old problem of
human violence.
