Contra Carl Schmitt: A play-centered alternative to his existentially distorted concept of politics

In this article, I show that Carl Schmitt’s conceptualization of the political can be seen as a skewed phenomenological analysis. From this point of view, it becomes clear why he claims the essence of the political lies in the distinction between friend and enemy, and why this is by no means its invariant element. To this end, I review ancient and modern uses of the adjective political, his questionable approach to the relationship between rule and exception, and his biased reading of conflict, social cohesion, and political activity. Schmitt also carries out an existentialist distortion of the modern experience of the political based on the metaphors of enmity and war, which he found in various of his predecessors. Yet he ignores those derived from sports competition. I then show that, following Johan Huizinga’s work, a more general concept of the political refers to play according to which politics is norm-bounded. Finally, I show the implications of the previous analysis.