The Essence of the Political in Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt is currently considered, across continental Europe, one of the major political theorists of our century, but is still largely ignored in England and the United States. Even though Schmitt has been a very prolific author with wide-ranging interests, his best-known work remains the one on the nature of politics - which is the focus of this article. Sartori maintains that the friend-enemy opposition in conjunction with an intensity criterion does not suffice to seize the `essence' of the political. After Hobbes, it is Schmitt that best presents the case of politics-as-war. But this is only to deploy one of the modalities of the political; and Schmitt cannot cancel out of existence the alternative mode of politics, i.e. peace-like politics, by simply calling it non-politics.