It's not friend / enemy, it's enemy / (temporary) ally. This is Machiavelli's metaphysics, a step further, grounded and detached. Discuss.
Friend means friend of the state. Enemy means enemy of the state. A temporary ally would mean temporary citizenship which is ridiculous
>>24742122Citizenship does not mean automatically ally/friend. Antagonism is a fluid existent. The distinction is not bound by citizenship, law and rights. It's determined only by "naked life" which means raw power over the physical body of the supposed victim. The antagonism between plebs and the senate, the fundamental conflict.
>>24742131Nope, friend/enemy is a distinction determined by the sovereign and corresponds to friend/enemy of the nation, the public enemy. Not an internal struggle
>>24742138the citizen is only a temporary ally, nothing fundamentally/permanently promotes the ally to a friend. Only temporarily held up by law or convention, which themselves stand on nothing but the wit of the rulers and physical violence, the only absolute authority. This means, permanent allies do not exist. Internal conflicts always fester inside societies, which either upholds freedom for the plebs, or makes that society implode.
>>24742156Internal conflicts always exist but they have nothing to do with the distinction of friend/enemy of the state unless they escalate to civil war
>>24742119How did nothing important happen in political philosophy between Aristotle and Machiavelli? Almost two entire millennia.
>>24742158they do not have to escalate to war to be regarded as distinctions/conflicts. That was what I meant by implosion. Very interestingly, what makes a society hold together, is actually the festering internal conflict, what Machiavelli calls the conflict of the humors. That of the plebs, that of not wanting to be pulled and pushed around by rulers, and the humor of the rulers, that of brutalising the plebs. This is the fundamental, universal distinction of politics. Even prior to that of the public enemies. Since the conflict is what makes a national unit come to existence in the first place.
>>24742162Machiavelli got that from Polybius and it has nothing to do with the friend/enemy distinction Schmitt talks about which is the one decided by sovereignty. The distinction you refer to is not decided by the person or body with sovereignty
>>24742160Machiavelli is anti-arestotellian. Aristotle says what makes a good state is the pursuit of the "common good". Machiavelli says not entirely. The common good is a result of good laws, much like Aristotle, but he says these good laws are the results of a the conflict between the humors of the plebs and the state. What made Rome free he argues in in the discources of livy, is the fact that the plebs constantly antagonised and resisted the senate. The laws are the results of the bloody conflicts and the revolts. The fact that the second amendment of America is based on.
>>24742119What do you think Schmitt means by friend?>>24742131Real Concept of the Political. It's clear you didn't when you talk out of your ass about Schmitt like this. >>24742156Schmitt never claims that friend and enemy are eternal or objective. You're arguing against a caricature of his work that you hold from /pol/ and Xitter.
>>24742168It is very much decided by the rulers. The fundamental lever of which is the violence over naked life. There's basically nothing out of one's sphere of decision making in politics, given the fact that the citizenry body is a construct which is defined by rules, written by rulers, implemented by the violence of the rulers.
>>24742178What I am suggesting, is that conflict is as internal as it is external. Something that is entirely ignored by Schmitt, making it inferior to the metaphysics of Machiavelli. It's not an atomic unit.
>>24742185It's "ignored" by Schmitt because that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about external conflict. You might as well criticize Plato for not talking about computer science.
Semantic distinction. You’ve clearly not read Carl Schmitt’s books.
>>24742188then it's not a comprehensive metaphysics of politics, which is a weakness. Machiavelli includes both external and internal in his system, making it more realistic.
>>24742192So you're mad at Schmitt for not being Machiavelli? You don't have any actual critiques of his ideas? You've clearly not read Concept of the Political, because in it he explicitly discusses how fluid the friend-enemy distinction can be and how easily it can change.
>>24742199I know he says that he is fluid, but he deliberately ignores the fact that the conflict is not between mutiple atomic units that are states. The political distinction is as internal as it is external. For Schmitt the friend is taken for granted. It is as permanent as the enemy. Which is not the case, what keeps a society up, is the internal conflict of the rulers and the ruled. Which Schmitt ignores, he only focuses on public enemy. Simplifying the reality.
>>24742209>he deliberately ignores the fact that the conflict is not between mutiple atomic units that are statesHe never says it is?>is the internal conflict of the rulers and the ruled.He never says there isn't conflict here? In fact he also says that when taken to the extreme, private, internal enemies become political, public enemies. This manifests itself in civil war. He would say that a private "enemy" falling short of warlike enmity is not a political enemy in his sense of the word. I'm going to ask you point blank, and don't fucking dodge it. Have you read Concept of the Political? If not spend the rest of your day and do so, it's only 70 pages.
>>24742209Thereby he failed to understand, what made Rome so long lasting. His political vision is as sturdy as the regime with which he believed his thoughts were realized into reality. Ultimately branding him as a failed political theorist. Machiavelli however, when properly understood by public figuers, lawyers and lecturers, is a much better way to understand and act in the political world. It is very grim, but also resourceful.
>>24742219>Nazi Germany lost a war therefore Schmitt is wrong
>>24742213you do not get my meaning, in his vision the internal enemy is disposable, the internal enemy should only be branded as an enemy when there is civil war, this dodges the idea that the citizen by the very virtue of being under the power of violence by the ruler, is the enemy, thereby constituting a long lasting conflict of the humors, that keeps the state from actions that irritates the public, and when the irritation occurs, like in dialectics, the public refuses to be silent, and this is what actually perpetuates the existence of said society. Schmitt does not understand this. The consequence of this failure is that the state turns its attention to outside, and this leads to implosion.
>>24742228quite unironically, yes.
>>24742180That’s neither here nor there. A criminal punished by the ruler is not the same as an enemy of the people, since the criminal is generally still regarded as one of the people. Generally. When the sovereign declares him an enemy of the people then he is the enemy Schmitt means
>>24742231>the internal enemy should only be branded as an enemy when there is civil warHe literally never says this though. He says that the ultimate expression of the internal enemy is civil war. I'll ask you again. Have you read Concept of the Political or are you just talking out of your ass?
>>24742235This is Richard Hanania tier thinking.
>>24742237it is implied. it is implied that the internal enemy is seperable from the whole of the society. But the internal enemy is actually the whole body of citizenry, and its enemy, the rulers. Yes I have read it.
>>24742180>It is very much decided by the rulersSo now you're talking about elite theory, something completely orthogonal to the friend-enemy distinction. If enough of the citizenry reject the authority of the rulers you'll get a revolution or a civil war, in which case the microconflicts of internal enemies become fully-fledged political enemies in war.
>>24742243>it is impliedIt's really not. Not much of anything is implied in that book, he kinda just lays it all out plainly.>But the internal enemy is actually the whole body of citizenry, and its enemy, the rulersIn what sense is this coherent? The rulers are not inherently the enemy of the common folk. They can be, and Schmitt never denies this. He never denies that classes have different interests which can lead them to become enemies. But there are times in which this is not the case, where it's useful to group the elite and the citizenry as political "friends". >Yes I have read itThen I think you're probably just retarded.
>>24742249It is coherent in the sense of the metaphysics that Machiavelli constructs, the theory of the humors. He says the most fundamental aspect of a political conflict, and that which must be regarded the most, is the humor of the pleb and the humor of the senate. That of not wanting to be brutalised, and that wanting to brutalise. The Romans understood this. That's why they lasted so long.
>>24742255Nothing in Schmitt's theory contradicts what you're saying.
>>24742263it does. there are no friends, there are allies.
>>24742276What the fuck do you think Schmitt means by friend?
>>24742276https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amicitia
>>24742280A friend is specified by sovereign which includes no anymosity. An alliance is something that both parties agree on. Two parties that are inherently at conflict.
