The Concept of the Political

Carl Schmitt's 1932 masterwork defining the political as the distinction between friend and enemy — and his critique of liberal attempts to dissolve political conflict into economics and morality.

Friend-enemy distinction as political essence: Schmitt's argument proceeds by identifying the criterion that makes something specifically political (as opposed to moral, aesthetic, or economic). That criterion is the friend-enemy distinction — the possibility of identifying a concrete enemy whose existence threatens one's own way of life. Liberalism, in Schmitt's reading, tries to deny the political by converting every conflict into economic competition or moral-legal dispute. This depoliticization weakens the capacity for genuine political decision. The book is an attack on parliamentary liberalism from a position that sees conflict as constitutive of politics. The concept of sovereignty as exception (from Political Theology) pairs with this: the political moment of exception reveals who really decides.