Goldhammer
By refusing to concretely and directly identify and enemy, the aff has posited itself as a weak player within the political that is incapable of justifying values. Only a strong assertive and absolute declaration of the enemy makes strong politics possible.
Pourciau dept german studies @ Stanford 2k5 (Sarah, “Bodily Negation: Carl Schmitt on the Meaning of Meaning” MLN 120.5 (2005) 1066-1090, Muse)
The essence of the Schmittian political resides, as the passages already cited suggest, in a practice of self-definition ["seinsmäßigen Behauptung der eigenen Existenzform"], which depends on a capacity to decide on the political enemy. Only in the autonomous application of this boundary-drawing power, in the clear delineation of a previously non-existent exterior, can the political self emerge from the formless plurality of bodily selves to take shape as a cohesive entity. "For as long as a people exists in the political sphere, this people must, even if only in the most extreme case—and whether this point has been reached it decides for itself—determine by itself the distinction of friend and enemy. Therein resides the essence of its political existence" (49). ["Solange ein Volk in der Sphäre des Politischen existiert, muß es, wenn auch nur für den extremsten Fall—über dessen Vorliegen es aber selbst entscheidet—die Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind selber bestimmen. Darin liegt das Wesen seiner politischen Existenz" (50).] To refuse the responsibility implied by the political decision is to relinquish all claims to political selfhood, and with it all capacity for worldly agency: "The political does not disappear from the world because a people no longer possesses the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics. Only a weak people disappears" (53, translation modified). ["Dadurch, daß ein Volk nicht mehr die Kraft oder den Willen hat, sich in der Sphäre des Politischen zu halten, verschwindet das Politische nicht aus der Welt. Es verschwindet nur ein schwaches Volk" (54).] That such a disappearance bespeaks a definitional failure on the part of the political self becomes abundantly clear from the way the structure plays out within the realm of the political concept, where the loss of a definite enemy effectively eliminates the potential for (linguistic) meaning:
First, all political concepts, ideas, and terms have a political meaning. They are focused on a specific conflict and are bound to a concrete situation; the result (which manifests itself in war or revolution) is a friend-enemy [End Page 1072]grouping, and they turn into empty and ghostlike abstractions when this situation disappears.
[Erstens haben alle politischen Begriffe, Vorstellungen und Worte einen polemischen Sinn; sie haben eine konkrete Gegensätzlichkeit im Auge, sind an eine konkrete Situation gebunden, deren letzte Konsequenz eine (in Krieg oder Revolution sich äußernde) Freund-Feindgruppierung ist, und werden zu leeren und gespenstischen Abstraktionen, wenn diese Situation entfällt.]
(31)
This descent into irrelevant abstraction, Schmitt will later insist, accurately characterizes the contemporary predicament of liberal thought, developed in the nineteenth century as a polemical alternative to now-defunct institutions like the absolutist state and the feudal aristocracy, and relegated, since the demise of its enemies, to the amorphous but hardly impotent status of meaningless anachronism.7
A definitive decision on the enemy, then, whether conceptual or human, produces a political entity made meaningful by the clarity of its contours. The kind of meaning arising within these boundaries has, however, little in common with the conventionally codified meaning of dictionary definitions, and still less with the romantic fantasy of a mystical link between word and thing. The definition neither imposes on the self arbitrarily from without, nor presupposes it as timeless essence; it derives instead from the real, relational configuration on which the decision decides:
You aren’t the flesh of the United States and you are not capable of reasserting excessive enjoyment through sacrifice – you cannot live like a sun, and your flesh in no way resembles the sun – their focus on metaphors obscures concrete reality
We, the flesh of the United States federal government, are capable of reasserting the excessive enjoyment of life through sacrifice. We, the flesh of the United States federal government, should gloriously sacrifice our flesh to live like suns.
Their first piece of evidence identifies the magical gesture of Vincent van gogh – magic implies a distinction that exists somehow independent of that of the friend and the one – they “tear within themselves through ecstasy and love” – this is reflective of role confusion, rather than demarcating lines they have pussyfooted around with those distinctions causing them to break down altogether
Their Jay and Land evidence - there aren’t two suns – there is in fact one sun, their refusal to identify reality and conflation of the sun - van gogh doesn’t become solar – solar is a thing and van gogh is a think – believing they are the same is a fallacious play on words, an aesthetic that is violent and precludes effective friend enemy dichotomies
Metaphors Metaphors suck in the context of the political. They will have some persuasive arguments about how metaphors are nice in the abstract, however in the realm of the political we need to concretely and directly identify who is the enemy. 1NC Kahn evidence indicates that enemies are not things that we just make up and refer to half-heartedly, they are existential realities that we need to in order to give value to life. the aff has forgone and prevented us from engaging in the creation of enemies.
The political is where we define the values that we embody and defend to the death. The enemies that we choose are essential in this process – only a concrete identification of the enemy can solve
Manzoor 2k last date cited, no date given (Parvez, “The Sovereignty of the Political” http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/carlschmitte.htm)
The totalizing thrust of Schmitt's argument is directed against liberalism, which by the postulation of a false universalism, according to him, obscures the existentially paramount nature of politics and replaces it with the struggle for purely formal notions of rights. Thus, Schmitt is at pains to underscore that, within the purview of his theory, friend and foe are not to be construed as metaphors or symbols, for they are 'neither normative not pure spiritual antitheses.' Elsewhere, he elaborates the same point in the following manner: 'The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist, theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transaction. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are always possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined norm nor by the judgement of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party.' (26-7; emphasis has been added.)
The political enemy, furthermore, must not be confounded with the private adversary whom one hates. For 'an enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship.' (28; my emphasis.) Given Schmitt's quintessentially tribal and bellicose conception of politics, it is not surprising that he is not disturbed by the New Testament exhortation: 'Love your enemies' (Matt: 5:44; Luke: 6:27) for the Bible quotation, he claims, does not touch the political antithesis, and 'it certainly does not mean that one should love and support the enemies of one's own people.' Thus, loving one's (private) enemy and pursuing the politics of the Holy Crusade are accepted as two complementary religio-political activities. Carrying his argument about the legitimacy of the two-tier, public-private, morality further, Schmitt then appeals to the logic of history itself: 'Never in the thousand year struggle between Christians and Moslems did id occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks.' (29) Thus, defining one's enemy is for him the first step towards defining the innermost self: 'Tell me who your enemy is and I'll tell you who you are,' Schmitt has pronounced on more than one occasion. Little wonder that he claims that 'the political is the most intense and extreme antagonism.'!
A2 Perm
The Political needs to be serious – it’s how we create and define the values that we will live and die for, only true engagement in the political gives value to life
Vander Valk doctoral student at the University at Albany 2k2 (Frank, “Decisions, Decisions: Carl Schmitt on Friends and Political Will” Rockefeller College Review, Vol 1 No. 2 http://www.albany.edu/rockefeller/rockreview/issue2/Paper4.pdf)
For Schmitt, the high point of politics is simultaneous with the recognition of the enemy, and in this recognition the meaning of the term “friend” is “he who can be counted on to fight and die for the state.” Friendship, in its most perfect political realization, occurs in those fleeting moments of decision, when sovereignty is asserted and the possibility of death in battle is imminent. At the point where the friend is most important, the individual citizen matters least. The relationship between friendship and the state is quite different for Aristotle, in whose theory “civic friendship is but the reflection, in the lives of individuals, of the constitution of the state” (Stern-Gillet, 1995, p. 153). This being the case, Aristotle notes that the most wide-ranging examples of civic friendship, as well as justice, are likely to be found in a democracy, “the citizens of a democracy being equal and having many things in common” (1955, p. 249). Civic friendship, for Aristotle, is accompanied by individual deliberation, reciprocal legal responsibilities, and the possibility, if not the promise, of an ethical component.
The recognition of the enemy cannot take place, for Schmitt, but through an expression of political will. And in the same way, the identification of friends also serves as an example of the expression of political will. In the sense in which Schmitt understands the political, friends cannot be chosen but for choosing enemies. To truly invoke political will is to affirm or reaffirm a particular friend/enemy grouping. Schmitt’s divergence from the tradition on this point is illustrative; for many political theorists the identification of friends entails no necessary simultaneous designation of enemies.
Schmitt does not think the selection of friends can allow for neutrality towards those who fall outside the circle of friendship. Such a choice is a profoundly important existential act of will. One defines one’s self in this political moment. The way one will exist, the very way of life which people are able to partake of, is the crux of the designation of the enemy. As Schmitt points out, “war is the existential negation of the enemy” (1996, p. 33). The corollary to this point, and perhaps one of the two or three most important insights that Schmitt provides in this area of thought, is that war is also the existential affirmation of the friend.
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