Violence as a condition or as a dissolution of the political: Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt

Abstract

Violence constitutes an important element of reflection for political philosophy. Two proposed theories of violence are discussed here. One takes violence to be the condition of politics. This is Carl Schmitt's proposal. He says that politics is always conflictive: political space is a battle camp, a confrontational and fighting place. That is why we need of a sovereign, omnipresent, all powerful and authoritative State. The mark of the political expresses itself in the friend-enemy relation. According to the second theory of violence, Hannah Arendt's theory, violence is outside of political space. Violence belongs to biological and labor environments. Politics is freedom, dialog and agreement. These are the characteristics of political agreements among political agents.