Schmitt contra Kant: Peace in the new Nomos of the Earth

In this presentation, I will discuss Carl Schmitt's implicit conception of a genuine political peace, mainly through his 1950 book The Nomos of the Earth. I will argue that Schmitt proposes a conception of peace that is diametrically opposed to that defended by Immanuel Kant, in that Schmitt's version of political peace is one which is founded on retaining the concrete possibility of war, rather than the ultimate elimination of warfare, as defended by Kant. Most importantly, I will argue that a Schmittian peace cannot be achieved through a denial of enmity, as the Kantian/liberal ideal would expect. In so doing, my presentation will proceed in two parts: first, I will discuss Schmitt's conception of human nature as fundamental dangerousness and of the political, which he suggests cannot be suppressed. I will then proceed to outline a Schmittian framework for peace and contrast it to the Kantian account. My reconstruction of Schmitt's notion of political peace will be based on three main works, namely The Concept of the Political (Schmitt 2007 [1932/1963]), The Großraum Order of International Law (Schmitt 2011 [1939/1941]), and The Nomos of the Earth (Schmitt 2003 [1950]). In the Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt states that "The earth has been promised to the peacemakers. The idea of a new nomos of the earth belongs only to them," (Schmitt 2003, 39) thereby suggesting that for the first time in history, the globalisation of political order also raises the prospect of a genuinely global peace. However, heeding Schmitt's criticisms of liberal peace in The Concept of the Political, such global peace cannot be achieved at the expense of meaningful political existence, which Schmitt argues is founded on the belief in the problematic dangerousness of human beings (Schmitt 2007). As such, the first section of my presentation will outline Schmitt's conception of the political and of the general conditions for a genuinely political peace. I will also briefly discuss Schmitt's critique of liberal peace, in particular of Kant's suggestion of collective security and economic interdependence. The second section of my presentation will propose a Schmittian framework for peace, as part of the new "nomos" of the earth. I will begin by briefly outlining how Schmitt conceives of "nomic order," and of the "call" to a new nomos of the earth, in contrast to a purely European order. I will then proceed to outline the Schmittian distinction between limited and unlimited enmity and war, and how a genuine peace must accept the former in order to restrain the latter by privileging order over disorder. I will finally propose a tentative way in which Schmitt suggests that such peace may be achieved, through a plurality of spatially fixated orders conceived as purely defensive and committed to excluding all external interference, rather than a (broadly Kantian) universal moral order. I will conclude by noting that Schmitt's conception of peace must always remain relative, given the human propensity for dangerousness and the ontological possibility of disorder, unlike Kant's ideal perpetual peace.