Carl Schmitt on hostis and inimicus: A veneer for bloody-mindedness

ABSTRACT: This discussion note begins demonstrate, in a modest but concrete

way, that Carl Schmitt’s appeal to Greek and Latin juridical language in the 1932

edition of The Concept of the Political displays nothing like what Jacques Derrida

praised as Schmitt’s “vigilant, meticulous, implacable rigour inherited from the

tradition.” In light of the evidence briefly presented here, deference to Schmitt’s

erudition in the philosophical and historical literature should be tempered; and

taking Ernst Jünger’s “cold-blooded” intuition of Schmitt as a point of departure,

critical attention should be given to Schmitt’s use of the sources of European law.

KEY WORDS: Carl Schmitt; Concept of the Political; Jacques Derrida; Ernst

Jünger; Corpus Iuris Civilis

§1. Jacques Derrida, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt

In his Politics of Friendship, Jacques Derrida (1997, 156) identifies a “philosophy of merciless

war,” an “implacable logic of absolute hostility” in the 1932 edition of Carl Schmitt’s essay, The

Concept of the Political (hereafter C.P.). This ‘philosophy’ and ‘logic’ are presumably what

Ernst Jünger praised in 1930—”suprema laus,” he writes—as Schmitt’s “cold-bloodedness and

viciousness” in the 1927 version of that essay (Jünger and Schmitt 1999, 7).

It is also a logic of absolute hostility that Schmitt himself valued in the C.P. As he

expresses it in a 1937 article, “Total Enemy, Total War, Total State,” the imminent prospect of a

European “total war takes its sense from the total enemy” (Schmitt 1994, 270). And “in

Germany,” as Schmitt (1994, 268) recalls, it is “the The Concept of the Political [which] has,

since 1927, expanded” a previously formulated “pair of concepts”—namely, ‘total state’ and

‘total war’—into this new and indissoluble triad: “total enemy, total war, total state.” It is thus,

very precisely, Schmitt’s formulation of totalised enmity that he comes to regard as his signal

contribution to the inter-war political literature: the figure of the “total enemy” (totaler Feind) is

what the C.P. posits or revives. Schmitt (1994, 268) then remarks, which is not without interest,

that it was “Jünger’s book Total Mobilization (1930)”—a work that Martin Heidegger greatly

admired—which introduced this “total enemy-war-state” triad into the “general consciousness”

of inter-war Germany.

Unlike Jünger, Derrida has no praise for Schmitt’s cold-bloodedness as such; and unlike

Schmitt, Derrida has no taste for total war. Rather, Derrida offers the following justification for

Leftist and deconstructive attentions to Schmitt, whose “political commitments,” Derrida admits,

“appear more serious and more repugnant than those of Heidegger.”

This should not distract us from a serious reading, nor keep us from taking up a thought

and a work so deeply rooted [qui plongent par tant de racines] in the richest tradition of

the theological, juridical, political and philosophical culture of Europe, in that of a

European law [un droit européen] of which this Catholic thinker1 (who probably

remained a Nazi for a much longer period of time than he publicly confessed, and no

doubt remained anti-Semitic for the rest of his life—and the forms of his anti-Semitism

were extremely virulent)2 claimed to be the last—fervent—advocate. (Derrida 1997, 107)

Derrida (1997, 87–88) writes, moreover, of Schmitt’s “conceptual prudence and rigour”—a

‘prudence’ which is “at once phenomenological and semantic,” and “a vigilant, meticulous,

implacable rigour inherited from the tradition ... that this entire discourse [sc. la pensée

schmittienne] intends to serve and repeat.” Or finally, “Schmitt is a jurist-historian-of-the-

theological-political” (Derrida 1997, 115).

Derrida heaps up the descriptors, and deferential gestures to Schmitt’s erudition are de

rigeuer in the philosophical literature.3 The task of this note, in lieu of such deference, is to begin

to scrutinise Schmitt’s use of and appeals to le champ historique—i.e. his philological, juridical

and philosophical ‘sources’—in a passage of the text that Derrida privileges, namely, §III of the

1932 C.P. But since his October 1930 letter to Schmitt has already been quoted, it will be useful

to inject one of Jünger’s characteristically potent images here, before proceeding.

What Jünger senses in the C.P., in 1930, is this: “You [sc. Schmitt] have successfully

devised a special new mechanism of war (kriegstechnische): a mine that detonates silently”

(Jünger and Schmitt 1999, 7). This idea of a muted blast nicely modulates the ‘veneer’-image in

this note’s title, which of course gives the impression that Schmitt’s evocations of “the

theological, juridical, political and philosophical culture of Europe” in the C.P.—however

convincing they may have appeared to Derrida (1997, 107)—have no integral relation to that

text’s motive force, which is single-mindedly bellicose and self-evidently revanchist, i.e. bloody-

minded.

1 While there is no denying that Schmitt was a Roman Catholic, despite the years in which he fell out of favour with

the Church, the question of his Catholicism—i.e. its effect on his work—is a vexed one. Derrida was either unaware

of this fact, or disinclined to address it.

The most interesting work on this, to date, is Faber (2001). For a challenge to Schmitt’s use of de Maistre

and Cortés, cf. Spektorowski (2002). 2 Keeping Schmitt’s well-documented anti-Semitism in view, François Rigaux nicely captures the duplicity of the

anti-imperialist rhetoric in his post-war work The Nomos of the Earth: “Schmitt opposes the war of extermination—

which he condemns—to regulated warfare in the form of a duel between states. But he refrains from making any

pronouncements regarding the wars of aggression and extermination that were conducted by the Third Reich. He

observes the same silence regarding their internal war of extermination, i.e. ‘the final solution’ to the Jewish

question” (Rigaux 2007, 253 [my translation]).

For Schmitt’s juridical anti-Semitism in the Nazizeit, see the documentation presented in Zarka (2005). A

broader study is Gross (2000). 3 For a review of the literature, see Caldwell (2005).

Or more concretely: the re-politicisation of inter-war Germany, for Schmitt, is

conceptually and juridically indistinct from a re-militarisation of inter-war Germany;4 while the

‘right’ of a re-militarised Germany to prosecute wars (ius ad bellum), for Schmitt, is to be

conceptually and juridically identical with its mobilisation for such wars. This duplex condition

for ‘the political’ in the C.P., a ‘politics’ that was furiously realised by the National Socialist

Soldatenstaat, at once announces and exhausts Schmitt’s celebrated ‘concept of the political’—a

concept which operated, as Jünger perceived, as a subtly geared “mechanism of war” (Jünger and

Schmitt 1999, 7).5

Pace Derrida (1997, 88), then, Schmitt’s C.P. was never intended to “serve and repeat”

the philosophical-juridical critiques of and limits to warfare that Plato and Cicero, Ulpian and

Augustine, Vitoria and Grotius had patiently forged. What Derrida takes for learned repetition,

Jünger hails as a detonation—and Jünger is here the less credulous interpreter. Schmitt’s ‘Plato’

is a veneer; Schmitt’s ‘Pomponius’ is a silencer; and Schmitt’s ‘concept’ reduces to a formally

uncritical hostility, while his ‘political’ is to be constituted as and perfected by a capacity for

unajudicated destruction.

But all this has not been proved, and cannot be proved here.6 And what is perhaps worse,

this opening Derrida-Jünger opposition has glossed over the fact that Schmitt’s references to

Plato and Pomponius in §III of the C.P.—the passage that intrigues Derrida, and will concern us

here—do not appear in the 1927 edition that Jünger reacts to in the letter I have quoted. For

while Schmitt (1996, 28; 2005, 198) writes, in 1927, “The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the

broader sense; πολέμιος, not ἐχϑρός”; and while this sentence is not revised for the 1932 C.P.; it

is only in the 1932 edition that Schmitt (1991, 29) appends a note to this set of distinctions,

supporting them with citations of

1. Plato, Republic V

2. Pomponius, Digest 50, and

3. Forcellini, Totius Latinitatis Lexicon.

Of course, the fact that these citations do not appear in the 1927 C.P. could itself suggest

that Schmitt’s use of the philological-juridical literature is incidental, and thus that it is

Derrida—not Jünger—who is distracted from the text’s basic thrust and intent. This cannot be

assumed, however, and in the following sections, after some preliminary remarks on the

structural rôle of Schmitt’s hostis-inimicus distinction in the C.P., we will review two of his three

Greek and Latin sources in C.P. §III, in the reverse order of his citations—i.e. first Forcellini’s

Lexicon, then the Corpus Iuris Civilis.

While Schmitt’s Platonic text, Republic V 470, provokes the most fundamental and

illuminating difficulties for the terminology and logic of the C.P., it would be impossible to do

4 As Schmitt (1994, 272) states very clearly in the last paragraphs of the 1937 article I have cited. Here, Hitler’s state

is praised for its resurrection of a “Prussian soldier-state” (Preußische Soldatenstaat) to replace the “constitutional-

ideal” (Verfassungsideale) and “civil-bourgeois system” (zivil-bürgerliches System) that Versailles imposed on the

Germans. 5 For more on this, see Stirk (2003).

6 Van Gelderen (2011) is a recent article that argues to similar effect from Schmitt’s citation of Grotius in the C.P.

justice to Plato—or indeed, to Schmitt and Derrida on Plato—in the space of a note.

Unfortunately, then, Republic V will not be taken into consideration here, and Schmitt’s use of

the Greek terms polémios and ekhthrós will only come into question—and to a limited degree—

by way of Forcellini’s Lexicon entry on the Latin term hostis.

§2. The function of the hostis-inimicus distinction in Der Begriff des Politischen

Since the logic of Schmitt’s ‘political’ in the C.P. is a priori,7 and heavily weighted by his desire

to see a re-militarised Germany, it is predictably reductive. His opening and determining logic

can be distilled without much difficulty into the below syllogism, in which it is solely “the

enemy” who figures since—as Schmitt (1991, 77) concludes the 1932 C.P.—“essentially

peaceful means of coercion” (essentiell friedliche Zwangsmittel) are no less essentially

“apolitical” (unpolitische). That is to say, all peaceful (friedliche) or friendly (freundliche)

deployments of force are alike, and per se, ‘apolitical’; so that within Schmitt’s criterion of ‘the

political’—i..e. within his “specific political distinction” of “friend and enemy” (Schmitt 1991,

26; 2005, 196)—it is less a process of conceptual distinction than the concrete identification of

an enemy which constitutes the political.8 Or said differently: in the absence of a determinate

enemy, there can be no possibility of a “friend in the specifically political sense of the word”

(Schmitt 1991, 28; 2005, 197).

With this point clarified, Schmitt’s logic can be reconstructed as follows:

The possibility of war constitutes the actuality of the political.

The concrete enemy constitutes the possibility of war.

The concrete enemy constitutes the actuality of the political.

But this immediately, and in the first pages of the C.P., results in a difficulty: if it is the

generic figure of ‘the enemy’ which constitutes the possibility of war and thereby, at once, the

actuality of the political, then any enemy should constitute the actuality of the political. This is

not the case, however, since it is not any enemy that constitutes the possibility of ‘war,’ sensu

stricto.

Thus, immediately after taking the figure of ‘the enemy’ as his definiens for ‘the

political,’ Schmitt (1991, 27; 2005, 197) specifies that this figure is to be understood as “the

political enemy” (der politische Feind). This move, of course, shows up a nervous circularity in

C.P. §II: Schmitt’s definiendum is now, within the space of a paragraph, modifying its definiens;

7 Or perhaps, as he came to prefer it, fideistic. See Schmitt’s (1991, 58) much-quoted appeal to “an anthropological

confession of faith” (ein anthropologisches Glaubensbekenntnis) at the end of the 1932 C.P. §VI. 8 As Derrida (1997, 138) remarks: “We are constantly reminded that only a concrete, concretely determined enemy

can awaken the political.”

his ‘enemy’ defines ‘the political,’ while ‘the political’ defines ‘the enemy’ that defines ‘the

political.’9

It is in part to escape this formal-linguistic circularity that Schmitt, in C.P. §III—and

already in the 1927 edition, as we have seen—invokes the Latin terms hostis and inimicus, along

with the Greek terms polémios and ekhthrós. By means of this set of coupled terms, hostis-

polémios and inimicus-ekhthrós, Schmitt (1991, 29; 2005, 198) posits a juridically,

philosophically and theologically10

significant Greco-Latin distinction which is obscured by the

German word Feind no less than by the English word ‘enemy’—namely, a distinction between

(α) the ‘political enemy’ (politischen ‘Feind’)

= Latin hostis

= Greek polémios

(β) the ‘private … enemy’ (privaten … ‘Feind’)

= Latin inimicus

= Greek ekhthrós.

In light of Schmitt’s new terms, we could thus revise the minor premise and conclusion

of our above syllogism to read:

The concrete hostis-polémios constitutes the possibility of war.

Thus, the concrete hostis-polémios constitutes the actuality of the political.

And there is accordingly, for Schmitt, now a radically apolitical enemy-concept, i.e. an enemy

whose presence does not constitute a threat of ‘war.’ This is the inimicus-ekhthrós, or ‘private

enemy.’

In the following sections, I will briefly attempt to determine the philological merits of

Schmitt’s introduction of these term-sets, hostis-polémios and inimicus-ekhthrós. As should

become apparent, Schmitt’s use of these terms in the C.P.—and of his chosen sources—is

distinctly less rigorous than Derrida assumes.

§3. Hostis in Forcellini’s Lexicon

To say that Derrida ‘assumes’ Schmitt’s philological rigour, far from being a slur, is charitable.

For in his 1932 note on the hostis-inimicus distinction, Schmitt (1991, 29 n. 5) refers us to

Forcellini’s Totius Latinitatis Lexicon as providing “the clearest definition” of this distinction,

9 Derrida (1997, 139) senses this, but declines to criticise: “It is impossible here—as it is impossible in any absolute

proposition of speculative idealism, and hence of ideal dialectics—to distinguish between subject and predicate.

Schmitt does not so much define the political by oppositional negation as define the latter by the political.” 10

Cf. Schmitt’s (1991, 29; 2005, 198) remarks on the Greek and Vulgate wording at Matthew 5.44 and Luke 6.27, in

which Christians are “not” (Schmitt’s stress) admonished to love the “political enemy” (politischen Feind).

“with supporting evidence.”11

Yet if Derrida had consulted Schmitt’s source, and it seems that he

did not,12

he would have immediately noticed a discrepancy.

As we have seen, Schmitt insists on a strict conceptual-linguistic alignment of hostis with

polémios, in marked contradistinction to his similarly linked terms, inimicus and ekhthrós—

which is to say, for Schmitt, that the Latin hostis should be lexically equidistant from the Latin

word inimicus and from the Greek word ekhthrós. Schmitt takes ekhthrós, like inimicus, to be a

technical term for the ‘private enemy’; while hostis, like polémios, serves as a technical term for

the ‘political enemy.’ Yet this is how Forcellini’s Lexicon entries on hostis open in the Patavium,

1771 and the London, 1828 editions respectively:

HOSTIS, nemico, πολέμιος, ἐχϑρὸς. (Forcellini 1771, 2: 444)

HOSTIS, an enemy, πολέμιος, ἐχϑρὸς. (Forcellini 1828, 1: 885)

Now, per Schmitt, ekhthrós should not be in evidence here. Indeed, Schmitt’s ‘political

enemy’ set of terms, hostis-polémios, is by no means supposed to display a pronounced lexical

overlap with his ‘private enemy’ set, inimicus-ekhthrós. In effect, the first set’s lexical distance

from ekhthrós should signal the precise lexical distance between the Greco-Latin ‘political

enemy’ and ‘private enemy’ concepts. And yet immediately, Schmitt’s ‘political enemy’ set is

shown to include a term from his ‘private enemy’ set: the lexical space of hostis-polémios, in

Forcellini’s lexicography of hostis, includes the Greek term ekhthrós—as Schmitt would

doubtless have seen.

As a first finding, then: the Latin term hostis can (per Forcellini) render the Greek term

ekhthrós, as well as polémios. Schmitt’s ‘political enemy’ terms, hostis-polémios, are not

lexically opposed to his Greek ‘private enemy’ term, ekhthrós, in the way he indicates they

should be.

But this being said, Schmitt cites the Lexicon apropos of his Latin terms specifically—

hostis and inimicus—and Forcellini’s hostis entry does provide some lexical support for this

Latin opposition.13

For instance, Forcellini gives a phrase from Cicero’s Eleventh Philippic in

which, to Cicero’s disgust, Marc Antony and Dolabella threaten to punish Roman republicans

“not as opponents, but as enemies”: non inimicos, sed hostis (Forcellini 1771, 2: 444; 1828, 1:

885). So as Schmitt leads us to expect, Cicero could rely—as he does in this Philippic—on a

recognisable, lexical-conceptual distinction between the Latin terms hostis and inimicus.

11

Schmitt provides no information regarding the Lexicon edition he consulted, though no doubt it could be

identified—painstakingly—by way of the volume and page numbers he provides. Having consulted two editions of

the Lexicon, however—between which there are only the most insignificant differences in typography, and so on—I

feel confident that my remarks in this section do Schmitt no injustice. 12

Derrida (1997, 109) merely quotes Schmitt’s quotation of Forcellini: “As for the Latin, Schmitt’s reference is as

follows …” 13

Schmitt himself merely quotes Forcellini’s definition, in which bellum publicum is specific to the terms hostis and

adversarius, while odium privatum is specific to inimicus. In his quote, however, Schmitt (1991, 29 n. 5) elides

Forcellini’s reference to the ‘adversary’ (adversarius). This omission may not simply reflect Schmitt’s desire for

concision: adversarius, which Forcellini places here alongside hostis, also carries the sense of an ‘opponent in

court’—for Schmitt, a civil and thus ‘apolitical’ enmity—and more generally, of a ‘rival’—while Schmitt is at pains,

in the C.P., to exclude all economic (etc.) rivalries from his sphere of ‘the political.’

But if this Ciceronian phrase is the most supportive “evidence” that Forcellini provides

Schmitt,14

it is by no means the most suggestive, for in the hostis entry, Forcellini also quotes

from Cicero’s De Officiis I 12,15

while De Officiis I 11–13—which contain, to my awareness, the

most sustained discussion of the word hostis in the extant Roman literature16

—conflict with

Schmitt’s logic and terminology in the C.P. nearly point-for-point, seriatim. Several points can

be noted here.

(α) Whereas for Schmitt (1991, 27), neither the initiation, prosecution nor conclusion of

“conflicts” (Konflikte) with a hostis should “be decided by a previously determined

general norm” (eine im voraus getroffene generelle Normierung); for Cicero (1913, 36–

37, 44–45), the “laws of war” (iura belli) and “duties connected with war” (de bellicis …

officiis) should pre-decide (i) the initiation, (ii) the prosecution and (iii) the conclusion of

all such conflicts.

(i) “The only excuse (causam) for going to war,” writes Cicero (1913, 36–37), “is

that we may live in peace unharmed (sine iniuria in pace vivatur),” while “no war

is just (nullum bellum esse iustum) unless … warning (denuntiatum) has been

given and a formal declaration (indictum) made” (Cicero 1913, 38–39).

(ii) “The man who is not legally a soldier (qui miles non sit) has no right (negat …

ius esse) to be fighting the foe (cum hoste pugnare)” (Cicero 1913, 38–39), and

Cicero (1913, 36–37, 44–45) maintains that “justice toward an enemy” (iustitiae

in hostem) should be “strictly observed” (maxime conservanda).

(iii) “When victory is won, we should spare those (conservandi ii) who have not

been blood-thirsty … in their warfare (non crudeles in bello)” (Cicero 1913, 36–

37).

All of these Ciceronian strictures on bellum, from the paragraphs surrounding his

reflection on the word hostis, invoke and advocate “previously determined general

norms.”

(β) Whereas for Schmitt, the term inimicus—as we have discussed—should refer with

some consistency and specificity to a ‘private enemy,’ i.e. precisely not to ‘the enemy’

who introduces the possibility of war; for Cicero (1913, 40–41), the term inimicus can

very clearly refer—within a single sentence—to a personal enemy (si est inimicus) and to

cities locked in bellum, ‘war’: “We conducted a war … with deadly enemies” (bellum ut

cum inimicis gerebatur).

14

Or at least, the most compressed. Forcellini quotes several other Ciceronian sentences in which hostis and

inimicus are clearly opposed. 15

“Cic. I Offic. c. 12. is dicebatur, quem nunc peregrinum dicimus. Indicant XII. Tabulæ : aut status dies cum hoste.

Itemque : adversus hostem æterna auctoritas” (Forcellini 1771, 2: 444; 1828, 1: 885) = “[For ‘enemy’ (hostis)]

meant [to our ancestors] what we now call ‘stranger’ (peregrinus). This is proved by the usage of the Twelve

Tables: ‘Or a day fixed for trial with a stranger’ (hostis). And again: ‘Right of ownership is inalienable forever in

dealings with a stranger’ (hostis)” (Cicero 1913, 38–41). 16

It is certainly more elaborate than Varro’s aside at De Lingua Latina V 3, which nevertheless may have inspired

Cicero’s remarks in De Officiis I.

(γ) And whereas for Schmitt (1991, 27) the ‘political enemy’ or hostis as “the other, the

stranger” (anderes und Fremdes) is evoked as a “specially intense” (besonders

intensiven) provocation to political enmity and war; for Cicero, stress rather falls on the

fact that the term hostis, as originally signifying a ‘stranger’ or ‘guest,’ served to “pacify”

or “soften” the semantics of Roman enmity (lenitate verbi rei tristitiam mitigatam), so

that he finally asks: “What can exceed such clemency (mansuetudinem), when he with

whom one is at war (quicum bellum geras) is called by so gentle a name (tam molli

nomine appellare)?” (Cicero 1913, 38–41 [translation modified]).

Cicero’s question here apropos the term hostis directly follows the sentences of De Officiis I 12

that Forcellini quotes in his hostis entry. Yet if Schmitt had gone to Forcellini’s sources, a

question like this would still have no possible place in the C.P., where the term hostis is

introduced to aggravate, and not mitigate, the semantics of inter-war enmity.

For a second finding, then: just as there is no indication that Derrida looked past

Schmitt’s reference to the Lexicon, so there is no indication that Schmitt looked past the

Lexicon’s gloss on hostis—i.e. to his own “supporting evidence.” And if Schmitt did proceed to

the relevant sources—the most pertinent being De Officiis I—then he suppressed a whole

complex of problems these sources present to the hostis-inimicus distinction in, and the deeper

logic of, the C.P.

§4. Hostis in the Corpus Iuris Civilis

Before quoting from Forcellini’s hostis entry, Schmitt (1991, 29 n. 5) refers us to the sentence in

Justinian’s Digest which is “most often cited for the hostis concept”; this is a definition by

Pomponius in the section of the Digesta titled “De verborum significatione.” Schmitt does not

quote this sentence at Digest 50.16.118 which states the Roman-legal sense of hostis. And as he

suggests, there was not much need to: Digest 50.16.118 is, for instance, the first text that appears

s.v. hostis in the 1910 Vocabularum Iurisprudentiae Romanae, published in Berlin.17

At Digest 50.16.118, the Byzantine juris-consults have preserved the following sentence:

POMPONIUS, Quintus Mucius, book 2: ‘Enemies’ (hostes) are those who have publicly

declared war on us [sc. the Roman people] or on whom we have publicly declared war

(publice bellum decrevimus); others are ‘brigands’ (latrones) or ‘pirates’ (praedones).

(Mommsen 1985, 4: 943; Krueger and Mommsen 1970, 1: 913)

This clarification—which has a nearly verbatim parallel in a passage from Ulpian at Digest

49.15.24,18

in the section titled “De captivis”—shores up Schmitt’s use of hostis in one regard,

but differs from it in two more fundamental regards.

In keeping with Schmitt’s use of hostis to signal a counter-concept to the ‘private

enemy,’ we note the expressly public hostilities (publice bellum) which Pomponius relies on to

17

Cf. Kübler 1910, 3.1: s.v. hostis. 18

“ULPIAN, Institutes, book 1: The enemy (hostes) are those on whom the Roman people has publicly declared war

(bellum publice … decrevit), or who themselves [declare war] on the Roman people; others are termed robbers

(latrunculi) or bandits (praedones)” (Mommsen 1985, 4: 892).

fix the sense of this same term. Pomponius’ hostis, like Schmitt’s, is therefore (per definitionem)

never a merely ‘private enemy.’

Briefly observe, however, these implicit and far-reaching contrasts to the C.P. in

Pomponius’ definition of hostis:

(α) Pomponius’ hostis-concept is not lexically contrasted with the term inimicus, as in

Schmitt, but with the closely linked and politically significant terms, latro (brigand) and

praedo (pirate)—i.e. public enemies who nevertheless do not threaten ‘war,’ sensu

stricto.

(β) While Schmitt’s (1991, 28) hostis-concept is resolutely extra-judicial—or in his

words “concrete, existential” (konkreten, existenziellen)19

—Pomponius’ hostis-concept is

defined no less by its juridical character than by its martial and ‘public’ character:

“Hostes are those who have publicly declared war on us, or on whom we have publicly

declared war.” We will recall that Cicero (1913, 38–39) similarly maintains that “no war

is just unless … a formal declaration (indictum) has been made.” The Roman-legal

hostis-concept, then, unlike Schmitt’s, incorporates into its definition the idea that the

word hostis signifies, in the first instance, a juridical status.

There is of course more to be said, but I limit myself to this third finding: despite a partial

agreement between Schmitt’s hostis-concept in the C.P. and Pomponius’ definition in the

Digesta, the term hostis in the Corpus Iuris Civilis is a distinctly and essentially juridical

category which is opposed—not to Schmitt’s ‘private enemy,’ i.e. inimicus—but to the ‘political

enemy’-concepts signified by the terms latro and praedo. Here as previously, then, there is scant

evidence to suggest that Schmitt, as Derrida would have it, “intends to serve and repeat” the

classical hostis-concept, or indeed, much at all that is preserved in the Corpus Iuris Civilis.

References

Caldwell, Peter. 2005. Controversies over Carl Schmitt: A review of recent literature. The

Journal of Modern History 77.2: 357–87.

Cicero. 1913. De Officiis. Tr. W. Miller. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Politiques de l’amitié suivi de L’oreille de Heidegger. Paris: Editions

Galilée.

Derrida, Jacques. 1997. Politics of Friendship. Tr. G. Collins. London: Verso.

Faber, Richard. 2001. Lateinischer Faschismus. Über Carl Schmitt den Römer und Katholiken.

Berlin: Philo.

19

And similarly, whereas for Pomponius—and, as we have seen, Cicero—bellum is to be juridically signalled and

thereby constituted, Schmitt (1991, 33; 1996, 33) wishes to ‘concretise’ Krieg: “War is the existential negation

(seinsmäßige Negierung) of the enemy.”

Forcellini, Ægidius. 1771. Totius Latinitatis Lexicon. Comp. J. Facciolati and Æ. Forcellini.

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