Those that know me well this first bit of news will come
with little to no surprise; I am …yet again… blogging from the comfort of a
hospital. Oh the crazy shenanigans that weekends inspire. Anywhoop, who is this
Schmitt fellow I’ve been going on about? Well, he is undoubtedly one of the
most controversial political theoreticians of the 20^th century and
one of the most brilliant. He is the father of the political idea of the ‘total’
state and wrote the thesis on democracy negating liberalism and vice versa. He
was born a Catholic in Plettenberg, Westphalia circa 1888. He went into law starting in 1907 and received his doctorate in
jurisprudence by 1910.

Pre WWI Schmitt was firm in his belief that the Catholic Church
(mixed with a little bit of neo-Kantianism) was a universal and spiritual
entity having no other equal. The ‘proper order’ to him was right, state,
individual. However the realities that WWI withheld shattered his neo-Kantian political
beliefs veering him towards a much more stark political realism. The focal
point of his political thinking became centered on the state being governed by
the ever-present possibility of conflict.

“In contrast to Hegel, for whom the state was the
realization of the highest form of existence, Schmitt perceived the role of the
state as the securing of conditions under which citizens could pursue their
private wills”

Who then, do you suppose he turned to very frequently? None
other than my main man Thomas Hobbes and his writings “mutual Relation between
Protection and Obedience”.

With Hobbes he shared the believe that the one who has
authority can demand obedience, where the sovereign is not always the one who
possess this authority. This belief is the one that led Schmitt to become part
of his widely recognized controversy, which was his participation in the Nazi
events of 1933 – 1936.

Basically Schmitt goes on to show that even though a concept
such as the omnipotent lawgiver could be traced back to that of the omni potent
God, the meaning of the concept had changed profoundly over the centuries.
Hence the reason Momen’s term of ‘ultimate reality’ holds firmly when speaking
of Schmitt and Hobbes. Without putting a definition on this ultimate reality it
is open to be the sovereign. And that sovereign, as the picture on the cover of
Leviathan suggests, is a collection of the people. So really, the whole thing
boils down to making the sovereign the secular, human ‘god’.

There is obviously
a lot more in there, all described by Momen, Schmitt and Hobbes, but that’s
what my prof was trying to convey to us. That it is impossible to detach
religion from politics not only because all religious leaders ultimately guide
political decisions, but because the state is a secular religious figure, it is
the ‘ultimate reality’ of the people.

More on this later, more coherently and indepth.