Carnal Enlightenment, The Myth of Enlightened Reason and Two Carnal Conceptions of the State_Hrvoje Cvijanovic

7/27/2019 Carnal Enlightenment, The Myth of Enlightened Reason and Two Carnal Conceptions of the State_Hrvoje Cvijanovic

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7 6 Cvijanovi H. amalEnlightenment The Mytho fEnlightenedReason

Prethodno priopenjeUDK 1:32

321.01:1340.1 Schmitt,C.

Primljeno: 12. studenog 2009.

C arn al Enlightenm ent: The Myth of Enlightened Reasonand Two Carnal Conceptions of the State*

HRVOJE CVIJANOVIC

SummaryThe state in the modem sense ought to appear as the instmment of Reasonable to control the passions. This is the modem myth of the state which hasbeen fortified through the age of Enlightenment. How ever, the concept of 'e n-lightened re aso n' that lies behind the idea of the state is jus t a myth and thu sis false. Rather, the modem state becomes the highest embod iment of 'cama lreason'. As such, camal reason manifests itself through the idea of self-pre-servation or life-preserving in general which feeds on human desire for domi-nation over nature and over human b eings themselves. Thus, the mo dem stateprovides the framework for the camal discharge of sadistic passions in thename of the myth of 'enlightened reason'. The argument is that the Enlight-enment deceptively presented its goals as the cravings of Reason while deli-berately concealing its camal foundations. Namely, I differentiate betweenthe sado-masochistic core of the Enlightenment and its rhetorical or intellec-tual mask. The life-preserving drive that inevitably transmutes into compre-hensive destmction of theself as well as destruction of the others and of theentire environm ent, is upheld through the legal framework of the state. I arguethat it is this camal reason that provides the foundation for the modem state,as opposed to the historically propagated ideal of 'enlightened reaso n'. H ow-ever, if the state represents the ultimate emb odiment of 'ca m al re ason ', thereare at least two possible responses to that condition. The first response recog-nizes 'camal reason' as an obstacle for the fulfilment of the Enlightenment'sideals or as a betrayal of the idea of the state. This is the criticism developedby Horkheim er and Adom o in their diatribe on the Enlightenment and on thestate, both of which are de scribed as totalitarian and life-denying. On the otherhand, the camal conception of the state, separated from the burden of moral

The paper was presented at the Association of Political Theory Conference 2009 , Texas A&MUniversity, College Station, Texas.Hrvoje Cvijanovic PhD candidate in political science at the University of Massachusetts Am-


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Politikamisao god. 48, br. 1,2011,str. 76-93 7 7argument, is defended by Carl Schmitt as the fact of the political. Two camalconcep tions of the state represent two different articulations which should bejuxtaposed and illuminated.Keywords:Enlightenment, state, camal, Adomo and Horkheimer, Carl Schmitt

The self-deception of the masses -jur instance in all dem ocracies- is highlyadvantageous: makingpeople small andgovernableishailedas 'progress ' Nietzsche

ntrodu tionTraditionally, the Enlightenment is conceptualized as an intellectual effort wherethe power of Reason was uplifted above the passions and presented as a liberatingforce from all types of parochialism connected w ith tradition or authority. However,the argument is that the Enlightenment deceptively presented its goals as the crav-ings of Reason, while deliberately concealing its camal foundations. The modemconception ofthestate is an embodiment of camal reason. In a nutshell, the camalshould be understood as life-preserving. Therefore, the camal understanding of lifeis opposed to the life of the higher ends. Since the camal refers exclusively to thebody, the whole idea of Reason lurking behind the modem state is problematic. Yet,the very interpretation of the modem state as an offspring of Reason has been domi-nant from the early Enlightenment period on. In fact, the modem state has beenuplifted on a mythical reconstmction of Reason. It is the same Reason which waspropagated during the age of Enlightenment, but much more emphatically a centuryor so later. In other words, we should make a distinction between the 18 ' and 19 'century Enlightenments, and reject the claim about the Enlightenment as universaland monolithic project. However, irrespective of this distinction, the Enlightenmentand its progeny established a particular belief in 'enlightened reason'. While reasonis traditionally understood as a portal into the real nature of the world as well asthe faculty for understanding and dealing with moral perplexities of life, so-called'enlightened reason ' has been developed as inherently instmm ental in its scope. Itsdistinctive feature is the stmggle for success or efficiency. While the idea of Rea-son was put on the pedestal of the Enlightenment's rhetoric, its instmmental naturehas shown a radically different face ofthe'enlightened civilization' - a sole desirefor the instinctual and its basic preoccupation (not with moral excellence, but) withbodily existence. This is why I speak of 'Camal Enlightenment'. In other words,enlightened reason became a trick to obtain domination, to enslave the others, andto propagate universal happiness as a mask for self-preservation and well-being at


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at the same time developing in the shape of camal reason through the institutionalframework of the state.The first task is to unmask this enlightened reason by showing its inherently

camal character. From Socrates on, the purpose of philosophizing w as to convinceofth value of reason which goes beyond bodily pleasures. The whole tradition ofWestem political thought has been stmggling to this very day to refute the realistclaim expressed by Thrasymachus in Plato s epublic that the body is what mat-ters,not the soul. The second task will be to figure out how to deal with the camalshould we continue with the politics ofitsdisplacement, or should we accept it asan irreducible content of social reality.

All in all, the myth of enlightened reason refiects what I call camal reason- a desire for self-preservation. In its specific manifestation, enlightened reasondwells on its sado-masochistic core while having a deliberate political agenda fordomination over the natural world and the human world. The myth itself and itsconsequences have been discussed for centuries, starting with the work of counter--Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau, de Sade, or Nietzsche, and continuingthrough the 20* century. I found it interesting to concentrate, among all, on one ofthe most well-known diatribes on the Enlightenment, that of Adom o and H orkhei-mer. They correctly identified the problem of the myth of enlightened reason, con-cluding that the enlightened or cam al reason and its ramifications are inevitablylife-denying. In contrast, camal reason should not be considered as such by default,but only in particular circumstances.

There are two camal dynamics, and thus two camal conceptions of the state.The first operates under the veil ofth Enlightenment s philosophy of life, aims tobe life-preserving, yet disregards the price which should be paid for obtaining itsends. I found the second one in Carl Schm itt s conception of the political and thestate which deals more transparently w ith this camal reason. I will start with the na-ture of contemporary understanding of the Enlightenment, then move on to Adom oand Horkheimer s critique ofth state as a malevolent creation of enlightened rea-so n , and finally offer my interpretation of Carl Schm itt s affirmation of the statewhich mns on camal reason as its formative potentiality.The Enlightenment s)There are many different interpretations of the Enlightenment. Yet, we can roughlygroup them in two different tenets - the one which conceives the Enlightenment asa liberating movement in human history, and the other which connects it quite op-positely with enslavement, oppression, subjugation and domination over nature andhuman beings. Imm anuel Kant usually stands as the representative of the first view.


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such as Rousseau, but it was especially revived and articulated in the 20* centurystarting from Adomo and Horkheimer up to thinkers such as Isaiah Berlin, MichelFoucault, Alasdair Maclntyre, John Gray, Rajani Kanth, etc. What is inherent toboth arguments is the conception of the Enlightenment as a monolithic movementor project having a strong intellectual core, which contemporary critique connectswith an overestimated tmst in Reason. This is the basic myth of the Enlightenment.To ascribe to such a myth, to accept the assumptions that the movem ent was unifiedor progress ing from an intellectual core, is to foreclose the possibility o f greater un-derstanding. Rather than viewing it as a singular movement, we should instead talkabout Enlightenm ents, roughly that of the 18 ' century, its mythical reconstmctionwhich was related to the 19 ' century, along with its ideological projects of the 20 'century.First, as I have already mentioned, the Enlightenment was never a unifiedproject. According to Peter Gay, the Enlightenment was a volatile mixture ofclas-sicism, impiety, and science ; the philosophers, in a phrase, had a kind of satanicspirit of men who were bringing light to o thers by the pow er of knowledg e (Gay,

1977: 21).' As a by-product of this messianicbelief rationalization appears as atotalizing force exercised over man and nature to benefit all. The power of Reasonwas presented as a liberating and disenchanting momentum from any tutelage con-nected with tradition, authority, or passions. Even though the philosophers wereunited in their epochal illusions, they differed among themselves in the scope oftheir unreserved tmst in Reason. Namely, it was common in the 18*century not totmst Reason exclusively. Actually, some ofthe prominent figures ofthe 18 '-centu-ry Enlightenment like Voltaire, and even Kant, Diderot, d'Alembert or Hume, ac-cepted the fact that reason is not the only so urce of man's action. W hile Voltaire wasmo cking this w orshiping of reason in hisMem non the story of a self-satisfied ra-tionalist who conceives the foo lish notions o f being w holly wise and of establishingthe supremacy of reason over passion , Memnon w as actually, as Peter Gay pointedout, wrongly interpreted later on as the ideal representative of an age of reason, buthe is an anti-Voltaire; he is the very type that the Enlightenment repudiated and thatits critics later took as its em bo d imen f {ibid : 143).

Thus, overconfidence in reason is not something which should be easily at-tached to the Enlightenment as such. Rather, as I stated earlier, this tmst in reasonbecame the core ofthe Positivist understanding ofthe world embo died in the tech-nical reason, and thus a residual projection of what has been considered as the tme' This depictio n of Satan or Lucifer (lux = light; ferro = to bring) is the mo tive of Bau de laire'spoem Les Litanies de Satan . There Satan appears with his Luciferian halo as the keeper ofprofound knowledge, as an instructor in Promethean skills, as the patron saint of the stubbom


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nature of the Enlightenment 's thought. Nevertheless, the mythological story of l i-beration rem ained in both version s. The 18* century articulated the rhetoric of theEnlightenm ent, while later projects w ere mo re concem ed w ith the adaptation of thisrhetoric to more palpable purposes. The vulgar instmmentality of this 19*-centurypositivist Enlightenment climaxed in its equation of the moral progress with techni-cal developments in science. It refected the belief that technology, as an offspringof science, was going to solve all human problems and thus, as a liberating force,abolish institutionalized domination and all existing social hierarchies and depen-dencies blamed for man's intellectual downfall. Even though this myth has beenpersistently perpetuated, its promises have never been realized.

While emancipation from any tutelage was a pillar of Kant's notion of theEnlightenment, for some other fgures, such as Isaac Papin, a dissident Huguenottheologian, this overconfidence in reason hardly corresponds to social reality. Eventhough he at first supported this confidence in reason, he fgured out later that itwas a delusion projected by the Enlightenment 's nave optimism.^ Furthermore,Kant ' s s pere ude dictum the call for emancipation was not possible withoutpersonal subjugation. My point is that this subjugation would not allow the tutelageto become diminished, but rather deepen it in different directions while making itmore fragmented and concealed. According to Kant, Reason is exercised throughthe process of moral self-constitution. Kant argues that self-legislation is neces-sary to maintain a balance between individual interests and the interests of soci-ety. But, according to my view, the sado-masochistic character is revealed exactlyin this self-imposition of the mies. Self-mle or self-mastery does not serve merelyas a constraint to natural instincts, but rather as an entitlement to mle the environ-ment. Only those able to subdue their drives masochistically would be able to em-ploy their mastery in more efficient control of the environment. In other words, amasochistic pleasure in self-mastery leads to the mastery over the environment andover the people through sadistic discharge of previously accumulated layers ofself-discipline. This is why Ca m al Enlightenm ent is Janus-faced.

On the one hand, it closely refers to the Nie tzsche an ascetic idea l revealin gthe m asoch istic tendencies of m od em m an, while on the other hand it refects a typeof crit ique present in Ro usseau 's writings, and connected with certain developm entof sadistic discharges through the usage of knowledge and technology. Namely, forNie tzsch e, the ascetic ideal springs from the protective and healing instincts of adegenerating life which uses every means to maintain itself and stmggles for its^ Papin claimed that there is scarcely one in every hundred thousand people who can followthe way of reasoning and investigation. Life is too short and the diffieulty too great... forth vastmajority to be able to choose their religion, or establish their views, on the basis of independent


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existe nce (Nietzsc he, 200 6: 93). Ob served fi-om the Nietzs chea n standpo int, theEnlightenment, by being camal, possesses two qualities - first , i t is cutining, name-ly while it prop agates Rea son, it aims at the body; secon d, it is dege nerating - aim-ing at the body cau ses a total dam pen ing of the awa renes s of life, me chan icalactivity, the small pleasure, [...] this bestialization of man into a dwarf animal...ibid.: 107; also Nietzsche, 1998: 82).

For Rousseau, on the other hand, human perfectibility or usage of reason un-leashes the type of camal passions of boundless, insatiable and sadistic tendencies.According to the myth of the Enlightenment, both the natural world and the humanworld are perceived as plastic or mouldable. Reason is licensed to leave a humanimprint on the wo rld. But this is the cau se of all discontent in our life. For Ro ussea u,m an 's faculty of perfectibility is the source of all of ma n's m iseries; that it is thefaculty which by dint of time, draws him out ofthat original condition in which hewould spend tranquil and innocent days; that it is the faculty which, over the cen-turies, causing his enlightenment and his errors, his vices and his virtues to bloom,eventual ly mak es him his own and Na ture's tyrant (Rousseau, 1997: 141). Thu s,the perfection of reason goes hand in hand with the perfection of man's camal psy-chopathology.^ Perhaps the most powerful description of man's camal psychopa-thology connected with developments of reason is Rousseau's opening paragraphof Emile where he states:

...everything degenerates in the hands of man. He forces one soil to nourish theproducts of another, one tree to bear the fmit of another. He mixes and confusesclimates, the elements, the seasons. He m utilates his dog , his horse, his slave. Hetum s everything upside dow n; he disfigures ev erything; he loves deformity, m on-sters. He wants nothing as nature made it, not even man; for him, man must betrained like a school horse; man must be fashioned in keeping with his fancy likea tree in his garden. (Rou sseau, 1979: 37)Rou sseau 's cri tique of the by-products of so-cal led 'enl ightened re ason ' is de-

vastating for this reason itself While deeply selfish in self-preservation, the camalaspects of 'enl ightened reason' , according to Rousseau, encouraged man to act al-

^ Foucault's argument in Madness and Civilization (Foucault, 2001) mns along these lines. Hepoints out: Civilization, in a general way, constitutes a milieu favourable to the developm ent ofmadness... The more abstract or complex knowledge becomes, the greater the risk of madnessibid.: 206). Kno wled ge thus forms around feeling a milieu of abstract relationships where manrisks losing the physical happiness in which his relation to the world is usually established... Butit is not only know ledg e that detaches man from feeling; it is sensib ility itse lf a sensibility that is

no longer controlled by the movements of nature, but by all the habits, all the demands of sociallife ibid.:207). ... mad ness becom es possible in that milieu where m an's relations with his


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ways on the surface, in an actor-like fashion - being never in himself judged bythe appearance, applauded (or not) for the performance (Rousseau, 1968: 122-123).Man eventually becomes mthless, perceiving others as obstacles to his self-real-ization. Not only for Rousseau, but for all pre-20 ' century critics of enlightenedreason, modemity represents a life that has been devaluated, and not only by theestrangement through technology, but also, more profoundly, through a particularphilosophy of life.

The 20 '-century critique ofth Enlightenment and the state was erected uponthese views. In the following part, I will show how contemporary critique of theEnlightenment and its legacy severely criticized its residual effects, showing thatthere was nothing enlightening in the Enlightenment and in its heritage. The car-nal aspects of the Enlightenment were almost unanimously condemned. In such aconstellation, the state was perceived as the most poweril weapon for the camaldischarges.Criticism: Adorno and Horkheimer et alInThe Eighteenth rumaireo fLouisBonaparte Marx wrote: Men make their ownhistory, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under cir-cumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered,given and transmitted from thepast.The tradition of all the dead generations weighslike a nightmare on the brain of the living (Marx, 1972: 15). Similarly, a heavyburden of the Enlightenment's promises and their residual effects shaped the wholeanti-Enlightenment discourse ofth 20* century.

Before I move on to Adomo and Horkheimer's criticism of the state, perceivedas the most palpable embodiment of the philosophy of the Enlightenment and itstotalitarian ideological manifestations, it would be interesting to briefly mentionthe other contemporary accusations toward enlightened reason. For instance, JacobTalmon and Isaiah Berlin highlighted that enlightened reason ends up as oppres-sion. It happens due to the nature of reason's perfectibility or desire to uplift themost harmonious political order whose shining is going to be universally recog-nized. While propagating the gospel of universal liberation, far away from this rhe-torical beauty, we have witnessed the camal discharge ofth state power manifest-ing itself through totalitarian movements. Similarly, in Michel Foucault's writingsthe camal expression of the Enlightenment's ideals was present through diversity ofdisciplining techniques. Foucault's notion of biopolitics emphasizes the role of themodem state and its institutions obsessed with the body - a particular way of nur-turing and control which goes beyond previous disciplining techniques. For JohnGray, liberalism represents a cloaked version ofth Enlightenment project. G ray'sview of the Enlightenment and its liberal disciples shows that the Westemizing


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project of Enlightenment humanism has desolated traditional cultures in every partof the globe and visited devastation on their natural environment (Gray, 1995:178). Many post-colonial scholars, such as Edward Said or Rajani Kanth, deve-loped the cultural critique of the Enlightenm ent, blaming it for the Westem do mina-tion and exploitation of non-Westem cultures. For example, in his book Breakingwith the Enlightenment Rajani Kanth attacks this camal reason embodied in theEnlightenment's understanding of the wo rld, by claiming that the doughty warriorsof the Enlightenment... torched, raped, pillaged, and plundered the world, and allin the name of prog ress (Kanth, 199 7:119). All these views represent a critique ofcamal understanding of theEnlightenment. According to them, the Enlightenmentoffers nothing but a lie: the lie of an 'enlightened', unified and progressive world.What differentiates these arguments from Adomo and Horkheimer's view is theirultimate and irreconcilable 'go o d bye' to the Enlightenment ideals. On the contrary,when Adomo deploys his critique of camal reason, he still believes that the lightof enlightened reason has not completely faded. In other words, Adomo and Hork-heimer's attack on the Enlightenment has to do with their deep conviction that thestate, as the contemporary embodiment of the camal, can be reinvented and libe-rated from these 'inverte d ' Enlightenment ideals.

Adomo and Horkheimer correctly identified the problem of the myth of en-lightened reason. However, their conclusion about the consequences of that reasonis somewhat different than mine. Namely, they consider the Enlightenment and itsramifications as inevitably life-denying. For them, the dialectic of the Enlighten-ment leads from self-preservation to self-destmction. In this view, the state andculture serve as proliferators of camal aspirations, or those aspirations connectedwith the mass consumerist society, not those attached to the individualized (intel-lectual) g oals. In other words , the Enlightenm ent's philosophical foundations havebeen articulated dominantly to legitimize the camal worldview over the spiritualone, not vice versa. According to this view, despite its hom age to intellectual aims,the Enlightenment failed by trying to mask its inherent camal character embeddedin the desire for self-preservation. It used reason as a medium for transformationof knowledge into power, in order to empower the elites to use the masses for ap-propriation of wealth and enjoyment. In their book ialectico f Enlightenmenttheywrite:

Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement... Tech-nology is the essence oft isknowledge. It aims to prod uce neither concepts norimages, northejoy ofunderstanding,but method, exploitation ofthe labor of ot-hers, capital... Power and knowledge are synonymous... Enlightenment stands inthe same relationship to things as the d ictatortohuman beings. He knows them tothe extent that he can manipulate them. The man of science knows things to the


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extent that he can make them... In their transformation the essence of things is re-vealed as always the same, a substrate for domination. (Horkheimer and Adomo,2002:2, 6)Previously, nature had been experienced as harmonious. Now the Enlighten-ment's philosophy and science revealed nature as chaotic. According to this beliefthe 'M an of reason ' emerged from the chaos of nature with a historical mission - tomake sense of these chaotic forces of nature. Horkheimer and Adomo write: Whathuman beings seek to leam from nature is how to use it to dominate wholly both itand human beings. Nothing else counts. Ruthless towarditself the Enlightenmenthas eradicated the last remnant of tsown self-awareness. Only thought which doesviolence to itself shard enough to shatter m yths {ibid :2Finally, technological m astery became an expression of human power over na-ture.This mastery in the hands of the state should be regarded, accordingtoAdomo,as a totalizing power. The Enlightenment's disenchantment from the myth becamemyth itself As every other myth, the Enlightenment was dealing with the essentialhuman needs - survival and fear. From the very beginning, the Enlightenm ent wasconcemed more with satisfying these needs on the palpable, material level, whilethe philosophical foundations served dominantly to legitimize the camal worldviewover the spiritual one. In otherwords.Reason liberated the 'bea st' in human beingsby institutionalizing their instinctual cravings. That is why the same Reason wasemployed into the process of domination and subjugation, the process Adom o con-nected with the very premise of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment is totalitarian {ibid :4) in the way the state and culture are or-ganized. Almost nothing can be left without the tutelage of organizational Reason.It is, therefore, totalitarian as the sado-m asochistic practice is totalitarian - namely,a complete surrender of particular will to a common denominator, while at the sametime it is perfectly rationally conducted for the sake of attaining camal enjoymentthrough domination and subjugation. In addition, the sado-masochistic role-playing

is predetermined since both sides know their roles. Horkheimer and Adomo write: For Enlightenment is totalitarian as only a system canbe.Its untmth does not lie inthe analytical method, the reduction to elements, the decomposition through reflec-tion, as its Romantic enemies had maintained from the first, but in its assumptionthat the trial is prejudged {ibid : 18). In his essayOn the Fetish-Character in Mu-sic and the egression of Listening,Adomo claims that modemity along with theEnlightenment did not offer anything but a culmination of the vulgar understandingof the state and culture concemed mostly with self-preservation, or with the camal,thus absorbing all other aspects of life to this utility. In that way nothing was sparedfrom the sado-masochistic discharge of the drives of civilized man. Another linkage


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ian pol i t ica l movements . For ins tance , Adomo sees a l ink between the to ta l i tar ianFhrer and the cond uctor of the orches t ra (Ad om o, 1982: 285) . They both resem blethe same fate of modem mass society - one in poli t ical , the other in cultural terms.The exercise of totali tarian power is perceived as sadist ic and at the same t ime pro-vid ing a fa lse cons ola t ion for suffer ing . On the o ther hand, A d o m o 's d iscuss ionon music as one of the most poweri l tools of contro l por t rays the l iquida t ion ofthe individual ibid.: 276) . The l i s tener ' s ro le i s predetermined as pass ive , receiv-ing s t imuli from the authority, acting out of convention, acting out of an expectedetiquette; in a word - he is trained to masochist ically endure whatever is deliveredto him. Therefore, in poli t ical terms, the source of power, the s tate , tacit ly legit i-mizes this maso chism throug h permanent reaffirmation of the fragili ty o f the po li t i-cal order, and by doing that , potentiates desire for self-preservation. Adomo says: Masochism in hearing is not only defined by self-surrender and pseudo-pleasurethrough identification with power. Underlying i t is knowledge that the security ofshelter under the mling condit ions is a provisional one, that i t is only a respite , andthat eventually everything must collapse ibid.:2 9 4 - 2 9 5 ).

According to th is unders tanding , the pol i t ica l order dwells on the sado-maso-chist ic camal principle which fosters a dependence relationship between those whodemand satisfaction of their needs (self-preservation) and those who offer this satis-faction. W hat s tays perm anent in this relationship is i ts incom pleteness - both needsare insatiable, and on this insatiabili ty the reason of the poli t ical has been estab-lished. For Adomo, what I call the camal principle is always self-devouring, eventho ugh i t ad voca tes self-preservation:

The human being's mastery of itself on which the self is founded, practicallyalways involves the annihilation of the subject in whose service that mastery ismaintained, because the substance which is mastered, suppressed, and disinte-grated by self-preservation is nothing other than living entity, of which the achi-evements of self-preservation can only be defined as functions - in other words,self-preservation destro ys the very thing w hich is to be preserved. The antireasonof totalitarian capitalism, whose technique of satisfying needs, in their objectifiedform determined by domination, makes the satisfaction of needs impossible andtends toward the extermination ofhum anity.. . The history of civilization is the hi-story of the introversion of sacrifice - in other word s, the history of renunciation.All who renounce give away more of their life than is given back to them, morethan the life they preserve. (Horkheimer and Ado mo , 20 02 : 43)The implication of this sado-masochist ic character of the s tate is the produc-

tion of an inherently destmctive social milieu. Due to the masochist ic sacrifice ofall other potentiali t ies and qualit ies of l ife , the desire for self-preservation leads tose lf -des tmct ion . On the o ther hand, the sadis t ic d ischarge of dr ives leads to d es tm c-


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tion of others. Both dynamics are harboured by the state leading to self-destmction.In Ado mo s own words:The dialectic of enlightenment is culminating objectively in madness. This is al-so a madness of political reality... humanity is... divided into a small number ofpower blocs. They compete more pitilessly than the firmsnvolved in the anarchyof commodity production everdid and strive toward mutual liquidation... [...] selfpreservation... had become the reified drive ofe chindividual citizen and provedto be a destmctive natural force no longer distinguishable from self-destmction.ibid : 169, 171)AU those and other, different critical standpoints share a very similar disap-pointment with the Enlightetiment and its legacy. They want to tum our attention

towards the origins of the Enlightenment s philosophy and detect why, how andwhen something went wrong. On the contrary, according to my view, this effort isfutile. Instead of lamenting on how we were betrayed by the Enlightenment andits disciples, we should rather recognize the ever-present pattem underlining thewhole Enlightenment s legacy - its camal embodiment. As I have mentioned ear-lier, this camal principle should be regarded as self-preserving as well. Horkheimerand Adomo s understanding of the state power represents one possible, yet bleak,concept of camal reason. Carl Schm itt s concept ofthepolitical and the state mightalso be regarded as camal, but having a different trajectory. Instead of perceivingcamal reason as a self-preserving impulse which is paradoxically life-denying, Iargue that Schm itt s understanding of the modem state starts up from the premiseofthestate as an embodiment ofthesame self-preserving drive, but ending up dif-ferently, namely through the idea of the state as a proliferator ofgroupidentity andthus a life-affirming power. hmittEven though Carl Schmitt was an obscure figure ofthe20* century, his theorizingon the state left no one indifferent. What brings me to Schmitt is his relationshiptoward the modem state, which is, in my judgement, unique. Up to now we haveseen that all counter-Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment perspectives linked thestate with the oppressive instmmental rationality blamed to be inherent to the Ageof Reason. For Schmitt, the umbilical cord between the state and philosophy of theEnlightenment was neither logical nor necessary. According to my view, Schmitt isnot interested in lamenting about the carnal core oftheEnlightenment worldview.The camal principle had always been there, much before the Enlightenmentitself.The catastrophic defeat ofthe ideals oftheEnlightenment should not be perceivedas a defeat of the state. Surely, the concept of the modem state suffered the most,


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discrepancy between myth and socio-political reality. The popular discontent of themasses can be healed by reaffirming the existential or life-affirming potentiality ofcarnal reason. What does this mean?

The whole concept of falsely worshiped enlightened reason relies on thefeigned neutrality of Reason itself However, if this neutrality along with its pre-tentious universal judgments were proved to be false, similarly, all ideologies andaffiliations pretending to defend universal principles of life should be unmaskedas false too. Behind the mask of enlightened reason is pure self-interest for self-preservation know n as the camal principle of life - aiming at the body and power.For Schmitt, there would be nothing wrong with this camal affrmation of politics.The problem is the fact of concealing it, namely by presenting someone's subjuga-tion as her liberation. This concealed camal concept ofth state with false neutral-ity was discussed much earlier by Rousseau in hisSecond Discourse Rousseauwas arguing that those able to control the means of power took the institutions ofthe state to present their particular camal cravings as objective, universa l, and moreimportantly, as neutral interests of humanity as a whole, while actually conceiving the most well-considered project ever to enter the human mind; to use his attack-ers' forces in his favour, to make his adversaries his defenders, to instil in themother maxims and to give them different institutions... (Rousseau , 1997: 172-173).This concealed and cunning camal reason and its fake neutrality institutionalizedpolitical and econom ic inequalities where, as Starobinski pointed out, econom icusurpation becomes political power while draping itself in the trappings of lega-lity and peace... We are the heirs ofthisfool's bargain, which eliminated overt vio-lence by ending the war of all against all but replaced it with the hypocritical vio-lence of conventions favourable to the rich (Starobinski, 1988: 299). According toSchmitt's argument, this particular cunning camal conception of the state is inhe-rent to the liberal worldview. While spreading the gospel of the Enlightenment, theliberal state aimed at securing its particular camal interests; subjugating and ex-ploiting in the name of progress.

Schmitt's attack on liberalism as well as his affirmation ofth political is con-ducted in order to strip offth enlightened face of feigned neutrality from the con-cept of the state. The state has to deal with the cam al. It needs to employ the cam alpassion of self-preservation to fortify life, not to fragment it and destroy it throughindividual oppositions inherent to the competitive liberal society. Schmitt's camalconception ofth state is not dealing with the people as they ought to be, but withthe people as they are, drenched in their everyday existential and irrevocable hopesand fears. He says: All historical knowledge receives its light and intensity fromthe present; all historical representations and constmctions are filled with naveprojections and identifications; only a consciousness of our own historical situation


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will provide historical ins ighf (Schmitt, 1963: 17). Schmitt opposes the liberal me-ta-narrative and its reliance to the Enlightenment's philosophy of history. The statedoes not represent a culmination of progressive ideals of humanity, but a particularexpression of camalwill.As Gopal Balakrishnan, a scholar on Schmitt, articulated:Schmitt attempted to capture the harsh objectivity as well as the phantasms of thepolitical - that is to say, the necessity of confiict and the surplus of violence and pas-sion (Balakrishnan, 2000: 261).The heart of the political manifests itself as an irreducible potentiality of fri-end/enemy groupings. Namely, the political must refiect the camal, since it dealswith the instincts of self-preservation. It must be highlighted that Schmitt, in oppo-sition to Adomo and Horkheimer, does not attach any moral attributes to the con-cept which I recognize as camal. The camal is simply the essence of political life

as well as the essence of life as a whole. Accordingly, the friend/enemy distinctionis a political distinction, not a moral one. It means that the enemy is not necessarily morally evil, aesthetically ugly or econom ically dam aging (Schmitt, 1996: 27).''So when liberals hide the camal principle behind the notion of neutrality, they wantto mask the inherently antagonistic existential drives ofth political, presenting itas merely agonistic or competitive. Schmitt writes: Liberalism... has attempted totransform the enemy from the viewpoint of economics into a competitor and fromthe intellectual point into a debating adversary {ibid :28). Therefore, liberalism isessentially anti-political, since it deliberately portrays political antagonisms merelyas political agonisms.

Perhaps war is the ultimate expression of the camal. Even though the camalis always already present, it should be defined and articulated as a collective enter-prise of the state. In that respect, Schmitt's view of the state and its apparatus some-what resembles Plato's Spartan-like constmction of the state. In his project in theRepublic the desires of the masses are held in check by the virtue of the wisdom /po-wer ofth superior few, where the education ofth masses is insufficient for mlingover themselves and keeping their camal desires at bay (Plato, 2004: 117). There-fore the state is the ultimate formative power in the protection and enhancement oflife,while at the same time the only political subject able to demand this life back,if necessary, as a sacrifice for the comm on cause. Schm itt writes:

' ' It is impo rtant to note that Schmitt relies on Plato's d istinction betw een the pub lic enemy andthe private one. The Greek word plemos [nX \ioc] should be contrasted with stasis [axaic],where the former means war in the public sense (between the Greeks and non-G reeks), and thelatter mea ns a quarrel on the personal level (for Plato can be only am ong the Gre eks the mse lves).Schm itt writes in one of his footnotes: a private enemy is a person w ho hates us, wh ereas a pu b-


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The State as the decisive political entity possesses an enormous power: the pos-sibility of wag ing the war and thereby publicly d isposing o f the lives of men. Thejus belli contains such a disposition. It implies a double possibility: the right todem and from its own mem bers the readiness to d ie and unhesitatingly to kill ene-mies. The endeavour of a normal state consists above all in assuring total peacewithin the state and its territory... A human group which renounces these conse-quences of a political entity ceases to be a political group, because it thereby re-nounces the possibility of deciding whom it considers to be the enemy and howhe should be treated. By virtue of this power over the physical life of men, the po-litical community transcends all other associations and societies. (Schmitt, 1996:4 6 , 4 7 )Schmitt actually argues that the very instinct of life contains a potentiality of

destmction and total negation of the body. In addition, the political only means thatthe cam al has been shaped around a particular existential threat where a po liticallyunited people is prepared to fight for i ts existence, independence, and freedom onthe basis of a decision emanating from the political entity {ibid :45- 46 ) . By say-ing that, Schmitt does not prom ote blood lust or any type of warlike behaviour: Thedefinition of the political suggested here neither favours w ar nor militarism, neitherimperialism nor pacifism {ibid :33 ). On the contrary, by negating o r co ncealingthe camal aspect of the political , namely by negating the fact that existential con-flicts can be fought for the sake of and in the name of a particular political entityalo ne, and not for so m e self-declared hig her princip les, it is to uplift a particularrationality and admire its supremacy. This was exactly the purpose of the Enlight-enments and their ideological disciples. Schmitt actually attacks the liberal rhetori-cal ma no euvre w ho se purpose is to drag no n-liberals into a liberally shaped rationalargument, thus closing the possibility to argue from an incommensurable politicaluniverse.

Schmitt 's famous example is the usage of the notion of humanity. Let us takethe examp le of the war on terror. Imm ediately after the terrorist attacks on Septem -ber l l * 20 0 1, mo st of the wo rld leaders were uni ted in cond emning th is act . Wh atbecame a distinctive feature of the Westem powers, along with the Vatican, wastheir denouncement of these events as crimes against humanity. Hence, the waron terror has been legitimized to be waged for the sake of humanity. For Schmitt ,the problem would not be the war itself since the attack represented an existen-tial threat for the American people. Thus, to engage with the enemy in an existen-tial stmggle is the political principle/jr excellence. What becomes problematic isthe usag e of the co ncept of hum anity in the particular con text of terrorism andagainst a particular political entity. Why so? Since every political entity operateswithin the friend/enemy distinction, saying that humanity is waging war against


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9 0 Cvijanovi H. arnaiEnlightenment The Mytho fEniightenedReason

since the notion of hum anity does not presupp ose any other opposition but anon-human entity. To clarify, Schmitt is making a powerful point in the followingparagraph:

When a state fights its political enemy in the name of humanity, it is not a warfor the sake of humanity, but a war wherein a particular state seeks to usurp auniversal concept against its military opponent. At the expense of its opponent,it tries to identify itself with hum anity in the same w ay as one can m isuse peac e,justic e, progress, and civilization in order to claim these as one's ow n and to denythe same to the enemy. The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideologi-cal instmment of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it isa specific vehicle of economic imperialism... To confiscate the word humanity,to invoke and monopolize such a term, probably has certain incalculable effects,such as denying the enemy the quality of being hum an and dec laring him to be anoutlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhu-manity, ibid.:54)Thus, by hiding behind the mask of humanity or other self-proclaimed univer-

sal aspirations, the liberal bourgeoisie, as Schmitt was constantly emphasizing,^ istrying to neutralize the political or, in other wo rds, to de-legitim ize only non-lib eralarticulations of camal reason. What drives liberal camal reason is the primacy ofthe economic over the political sphere. Namely, Schmitt argues that liberal politicsis aligned with the logic of capital against the state. Ac cording ly, the mo de m statehas becom e a huge industrial plant (Schmitt , 1985: 65).on lusionIf the task of the philoso phical foundations of the Enlig htenm ent w as to deliver m anfrom domination and subjugation, then the Enlightenment has failed. According toAdomo and Horkheimer, as well as an entire army of other scholars, i t should beblamed for the impoverished life, wrapping up everything into a 'shi ny ' but decep -tive reality. For all of them , the bourge ois ideals of the Enligh tenm ent era have b eenimplemented through institutional settings of the state and its legal framework, fi-nally ending up in life-denying totalitarian practices. The dream of a harmonious,universal and rational civilization faded away, causing the awakening to be bitterwhile echoing in our contemporary anti-Enlightenment rhetoric. The unmaskingof the myth of enlightened reason brought up the conclusion that something wentwrong with putting the ideals into practice, but not with the ideals themselves. Thepurification o f the Enlightenm ent from itself wa s considered as the ability to abolish

^ SeeThe Concept of the Political; Rom an Catholicism a nd Political Form; The Leviathan in the


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its camal core. Adomo and Horkheimer blamed the modem state as being beyondredemption, as an engulfing institutional monster whose camal ideology ofself--preservation is causing the annihilation of life of those who ought to be preserved,and the whole environment. The state became the darkest progeny of totalitarianEnlightenment. However, they were unable to accept the fact that the Enlighten-ment was inherently camal, as almost every other myth. They thought there was aliving kemel of our uncormpted humanity laying there somewhere, and this kemelmight be somehow redeemed if able to reconstmct the causal chain of events in-fiuenc ing its degeneration. On the other hand, I perceive Schm itt's political theoryas an important and lucrative argument about the irreducibility and permanence ofcamal reason. The potentiality of this reason is always already there, lurking behindevery political project, especially behind the Enlightenment. Liberal politics, whichtakes the Enlightenment tradition as its blueprint, was aiming to shape the politicalstmggles into agonistic tensions between interests, ideas, and values. This attemptwas itile. The camal aspects of life always escape rationalizing, thus invoking aspectmm of irrevocable existential stmggles. Moreover, these stmggles cannot beharmonized. Ifwestart from the premise that the political conflicts are deeply en-trenched, then the conflicts of interests cannot be resolved by compromising, theconflicts of ideas by rational discussion, or the conflicts of values by withdraw ing tothe private sphere. Quite contrary, what we can find in Schm itt's political testamentis an awakening insight that the social conflict might be irrational since it is occa-sionally backed up and driven by camal reason and its existential dictums.

BIBLIOGRAPHYAdomo, TheodorW. 1982: On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression ofLi-stening, in: Arato, A., Gephardt, E. (eds).The ssential Frankfurt SchoolReader

Continuum.Balakrishnan, Gopal, 2000:The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt,Verso,London/New York.Benjamin, Walter,2003: Selected Writings,Harvard University Press, Cambridge.Foucault, Michel,2 1 :Madness and Civilization,Routledge Classics, London.Gay, Peter, 1977: The Enlightenment: An Interpretation I, W.W. Norton Company,

London.Gray, John, 1995:Enlightenment s Wake,Routledge, London.Horkheimer, M., Adomo, T., 2002: Dialectic of Enlightenment, Stanford UniversityPress, Stanford.


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Israel, Jonathan, 2006:EnlightenmentContested Oxford University Press, Oxford.Kanth, Rajani K., 1997:Breaking w ith the Enlightenment: The Tw ilight of History and

the Rediscovery of Utopia Hum anities Press, Atlantic Highlands.Marx, Karl, 1972: heEighteenth B rumaire of Louis Bonaparte Intemationai Publishers,New York.Nietzsche, Friedrich, 2006:O n the Genealogy of Morality Cambridge U niversity Press,Cambridge.Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1998:Beyond Good andEvil Oxford University Press, Oxford.Plato, 2004:Republic Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis/Cambridge.Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 1997: Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality

Am ong M en, in: Rousseau, J. J.,T he Discou rses and other early political writingsCam bridge University Press, Cambridge.Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 1979:Emile Basic Bo oks, New York.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 1968:Politics and the Arts Com el U niversity Press, Ithaca.Schmitt, Carl, 1996:The C oncept of the Political The University of Chicago Press, Chi-

cago/London.Schmitt, Carl, 1985:Political Theology The University of Chicago Press, Chicago/Lon-don.Schmitt, Carl, 1963: Preface, in: Schmitt, C , Der Begriff des Politischen Duncker &

Hum blot, Berlin.Starobinski, Jean, 1988: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction TheUniversity of Chicago Press, Chicago/London.

Hrvoje CvijanoviKARNALNO PROSVJETITELJSTVO:

MIT O PROSVJETITELJSKOM RAZUM UI DVIJE KARNALNE KONCEPCIJE DRZAVE

SazetakDrzava u modemom smislu trebala bi se pokazati kao instmment Razumasposoban ko ntrolirati strasti. To je mod em i m it o drzavi koji se potkreplju-je tijekom doba prosvjetiteljstva. No pojam prosvjetiteljskog raz um a kojije u pozad ini ideje drizave samo je mit, te je stoga pogresan. M ode ma drza-va zapravo postaje najvise utjelovljenje kam alnog razu ma . On se kao ta-kav oCituje u ideji samoodrzanja ili odrzanja zivota openito, koje se hraniljudskom zeljom za prevlasti nad prirodom i samim ljudima. Prema tome,


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mita prosvjetiteijskog razum a . Argume ntacija glasi da je prosvjetiteljstvolazno predstavilo svoje ciljeve kao 6eznje Razuma i daje hotimino prikrilosvoje kamalne temelje. Naime autor pravi razliku izmedu sadomazohistickejezg re prosvjetiteljstva i njegove retoricke ili intelektualne krinke. Nagon zaodrzanjem zivota koji se neizbjezno pretvara u obuhvatno samounitenje teunitenje dmgih i cijelog okolia odrzava se pravnim okvirom drzave. Autorustvrduje da se modema drzava temelji na tom kamalnom razumu, nasuprotpovijesno propagiranom idealu prosvijetljenog razu ma . Ako je medutim dr-zava najvie utjelovljenje kam alno g razum a , postoje barem dvije moguc ereakcije na takvo stanje. Prva prepoznaje kam alni razum kao prepreku is-punjavanju ideal prosvjetiteljstva ili kao izdaju ideje drzave. Takvu su kritikurazvili Horkheime r i Ad om o u svom zunom na padu na prosvjetiteljstvo i nadrzavu, koje su opisali kao totalitame i protivne zivotu. S dmge strane, CarlSchmitt branio je kam alnu koncepciju drzave, oslobodenu od opterecenja m o-ralne argumentacije, kao injenicu politikoga. Dvije kamalne koncepcije dr-zave dvije U razliite artikulaeije koje valja usporediti i rasvijetliti.Kljucne rijeci prosvjetiteljstvo, drzava, kamalno, Adomo i Horkheimer, CarlSchmitt

Kontakt:Hrvoje Cvijanovi Fakultet politickih znanosti, Lepusiceva 6, HR 10000Zagreb. E-mail: hcvijano(^polsci.umass.edu


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Carnal Enlightenment, The Myth of Enlightened Reason and Two Carnal Conceptions of the State_Hrvoje Cvijanovic