Characteristics of Schmitt’s philosophy of history

In addition to establishing a connection between history, the political and the human, our analysis of Schmitt’s philosophy of history offers us the possibility of further specifying the contents and contours, not only of this history but of Schmitt’s concept of the human. In the closing sections of this chapter I would like to describe this relationship between Schmitt’s philosophy of history and the concept of the human and to do so by focusing on two of this history’s aspects: its “creatureliness” and its “spatiality”.

3.2.4.1 Creaturings of a human history

In addition to positioning the human being in an interim between arrival and return of the lord, Schmitt assigns to this existence a particular character, namely, that of “creaturely autonomy”. We have already examined the role of autonomy in Schmitt’s conept of the political in the last chapter. But what are we to make of this description of autonomy as a particularly “creaturely” autonomy? Schmitt employ’s the peculiar term “creaturings” on several occasions in his later texts⁷⁴³. Describing the function of the katechon as a “bridge” in the creation of historical space, Schmitt writes:

We draw concrete conclusions from the great impression of [Löwith's] critical analysis and dare to speak once more of a history which is neither merely an archive of that which was, nor a humanistic self-reflection nor a mere piece of nature circling within itself, but rather a growing insertion of the eternal, in great witnessings and in strong creaturings, into the course of time, a taking root in the earth’s realm of meaning, through lack and powerless, the hope and honor of our existence⁷⁴⁴.

743 In addition to the passages with which I will interact in the following section, Schmitt also uses the word in, at least, Glossarium, in the entry dated 29.6.48., as well as in Political Theology II, where he writes of a

“human being acting in its creaturely autonomy”, p. 107.

744 Schmitt, Carl. Drei Stufen, p. 931. “Wir ziehen konkrete Folgerungen aus dem großen Eindruck seiner [Löwiths] kritischen Analyse und wagen es, wieder von einer Geschichte zu sprechen, die nicht nur ein Archiv des Gewesenen ist, aber auch keine humanistische Selbstbespiegelung und auch kein bloßes Stück

Here we have Schmitt's concept of history as clearly presented as anywhere in his work. History is neither an objective series of events located merely in the past, an “archive of that which was”⁷⁴⁵, nor a positivistic realization of human progress, nor a cyclical nature which “circles in itself”, but an, “in strong creaturings, insertion of a piece of the eternal”

[Einstückung des Ewigen] into the course of time”⁷⁴⁶. Schmitt offers a similar formulation at the end of Hamlet or Hecuba when he criticizes a history conceived only “as the past and that which was, no longer as the present and reality”⁷⁴⁷. Yet the nature and meaning of this

“creaturings” remains vague.

As a means of approaching the meaning of this pivotal and yet unwieldy term drawn from Schmitt’s interaction with the poet Konrad Weiss, we might begin with a brief consideration of the more mundane root of “creaturings”, namely, “creature”, looking at the way in which this term can point us to a point of intersection and border between the human and the animal. By examining more closely the way in which the “creature” represents a particular position, a Sonderstellung which at once belongs and yet does not belong to the animal kingdom, we can, in other words, come to a better understanding of what the terms

“creaturings” might mean and thus to a better understanding of Schmitt’s vision of such a creaturely history in its relationship to the human. Two discourses bring the ambivalent zone occupied by the creature to light particularly well. The first of these is a bioethical discourse and the second a German-Jewish dialogue from the early 20^th century in which, as we will see, the term “creature” signifies a particularly political plane of existence.

3.2.4.1.1. Dignitas and bonitas: the human and the animal

With the increasing prominence of genetic technology in the production of foodstuff, the basic question of the human being’s right to exert influence upon ‘creation’ in the widest sense of the term has been posed anew. A concrete example of this question’s importance for political

insichselbstkreisender Natur, sondern eine in großen Zeugnissen stürmende, in starken Kreaturierungen wachsende Einstückung des Ewigen in den Ablauf der Zeiten, ein Wurzelschlagen im Sinnreich der Erde, durch Mangel und Ohnmacht die Hoffnung und Ehre unseres Daseins”.

745 In Hamlet or Hecuba, Schmitt writes of history: “No archive, no museum and no antique store can, with their kind of authenticity, invoke the presence of a myth” (Schmitt, Carl. HH, p. 53).

746 The German word Schmitt uses, Einstückung, consists of a prefix, ein, which in this case connotes the preposition 'into' and the verb Stücken, derived from the substantive Stück, or piece. A related verb Zusammenstücken means 'to piece together'. The meaning of Einstückung is therefore more or less 'the insertion of a piece'. Important in the context of our discussion of a spatial concept of history is that Einstückung is more than just an insertion: the element Stück makes this clear in that the word Stück is inherently physical (gegenständlich) and implies a piece which occupies space and possesses in a certain sense mass.

747 Schmitt, Carl. HH, p. 53.

reality as well as the point of departure in Heinke Baranzke’s work Die Würde der Kreatur, is the phrase “the dignity of the creature” which appears in Article 120 of the Swiss Federal Consitution⁷⁴⁸, the second section of which reads: “The Confederation shall legislate on the use of reproductive and genetic material from animals, plants and other organisms. In doing so, it shall take account of the dignity of living beings [die Würde der Kreatur] as well as the safety of human beings, animals and the environment, and shall protect the genetic diversity of animal and plant species”⁷⁴⁹. The basic question, therefore, is whether and if so to what degree human beings have the right to exert control over animals. A thorough evaluation of this question, however, cannot overlook the fact that the term creature, whether intended or not, has theological implications; it implies a creator. Thus, Baranzke has approached this question via a distinction between two biblical traditions of interpreting the human-animal relationship: on the one hand a bonitas oriented tradition and on the other a dignitas oriented tradition⁷⁵⁰. According to Baranzke these two traditions pose competing definitions of the human-animal relationship: the bonitas tradition, exemplified by Genesis 1:31 (“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”⁷⁵¹), focuses on the equal standing of all of creation while the dignitas tradition draws upon Genesis 1:26-28 (“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground”), which suggests that the human being enjoys a position of authority with respect to the rest of creation, that is, that the human being exists on a plane different from and fundamentally above that of the creature. The creature of the dignitas tradition is essentially a lacking, needy

748 Richter, Dagmar. Die Würde der Kreatur: Rechtsvergleichende Betrachtungen, pp. 319-349 in: Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, 67 (2007), p. 319: “This definition is not an original product of the Federal Constitution of 1999. At least in the German language version […,] a preceding norm with the exact same wording had already been added, in 1992, to the old Federal Constitution from 1874 (Art. 24 novies Abs. 3 BV 1874 [...]). This addition can, in turn be traced back to an even older prototype of the dignity of the creature, namely § 14 of the constitution of the canton Aargau from 1980 […], the developmental history of which is related to the ecology movement of the 1970’s (See: Ina P r a e t o r i u s /Peter S a l a d i n, Die Würde der Kreatur (Art. 24novies Abs. 3 BV), Gutachten, in: Schriftenreihe Umwelt Nr. 260, Bundesamt für Umwelt, Wald und Landwirtschaft (Hrsg.), 1996)”.

749 Because Baranzke’s work is based on the German version of the constitution in which the term “Kreatur”, rather than merely “living beings” appears, I provide here the German original: “Der Bund erlässt Vorschriften über den Umgang mit Keim- und Erbgut von Tieren, Pflanzen und anderen Organismen. Er trägt dabei der Würde der Kreatur sowie der Sicherheit von Mensch, Tier und Umwelt Rechnung und schützt die genetische Vielfalt der Tier- und Pflanzenarten”. It is perhaps of interest that the unofficial English translation is not alone in its use of the term “living creatures”, but that the French version also speaks of a respect for

“l’intégrité de organismes vivants”. In addition to the German version, however, both the Italian and the Romansch versions also employ the term “creature”, speaking of a “dignità della creatura” and a “dignitad da las creatiras” respectively. Links to all translations can be found online at the website of the German version: URL: https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/19995395/index.html. Accessed on August 16th, 2015.

750 Baranzke, Heike. Die Würde der Kreatur?: die Idee der Würde im Horizont der Bioethik, Würzburg:

Königshausen & Neumann 2002.

751 Emphasis – N.H..

being⁷⁵².

Baranzke introduces the bonitas/dignitas distinction in order to make clear that the main problem in understanding the term creature is not only that of defining the human-animal relationship but the human-creature relationship as well. Put simply, the question at stake is whether the term creature includes human beings or denotes a plane existence above which humans exist. Seen from the perspective of the dignitas-tradition, human beings in some way stand, by virtue of their reason for instance, above animals⁷⁵³. This tension between the dignity or rationality of the human being and the fact that the human being does in some way belong to the totality of creation positions the human being in a precarious middle position, that is, both beyond and within the realm of the animal. While Baranzke’s work does not provide us with a conclusive definition of the creature it does provide us with a basic terminology, along the lines of which we can begin to reflect upon what Schmitt’s vision of a history composed of “creaturings” might look like.

Given that Schmitt’s focus clearly lies on human, political activity we can eliminate the possibility of a, so to speak, purely dignitas oriented meaning of the term “creaturings” in the sense of placing humans above and therefore in static opposition to the creature and its creatureliness as if the human in no way participated in the creaturely. At the same time, it also seems unlikely that Schmitt intends the term strictly in the sense of the bonitas tradition, since this would suggest that humans exist entirely on the same plane as animals. Here we may we recall Schmitt’s emphasis in Roman Catholicism on the civitas humana as the necessarily in part artificial product of a “normative guidance of social life”, our interpretation of the political as an ‘artificial’ pretention, Schmitt’s own mention of Hobbes’ “strongest emphasis on the external”, the Leviathan’s theatrical sich Spreizen, as well as the parallels we have drawn between Schmitt’s concept of the political and the philosophical anthropology of Max Scheler. Throughout his thought Schmitt consistently emphasized the necessity of understanding human activity as something more than just nature, that is, a mere biological or social mechanism ultimately reducible to a set of laws. For Schmitt, the creatureliness of the human lies neither in a bonitas nor a dignitas tradition, Schmitt’s notion of “creaturings” is

752 This understanding of creatureliness can be seen if one turns to Johannes Micraelius’ entry to the term creature in the Lexicon Philosophicum published in 1662, which appears in Baranzke’s work described in the following terms: “There it reads, in addition to further provisions, that the creature is a limited, developed thing of nature (natura naturata, finite), which is dependent upon God with respect to its reproduction and preservation (dependens à Deo, ut causa procreante, conservante). It would be subjected to transience if the special grace of the creator did not rush to meet it (subjecta mutationi, nisi peculiaris creatoris gratia accesserit)”: Baranzke, Heike. Die Würde der Kreatur?, p. 48.

753 Baranzke draws upon Cicero in the text De Officiis, about which she writes: The universal logos-nature of the human being is the presupposition for the realization of its dignitas, that is, once again its intellectual endowment on the basis of which the human being can orient itself towards the whole and towards the sphere of the Gods (p. 77).