아이러니의 마지막 질문 –칼 슈미트의 정치인간학에 대한 시론

Abstract

While enduring a bitter time after the German defeat in the Second World War, Carl Schmitt, in spite of his old age, undertakes the transition from political theology to political anthropology. This implies that the old Schmitt wanted to resume the study of ‘hydraulics’ in the metaphorical sense as the German poet Hugo Ball had characterized what the young Schmitt had done with his books and writings published in the 1920s. At the root of this transition lies the question of irony that has been accompanying Schmitt since his youth. When it comes to the problem of irony, Schmitt tries to follow in the footsteps of Søren Kierkegaard, who refuted the concept of irony that the German Romantics had propagated. Like Kierkegaard, Schmitt holds fast to the idea of objectivity which is supposed to be realized by the act of self-irony. Nonetheless, Schmitt could not immerse himself in the ideal of Christianity as Kierkegaard had delineated. Rather, Schmitt opts for the ‘real’ politics. This explains why Schmitt decided to devote himself to the cause of the Third Reich. But he was deeply disillusioned even before the collapse of the Nazi regime. And this very disillusionment enabled him to embark upon the study of hydraulics anew. The question of irony still hangs over him, however. To escape from the labyrinth of irony, Schmitt grappled with the egoism of Max Stirner as well as with the famous formula coined by Francisco de Vitoria: homo homini homo. But the notion that a human being is a human being to another human being turns out to be highly ironic. For human beings are unavoidably involved in what Schmitt called ‘the inner dialectics of human power.’ And this dialectics paves the way for ‘the question about question,’ i.e., the highest irony. To shake off this dizziness, Schmitt now resorts to the idea of the earth, which is for him the genuine dogma of Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately, however, the faith in the earth cannot be his final solution. Unbeknownst to himself or not, Schmitt regressed to the ultimate irony when he emphatically declared that every historical truth is only once true. This remark could justifiably be considered the last word of Carl Schmitt.