The Lesson of Carl Schmitt Quotes

“The Nemo contra hominem nisi homo ipse could not be in sharper conflict with the doctrine of original sin, and the way in which the Promethean self-authorization and self-salvation attacked by Schmitt behaves towards it is no less evident; for the will of man to lead his life based entirely on his own resources and his own efforts, following reason alone and his own judgment—that is the original sin: man's impudence does not begin when he believes that he can make anything and everything, but rather when he forgets that there is nothing that he may do on his own authority, i.e., outside of the realm of obedience. The romantic is defined by Schmitt as the virtual embodiment of the incapacity to make the demanding moral decision; the romantic, like the bourgeois in general, would like to adjourn and postpone the decision forever; the "higher third" to which he appeals when confronted with a choie is in truth "not a higher but another third, i.e., always the way out in the fact of the Either-Or"; however, the matter does not rest there: religion, morality, and politics are for him nothing but "vehicles for his romantic interests" or just so many occasions to develop comprehensively his brilliant ego, which he raises to the "absolute center"; the romantic wants to defend the sovereignty of his limitless subjectivism against the seriousness of the political-theological reality inasmuch as he plays off one reality against the other, "never deciding in this intrigue of realities"; the romantic ego, which usurps God's place as the "final instance," lives in a "world without substance and without functional commitment, without firm guidance, without conclusion, and without definition, without decision, without a last judgment, continuing on without end, led only by the magic hand of chance"; the "secularization of God as a brilliant subject" conjures up a world in which all religious, moral, and political distinctions dissolve "into an interesting multitude of interpretations" and certainty evaporates into arbitrariness.”
― Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy

“The most outspoken rebellion need not be the most threatening, nor the most conspicuous enmity, the most decisive. It is rather unlikely that Satan will display his power most prominently where he is celebrated as the eternal rebel and world-liberator in the battle against God and State or where he, as in the Satanism of a Baudelaire, is formally enthroned with the fratricide Cain. Truly satanic is—there is no doubt about it for Schmitt—the flight into invisibility. The Old Enemy prefers cunning, he is a virtuoso of disguise. He will attempt to avoid the open battle and will hardly enlist under his own flag. Instead of declaring war on someone or something, if not "war on itself," he is much more likely to promise peace and will make every effort to lull his adversary into a false sense of security.”
― Heinrich Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy