“War, Violence, Politics: between Arendt and Schmitt“

This project examines the notions of war, violence, and politics as Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt–from very different historical and theoretical perspectives–defined and distinguished them. According to Schmitt’s analysis, the modern nomos of the Earth–i.e., the localization and organization of the European political settlement which appeared after the modern colonization of the Earth–required a balance among the European sovereign countries. Nevertheless, for him, this order did not exclude war: the European System of the modern sovereign states involved war from its very birth. Indeed, war was the primary means to solve the disputes among states, which were thus not in a “state of nature” towards each other.

From the modern European order, two capital ideas of Schmitt’s came: firstly, the notion of the limited war, since the European states were able to overcome the “just” war, which implied the annihilation of the enemy, for the war against the just enemy, that is, war among equal sovereign states fighting for territorial scopes. Secondly, from the modern nomos, Schmitt’s idea of politics came, i.e., the distinction between enemy and friend. Thus, Schmitt intertwines war and politics, while war does not always mean extreme violence for him. From a different perspective, Arendt thought that war had been the strategy for the solution of litigations among sovereign states in Europe during the modern Age; however, for her, the inefficacy of contemporary wars for limiting conflicts showed the crumbling of the system of sovereignty. However, Arendt’s notion of politics is entirely different from Schmitt’s: according to her, politics consists of the public speeches and deeds which men fulfill, thus enacting the human condition of plurality.

In Arendt’s view, politics excludes violence and war since the polis was born when men gave up on violence to deal with their conflicts. These two authors’ distinctions and connections among violence, politics, and war could contribute to the analysis of the ongoing global happenings. Remarkably, the global political and economic unification makes the limitation of the war more and more arduous since each event influences the rest of the world. Moreover, the democratic grounding of the western democracies resulted in what Schmitt calls the “criminalization” of war. Indeed, the people are recognized as the sovereign of their states, while each war puts the citizens’ lives at risk.

In this entangled global situation, Arendt’s and Schmitt’s perspectives about politics, war, and violence are being examined: is a limitation of war possible without Schmitt’s actual justification of the limited war? Is Arendt’s idea of politics as the end of violence theoretically and practically employable if politics, as she means it, appears only seldom in history? These questions are the ground for envisaging the political and philosophical quest for an end to violence.

Doctor in Philosophy and History of Philosophy at the University of Bari (Italy), where she discussed her dissertation Worldliness of Man and Humanity of the World. The overcoming of Worldlessness in Hannah Arendt in 2021. The Italian editing house Orthotes published this work in 2022.

She is currently Assistant to the Chair of Ethics and Political Philosophy. She is particularly interested in moral and political philosophy, and she published several articles concerning human rights, cosmopolitanism, and the ecological question, focusing on the idea of the common world.