Quick summary of what I address in this discussion:
I begin by placing Schmitt’s reason for emphasizing “the political” in the context of the early 20th Century with Max Weber, then Schmitt (with emphasis upon Hobbes), and then Leo Strauss. From there I briefly discuss Meineke’s crucial 1905 role in that context along with Nietzsche — and from there we are off and running to the American founding, Madison, Jefferson, Adam Smith, technology (especially as unique in the American Constitution), the role of the divine and “Modernity,” Descartes, and then everything encompassed in the phrase “Classical Philosophy” with emphasis upon Plato, Aristotle, and the surprisingly and absolutely fascinating relationship between (1) philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistry, (2) the significance of poetry for philosophy, (3) the meaning of “the political” in Plato, Aristotle, and Shakespeare (!) as fundamentally grounded in the defining characteristic of the human soul’s relationship to the beautiful and how that relationship make “Enlightenment” beyond a one-on-one relationship impossible, i.e. how it is that the chaos the simply is the human soul defines “the political” in such a way that to expect very much of reason in politics is itself entirely unreasonable.
Slightly more elaborated description of this discussion:
In this discussion I provide an introduction to the relevance of the relationship between philosophy and America for us today and in reference to the American founding. I begin with Schmitt’s “The Concept of the Political” and show how it is best understood as an entryway into how the entirety of philosophy comes tumbling out of the emphasis he places on the distinction between friends and enemy, but in a way he himself never addresses in that all-important distinction which is lost on so many of his readers, even and especially his advocates.
Let me clarify that admittedly bold claim: I begin by placing Schmitt’s reason for emphasizing “the political” in the context of the early 20th Century with Max Weber, then Schmitt (with emphasis upon Hobbes), and then Leo Strauss and Martin Heidegger (with emphasis upon the meaning of technology in his thought). From there I briefly discuss Meineke’s crucial 1905 role in that context along with Nietzsche — and from there we are off and running to the American founding, Madison, Jefferson, Adam Smith, technology (especially as unique in the American Constitution), the role of the divine and “Modernity,” Descartes, and then everything encompassed in the phrase “Classical Philosophy” with emphasis upon Plato, Aristotle, and the surprisingly and absolutely fascinating relationship between (1) philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistry, (2) the significance of poetry for philosophy, (3) the meaning of “the political” in Plato, Aristotle, and Shakespeare (!) as fundamentally grounded in the defining characteristic of the human soul’s relationship to the beautiful and how that relationship make “Enlightenment” beyond a one-on-one relationship impossible, i.e. how it is that the chaos the simply is the human soul defines “the political” in such a way that to expect very much of reason in politics is itself entirely unreasonable.