![]() ![]() Juridical order, to keep things brief and clear, is the political legal norm that societies are constructed on. ![]() (Kind of like how God gets to decide who to admit into heaven and who to cast into hell in sticking with the theme of political concepts as secularized theological principles.) Thus, the sovereign is he who has absolute control over the juridical order itself and has the power to decide who is included and who is excluded from this order. What Schmitt means by sovereignty and exception is twofold: (1) exception is a political moment when the sovereign can suspend the juridical order (the “rule of law”) in a “state of emergency” (a term more familiar to English speakers) and (2) decide who is included and (more importantly) excluded within that juridical order. Some famous names who have taken to heart and criticism Schmitt’s understanding have been: Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Giorgio Agamben to name a few. In fact, the last almost 100 years of political philosophy and critical political theory (especially in France, Germany, and Italy), have wrestled with Schmitt’s outline of sovereignty. Schmitt’s definition that the sovereign is he who decides on the exception is one of the most famous sentences of all modern political philosophy. As he famously opens, “ Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” What exactly does this all entail? ![]() ![]() Carl Schmitt begins his essay on political theology by discussing sovereignty. ![]()
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