Revolutionary War and Absolute Enemy

Abstract

The fourth chapter refers to a historical situation defined by Schmitt as the stage of global civil war. It examines Schmitt’s understanding of the history of irregular warfare, especially of the conflicts that spread after World War II in response to liberation movements and social revolutions in third-world countries. The reading stresses the conflicted sympathies of Schmitt’s theoretical intervention: his defence of late European colonialism on the one hand and his empathy for the logic of revolutionary wars, resulting in the figure of the absolute enemy. In this context the theological horizon of civil war is addressed as well.