Schmitt’s text performs the political passage its argument denies

Evidence

Starting from the “often quoted” passage he finds at the source of Western theology-”Love your enemies”-Schmitt moves on and away from it and reaches for a political example. Yet he paradoxically arrives at this example without passage, without transition. More precisely, Schmitt denies the possibility of a passage and a transition between theology and politics, between the theological teaching of the Gospels and the political example that follows. No less clearly, however, Schmitt’s text also syntactically makes the passage from one to the other, from the nonpolitical Gospels to the political example. In other words, even though the one follows the other in the text of the Concept of the Political, Schmitt nevertheless distinguished the theological teaching of the Gospels and the example of the political, the example of the political enemy. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 278