Schmitt confined the enemy to law while dodging the ontological question

Evidence

I will later engage the absence of an “ontological question” concerning the enemy, as Derrida pointed it out. For now, it will be enough to signal that this is precisely the question that vacillates and withdraws in Schmitt’s own text, appearing and vanishing depending on how one reads the “they” in Schmitt’s misquotation of The Education of Henry Adams at the very end of Der Nomos der Erde. “if the foe is not what they say he is, what are they?” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 819

Interestingly, in his Nomos der Erde, Schmitt would ultimately document the operations of something like a concept of the enemy in the sphere of law. Yet such a confinement of the enemy to the realm of law seems only to have buttressed a general lack of philosophical and political reflections on the enemy. I will later engage the absence of an “ontological question” concerning the enemy, as Derrida pointed it out. For now, it will be enough to signal that this is precisely the question that vacillates and withdraws in Schmitt’s own text, appearing and vanishing depending on how one reads the “they” in Schmitt’s misquotation of The Education of Henry Adams at the very end of Der Nomos der Erde. “if the foe is not what they say he is, what are they?” (Schmitt, Nomos der Erde, 299). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 819

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction being a thread throughout the book; also resonates with Chantal Mouffe’s agonism and Derrida’s Politics of Friendship.
• QUESTION: What exactly is the misquotation of Henry Adams doing in Schmitt’s text? The ambiguity of ‘they’ is flagged as deliberate.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 819