Schmitt derives contrasting civilizations and ethics from land versus sea

Evidence

To develop Goodhart’s thesis, Carl Schmitt is again helpful because of his close attention to the ontological implications of space. In Land and Sea and Dialogue on Power and Space Schmitt throws down this provocation: humans are land mammals and orient themselves through land demarcation and organization. A close relationship to the earth secures both ground and horizon for humans. It orients humanity toward demarcation, possession, and lineage, which are concretely achieved through property, house, marriage, family and inheritance. In contrast, efforts to extend sovereignty through or across the sea and even develop livelihoods from the sea orient people differently: toward boundarylessness, but also toward use and consumption, rather than ownership and cultivation. Schmitt is thinking here not only about the difference between fishing and farming, extraction and reproduction, but about how and why sea-surrounded England becomes an empire and how all the coastal nations of Europe attempt infinite outward expansion, while other European peoples and nations remain oriented toward Europe. By his own acknowledgment, he is responding to Hegel’s remark in the Philosophy of Right that land “is the condition for the principle of family life,” while “for industry the outward enlivening natural element is the sea,” and he is openly wrestling with the fusion of industry and colonization that Hegel mirrors from his time. In this discussion, Schmitt’s wariness of seafaring people but also of denationalization is palpable: loss of ground entails loss of boundary and horizon, loss of ties to the local across time, loss of the primacy of family, tradition, religion. Blood and soil indeed. — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 313

Categorization

• SEED: The land/sea consciousness contrast is a potential essay hook on how geographic orientation shapes political ontology.
• SHARE: Would resonate with anyone interested in Carl Schmitt or geopolitical ontology.