“Us” and “Them”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23229828 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrew Norris (0000-0001-9451-9388, University of Pennsylvania, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 249-272 |
| Publication date | 2004-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Metaphilosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-1068 • E-ISSN: 1467-9973 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2004.00318.x |
| OpenAlex | W2014188422 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 11 |
In the Aristotelian tradition, politics is a matter of public deliberation over questions of justice and injustice. The Bush administration's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been uniformly hostile to this notion, and it has instead promoted a jingoistic politics of self‐assertion by an America largely identified with the executive branch of its government. This is doubly disturbing, as the executive branch has sought to free itself from international law, multinational commitments, and domestic judicial regulation, even as it has sought to validate itself by demonizing its enemies. This essay draws out the disturbing echoes here of Carl Schmitt's work of the 1920s, in particular of Schmitt's conception of the sovereign as the ungrounded ground of the law and the political as the site of mortal conflict between friend and enemy. The essay argues that Schmitt's position in the twenties, for all of its evident problems, is superior to that of Bush, Wolfowitz, and Ashcroft in at least two senses: Schmitt condemns the idea of waging war for profit and recognizes that such wars will often be disguised as moral crusades waged against the “inhuman”; and he acknowledges that claiming to fight a war for humanity denies one's enemies their humanity, leaving them open to torture and even extermination.
Crimes against humanity · Deliberation · Human rights · Humanity · International law · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Terrorism · Torture · War crime · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
The Politics of Diversity in Europe
States of Exception on the Mexico?U.S. Border
International society’s challenge of targeted killing by drones
The ‘Bush Doctrine’ as a hegemonic discourse strategy
Un-Promethean” science and the future of humanity
The Camera as a Weapon
Illiberal Means to Liberal Ends? Understanding Recent Immigrant Integration Policies in Europe
In Whose Interest? Financial Surveillance and the Circuits of Exception in the War on Terror
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,42 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2021 (15) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |