The Impossible Decision in Schmitt and Derrida

Abstract

In The Politics of friendship Derrida deconstructs the axiomatic system that Carl Schmitt develops in The Concept of the Political by focusing his attention in the decision as the essential note of the sovereignty and arguing that the difference between the ontic and the ontological, fundamental frontier in Schmitt’s formalization of the political, is impossible to sustain. This analysis allows us to put together the Schmittian conception of the sovereignty and the so called impolitical philosophers´ one. The hypothesis of this text is that these aforementioned authors agree with Schmitt when they think about the sovereign decision. This will be clear when analysing the concept of the “impossible decision”, as Derrida describes it and also his own politi - cal conception.