The Serpent | 71of Bakunin, “the greatest anarchist of the nineteenth century,” who “had to be-
come in theory the theologian of the anti-theological and in practice the dicta-
tor of an antidictatorship.”^42 In this sense, anarchists would be the very incarna-
tion of the political, which Schmitt defines as “the most intense and extreme
antagonism, [which] becomes that much more political the closer it approaches
the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.”^43 Anarchists thus
embody a fascinating paradox for Schmitt: by declaring war against the political,
they instantiate the political.^44 Whereas Weber had characterized anarchism as
utopian, Schmitt does not see the anarchist ideal as utopian and admits that he
does not know whether it can be realized. Rather, he simply abhors it. In it he
recognizes a powerful enemy.^45
But what about an anarchist who forswears violence as a means? Would
Schmitt see such a figure as irredeemably romantic? If Tolstoy, or Landauer, is
our model anarchist rather than Bakunin, is our anarchism depoliticized? Or
does the decentering of violence, precisely as the criterion of the political, con-
stitute an even more radical attack on the political, such that by Schmitt’s crite-
ria the nonviolent anarchist is an even greater instantiation of the paradox? The
paradox may be irresolvable, by Schmitt’s criteria. Let us, then, turn to Buber for
an alternative set of criteria. Against political theology’s demand for hierarchical,
“representative” authority, Buber’s theopolitics asserts precisely the mere “del-
egation” that Schmitt scorns. Against political theology’s deployment of God’s
messiah as a legitimating metaphor, even in a secularized world, theopolitics as-
serts the direct, literal rulership of God—and sees human rule, even a human
“anointed” by God, as the beginning of secularization. Against political theol-
ogy’s attempt to freeze charisma into an enduring office, theopolitics ensures that
authority comes and goes, requiring proof through deeds, like the fleeting cha-
risma itself: “The charis accordingly stands superior to every enchantment as well
as every law.”^46 All this works to decenter violence as the criterion of the political:
the state of emergency, in which according to Schmitt the location of sovereignty
is revealed and dictatorship is enacted, is a time for theopolitical faith to act, but
also to wait expectantly on God. It is only the failure to do so, and the succumb-
ing to fear, that institutes violence at the heart of social life and thereby creates
the purely political sphere: “Give us a king like all the nations have, to go out
before us and fight our battles.”
Hallowing the Serpent: Political Success as Religion’s Trial by Fire
The claim of a necessary linkage of politics and violence, whether in Webe-
rian or Schmittian form, implies that Landauer’s murderers were engaged
in political action while their victim was an unpolitical anarchist romantic.
Buber’s rhetoric develops two types of response to this implication (although
without ever framing the problem explicitly). The first accepts Weber’s general