MARC DE WILDEinadequacy—an inadequacy that affects the core of these laws’ legitimacy. A similar im-
perfection characterizes the concept of the political: the sovereign can only create a politi-
cal community by identifying enemies, reconciling his citizens by excluding others. Since
there is no foundational norm, the political is defined by the ‘‘real possibility’’ of a conflict
that cannot be permanently mediated.^18 Schmitt’s understanding of the juridico-political
order as the embodiment of a mystical unity can therefore be adequately interpreted only
if its counterpoint, that is, an urgent awareness of the imperfection marking its laws and
decisions, is also taken into consideration.
The second interpretation fails in a similar way by identifying Benjamin’s political
conceptsastheology, thus ignoring his conviction that theology has to keep out of sight,
be hidden in a radical materialism. In Benjamin’s view, theology is not completely absent
from the juridico-political sphere, but neither can it be described in explicitly theological
terms. His materialist understanding of politics and law relates, as he famously puts it,
‘‘to theology like blotting paper to ink.’’^19 On the one hand, understanding the juridico-
political order as a historical phenomenon in the light of redemption would be, according
to theology itself, inadmissible.^20 On the other hand, without theology history would, in
the final analysis, be incomprehensible; it would become a senseless conjunction of events.
Benjamin therefore understands the juridico-political order with the help of theology,
though he avoids the use of explicitly theological concepts. Although representatives of
the second interpretation emphasize the theological implications of Benjamin’s juridico-
political vocabulary—for example, by claiming the positive identity of theological illumi-
nation and revolutionary politics—Benjamin actually underlines the impossibility of an
explicitly theological interpretation of the political, emphasizing that ‘‘nothing historical
... can of itself relate to the Messianic.’’^21
Schmitt’s Theory of Sovereignty
The state of exception, Schmitt argues inPolitical Theology, can be proclaimed when the
existence of the legal order as such is threatened, for example, in the case of an impending
civil war or a large-scale terrorist attack. This proclamation results in the temporary sus-
pension of the law, so that the threat can be countered without any legal restrictions. In
the state of exception, Schmitt claims, the normal legal order ‘‘recedes,’’ making way for
an ‘‘authority that is unlimited in principle [eine prinzipiell unbegrenzte Befugnis].’’ The
one who proclaims the state of exception can thus be identified as the sovereign ruler.^22
In the state of exception, the sovereign has carte blanche to take all measures he deems
necessary to suppress the threat posed to the legal order and to restore a normal situation
in which the law can again be applied. He is even authorized to suspend constitutional
rights and freedoms, if necessary, to safeguard the constitution as such. Thus, the state of
exception should neither be confused with a legally regulated ‘‘state of emergency’’ nor
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