States of Emergency
Or, how to invoke Leviathan
Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. ~ Carl Schmitt
Back in the day, when I was studying theology, I took a seminar on Political Theology during which I was introduced to the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who was writing on “states of exception” or “states of emergency” among many things. For Agamben, the most salient state of exception was the Nazi concentration camp. A sovereign power has sovereignty by his very ability to suspend all the normal laws, rules, and rights of a constitutionally organized society. This is the famous theory of Carl Schmitt, a Nazi legal theorist who has since become enormously influential in political philosophy on both the left and right. Agamben was working to deal with Schmitt’s impact.
It turns out that the number of situations today that evoke a state of emergency has been increasing at a frightening pace, to the point where it now seems we’re almost constantly in a time of crisis. The exception has become the rule. Crises can be wars, even non-literal ones such as the “war on poverty” or “the war on drugs.” Emergency is evoked by the threat of terror, disease, social unrest, economic meltdown, and so on. Perhaps the most vivid example for most of us since 2020 is the COVID pandemic, where we all lived in lockdown and under severe restriction of movement, mandated social distancing, masking, and the closing of schools and workplaces for months, even years, with national, state, and local governments, and police, not to mention private businesses, airlines and transport systems, health departments, health care facilities, and so on, all enforcing various new and exceptional rules for the sake of public health and safety. Normal life was completely suspended!
Thus it’s clear how emergency leads directly to opportunities for sovereign power — someone who can take control and make decisions — to take charge and declare what must be done to deal with the situation. In particular, sovereign power in a state of emergency — be it totalitarian dictator, populist authoritarian, or technocratic elite backed up by science, the form doesn’t matter! — takes the reigns to suspend normal rights, rules, and all privileges of everyday life.
In Hobbes’ case, the crisis was the English Civil Wars and the near complete breakdown of his society all the way down to a state of nature, where life became “nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes was led by this experience to develop the political theory of the Leviathan, an absolute state power, a sovereign power, that necessarily should emerge — with the people’s consent! — in order to protect them from dire threat. The state of nature, for Hobbes, was precisely a state of emergency that had to be countered by a Leviathan-scale force.
Notably, dealing with an emergency often means protecting some people, some members of society, from other people, even in the society itself. A threat need not come from outside. Nor might it be necessary to be completely clear on what exactly the conflict is, if the scapegoats are truly guilty or genuine threats, or if they are merely tainted by association or conveniently placed according to ethnic, racial, class, political party, or economic differences, so as to make them easy targets. All it takes is for the sovereign to declare, and regular rule of law, rights and citizenship, all due process may be set aside. In Nazi ideology, Jews and others became enemies of the state, were re-classified into an “exempt” status, in which they could be predated upon, and they could be shipped off to concentration camps and murdered en masse.
It turns out that a climate emergency… catastrophe… impending apocalypse, is entirely suited to become a situation that justifies — even demands — the emergence of the strongest political force.
What might have to be done to save the planet!?
Many people, even the most rational and thoughtful, have no problem with the idea that government should “make people do what’s right” in the face of a grave threat, an “existential” crisis. One of the most mild-mannered, kind-hearted, and easy-going of my former colleagues routinely resorted to demanding that “government should do (this or that)” in the face of environmental crisis. It should make people behave, for their own good!
I’m recommending yet another video today, this time from UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers in conversation with Matthew Crawford. There are more vivid and compelling explanations and conservations out there than I could ever rival by writing a short post. This time, it’s not a lecture, it’s not heavy political philosophy. The video simply lays out our present tendency to continually be evoking states of emergency along with the kinds of political responses that follow. It explores how ubiquitous crises have become, what might be motivating them, and the many-factored impacts and effects we should be on the lookout for. The video doesn’t get into Schmitt, Agamben receives the briefest of mentions, but Hobbes and Leviathan are, unsurprisingly, right there on the scene.
