Building Bridges vs. Building Walls. Politics as the End of Violence

This contribution analyzes the different meanings of fundamental political concepts in Hannah Arendt's and Carl Schmitt's works. Despite their very different background, something like an underground dialogue between the two authors occurred through marginalia and seldom quotations. The meanings of law, politics, and violence is especially addressed. While Schmitt conceives of politics as deciding on the foe-friend antinomy, and of nomos as building walls, Arendt describes politics as the enacting of human plurality. Law means, according to her, building bridges and building walls, thereby multiplying the possibilities for political cooperation and neutralization of violence.