Sacred Enmity and Political Identity: Old Testament, Ancient Greek, and Modern Roots of Carl Schmitt’s Friend–Enemy Distinction

Introduction

Carl Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction, first systematically articulated in The Concept of the Political (1927/2007), remains one of the most provocative and controversial ideas in modern political theory. Rather than locating “the political” in institutions, interests, or deliberative processes, Schmitt identifies it with an existential distinction between collective “friends” and “enemies.” This framing insists that the essence of politics is not persuasion or negotiation but conflict and the possibility of violence. Political communities exist as “friends,” united and defined by the potential confrontation with “enemies” whose existence threatens their way of life.

Schmitt’s genealogy of the political, however, did not emerge in a vacuum. As a Catholic jurist educated in the German Gymnasium system, Schmitt absorbed both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek classics long before he encountered Hobbes or Machiavelli. These formative texts deeply shaped his imagination. The Old Testament presented him with a model of divine sovereignty, covenantal identity, and existential enmity; the Greek world offered a civic tradition in which the polis defined itself in opposition to the barbarian and to internal subversives. Early modern realists such as Hobbes and Machiavelli then secularized these themes, giving Schmitt a conceptual bridge to his own twentieth-century critique of liberalism.

This essay argues that Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction represents a secularized synthesis of three traditions: (1) the Old Testament’s portrayal of collective identity and existential enmity; (2) the Greek polis tradition, which forged political unity through opposition to external and internal threats; and (3) early modern realism, especially Hobbes and Machiavelli, which reframed these ideas in a secular, decisionistic mode. By tracing these influences, we can see how Schmitt’s concept of “the political” emerges as both a continuation and a radicalization of ancient ideas.

Schmitt’s Friend–Enemy Distinction in Context

Schmitt defines the political not as a set of institutions or procedures but as a realm of existential antagonism. “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy” (Schmitt, 1927/2007, p. 26). For Schmitt, this enemy is not simply an adversary in policy or competition but an existential “other” whose continued existence threatens the survival of one’s collective way of life.

In Political Theology (1922/2005), Schmitt advances a complementary idea: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (p. 5). The sovereign suspends the normal legal order in moments of crisis and identifies who counts as an enemy. This notion resonates strongly with the Old Testament portrayal of God as a sovereign who commands wars of annihilation or raises judges to deliver Israel from its enemies. Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction thus emerges from a larger project: a “political theology” that seeks the structural homologies between theological and political concepts.

Critically, Schmitt positions his theory against liberal pluralism. Liberalism, he argues, tries to reduce politics to economics, ethics, or administration. Yet without the ability to define enemies and make existential decisions, a state loses its political character and becomes a mere administrative apparatus (Schmitt, 1927/2007, pp. 35–37). For Schmitt, then, the friend–enemy distinction is the criterion that sustains the very possibility of political life.

Old Testament Influences: Covenant, Enmity, and Divine Sovereignty

The Hebrew Bible repeatedly portrays Israel as a chosen people whose identity is defined by covenantal obligations and by existential separation from surrounding nations. In Deuteronomy, the covenant is not a vague spiritual ideal but a set of concrete commands, including the imperative to wage total war against certain peoples. “You shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction” (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Deut. 20:16–17). This stark injunction, which often shocks modern readers, signals that Israel’s community is constituted not only by shared belief but by the eradication of enemies deemed existential threats. Carl Schmitt reads this kind of political–theological moment as revealing the deep grammar of sovereignty and the friend–enemy distinction. In Political Theology, he argues that the sovereign “decides on the exception” and thus resembles the biblical God who alone decides which peoples shall live and which shall be destroyed (Schmitt, 2005). The Israelites’ covenantal identity is forged in this double movement of belonging and exclusion, much as Schmitt (2007) claims that any real political order presupposes the possibility of defining and confronting an existential enemy.

This delineation between the covenant community and the outsiders parallels Schmitt’s insistence that politics concerns survival rather than mere competition. As in Deuteronomy’s command to destroy rather than assimilate the Canaanite nations, Schmitt rejects liberal universalism in favor of a hard boundary between one’s own community and the existential “other” (Schmitt, 2007). Contemporary scholarship underscores that this biblical model creates not just a religious boundary but an existential one (English Standard Version Bible, 2001). When Schmitt critiques liberal norms of negotiation and compromise, he effectively channels the uncompromising biblical logic of covenantal separation and the violent defense of communal identity. Political identity, in his view, cannot emerge without the possibility of enmity; otherwise, the state collapses into a neutral administrative entity without the capacity for decision (Schmitt, 2005).

The Book of Joshua recounts Israel’s conquest of the Promised Land, led by a commander who functions as a proto-sovereign figure. Joshua determines when and how to engage the enemy under divine sanction. “Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old” (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Josh. 6:21). This totalizing warfare exemplifies the Old Testament paradigm of enmity as existential rather than competitive. Schmitt’s sovereign likewise stands outside the normal legal order in moments of crisis, determining when a state of emergency suspends ordinary law. In both cases, legitimacy derives from the capacity to decide the exception and to act decisively in existential conflict (Schmitt, 2005). Joshua, as military leader and religious mediator, dramatizes the fusion of political and theological authority that Schmitt calls “political theology.”

Schmitt’s (2007) description of sovereignty as the power to define the political enemy can also be traced to the cyclical pattern in the Book of Judges. Each time Israel succumbs to foreign domination, God raises up a judge such as Gideon or Samson to deliver the people. Judges 7:2–3 shows Gideon reducing his army at God’s command so victory will be attributed to divine will, not human might (English Standard Version Bible, 2001). This narrative demonstrates the close link between sovereign decision, divine legitimacy, and existential warfare—an antecedent to Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty as decision rather than mere administration. In Schmitt’s terms, the “judge” is an extraordinary figure who arises in a state of exception to restore order, just as the sovereign suspends the norm to reconstitute the polity’s identity (Schmitt, 2005).

The story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 crystallizes the friend–enemy dynamic at the individual level. David frames Goliath not merely as a personal adversary but as an enemy of “the armies of the living God” (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, 1 Sam. 17:26). By killing Goliath, David reinforces Israel’s identity against its archetypal foe, the Philistines. This dramatic confrontation parallels Schmitt’s (2007) claim that political unity is not produced by internal consensus but by external confrontation with a perceived enemy. Just as David’s victory consolidates collective identity, Schmitt’s sovereign consolidates the state by designating and confronting the enemy, thereby actualizing the political community’s self-understanding.

The Psalms further express an intense emotional investment in enmity. “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? … I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies” (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Ps. 139:21–22). This imprecatory language of total hostility mirrors Schmitt’s existential framing of politics. Loyalty to the covenant community is inseparable from opposition to its enemies; hatred is not merely personal but political-theological. Schmitt (2005) appropriates this logic by arguing that liberal moral universalism cannot eliminate the existential antagonism at the heart of politics. He secularizes the biblical pattern but preserves its core: enmity defines identity.

Taken together, these Old Testament texts offer a template for Schmitt’s view of the political: a chosen community defined by covenant, facing existential threats, and requiring a sovereign—judge, king, or God—to decide who the enemy is. Schmitt’s “political theology” explicitly draws on such patterns, even as he transposes them into a secular key (Schmitt, 2005). In his analysis, the state emerges as a secularized covenant community: it binds citizens in a mutual pledge and sets them apart from outsiders, just as Israel was set apart from the nations. Political identity is therefore not simply contractual but existential, grounded in a willingness to defend the community’s life by force if necessary (Schmitt, 2007). This biblical inheritance explains why Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty is simultaneously juridical, existential, and theological—an enduring insight that illuminates both ancient politics and modern crises of state authority.

III. Greek Foundations: Conflict and the Polis

In the Greek tradition, the polis defines itself in opposition to external enemies and through the cultivation of internal solidarity. Homer’s Iliad centers on the conflict between Greeks and Trojans, where collective identity emerges precisely in opposition to the “other” (Homer, trans. 2011). The duel between Hector and Achilles in Books 6 and 22 dramatizes not only individual heroism but also the existential stakes of communal identity. The Greeks besiege Troy for a decade, and their honor, kleos, and collective self-definition hinge on the outcome of the war. This anticipates Schmitt’s (2007) argument that political unity requires an enemy whose very existence threatens one’s way of life. As Schmitt contends in The Concept of the Political, the possibility of violent struggle is the defining mark of the political, much as Homer depicts war as the arena in which Greek identity is forged. Contemporary classicists have also noted that Homer’s epic offers a vision of proto-political communities engaged in existential struggle rather than mere episodic skirmishes (Homer, trans. 2011), reinforcing the analogy with Schmitt’s existentialism.

The Homeric world also presents a vision of leadership and sovereignty grounded in war. Figures such as Agamemnon and Achilles act as commanders whose legitimacy is continually tested by their ability to defend their people and exact vengeance on enemies. Schmitt (2005) likewise frames sovereignty as decisionistic and existential rather than merely administrative. Where liberalism assumes a pre-existing order, Homeric society shows order arising from the shared experience of war, ritualized enmity, and the authority of a leader who can unite disparate factions in battle. In this sense, the Iliad provides an archetype of the state of exception: in moments of existential crisis, ordinary norms yield to the command of the sovereign war-leader, foreshadowing Schmitt’s concept of decision on the exception (Schmitt, 2005).

Herodotus’ Histories recount the Persian Wars, emphasizing how Greek city-states formed a pan-Hellenic identity against Persia. “We are one in blood and one in language… we will not make peace with Xerxes” (Herodotus, trans. 2003, 8.144). This articulation of collective identity forged through enmity parallels Schmitt’s (2007) theory of politics as the existential friend–enemy relation. For Herodotus, the Greek resistance to Persia is not simply a military event but a civilizational statement about who counts as “us” and “them.” The Persian invasion produces a unity that had eluded the Greeks in times of peace, echoing Schmitt’s contention that “a people exists politically only when it is prepared to distinguish friend from enemy” (Schmitt, 2007, p. 28). The Athenians and Spartans may have been rivals, but the Persian threat compelled a temporary suspension of internal differences to present a unified front—a classic example of external enmity consolidating internal identity.

Herodotus also underscores the role of religious sanction and cultural pride in forging this unity. Temples are desecrated, oracles consulted, and sacrifices offered as Greece defines itself as a sacred community opposed to a foreign despotism (Herodotus, trans. 2003). This combination of sacred identity and existential struggle foreshadows Schmitt’s (2005) notion of political theology, where religious imagery underwrites the decisive power of the sovereign. Even in a polytheistic context, the gods take sides, and the war is framed as a cosmic contest, reflecting Schmitt’s claim that enmity is always more than instrumental; it is existential.

Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War offers a darker realism, showing how the friend–enemy distinction operates not only against outsiders but also within the Greek world itself. In the Melian Dialogue (5.84–116), Athens tells Melos, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (Thucydides, trans. 1996, 5.89). This amoral assertion of power echoes Schmitt’s (2007) rejection of liberal universalism and his insistence that politics is existential, not moral. The rivalry between Athens and Sparta embodies the friend–enemy distinction on a civilizational scale, but it also reveals how internal Greek conflicts—stasis writ large—can produce the same existential dynamics as wars with Persians or Trojans. Thucydides depicts a world where neutrality is impossible and where survival depends on decisive alignment, prefiguring Schmitt’s theory that the political cannot be neutral or purely economic (Schmitt, 2007).

Thucydides also emphasizes the breakdown of norms during civil war, especially in his famous description of Corcyra (3.69–85), where words change their meanings and morality collapses under factional pressure (Thucydides, trans. 1996). This parallels Schmitt’s (2005) notion of the state of exception, where the normal order cannot contain existential conflict and only decisive force can restore stability. In both accounts, sovereignty and political identity emerge not from ideal agreements but from the crucible of crisis. Where Hobbes later theorizes the war of all against all in the state of nature, Thucydides already presents a historical case of how communities descend into existential conflict and must be reconstituted through force.

Plato’s Republic (Bloom, 1991) describes the role of guardians tasked with defending the city from external enemies, grounding political unity in a structured distinction between friends and foes (2.374a–376e). The city’s unity, Plato argues, depends on distinguishing between citizens (friends) and outsiders (enemies). This anticipates Schmitt’s (2007) idea that political order rests on the capacity to identify and confront enemies. The guardians’ training in both philosophy and warfare mirrors Schmitt’s insistence that politics is inseparable from the possibility of force. Even the ideal city must be prepared to defend itself, underscoring Schmitt’s point that the friend–enemy distinction is a structural, not accidental, feature of political life. Furthermore, Plato’s concept of the “noble lie” and communal property among guardians parallels Schmitt’s claim that political unity may require extraordinary measures, including myth and sacrifice, to sustain itself.

Plato also connects the internal virtues of the guardians to the external security of the polis. Courage, moderation, and wisdom are not merely moral attributes but political necessities, ensuring that the guardians can decisively recognize and repel threats (Bloom, 1991). Schmitt (2005) similarly argues that sovereignty is not a purely procedural capacity but a substantive readiness to act. Without this readiness, a state ceases to be political and degenerates into administration. In this way, Plato provides a normative model of the very capacities Schmitt later theorizes in existential and secular terms.

Aristotle famously calls humans “political animals” (Politics 1253a; Aristotle, trans. 1998) and analyzes the polis as a self-sufficient community bound by shared purpose. Yet Aristotle also acknowledges the persistence of factional conflict (stasis), which resembles Schmitt’s recognition that internal as well as external enemies can threaten political unity (Aristotle, trans. 1998). In Book 5 of Politics, he systematically studies the causes of revolution, demonstrating that the polis cannot simply be understood as harmonious but must be understood as a space of competing interests and potential enmities. By acknowledging the persistence of conflict within the city, Aristotle anticipates Schmitt’s (2007) later extension of the friend–enemy distinction to internal politics. This recognition undercuts the liberal hope for consensus politics and underscores that even the best-designed constitutions must prepare for the possibility of enmity.

Aristotle’s emphasis on practical wisdom (phronesis) also complements Schmitt’s decisionism. Just as the sovereign must decide under conditions of uncertainty, the prudent statesman must act when the law or the constitution cannot provide an automatic answer (Aristotle, trans. 1998). Both thinkers see politics as irreducibly tied to judgment and to the possibility of exception. While Aristotle retains a more teleological vision of human flourishing, the structural similarities between his view of factional conflict and Schmitt’s existential enmity are striking. The Greek foundations thus offer Schmitt both a model of the polis as an identity-generating community and a cautionary tale about the fragility of order when the capacity for decision falters.

Taken together, Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle supply Schmitt with a repertoire of concepts—war, enmity, guardianship, sovereignty, and factional conflict—that he secularizes and radicalizes in his twentieth-century theory. Greek literature and political philosophy show that the friend–enemy distinction is not a modern invention but a deep structure of communal life. Schmitt (2005, 2007) turns these historical patterns into an existential criterion of politics, but the pattern itself stretches back to the earliest Western reflections on war, order, and identity.

Beyond the Canon: Tragedy and the Internal Enemy

Sophocles’ Antigone dramatizes the clash between individual duty and state authority, foregrounding the inner tensions of the polis as sharply as any war with outsiders. At its center is Creon, who, after the civil war between Oedipus’ sons, proclaims that anyone who defies his edict is an enemy of the city. “Whoever is not with the city is against it” (Sophocles, trans. 2018, lines 182–183), he declares, evoking the stark binary that Schmitt (2007) places at the heart of the political. For Schmitt, the sovereign must decide who the enemy is; in Antigone, Creon claims that authority explicitly. The tragedy thus offers a powerful illustration of Schmitt’s argument that sovereignty extends not only to external threats but also to internal dissidents whose actions, if unchecked, undermine the integrity of the political community. Antigone’s act of burying her brother Polynices is framed as a private moral or religious duty, but Creon defines it as an act of treason. This boundary-making—transforming a citizen into an enemy—constitutes precisely the decision Schmitt (2005) identifies as the sovereign prerogative.

The tragedy also emphasizes the personal stakes of sovereign decision. Creon’s legitimacy depends on his ability to enforce his edict; yet his rigidity destroys his family and undermines his rule. This mirrors Schmitt’s (2005) notion that the sovereign decision is never a neutral application of law but always a high-stakes wager, where failure to act decisively—or to act with prudence—may doom the polity. Sophocles depicts the city of Thebes in a precarious state, emerging from civil war and trying to restore unity. In this context, Creon’s insistence on political order over private conscience resonates with Schmitt’s claim that “the political is the most intense and extreme antagonism” (Schmitt, 2007, p. 29). Antigone herself functions as an archetype of the political dissident who appeals to a higher law, destabilizing the sovereign’s attempt at totalizing control. Her moral courage, however, does not erase the tragic reality that the state’s authority claims precedence in the existential struggle for survival. The tension between Creon and Antigone thus exemplifies how even within a single polis, the friend–enemy distinction can fracture along lines of conscience, kinship, or religion (Sophocles, trans. 2018).

Aeschylus’ The Persians offers a complementary, external view of enmity by dramatizing the Persian defeat at Salamis. Although written by a Greek for a Greek audience, the play focuses on the Persian court, showing the collective trauma of the defeated “other” (Aeschylus, trans. 2009). The chorus laments the catastrophe, while Queen Atossa seeks answers from the ghost of Darius. The entire tragedy turns on the moment of existential reversal: the empire that sought to annihilate Greece is itself shattered. This reversal confirms Greek identity through the negation of the Persian threat. As Schmitt (2007) argues, political identity solidifies through existential victory over an enemy; the Greeks’ survival and triumph at Salamis thus reaffirm their collective self-understanding. By presenting the Persian loss in human terms, Aeschylus still underscores the inescapable binary between victor and vanquished, a binary that forms the foundation of Schmitt’s concept of the political.

The Persians also illustrates the theological dimension of political conflict. Xerxes’ hubris is punished by the gods, who favor the Greeks for defending their freedom and ancestral customs (Aeschylus, trans. 2009). This divine vindication mirrors Schmitt’s (2005) concept of political theology, in which secular political order inherits the structure of sacred distinctions between chosen and rejected. The Athenian audience, hearing this tragedy in 472 BCE, would have interpreted the Persian defeat not only as a military victory but also as a moral and cosmological vindication of their way of life. The play thus reinforces the idea that the friend–enemy distinction operates at both a political and metaphysical level, anticipating Schmitt’s claim that even in ostensibly secular societies, politics carries a theological residue. Aeschylus’ decision to dramatize the enemy’s perspective makes the point more poignant: the identity of the Greek polis is secured and illuminated through the suffering and downfall of its adversary, an existential confirmation of political selfhood.

Euripides’ The Bacchae explores a different dimension of enmity: the threat from within. Pentheus’ confrontation with the Dionysian worshippers dramatizes how internal cultural or religious movements can destabilize the polis (Euripides, trans. 2002). By casting the cult of Dionysus as an enemy of civic order, Pentheus acts as a sovereign in Schmitt’s (2005) sense, attempting to define and suppress a perceived internal foe. Yet his failure to manage the threat leads to his destruction—a cautionary tale about the stakes of political decision. Euripides portrays Dionysus as both god and outsider, returning to Thebes to assert his cult against the rational, orderly rule of Pentheus. The resulting conflict is less a clash of armies than a clash of worldviews, but it is no less existential: either the city accommodates the god, or the god destroys the city’s ruler.

This internal threat exemplifies Schmitt’s (2007) insight that politics is not exhausted by external defense; the sovereign must also be prepared to identify and act against domestic enemies, whether they take the form of rebellion, heresy, or cultural subversion. Pentheus’ attempt to spy on the Bacchic rites and arrest Dionysus mirrors the modern state’s attempt to surveil and neutralize internal dissidents. Yet in Euripides’ telling, Pentheus is undone precisely because he misunderstands the nature of the threat. His rigid, rationalistic conception of order cannot cope with the irrational and ecstatic dimension of political life, and thus he falls victim to the very forces he sought to control (Euripides, trans. 2002). Schmitt (2005) similarly warns that liberal or procedural conceptions of politics may fail to recognize the intensity of enmity and the necessity of decisive action, leading to disaster when confronted with genuine existential threats.

Moreover, The Bacchae underscores the ambiguity of sovereignty. Is Dionysus himself the true sovereign, imposing his will on Thebes through divine power? Or is Pentheus the sovereign, claiming to uphold the city’s laws against religious extremism? The tragedy destabilizes the distinction, suggesting that sovereignty and enmity are interwoven and that the boundary between ruler and rebel can blur under conditions of crisis. This mirrors Schmitt’s (2005) claim that sovereignty emerges most clearly in the exception, when normal distinctions collapse and only the decision to friend or foe remains. By dramatizing the destruction of a ruler who fails to navigate this terrain, Euripides anticipates Schmitt’s critique of modern political forms that seek to depoliticize conflict.

Together, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides offer a triptych of political lessons that go beyond the canonical accounts of the polis found in historians and philosophers. Sophocles exposes the tragic consequences of internalizing the friend–enemy distinction too rigidly within a single city; Aeschylus celebrates the consolidation of identity through external victory; Euripides warns of the sovereign’s peril when facing cultural and religious forces that elude conventional political control. These themes collectively demonstrate that Greek tragedy already grappled with the central insights of Schmitt’s political theory: the existential stakes of enmity, the necessity of decision, and the fragility of order in the face of internal and external threats. They show that the sovereign’s task is not merely to govern according to law but to discern, under pressure, who constitutes the enemy and what must be done to preserve the community (Schmitt, 2007).

In this way, tragedy provides a richer and darker complement to the canonical texts of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle. Where the latter often emphasize the structures, virtues, and external contests of the polis, the tragedians reveal its vulnerabilities, contradictions, and internal fissures. Their dramas foreshadow Schmitt’s insistence that politics is not an arena of neutral exchange but a realm of existential stakes where misjudgment can be fatal. The polis, in their telling, is always perched on the edge of catastrophe, sustained only by the vigilance and prudence of its leaders—a theme that resonates powerfully with Schmitt’s (2005, 2007) vision of the sovereign decision in the state of exception.

Schmitt’s Modern Reframing: Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Decisionism

While the Old Testament and the Greek tradition provided Schmitt with paradigms of divine sovereignty and civic enmity, it was early modern political thought—especially Hobbes and Machiavelli—that gave him a language for secularizing these ideas and embedding them within the structure of the modern state. Schmitt read Thomas Hobbes closely and regarded him as the paradigmatic theorist of modern sovereignty, the thinker who most clearly articulated how fear and enmity could be transposed into a secular political order. In Political Theology, Schmitt (1922/2005) describes Hobbes as having made the decisive move from a theological to a juridical conception of sovereignty, yet still retaining the essential structure of the decision on life and death. By aligning his theory with both Hobbes and Machiavelli, Schmitt situates himself in a lineage that sees politics as conflictual, high-stakes, and irreducible to moral or economic categories.

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651/1996) famously begins with a state of nature where “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (ch. XIII). This pre-political condition is not, for Hobbes, a moral failing but an existential reality: without a common power to keep them in awe, humans live in a perpetual state of war, where everyone is potentially an enemy. Schmitt (1922/2005) interprets this “war of all against all” as the archetype of his friend–enemy distinction. For Hobbes, the social contract arises as a way to escape this war by transferring authority to a sovereign who alone has the power to decide on peace and war. This sovereign functions like the Old Testament God or the Greek lawgiver: he identifies the enemy, sets the rules of conflict, and commands obedience under the threat of death. Yet Hobbes secularizes this power. The sovereign’s authority is no longer divinely mandated but constructed through human agreement, albeit under the duress of existential fear. Schmitt (1922/2005, p. 36) seizes on this secularization but rejects Hobbes’s attempt to subordinate religion to the state, arguing instead that the theological structure of sovereignty persists even in secular form.

For Schmitt, Hobbes’s sovereign illustrates both the promise and the problem of modern politics. On the one hand, Hobbes demonstrates that political unity can be generated by mutual fear and a common enemy, even without religious underpinnings. On the other hand, Hobbes also gestures toward neutralizing conflict by establishing a sovereign powerful enough to end the war of all against all. Schmitt (1922/2005) resists this pacification. He argues that the political cannot be eliminated by contract or law because the possibility of enmity is constitutive of political identity. In this sense, Hobbes’s Leviathan becomes not merely a theory of peace but a template for decisionist sovereignty: the state that transcends individual enmity does so only by concentrating in itself the right to define and combat enemies, both internal and external.

Niccolò Machiavelli offers Schmitt a complementary model, emphasizing not the pacification of conflict but its productive role in sustaining civic vitality. In The Prince (1532/1998) and Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli highlights the necessity of conflict and risk to political greatness. He argues that republics need periodic renewal through conflict to maintain their liberty and strength (Machiavelli, 1532/1998). War is treated not as an exceptional breakdown of politics but as its normal condition; rulers who act decisively and ruthlessly when necessary are praised. This Machiavellian celebration of virtù—energy, decisiveness, and adaptability—resonates with Schmitt’s (1922/2005) notion of the sovereign decision. Where liberalism imagines politics as consensus-building and moral progress, Machiavelli and Schmitt insist it is defined by antagonism, risk, and decisive action.

Machiavelli’s realism acts as a bridge between the Greek emphasis on the polis’s external enemies and Schmitt’s modern friend–enemy distinction. In the Discourses, Machiavelli argues that the conflict between plebs and patricians helped preserve Roman liberty, illustrating his belief that enmity and political greatness are intertwined (Machiavelli, 1532/1998). Schmitt (1927/2007) draws a similar conclusion about modern states: without the capacity to identify enemies and mobilize against them, a state becomes merely an administrative apparatus, devoid of political substance. By valorizing the ruler who takes bold action in crisis—what Schmitt would call the decisionist sovereign—Machiavelli provides a secular vocabulary for the qualities of leadership previously associated with divine lawgivers or biblical judges.

By synthesizing Hobbesian sovereignty and Machiavellian virtù, Schmitt develops his doctrine of “decisionism.” In Political Theology, he famously declares, “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Schmitt, 1922/2005, p. 5). The sovereign does not merely apply laws but decides when normal rules no longer apply. This capacity to suspend the norm in the name of existential necessity echoes the Old Testament’s divine commands and the Greek lawgiver’s emergency powers. Just as God suspends natural laws to perform miracles, the sovereign suspends legal norms to preserve the polity. In this sense, Schmitt’s decisionism secularizes the biblical and classical paradigms while retaining their core structure: the authority to declare the exception and act outside established norms is the defining mark of sovereignty.

The decision on who counts as the enemy, then, is the ultimate expression of sovereignty. Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction is inseparable from his theory of the exception: only by identifying an existential enemy can the sovereign justify extraordinary measures (Schmitt, 1927/2007, pp. 35–37). This is why Schmitt insists that politics cannot be reduced to economics, ethics, or culture. Without the capacity for existential decision, there is no genuine politics at all. Hobbes provided the template of a centralized, awe-inspiring sovereign who ends the war of all against all; Machiavelli provided the model of virtù and decisiveness in the face of risk and conflict. Schmitt fuses these elements to argue that sovereignty itself is grounded in the capacity to confront enmity, to decide on exceptions, and to act decisively when the survival of the political community is at stake.

This synthesis also helps explain Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. For liberal theorists, politics is about managing interests, balancing rights, and fostering dialogue. For Schmitt (1927/2007), these are secondary phenomena. The essence of politics lies in the existential distinction between friend and enemy, a distinction that cannot be neutralized without eroding the very possibility of political order. Hobbes and Machiavelli supply Schmitt with the early modern building blocks for this vision: a secular, decisionist sovereign with the authority and courage to defend the community by identifying and combating its enemies.

Points of Divergence: Secularization, Universalization, and Internalization

Although Schmitt draws heavily on ancient and biblical precedents, his theory of the political diverges from them in crucial ways. These divergences illuminate why his thought appears simultaneously archaic and strikingly modern. By secularizing, universalizing, and internalizing the friend–enemy distinction, Schmitt (1927/2007) transforms concrete historical narratives into an abstract principle of political existence. Each move distances him from his sources while also demonstrating his effort to make their insights usable in the context of modern statehood and twentieth-century crisis.

In the Old Testament, enmity is consistently framed in theological terms. Israel’s enemies are portrayed as enemies of God, and wars are sanctioned as divine commands rather than pragmatic calculations. For instance, in Deuteronomy 20:16–17, the Israelites are ordered to annihilate the Canaanite nations, not because of strategic necessity but because of covenantal faithfulness (English Standard Version Bible, 2001). Likewise, in the Psalms, hatred of the enemy is framed as an extension of loyalty to God (Ps. 139:21–22). In the Greek world, by contrast, enmity is cast in more concrete, historical terms: rivalries among city-states or between Greeks and barbarians. Herodotus (trans. 2003) emphasizes the Athenians’ refusal to compromise with Persia, while Thucydides (trans. 1996) frames the Peloponnesian War as a struggle for survival between Athens and Sparta. These accounts situate enmity within particular conflicts, contexts, and divine or cultural horizons.

Schmitt diverges sharply by secularizing the notion of enmity. For him, it is not God who declares war nor cultural tradition that justifies it, but the sovereign state itself that decides who constitutes an existential threat (Schmitt, 1922/2005). Sovereignty, in his theory, no longer derives from divine command but from political existence and the power to decide. This shift enables him to strip the friend–enemy distinction of its theological or mythic framework and redeploy it as a purely political criterion. The state, not God or fate, assumes the role of the decision-making entity. This secularization does not eliminate theology, however. As Schmitt himself argues, “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts” (Schmitt, 1922/2005, p. 36). The structure remains theological in origin, but its authority is relocated within the modern state. The sovereign now performs the role once played by the divine: suspending laws, defining enemies, and preserving order.

A second divergence is Schmitt’s universalization of enmity. Whereas the Bible or Greek texts describe specific wars—Israel against Amalek, Athens against Persia, Sparta against Athens—Schmitt abstracts these narratives into a general law of politics. For him, the friend–enemy distinction is not contingent on a particular historical or cultural conflict but constitutes the very essence of the political (Schmitt, 1927/2007). Every community, by virtue of its existence, possesses the potential to confront an enemy. Even if a state appears at peace, the possibility of violent confrontation remains the latent condition that defines political identity. In this respect, Schmitt moves beyond the ancients, who often treated conflict as episodic or circumstantial. He instead frames enmity as an existential possibility inherent in the structure of political life itself.

This universalization resonates with Max Weber’s famous definition of the state as the entity that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given territory (Weber, 1978). Yet Schmitt goes further. For Weber, violence is a means the state claims to control; for Schmitt, the identification of the enemy and the willingness to kill or be killed is the defining act of politics itself. The friend–enemy distinction becomes not just an aspect of political life but its criterion: without the possibility of enmity, politics ceases to exist (Schmitt, 1927/2007). This move renders Schmitt’s theory highly abstract and adaptable, allowing him to speak of politics in universal terms rather than in the language of particular conflicts. It also gives his concept a modern character, one suited to a world of nation-states, ideological struggles, and global wars.

A third divergence lies in Schmitt’s internalization of enmity. While both the Bible and Greek texts recognize internal strife, they generally present it as a deviation from normal order. Aristotle (Politics 1301a–1302b, trans. 1998) describes stasis as a disease of the polis rather than its essence, something to be corrected or prevented. Similarly, the Hebrew Bible often portrays civil wars, such as the conflict between Saul and David or between the tribes of Israel, as tragic breakdowns of covenantal unity (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, 2 Sam. 3–5). Even tragedies like Sophocles’ Antigone or Euripides’ The Bacchae dramatize internal threats but frame them as extraordinary ruptures rather than the constant background of political life (Sophocles, trans. 2018; Euripides, trans. 2002).

Schmitt, however, elevates internal enmity to the same level of significance as external conflict. In the modern state, revolutions, insurgencies, and subversive movements pose existential threats that require sovereign decision just as wars with foreign powers do (Schmitt, 1927/2007). The sovereign must not only guard the borders against external enemies but also identify and neutralize internal foes who undermine the unity of the political community. This is why Schmitt places such emphasis on the state of exception: it is the moment when the sovereign reveals itself by deciding that normal rules must be suspended to preserve order. By making internal enmity central, Schmitt departs from his ancient and biblical sources and creates a theory tailored to the conditions of modern mass politics, ideological conflict, and revolutionary movements.

Taken together, these divergences—secularization, universalization, and internalization—reveal how Schmitt retools inherited paradigms for a modern context. He retains the existential seriousness of the Old Testament’s divine commands and the Greeks’ wars of survival, but he abstracts them from their specific contexts and situates them within the modern state. By secularizing, he makes sovereignty a human and political decision rather than a divine decree. By universalizing, he transforms enmity from an episodic event into the essence of politics itself. By internalizing, he acknowledges that modern threats often come from within, not only from without. In doing so, Schmitt (1927/2007) creates a formal, existential principle that explains both the enduring power and the profound danger of his concept of the political.

 VII. Contemporary Scholarship and Interpretations

In recent years, scholars have begun to explore these deeper roots of Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction. For example, a 2023 article in Political Theology highlights how Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty echoes Old Testament models of divine kingship, particularly in 1 Samuel’s depiction of the monarchy. Another 2024 article in The Review of Politics underscores Thucydides’ influence on Schmitt’s realism, especially the Melian Dialogue’s stark assertion of power.

These studies suggest that Schmitt’s modern concept of the political is inseparable from his classical and biblical heritage, even though he rarely cited these sources directly. Understanding this lineage allows us to see Schmitt’s critique of liberalism not as a Weimar-era curiosity but as part of a much older intellectual tradition.

Moreover, contemporary debates about populism, nationalism, and democratic backsliding often echo Schmittian themes. When political leaders frame opponents as existential enemies, they invoke the logic Schmitt described. This logic can strengthen political identity but also undermine liberal norms of pluralism and compromise. Thus, revisiting the biblical and classical roots of Schmitt’s theory also helps us understand contemporary political dynamics.

VIII. Conclusion

Carl Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction stands at the intersection of biblical theology, classical political philosophy, and modern realism. From the Old Testament, Schmitt inherits the idea of a chosen community defined against existential enemies and led by a sovereign who decides the terms of conflict. From the Greek world, he inherits the polis as a self-defining unit forged through opposition to the “other,” whether Persian invaders, rival city-states, or internal subversives. From Hobbes and Machiavelli, he inherits a secular, decisionistic framework that transforms these narratives into a universal criterion of the political.

By synthesizing these traditions, Schmitt radicalizes a timeless insight: political identity is inseparable from enmity. Yet he also departs from his sources by stripping the concept of its theological and narrative contexts, rendering it an existential and universal principle. This secularization makes Schmitt’s theory both powerful and dangerous. It helps explain the persistence of conflict as a constitutive feature of political life but also raises troubling questions about how sovereigns might designate “enemies” internally and externally.

Understanding the biblical and classical roots of Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction does more than illuminate a historical curiosity; it clarifies how deeply embedded the politics of enmity is in Western thought. It also invites us to reflect on whether liberal democracy, with its emphasis on consensus and proceduralism, can truly escape the logic Schmitt describes—or whether, as he suspected, the friend–enemy distinction will always return as the hidden grammar of the political.

 

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