The Social Contract Research Podcast · Social Contract Research Network

The Significance of the Individual and the Concept of the Social in the work of Carl, with Timothy Howles

·1 hr 29 min·5 clips

For Schmitt, politics exists only when a state can name an enemy.

The seminar opens with a welcome to the last session of the semester. Chris introduces Timothy Howells, Associate Director of the Laudato Si' Research Institute, and sets out his work at the meeting point of politics and theology, with a focus on earth systems sciences and the political dimensions of climate change. Howells states his title plainly: he is interested in the significance of the individual and the concept of the social in the work of Carl Schmitt, and he uses that as an entry point into sovereignty, politics, and the limits of liberal norm-order. The argument moves carefully. Schmitt, on this reading, does defend the absolute sovereignty of the state, but that sovereignty is not just arbitrary power imposed on passive subjects. Instead, it reflects and decides on the realm of concrete human life it governs. In that sense, the state can sustain a highly animated, energized, and representative political space, not merely administer rules. Liberalism is the foil. The liberal regime of norms, Howells argues, produces inertia and simple compliance, secures contestation in advance, and leaves no enemy to mark out a real political field. That means no politics in the strong sense, and no social realm understood in this way. The lecture then makes a brief detour. Bruno Latour appears as a critical reader who came to Schmitt relatively late and treated him with caution, even while calling his work unavoidable. The point is not dismissive: Schmitt can be toxic, Howells suggests, yet still deserves careful reading because the concepts keep resurfacing in contemporary debates. The discussion stays close to the machinery of the argument. Sovereignty is not handled as a slogan, but as a concept that organizes a whole picture of state power, political contestation, and the social world. The speaker keeps returning to the contrast between a liberal regime of norms and a political space that can actually register conflict. The closing exchange turns toward the ideological and religious background of Schmitt's sovereignty arguments. Questions about grace, natural order, Protestant voluntarism, and Catholic formation lead to a short debate about where Schmitt should have stayed intellectually. The point is not settled into a neat conclusion; it remains a live interpretive problem. The session ends with thanks to the speaker after the conversation has moved from sovereignty and liberalism into the theological roots of the argument.

As heard by us

A sharp Schmitt seminar that treats sovereignty as a live problem, not a slogan.

Timothy Howells closes the last Social Contracts Research Network seminar of the semester with a hard-edged Schmittian claim: sovereignty is not just force, but a power that can look at concrete human life and make a decision that keeps political space alive and representative.

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Why you'd press play

For a careful, theory-heavy look at Schmitt, sovereignty, and why liberals keep flinching.

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