ABSTRACT
Carl Schmitt's vision of politics is characterised by the primacy of foreign policy, by war as the supreme manifestation of community and by the expansion of power as the be-all and end-all of communal human life. Schmitt, of course, is not unaware of the well-known motives for waging war that history provides. He concedes that 'religious, moral and other antagonisms are used for political ends, in order to bring about the hostile alignment that really counts. The actual powers and power aspirations of the individual nations and states represent different points of view, religious, cultural, internal political or social. In the social sphere life takes the form of power. Moral legitimations of power are futile and superfluous. Since power justifies itself, conflicts between powers whose spheres of action intersect are natural and unavoidable – indeed the true test and highest intensification of vigorous life.
