ABSTRACT
This chapter clarifies the relation of the political decision to necessity. It argues that the juristic space between legal order and the state of nature in which the decision is taken can be construed as a space between law, necessity and arbitrary freedom. The chapter begins by explaining why necessity, whether in its guize as a situation of self-defence or as action determined by absolute values, is incompatible with the notion of the decision. Necessity is said to 'have no law, that is, that no legal responsibility is said to attach to necessary action. Necessity as a force that determines action therefore has no place in Carl Schmitt's theory of the political, not only because it would negate the notion of the decision but also because it would spell an end to political existence. The active aspect of orientation also manages to avoid that other passivity of which Schmitt has sometimes been accused, namely, occasionalism.
