EXISTENTIALITY OF THE POLITICAL IN MAX WEBER'S AND CARL SCHMITT'S CONCEPTS // BSU bulletin. Philosophy. - 2025. №1. . - С. 31-43.

EXISTENTIALITY OF THE POLITICAL IN MAX WEBER'S AND CARL SCHMITT'S CONCEPTS

DOI: 10.18101/1994-0866-2025-1-31-43 UDK: 321.01:1

The article considers the existential dimension of the political in Max Weber's and Carl Schmitt's concepts. We have analyzed how Weber and Schmitt understand political reality through the prism of disenchantment of the world and conflict, revealing the differences in their approaches to the nature of power, rationality and values. Analysis of the existential dimension of the political in Max Weber's and Carl Schmitt's concepts allows us to identify two fundamentally different responses to the problem of the loss of political meaning in the modernity. If Weber notes the disillusionment of the world and the fragmentation of values, turning policy into a sphere of competitive struggle for power within the framework of rational administrative structures, Schmitt offers an alternative solution — repoliticization of the meaning through the existential difference between friend and enemy. In contrast to Weber's relativism, which makes policy an arena of subjective preferences, Schmitt's conception claims that policy is rooted in collective identity and ineradicable conflict. The article shows that political existentiality according to Schmitt is not an ideological apology for conflict, but serves as a tool for understanding the nature of political life, where meaning and values acquire an objective status through collective obligations, which allows taking a new look at the challenges of modern political theory associated with the crisis of legitimacy, sovereignty and democratic order.

political existentiality, disenchantment of the world, friend and enemy, sovereignty, values, conflict, rationality, political theory.