High Heels as Hammers: Hannah Arendt’s Critique of Carl Schmitt’s Political Theological Analogy

Abstract

Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt have been read together in several studies in previous years. They make an intriguing pair because Arendt appears to share a good deal of Schmitt’s diagnosis concerning the modern crisis of legitimacy, while also departing radically from his political conclusions. This article frames the Arendt–Schmitt encounter, real or imagined, in terms of the role of analogy in the discourse of political theology. Schmitt’s political theology relies on what he calls a “systematic analogy”. Arendt, meanwhile, levies a devastating critique of all conceptual analogies between theology and politics. The article shows that this difference between Schmitt and Arendt is undergirded by a fundamental theological dispute. Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty depends on the possibility that human beings can become God. Arendt’s contrasting account of freedom is structured by a fundamental disanalogy between humans and God. The article gestures to the idea that this dispute may be something of a basic difference between Christianity and Judaism.