Authoritarian Morals

From The Concept of the Political, by Carl Schmitt, which (full disclosure) I have yet to finish:

The numerous modifications and variations of this anthropological distinction of good and evil are not reviewed here in detail. Evil may appear as corruption, weakness, cowardice, stupidity, or also as brutality, sensuality, vitality, irrationality, and so on. Goodness may appear in corresponding variations as reasonableness, perfectibility, the capacity of being manipulated, of being taught, peaceful, and so forth.

Italics mine. This quote is somewhat tangential to Schmitt's argument about "the political" as a sphere apart from morals, economics, etc., but some of these concepts seem to be under the wrong heading. Having weakness and vitality together seems fully incoherent, and perhaps Schmitt means to challenge the universality of morals. Nonetheless, given an authoritarian perspective, these make more sense; that "the capacity of being manipulated" is certainly desirable from the perspective of the powerful, and would make the existence of the unified state that Schmitt speaks of much easier.

Not surprisingly, Schmitt speaks of Nietzsche and Hobbes together as philosophers who believe men are "basically evil", despite the fact that their definitions of "good" and "evil" are not very compatible. Of course, Nietzsche speaks repeatedly of ranking and ordering and command. Having last read Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche becomes especially problematic, but The Genealogy of Morals, if I recall, provides better justification.

But while the varieties of "evil" offered are contradictory, the varieties of "good" all seem to deal with malleability or lack of power. Goodness and harmlessness are essentially the same thing, from Schmitt's perspective. I argue that this can only speak to a philosophy of living in terror of others. Essentially this is a more comprehensive way of saying that humanity is basically evil -- that anyone capable of doing harm will do so.

By my thinking, if evil exists, the good are obliged to be dangerous. Evil/selfishness/sociopathy are characteristics which intend the accumulation of power without regard for the means, and naturally must impose themselves on others through force and manipulation. Hence, the good are compelled to be capable of resistance on behalf of themselves and others. Said resistance may take organized form, depending on the nature of the threat, but to do so in a compulsory, authoritarian fashion is extremely problematic, if we take human life, freedom, and happiness as paramount. "Reasonability" here is a good because it allows for cooperation among peers and the recognition of a common threat -- rational thinking as a kind of lingua franca, not as purely self-interested "economic rationalism."