| In this thesis, I trace the problematic of coercion and legitimation in democratic states as it is developed through Carl Schmitt's Political Theology and Legality and Legitimacy and Jacques Derrida's "The Force of Law." In my treatment of Schmitt's texts, present two of his critiques against legislative democracy: his critique based on legal indeterminacy and his critique of these regimes' representative legitimacy. Out of this reading of these two problems, I describe how Schmitt's critique of liberal democracy leads him to favor a government based on the authority of a strong and relatively unlimited executive. With Schmitt's critiques thus laid out, I turn to Derrida's recasting of law through his concept of the performative. Finally, turning to his treatment of Walter Benjamin's Critique of Violence, I argue that, through the shift in ontological stakes in his understanding of law as performative utterance as well as his treatment of Benjamin's concept of messianic violence, Derrida attempts to preserve a redemptive possibility of legal reformulation and justice that Schmitt foregoes in his more conservative political philosophy. |
