Though there may be abundant traces of play in domestic politics there would seem, at first sight, to be little opportunity for it in the field of international politics. The fact, however, that these have fallen to unheard of extremes of violence and dangerousness in political life among nations does not in itself exclude the possibility of play. As we have seen from numerous examples, play can be cruel and bloody and, in addition, can often be false play. Any law-abiding community or community of States will have characteristics linking it in one way or another to a play-community. A system of international law is maintained by the mutual recognition of certain principles and maxims which, in effect, operate like play-rules despite the fact that they may be founded in metaphysics. The explicit acknowledgment of the pacta sunt servanda principle is a de facto recognition that the integrity of the system rests on a willingness to play along. Once a party withdraws from the rules of the system, the whole system of international law must, if only temporarily, collapse unless the outlaw is banished from the community as a "spoilsport."
The maintenance of international law has always been dependent on the [continued] validity of principles such as honour, decency, and good form. An important part of European rules of warfare developed, after all, out of the code of honour proper to chivalry. International law tacitly assumed that a defeated state would behave like a gentleman and a good loser, even if it seldom did. The duty to declare war officially, though often violated, belonged to the good form of warring states. In short until quite recently modern European war included and still retained the ludic elements of war, which we have uncovered in all archaic eras, and on which the absolutely binding character of the rules of war in large part rested.
A common phrase in German speech speaks of the entry of war as "Ernstfall". In strictly military parlance the term is correct. Compared with the sham fighting of manoeuvres and drilling, 'real' war is undoubtedly what seriousness is to play. But it's altogether different when he term "Ernstfall" is understood politically. It would entail that foreign policy has not attained its full degree of seriousness, her real effectiveness, until the state of war is reached. This view is confessed by some. [In the Dutch, but not English, there is a note to Huizinga's (1935) In the Shadows of Tomorrow.] For them all diplomatic intercourse, insofar as it moves in the paths of negotiation and agreement, is only a preface to war or a transition between two wars. It is logical that its adherents, who regard war and its preparations as the sole form of serious politics, should deny that war has any connection with contest [Huizinga uses 'wedkamp' here which as he notes earlier, signals the rolling of betting in legal and athletic contests--ES] and hence with play. The agonistic factor, they tell us, may have been powerfully operative in earlier eras, but contemporary warfare is elevated above the old contest. It is based on the "friend-enemy" principle. All real political relationships among nations and states, so they say, are dominated by this principle. [Here Huizinga cites Schmitt's Der Begriff der Politischen in Dutch and English editions.]** The other group is always either your friend or your enemy. Enemy, of course, is not to be understood as inimicus or εχθρός (echtros), i.e. personally hated, or though wicked, but only as hostis or πόλεμιος, i.e. the stranger, who is in your group's way or about the stand in its way. Schmitt refuses to regard the enemy even as a rival or adversary. He is according to him just an opponent [tegenstander] in the most iteral sense and is thus to be liquidated [uit de weg ruimen]. If ever anything in history has corresponded to this gross reduction of the idea of enmity, which turns it into an almost mechanical relationship, it is precisely that archaic antagonism between phratries, clans or tribes where, as we saw, the play element was of considerable significance, and from which the growth of culture has carried us beyond. In so far as there is a glimpse of correctness in Schmitt's inhuman delusion, the conclusion has to be: war is not the 'Ernstfall,' but peace is. Only by conquering that pitiable friend-enemy relationship will humanity lay claim to the recognition of her dignity. With everything that evokes or accompanies it, war always remains ensnared in the daemonic witchcraft of the game.--J.H. Huizinga (1949 [1944]) Homo Ludens: A Study in the Play-Element in Culture, London Routledge pp. 208-209. {With corrections by Eric Schliesser in bold.}*
Homo Ludens appeared in Dutch in 1938. After the Von Leers incident (recall), Huizinga was effectively black-listed in Nazi-Germany (see Gossman's "Afterword" to Otterspeer's article). Somewhat amazingly the English translation was translated from the German edition, which, according to the English translation, is supposed to have appeared in Switzerland in 1944. But, in fact, Huizinga was also pretty effectively black-listed in neutral Switzerland. The book first appeared in German with Pantheon (a small press) in Amsterdam in 1939. Pantheon, which was not a Jewish firm, continued operation during the war. In Switzerland, the book was finally republished by Burg-Verlag in Basel, including a 1944 edition, which seems to have been a source of the English translation. I write 'a source' because the (anonymous to me) English translator appended the following note to the book:
THIS edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author's own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death. Comparison of the two texts shows a number of discrepancies and a marked difference in style; the translator hopes that the following version has achieved a reasonable synthesis. (vii)*
While it is tempting to turn swiftly to Huizinga's argument against Schmitt, it is worth noting that in Dutch the sub-title of the book is, "Proeve Eener Bepaling van het Spel-Element der Cultuur." In contemporary Dutch, a 'proeve' primarily means a 'tasting,' but in the past it is often used in terms of a 'trial' or 'assaying' (or 'essay'). It shares a root with the English 'proof'. And if you read the book, it's pretty clear that Huizinga intents to convey that the book involves taste and assaying. The first word ("Essai") of the sub-title French translation ("Essai sur le fonction sociale du jeu") captures these resonances by using 'Essai', although interestingly enough the rest of the sub-title is rather over-interpretive (even reductive). But I also suspect, as (also) passages that I quoted above from near the end of the book imply, Huizinga means to suggest that in his own day the play-element of culture is being challenged if not in danger of collapsing (a proeve in the sense of a beproeving--an ordeal or test).
Okay, with that in place let's turn to Huizinga's argument. It is no surprise that writing in an age of the collapse of the League of Nations into farce that Huizinga would have thought that the system of international law was rather fragile--that a single defection could make it collapse unless the rest is strong enough to banish the rule-breaker altogether from the system. We now know that this is need not be the case. The international system can survive considerable rule breaking by even its vital and leadings members and, what is more amazing, can maintain many of its norms with important rule-breakers while they are knowingly violating international law. So, for example, even while countries are putting sanctions on Putin's regime, Russia participates in an enormous range of international commercial and technical practices that are regulated by international law that nobody will consider revoking. Obviously, there is a tipping point where that may not be true anymore.
One way to understand Huizinga's diagnosis of Schmitt's position is that according to Huizinga (and I have a distinct feeling that this anticipates Foucault's interpretation of liberalism), and in a reversal of Clausewitz's famous dictum, Schmitt treats ordinary politics and diplomacy as a continuation and extension of war. It's in this fact that, according Huizinga's Schmitt, the paraphernalia of diplomacy and politics have their true significance.
Now, the position attributed by Huizinga to Schmitt that ordinary politics and statecraft are just the continuation of war and preparation for it implies that on the Schmittian picture there is no escape from the Hobbesian state of nature at all. So, it is worth noting that Huizinga converges on a crucial agreement with Strauss's criticism of Schmitt: (recall) that Schmitt remains, despite his own self-understanding, in the Hobbesian ambit. (I have no evidence that Huizinga was familiar with Strauss' reading of Schmitt.)
In addition, Huizinga attributes to Schmitt an ideal of progress. (Again, this is accord with Strauss, who discerned the existential providentialism in Schmitt, who is for all his rejection of liberalism a committed modernist.) But according to Huizinga, Schmitt's idea of progress presupposes the overcoming of the ludic and agonic ideals that were once inherent in the conceptualizations of war. And, on Huizinga's account this makes modern warfare the true barbarism because it mechanically promotes the killing of enemies.
Here, Huizinga echoes the practice -- from Thomas More forward, but reaching its peak in Enlightenment thought -- of treating modern Europeans as the true barbarians. And this is supposed to meet Schmitt on his own terms because according to Schmitt it's those very humanitarian ideals -- which turn the enemy into a inhumane monster -- that lead to total war.
At first sight, it might seem that Huizinga misses in his analysis of Schmitt is that enemies are symmetrical to each other: that there is a moment of existential choice in which some are recognized as friends to which one belongs and other social unities as enemies. This parity is absent in social domination and subordination. So, something of the agonic element is maintained even in Schmitt's analysis. And, in fact, I think this is Huizinga's position ("war always remains ensnared in the daemonic witchcraft of the game"), although it's unclear if Huizinga also thinks this is an immanent critique of Schmitt.
Be that as it may, while it's true that there is a sense in which Huizinga's response to Schmitt is question-begging (humanity is not common ground), it is not silly, and strikes me as coherent.+ In particular, Huizinga promotes the idea that the overcoming of the friend-enemy distinction is a real possibility and once this overcoming is associated with humanity's dignity (there are Kantian deals lurking here) a worthy ideal. In this, Huizinga echoes Ortega Y Gassett (recall) and he anticipates Popper's argument (recall). This is something that cannot be denied by Schmitt because the enemy-friend distinction itself presupposes an existential choice; and so could be otherwise. (Again, Strauss who parts ways with these liberals had noticed that Schmitt shares common ground in such matters with his liberal opponents.) Huizinga's position does not deny that politics plays a role in culture or in games, but rather that such activities, even when fully immersed in them, can reach beyond themselves to something ethical (or sittlich in a soft-Hegelian sense).
Huizinga does not claim that all of culture is play. In fact, he invites us to consider the renewal or development of a political art in all seriousness: this is the art of peace, how to achieve it and how to maintain it. (And given the Kantianism, this is really the art of world-federation.) And Huizinga claims here (and at the start of Homo Ludens) explicitly the authority of Plato's Laws 803: "It is the life of peace that everyone should live as much and as well as he can." And matching Schmitt's Christian political theology, with Plato's, we learn that in order to be serious about the art of peace, we must learn to understand ourselves, looking up, as God(s)'s playthings.
*My corrected translation is based on the 1951 Dutch third edition. It's possible, of course, that Huizinga's own translation provides authority for the English translator's choices. (It would be interesting to learn if the manuscript still exists.) But, as my corrections suggests, and as can be established by comparing it to the English printed version, the (1949) English translation deviates significantly from the original Dutch.
**The Dutch translation also cites the 1927 version not just the 1933 version.
+Some (e.g., Lambrow 2020) have claimed that Huizinga has an unpolitical conception of culture/play or that he effaces the politics of culture by insisting on the autonomy of play.
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