L’elastico di Carl Schmitt. Giovanni Sartori lettore del Begriff des Politischen

This article aims to briefly examine the intellectual relationship between Giovanni Sartori and the theory of Carl Schmitt. Although Schmitt's name is almost entirely absent from Sartori's writings, the political scientist admitted to having thoroughly studied the German jurist's works and considered him one of the three principal political thinkers of the 20th century. In the late 1980s, Sartori dedicated a dense essay to Begriff des Politischen, in which he criticized Schmitt's definition of the political. This article focuses specifically on this late essay, reconstructing the merits and limitations of Sartori's interpretation. The paper specifically discusses Sartori's critique of two aspects of Schmitt's definition: first, the role attributed to “intensity” in defining the specificity of the “political”; second, the idea that Schmitt’s definition identifies a “mode” of politics but not its essence. The article seeks to demonstrate that both of Sartori’s criticisms stem from a misunderstanding of Schmitt's definition and that, in particular, the Italian scholar fails to recognize that Schmitt’s Begriff proposes a “formal” rather than “substantial” definition of politics. Finally, it is suggested that just as Sartori “removed” his early reading of Schmitt from his writings, he similarly removed the notion of the enemy from his theory of democracy, which, precisely for this reason, appears—despite its claims—not entirely realistic.