Politics and Love

I will be completely honest and admit that some of Dr. Catherine Borck’s lecture went right over my head. Whenever I hear the word “politics” my palms get sweaty and I get a little dizzy. But there were many things that she brought up in her lecture that really stood out in my mind.

Dr. Borck discussed Carl Schmitt’s saying, “The enemy is our own question as a figure.” When I first thought about what this might mean, I understood it to mean that the enemy is the manifestation of our uncertainties or concerns. But when Dr. Borck spoke about the friend, enemy, and fraternity being combined, my interpretation of the saying changed. I began to see it as a way of saying that we are defined by our enemies. Similar to the way that people see what they want in the person that they love instead of the actual person. What we see as the bad in our enemies is reflective of the bad in us. This saying becomes even more impressive when considering that it is not referring to just one person but a group of people.

Dr. Borck also spoke about the quote by Plato, “Justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies.” I had heard this quote before, but within the context of this class, I was taken aback by its aggressively active stance. When I think back to the novels we read or movies we watched, Plato’s idea of Justice rings true. More often than not, the enemy of the novel is the main character’s self. The character simultaneously does “good” to himself or herself while causing also “harm”. In Madame Bovary, for example, Emma indulges in her desires for someone other than her horribly boring husband while also harming herself by entering into risky affairs and physically harming herself. The justice is done at the end of the novel when the character gets what she thought that she wanted (good to friend) and then she dies (harm to enemy).

Dr. Borck’s lecture offered some very interesting insights into the topics that we have already been discussing in class. I never would have thought that politics and the concepts of love could come together outside of an espionage romance novel. It is interesting to see how the ideas and concepts of love from many different concentrations of study fit together.