the exceptional act the possibility of safetyand passive nihilism is destroyed, (ibid) “in the exception the powerof real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has becometorpid with repetition.” There is a strong theological undertone tosuch violence. The exception here functions much like the sacrifice inreligion. It is that which is outside the limits of the rule; thatwhich is offered up to something absolutely interior. Indeed, we couldgo so far as to say that what the miracle is for theology, the state ofexception is for Schmitt. Both are exemplary, singular: and yet bothdefine the basis for the rule: one by proof of God’s existence, theother by proof of the existence of sovereignty. When man is attuned to battle, he will once more realise the nature ofexistence and thus the nature of sovereignty. Schmitt here finds astrang the Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR e bedfellow in the socialist Georges Sorel, who he quotesapprovingly on many occasions. In his essay on Sorel, he notes(Schmitt: 1933:18) “warlike and heroic conceptions that are bound upwith battle and struggle were taken seriously again… as the trueimpulse of an intensive life.” Both Schmitt and Sorel agree on the needfor swift action and decision, both on the need for man to besubservient to a higher myth. There only point of disagreement is onwhich particular myth needs to be followed. Sorel, as a Marxist, usesthe myth of the proletarian. However, for Schmitt this is anon-political notion, allowing ideas of economics to infuse what shouldbe a pure sphere of sovereignty. T the Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR he idea of the nation is that onlymyth that can keep such a purity alive. In a staggering display ofblindness to history Schmitt notes (1914:70): “the stronger myth isnational. The national myth has until today always been victorious.” Onthe same subject he quotes Mussolini approvingly (ibid: 75-76) when heclaims “we have created a myth, this myth is a belief, a nobleenthusiasm: it does not need to be a reality.” We should note at this juncture several subtleties of Schmitt’sargument. While he reverses Clausewitz, and claims politics should beplaced in the cause of war, he does so only to the extent that waremerges as a possibility to return to an autonomous notion of thepolitical sphere. Schmitt does not advocate violence for the sake ofviolence, but rather, as a way to bring democracy to its limit point.At this limit point, man will realise the impermanence of his existence(the friend: enemy distinction at the heart of politics) and realisethat only a total state the Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR  allows for this distinction to be transcendedthrough the absolute notion of sovereignty. Thus, war appears inSchmitt as a constant possibility: which is to say, as a way ofconstantly realising the nature of man’s existence. In this, theAusnahmmezustand (state of exception) is not dissimilar from whatHeidegger (1962:312) calls a Grenzsituation, where “Dasein glimpsestranscendence and is thereby transformed from possible to realexistence.” Furthe  r, the relationship of violence to the state of exception shouldbe clarified. The state of exception is not, in and of itself, violent.Schmitt makes two distinct arguments here>