Carl Schmitt. the Hobbesian of the 20th Century_Jacob Als Thomsen

8/13/2019 Carl Schmitt. the Hobbesian of the 20th Century_Jacob Als Thomsen

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RS/ Soda Thought Researchin an academic career. Early versions ofpapers, perhaps of a fonn arid lengthprepared for meeting presentat ion, can be published here before their heftand style are fully worked toSRdimensions.

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CARL SCHMITT -THE HOBBESIAN OF THE TH

CENTURY?*JACOB ALs THOMSENUniversity Roseilde Denmark

MARS/SocialThought Research,1997,Vol. D No. 1-2

IntroductionUndoubtedly Carl Schmi tt should be regarded as one on the most

significant political thinkers of the twentieth century - and certainly one of themost controversial. As one of the leading legal scholars and most profoundconservative intellectuals ofWeimar Germany Schmitt enjoyed in the 1920s areputation far beyond the borders of Gennany. A brilliant stylist and a trulyoriginal thinker whose critique of the ideas and inst itu tions of liberaldemocracy came to fascinate generations of political thinkers of the right aswell as of the left, amongst others: Leo Strauss, Hans Morgenthau- WalterBeniamin, Karl Mannheimer, Otto Kirchheimer, Franz Neuman, HerbertMarcuse andJiirgen Habermas.t .

Direc t a ll cor re spondence to Jacob Als Thompsen, Depar tment of History and SocialTheory, University of RoskiIde, Denmark.1 On the relation between Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt see Heinrich Meier, CarlSchmitttmdLeo Strauss: thebidden dialogue (Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press, 1995).

2 On Morgenthau s relation to Schmitt see Fragment of an Intellectual Autobiography:1904-1932, in Kenneth Thompson, Robert Myers (ed.), TruthandTrage4J: Trilmte toHans]. Morgen/hau (New Brunswick and London: TransactionBooks, 1984),pp. 15-16.3 On Walter Benjamin s relat ion to Schmitt see Samue l Weber, Taking Exception toDecision: Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt, in diacritics 22, nos. 3-4, Fali-Winter, 1992,pp.5-18.4 On Carl Schmitt s influence on the Frankfurter School, see Ellen Kennedy, Carl Schmittand the FrankfurterSchool, in Telos Number 71, Spring 1987,pp. 37-66,and the commentsto this article byMartinJay,Alfons Sellner and Ulrich K Preuss in the same issue. Telos made .a following special issue on Schmitt Telos Number 72,Summer 1987).


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M RS SodalThought ResearchSclunitt was born in 1888 in the small town of Plettenberg in the

Sauerland and raised as a catholic. He studied law in Berlin and Strassburggraduating from The University of Strassburg in 1910. Under the influence ofthe Getman defeat in the WW I (where Schmitt served in the state-of-warsection of the general staff in Munich), the dissolution of the Second Reichand the fol lowing poli tical chaos of the Weimar republic , Schmitt, as aprofessor of law and a very active publicist, became one of the sharpest criticsof the modem liberal parliamentary state, and in a b roader sense ofindividualistic liberalism. Concerned for the public order and the threat to itfrom radical political forces (communists and Nazis) he, from a conservativeposition during the 1920s and 1930s, poin ted to what he took to be theweakness of the liberal construction of the state embodied in the Weimarconstitution, and refuted legalnormativism in favour of decisionism.

Schmitt's reputation as a political thinker is primarily based on a numberof bri lliant works from the Weimar per iod, in which he addressed thefundamental problems of political theory; the nature of sovereignty, the basisof constitutionalism, the purpose and limits of political power and thelegitimacy of the state.>Schmitt tried to address these questions - which hadpreoccupied Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant - to theindustrialised society of the twentieth-century, arriving at a harsh critique ofthe l iberal concept of poli tics, par liamentary democracy and the l iberalconstitutional state. Among Schmitt's central ideas was the thesis thatdemocracy negates liberalism and liberalism negates democracy Diegeistesgeschichtliche Loge des heutigen Parlamentarismus 1923) , his concept of thepolitical as essentially being the distinction between friends and ene mies BegriffdesPolitischen (1927/32), and his definition of sovereignty as a question of 'whodecides on the exception' Politische Theoloie 19??). Following his politicalthinking and fear of political chaos Sclunitt in the later years of the republic,as a constitutional advisor to the Hindenburg government, provided the legaland theoretical justification for the extensive use of emergency powers by theReich presidentunder Article 48 of the Weimar constitution.

5 The literature by and on Carl Schmitt is vast, for a bibliographical overview that includesthe later literature on Schmitt seee.g. Andreas Koenen, Der FaDCarlSchmitt. Sein hiJitieg if mKronjuristen des Dritten Reiches (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995),Paul Noack: Carl Schmitt. Eine BiogJ-aphie (Berlin, Frankfurt a.M. : Propylaen Verlag, 1993),Dirk van Laak, Gespmche in tier Sicherheit des Schweige1zs. Carl Schmitt in tier politischenGeistesgeschichte tier friihm Bundesrepublik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993). Monographies onSchmitt in English seee.g. George Schwab, The ChaDenge of the Exception. Introduction tothePolitical Ideas of Carl Schmittbetween 1921 and 1936 (New York Westport, Connecticut London: Greenwood Press, 1989),Joseph W. Bendersky, Carl Schmitt. Theorist for the Reich(princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) and Paul Gottfried, Carl Schmitt. Politics andTheory (NewYork Westport,Connecticut London: Greenwood Press, 1990).

CarlSChlJlitt - 20th-Century Hobbesian?Although few doubt the significance of his work, Carl Schmittremains

one of the most controversial figures in modem political philosophy. Oftendescribed as a fascist, a nihilist and an opportunist, and as a (prophet of thetotali tarian state' , to many people he came to symbolise the intellectualundennining of parliamentary democracy in Weimar Germany and thecomingto powerof the Nazis.The major reason for chmitt scontroversialityis the fact that he after the Enabl ing Act of March 1933, took a conciliatoryattitude towards the Nazis and decided to become their self appointedideologist or (Crown Jurist'. Although Schmitt had support ed the use ofemergency powers to keep the anti-republican political forces from power inthe final years of the republic , and in his 1932 publication Legalitat undLegitimitiit had warned against the possible coming to power by legal means bythe communists or National Socialists,Schmitt joined the Nazi Party in May1933 (the same month as Martin Heidegger). During the following three yearshe published a series of articles defending the new Nazi-state. InJuly 1933 hebecame a member of the Prussian Council of State and was appointed tohead the professional group of university professors in the National-SocialistJurist' Association the same year. Schmitt's situation became precarious during1936 when he was attacked in the Gestapo organ Das Korps whichled him to withdraw from public life . nyway he was interned by theAmericans in September 1945 and imprisoned for more than a year, thoughhe wasnever formally charged.s

Because of Schmitt's association with the Nazi-regime in 1933-36 he wasbanned from post-war academic life as the political theorist or 'Crown juristof the Third Reich' and for a long time his works was largely ignored outsideGennany. As more recent studies have shown Schmittremained, however, acentral source of inspiration for political thinkers, notably on the far left or thefar right.7 During the 1980s and especially after Schmitt 's death in 1985,

6 The interrogation Reports of Carl Schmitt have been translated and commented byJosephBendersky in Telos Number72,Summer 1987,pp. 91-129.7 On Schmitt's influence after 1945see e.g. Ellen Kennedy, Carl Schmitt in West GermanPerspective, in West El1ropean Politics Vol. 7, No 3 1984 ,pp. 120-27 , Dirk van Laak,Gespriiche in er icherheit desSchweigen.r. Carl Schmitt in tierpolitischen Geistesgeschichte tier friihenBlmdesrepublik (Berlin:Akademie Verlag,1993),Dirk van Laak,Der Nachlass Carl Schmitts, inDeutscbe ZeitschtiftfiirPhilosophie Vol. 42, Number 1, 1994,pp. 141-154,Paul Gottfried, TheNouvelle Ecole of Carl Schmitt, in Telos Number 72, Summer 1987, Wolfgang Schieder,Carl Schmitt und ltalien, inVierteliahrshefte fiir Zeitgeschichte heft 1, januar 1989, pp. 1-21,Reinhard Mehring, vom Umgang mitCarl Schmitt. Zur neueren Literatur, in Geschicb/e uJGeschellschajt 19, 1993,pp. 388-407,Gunter Maschke, Carl Schmitt in Europa. Bemerkungenzur italienischen, spanischen und franz6sischen Nekrologdiskussion, in DerStaat Band 25,Heft 4, 1986,pp. 575-599, Armin Mohler, Schmittistes de droite, Schmittistes de gauche, etSchmittistes etablis, in Nouvelle ecole 44 (Spring 1987), pp. 29-66, Ulrich K. Preuss, PoliticalOrder and Democracy. Carl Schmitt and his influence, inPoif101l Studies in thePhilosop ?:; oftheSciences andtheHumanities Vol. 33, 1993,pp. 15-40.

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RS / SoaalThought & Researchinterest in Schmitt's work received a remarkable renaissance, especially amongpost-Marxistsand among the different groupings of the new right, notably inGermany and France. In fact today Carl chmitt together with his old friendErnst Jiinger, have become almost mythological figures, and Schmitt is thecentral philosophical reference point for the more intellectual parts of the newradical conservatives in Continental Europe. A glance in periodicals like theGerman U lge Fndheit or the French NotllJelie ecole leaves little doubt of this.

However, one might judge the political thinking of Carl Schmitt, he - asUlrich Preuss has noted- 'could no t have gained the paradigmatic significanceif his work had lost allrelevance after the eradication of the Nazi regime or ifit ha d slumped to a mere object of Geistesgeschichte. His rise to a caseappears only understandable if his work has still some significance for uS....8However, a central question in the debate about Carl Sclunitt remains whatled him to collaborate with the Nazis in the first place? Was it a result ofambition and intellectual pride, an act of personal opportunism or does theanswer lie in the axioms of his political philosophy? In my opinion it is notpossible to point to any singlefactor which can explain Schmitt's conciliatoryat ti tude towards the Nazis. As Schmitt 's American biographer JosephBendersky has pu t it ' the reasons for his collaboration lie in a labyrinth ofpersonalinvolvement, closelyintertwined with his basic political philosophy ?Thus, i t is no t the purpose of this paper to give a complete analysis of thebackground for and the intentions contained in Schmitt's association with theNazis, but to point to one possible explanation in Schmitt interpretation anduse of one of hismajor sources of inspiration: Thomas Hobbes. In looking atSclunitt's interpretation of Hobbes Leviathan, my primary intention willbe topoint to ways in which this a) can illuminate the neo-hobbesian aspects ofSchmitt's own theory of politics and his view on the state, and b) can explainfor Sclunitt's political manoeuvring during the 1930s and his view of theNazi-state.

chmitt s interest ino esCarl Schmitfslong-term interest in Thomas Hobbes is well known and,

to anyone familiarwith the writings of Carl Schmitt, it is easilyinferred fromhis writings. Th e clearest expression of this interest is the fact that Schmittsubsequendy turned his lectures on Leviathan into a book in 1938, entitled

s Ul ri ch Preuss, Political Order and Democracy. Carl Schmitt and his Influence.. InStudies inthePhilosophy oftheSciences andtheHumanities Vol. 33, 1993, pp. 15-40, pp. 15.

9 Joseph Bendersky, The Expendable Kronjurist: Carl Schmitt and National Socialism,1933-36, in JournalofContempo17lTJ History Vol. 14, 1979, pp. 309-28, pp. 310.

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CarlSchmitt - 20th-Century Hobbesian?DerLeuatban in tier Staatslelm des Thomas Hobbes -SinnandFehlslag einespolitischenSymbols. 10

Even in the beginning of the 1930s, before his lectures on Leviathan,Schmitt's admiration for Hobbes was known. This can be seen in hiscorrespondence with Leo Strauss .' In his famous (and notorious)(1927/1932) work DerBegriJ des Politischen he had focused attention on whathe conceived as being Hobbes' central concern - his protection-obedienceaxiom - which, in a modified version, Schmitt made his own,12and in 1937 hehad published a smaller article tided DerStaat als Mediamsmus bei Hobbes undDecartes3 As Paul Gottfried has put it, Schmitt's 'association with Hobbesbecame in fact 'so firmly fixed in Schmitt's own mind that both his disciplesand his critics now take it for granted'J

Sclunitt's book on Leviathan is interes ring in several respects. Seen in it'shistorical context of 1938, after 5 years of Nazi-rule and after the attacks onSchmitt's person in 1936, DerLeuatban can be read as a critical comment to10 This firstedition waspublished by Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt AG., Harnburg-Wandsbek,1938, on the fiftieth birthday of Carl Schmit t and on the three hundred ' and f if ti ethanniversary of Hobbes' b irth . A second printing appeared in 1982 in Koln: HohenheimVerlag. The latest available edition in German came out in 1995 on Klett-Cotta; Stuttgart,with a commentary by Gunter Maschke. An English translation hasbeen published recentlyby Greenwood Press, translated by George Schwaband Erna Hilfstein, with an introductionby George Schwab, entitled TheLniathan in theStateTheory ofThomas Hobbes: meaning andfaihlreofapolitical symbol Iest Port, Connecticut& London: Greenwood Press, 1996).11 In a let ter to Schmitt dated 10 of July 1933, Leo Strauss asks for information on and arecommendation from Schmitt to participate in a 'criticaledition 0 f the works 0 f Hobbes'.Published in Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt andLeo Strauss: the hidden Dialogue (Chicago London:The University of Chicago Press, 1995).12 No foan of order, no reasonable legitimacy or legalitycan exist without protection andobedience. The protege ergo obligo is the cogito ergo sum of the state. A political theorywhich does not systematically become aware of this sentence remains an inadequatefragment. Hobbes designated this (at the end of his English edition of 1651, P: 396) as thetrue purpose of his Leviathan, to instill in man once again the mutual relation betweenProtection and Obedience; human nature as well as divine right demands its inviolableobservation . In CarlSchmittThe Concept ofthePolitical (Chicago & London: The University ofChicago Press, 1996), pp. 5 Schmitt published an early version of his article in 1927 inArchivflir Soi}alwissenschajt lind Soiialpolitik Band 58, Heft 1 (1927), pp. 1-33. The Englishtranslation is based on the expanded monographic edition that was published in 1932 byDuncker& Humblot, Berlin.13 This appeared in Archiv fur Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, vol 30, pp. 622-32 It appearsinan English translationas an appendix in TheLeviathan inthe state theory ofThomas Hobbes. Seenote 10.14 Paul Edward Gottfried, Carl Schmitt. Politics and Theory (New York & Westport,Connecticut& London: Greenwood Press, 1990), pp. 39.

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destruction the Hobbesian state was marked by the development of theconcepts of nght and law, and the general legalisation of the constitutionalstate, that transformed the state into 'a positive system of legality'. Now thestate had been robbed of any substantive content of its own and

j u r i s p m ~ e n c e .was longer a personal judge pronouncing decisions, bu t amecharusm dispensing roles: 'The Legis lator humanus became a rnachinalegislatoria'.23

arlSchmitt - 20th Century Hobbesian?

As Gottfried has observed Schmitt's interpretations of Hobbes had littlediscernible impact beyond his own followers on the way other scholars readHob?es. In his time the best-known German study of Hobbes was the one byFerdinand Tonnies, He conceived Hobbes as a forerunner of the modemliberal state, i n f l u e ~ c e d by the new sciences of the seventeenth century.

o n t r ~ .to Schmi tt , Tonnies related Hobbes' politica l thought s to thematerialistic prenuses developed in Hobbes physics and anthropology andsaw Hob?es as a proponent of a sovereign regime based on popular consentTo Tonnies, Hobbes viewed civil society as an artificial constructionmade forthe ~ r ~ t e c t i o n individuals. This was brought into existence through the ~ p l i ~ t or e ~ p l i ~ l t consent of allwho subjected themselves to a sovereign.>'Tonrues m a m t a m ~ d t h ~ t both Hobbes' De Homine and De Corporepresented an atorrusnc view of human nature, which is ref lected in the viewon social ~ u e s t i o n s in Leviathan. This source of his political thinking madeHobbes view on the s tate, as presented in Elements of (1640), De Cive

1 6 4 ~ eng.ed) Leuaihan (1651), points of entr y to modem liberaldoctnnes, according to Tonnies.

Tonnies ' interpretat ion became paradigmatic for the views of otherscholars on Hobbes. In his famous comments on Schmitt's Begriifdes PolitischenLeo S t r a ~ s s r e f e r r e ~ to Tonnies in criticising Schmitt's appeal to a Hobbesian,bu t non-liberal political tradition- .As in the case of Tonnies, Strauss viewedHobbes as the 'founding father of liberalism', and he maintained that it wasimpossible to provide a critique of liberalism on the basis of his work that'moves beyond a liberal horizon'. In the works of both- Tonnies and StraussHobbes reduced the function of govemment to the protection of 'naked lif

power. nthe Jewish-Christian t r ~ t i o n this s ~ b o l had always been a hatefulimage, something, which according to Schmitt, Hobbes was no t awareUnintentionally, the substance of the modem s ~ t e as represented byimage, was therefore misunderstood in the centunes to follow, as somethingabnormal and contrary to nature.

Hobbes' secondmajor mistake was that he distinguished b e t w ~ e n : ~ t h :and confess ion and declared the state neutral with respect to its clttz:ensreligious beliefs C'confession ). nSchmitt's o p i n i o ~ this seno,usconsequences, in that the space Hobbes reserved p n v a ~ religious ~ e l i e fbecame the gateway for the subjectivity of bourgeois conscience and p n v a ~opinion. A gateway throughwhich these p h e n ? m e ~ a gradually unfolded their,subversive forces. History had shown that this pnvate s p ~ e r e had ~ x t e n d ~ dinto the bourgeois public sphe re and, via the aut honty legJ-slate 10parliament, bourgeois society had f i n ~ y overthrown the L e V l a ~ a n nLsuaibanSchmittshows this degeneratlon of the state by c o n ~ t r u c w : g an annSemitic genealogy of the enemies of L e v i a t h ~ He started with Spmoza who(as a Jew) approached religion from the outside.and opened up a d a n g e ~ u sbreach for individual freedom of thought This genealogy continues WithMoses Mendelsohn, the Rosicrucians, the freemasons and illuminates o ~ e r sof the late eighteenth century, and ends with the 'emancipated' . J e ~ s ; Heme,Borne and Marx.21 The result of this process had been a neutralisatl?nHobbesian state, turning it f rom a myth into a machine. As the s u b J e ~ t l V l ~ e sproliferated and gained in power they d e m a n d ~ d that the state be objective.The result of this would bethe complete neutrality of the state.

Schmitt maintained that to Hobbes there had been three Leviathans: themythical monster, the representative person and the machine:

In the forefront stands conspicuously the notorious mythical leviathan, that hasassimilatedgod,man, nim l and machine. Next to it.servesa juristicallyconstructedcovenant to explain the appearance of one sovereign person brought a b o ~ t by .representation. In addition,Hobbes transfers - and that seems to me to be gtst ofhis philosophy of state_the Cartesian c o n c e p ~ n of man as II ~ e c h a r u s m thII soulonto the hugeman t he s ta te, made by him into a machine animated by thesovereign-representativeperson.22

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However 'in the eighteenth century the leviathan as m a r z ~ J omo thegodlike sovereign person of the state, was destroyed.from within', ,to ~increasingextent the state was perceived as a mechamsm and a machine. This

21 Carl Schmitt The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. lvleaning and Failure of aPolitical ym ol


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HobbesRelevance toSchmitt

b ~ ~ e e ~ the ~ o r a l ,doctrines in Leviathan and modem technologicalcivilisanon. Tills reading of Hobbes is clearly marked by Schmitt 's owncontempt for the unconcrete, impersonal and 'soulless' functionalism ofm o d e ~ p o w e ~ structures. Although Schmittdoes not deny that Hobbes didnot reject Idea of an efficient administration, he stresses that Hobbes setout to d e V 1 ~ ~ for sovereigns 'those theorems that might enable them to makeprope.f decisions for their peoples'. He did not envision a mechanised worldUl.which r e r s o n ~ decisions would give way to 'administrativeacts that call tomind t?e alternating red and green flashes of traffic signals .29 In the centuriesfollowmg ~ o b b e s the Hobbesian state had lost it relation to human authority,however, this development had been against Hobbes will.

CarlSchlnitt - 20th-Century Hobbesian]

.The centrality of and intentions behind Sduni tt 's 1938 work onLeviathan have been viewed differently by his various commentators as hasthe n a ~ of Schmitt's interpretation of Hobbes. Like most of Schmitts work

J.: t ttlthun possesses a form of argumentation which points in manyd i ~ c n o n s , and leaves the reader in doubt as to what Sdunitt reallymeant. Inthis.respect Helmut Rumph was correct when he noted that DerLeuatban can.Ulterpreted as a critique of the totalitarian system and as 'a totalitariancntique of Hobbes' , which makes it difficult to conclude where Sdunittactually s t ~ Steven Holmes in a highly criticalessay on Schmitt notedthat Schmitt himself after the war tried to impose the view that his book on

H o b . b ~ s was.'harmlessly liberal in spirit', thereby trying to hide a strongly antiSemitic ,senes of arguments and cover ing up his embarrassing Nazisympathies.' George Schwab, DerLeviathan s English translator and a highlyrespected commentator of Schmitt (Schwab's book The Challenge of the

~ X c e p t i o ~ l is considered one of the standard works on Schmitt's political ideasm ~ g l i s h ) : argues on the other hand that Schmitt's book on Hobbes shows

~ l u n i t t was undoubtedly closer to an authoritarian fonn of bourgeoisliberalism than to Hiderian Nazism.'32

Instead Schmitt tries to find a traditionalist worldview behind Hobbes'scientific political theory, and denies any kind of necessary correspondence

In his work in exile from 1936, The Political Phi osopf y ofThomas Hobbes: ItsBasis and Genesis Strauss attacked Hobbes for disavowing the classicalpoliticalphilosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Unlike these Hobbes had no interest in theood and the Just. Combining Epicurean sensualism and the materialistphilosophy of Lucretius, Hobbes ended up with an ego-centred ethic mergedwith a materialist science. The atomistic view of society of political liberalismand its focus on individual material interest was a by-product of thisHobbesian Synthesis. ?

Schmitt did no t deny that Hobbes was inspi red by the intellectualdiscoveries of his time, and drew on the new sciences of physics, anatomy andadvanced mathematics. ut Schmitt was defending Hobbes agdinst those whowould interpret him 'superficially' - as stricdy a 'rationalist, mechanist,sensualist, individualist'28. In Schmitt's opinion, Hobbes remained a reluctantinnovator. The degree to which Hobbes served polit ical modernism wasdespite himselfand against his intentions. Thus, Schmitt denied that any kindof constitutionalism or idea of individual freedom was intended by Hobbes.

Hobbes, to a much higherdegree thanBacon, for example,is the.author of the ofcivilization. Bythis veryfact he isthe founder of liberalism. The right to the seeunng ofl ifepure and simple- and this r ight sums up Hobbes's natural r ight - has fully thecharacter of an inalienable human right, that is, of an individual's claim that takesprecedenceover the stateanddetermines itspurpose and itslimits;Hobbes's foundationfor the natural-rightclaim to the securingof life pure ,and simplesets the path thewhole systemof human rights in the sense of liberalism, if his foundation does notactually makesucha course necessary.

and thereby individualised the entire system of natural rights. In his commentsto Begriff des Politischen, Strauss writes:MARS Social Thought Research

26 Ibid., pp. 90-91.27 Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy o ThomasHobbes: Its Basisand Genesis (Chicago: ChicagoUniversity Press, 1952), pp. 1-5, 30-43. Here from Gottfried, Carl Schmitt. Politics and Theory(New York & Westport, Connecticut & London: Greenwood Press, 1990), pp. 41. As hasbeen pointed out by several commentators, Strauss' hostile attacks on Hobbes can be seen asa critical confrontation with Schmitt. Strauss completed his book after Sclunitt had joinedthe nazi party in May 1933. In Strauss' communication with Schmitt before this happened, amuch more favourable picture of Hobbes is drawn. In fact an earlier draf t of Strauss workwas pre sented to Schmitt , who l iked i t and wrote a convinc ing recommendat ion for aRockefeller Foundation Grant. It is, thus, very likely that Strauss' later attempt to underlinethe modernist, naturalist and antisocial aspects of Hobbes' work was written to criticise hisformer mentor.28 Carl Schmitt, The Leviathanin the Stote Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Faihm of aPolitical Symbol. (Westport,Connecticut London: Greenwood Press, 1996), pp. 11.

9 Here from Gottfried, Carl Schmitt. Politics and Theory (New York Westport & L d 'Greenwood Press, 1990), pp. 48. - on on.

Helmut R u m ~ h Schmittu r Thomas Hobbes. ldeeUe BeiJehungen un aktueUe Bedeutung mitemer bhandlunguber: DIeFriihsr.hriften CarlSchmitts (Berlin:Duncker Hu bl t 1972'\ 68 hPp3E glStevden Holmes, h e ~ 1 l O t O Y o ntiliberalism (Cambridge, Massachusetts & Londonn a n : Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 50. . ,3 From SC?wab's in,troduction to Carl Schmitt The Leviathan in the State Theory o ThomasHp obbes. MeamngandFailure o a Political Symbol(Westport, Connecticut London: Greenwoodress, 1996), pp. XXI.

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To Schwab Schmitt's first major essay in the Third Reich Staat Belt egung,r rJik DieDrngliedenlllg derpolitischen Einheit 44 published in 1933, shows that hewas still consistent with his pre-1933 writing in that it is posits 'state beforemovement', thereby arguing against the Nazi-movement's take-over of thestate. However, as Schwab admits, Schmitt 'muddled the question of whoposses the monopoly of the political...when he declared that the politicalemanated from the movementrather that from the state', and 'in asserting thatthe leaders of the s tate are also the leaders of the movement'.f Already inMay Schmitt, however, returned to an insistence on the supremacy ofthe state Staatsgtfiige undZusammenbmch des :lJt eiten Reiches: DerSieg s BUrgersiiber den Soldate11,46 by pointing out the Reichswehr's status as the pillar of thestate; and by not mentioning Hitler's political brown shirt anny. Shortly afterthis publication Schmitt published another work, Ober die drei .Arten desRechswissenJchiftlichen Denkf 11s,47 in which he argued for a legal order based oninstitutions to which individuals would belong depending on theirprofessional, business or political careers. Although Schmitt added that thistype of legal order could not be understood outside the context of nationalsocialism, Schwab argues that Schmitt 'by postulating a grassroots form ofpolitica11egitimacy....implicitly expressed his reservation about one-man ruleand his apparent belief that a legal order based on institutional justice had agreater chance of surviving upheavals than other political systems do. 48

Carl Schmitt - 20th-Century Hobbesian?

Thus, it is Schwab's op inion that Der Lsuadian was a return to a10bbesian view of. the s t a t e ~ which he more or less indirectly had presentedU the above mentioned articles from the firs t two years of Nazi-rule andwhich had dominated his Weimarwritings.

When Schmitt to his own great surprise,42 was invited to participate inthe Nazi-administration in April 193343 and was later was asked by Goring tojoin the Prussian StateCoWlcil he - m i s t a k ~ n l y in ~ w a b s view- t h o ~ g h t itpossible to help forge the Third Reich into this ~ d e ~ of ..a mearungfulqualitativestate. It wasthuswith a vision,not a totalitanan FUhrerstate, butof a strong, neutral and authoritarian state a c ~ g for the ~ a t e r thatSchmitt entered the Third Reich. When he real ised that this was a mistake,and that the Nazi-regime was rapidly developing into a totalitarian one-partyquantitativestate, not fulfilling the p r o t e c t i o n - o . ~ d i e n c e axiomof ~ ~ b b e s heby maintaining his pre-1933 view on state l e ~ t u n a c y became a cnnc of theNazi-rule.

argumentation he proposed banning political ~ a r t i e s that a n t i n : p ~ b l i ~ a npolitical programmes and proposed a b a n d o ~ g the ~ t l n a l d i s ~ c t l O nbetween the state and society in favour of a tnple construction. According tothis the state would be designated as the pol itical part , the public s p h e ~ e . asneither stricdy political nor stricdy private, and society the . n o n - p o l i ~ c a lpart.40 'Thisidea centred on the creationof an upper house which ~ r g a r u s e dinterests such as industry and agriculture, as well as the profeSSions andvocational groups, would be represented. As e n v i s i o n e ~ by S c ~ t t in 1932this body would not supersede the lower house of the liberal parliament, butwould complement it According to Schmitt in this c o n ~ t r u c t 'a stroog statewould be in a position to endow the second house with presngeauthority necessary for the men...to be freed from the allegiance to ~ e u :interes ts and would dare.. .to subject themselves to a consensual decisionwithout the fear of being chased ou t by their discontented bosses'.

AtIARS/SociaL Thought & Research

After the attacks on Schmitt's person in 1936 he realised that his past wastoo c o m p ~ ~ s i n g and that his hopes for the new sta te had been terriblywrong. Realising the nature of the Nazi-state and its danger to his own person

40 Carl Schmitt , Starker Staat un gesunde Wirlschojt pp. 89-90. Here from S c ~ w a b sintroduction to. Carl Schmitt The Leviathan in the State Theory o Thomas Hobbes Meamng andFailure o a PoliticalSymbol (Westport, Connecticut London: Greenwood Press, 1996), pp.xu.41 Carl Schmitt, StarkerStaat undgesrmde If irtschaft pp. 9 Here form S c h ~ a b s i n t r ~ d u c t i o nto Carl Schmitt , The Leviathan in the State Theory o Thomas Hobbes. Meamng a n d ~ a t l u r e o aPoliticalSymbol (Westport, Connecticut& London: Greenwood Press, 1996),pp. X111.42 As both Schwab and Bendersky have pointed out S c h m i ~ was a m a r k ~ d man when heentered the Third Reich. He was a knownCatholic, a close friend to Marxists and Jewshad dedicated his Verfassungslehre (1928) to his Jewish friend.Fritz Eisler), he was twicemarried to Slavs and he had never joined the racist arguments against Jews or others.

44 Carl Schmitt, Staat Bnvegzm Volk Die Dreigliedming tierpolitischen Einheit (Hamburg:Hanseatissche VerlagsanstaltAG, 1933).45 S ~ h w a b s introduction to Carl Schmitt The Lniathan in the State Theory o Thomas Hobbes.Meamng and Failure o a PoliticalSymbol (Westport, Connecticut London: Greenwood Press,1996),pp. xv.46 Carl Schmitt, Stoatsgeftige und Zusammenbmch des zweiten Reiches:Der Sieg desBiitgers iiberdenSoldaten (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934).47 Carl Schmitt, Ober die drei.Arten desRechswissmschafllichen enkms(Hamburg: HanseatischeVerlagsanstalt, 1934.

43 In Apr il 1933 Schmi tt was inv it ed to join a commiss ion working on a law empoweringHitler to appoint commissioners to oversee state governments.

48 Schwab's introduction to Carl Schmitt The Leviathan in the State Theoryo Thomas Hobbes(Westport& London: Greenwood Press, 1996),pp. xvii.19


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Secondly, Schmittdid not only legitimate his strong state by reference toHobbes protection-obedience axioms. Schmitt's vision of a the new s tr ongstate was also built on an organic vision that had much more communitarian,volkisch, and excludingelements attached to it To Sclunitt a major problemwith the modem liberal constitutional state was its inability to protectitselfinsituations of exception, as in Weimar Germany, Tills problem came from itsglorification of discussion and compromise (institutionalised in theparliament) at the expense of decision. Schmitt not only refuted this form ofgovernment with reference to its inability to govern, bu t also by arguing that ithad not hing to do with democracy. To Schmitt - whose con cept ofdemocracy was essentially Rousseauian - democracy is characterised by theidentity between ruler and ruled, not by liberty, pluralism and discussion. ToSchmitt the task was, therefore, to create a new decisionist state that derivedit 's legi timacy from its funct ion as an organic expression of the nationalcommunity, something no t very far from the Nazi-states volkisch image ofitself In Schmitt view this organic nature was to be c re ated t hro ugh aexcluding cultural relativism that rejected universal moral principles of rightand wrong as guidel ines for pol itics , and was build on a) a homogenisedpeople, and b) the ident if icat ion of an (external) enemy. Only if thesepremises were obtained was the qualitative total state able to exist This hadbeen the argument in ie geistesges hi htli he Lage des heutigen Parlamentorismus 1923):

In this r espect Schmi tt opt ed for a greater kind of obedience thanHobbes, and therefore comes closer to a totalitarian critique of Hobbes thanto a ' const itu ti ona l reading' as i ndi ca ted by Schwab. It seems to me thatSchmitt had not completely left this view on the state by 1938.

arlSchmitt - 2 th Century Hobbesian?

The sta te as the decisive poli tical ent ity possesses an enormouspower: the possibility of waging war and thereby publicly disposingof the lives of men. The jus belli contains such a disposition. Itimplies a doubl e possibility: the right to demand from its ownmembers the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill enernies.P

Firstly, Schwab's statement that Schmitt came close to underlining apriority of protection over obedience, seems suspect in light of the fact thatSchmittin Begrijfes Politisdie had stated that the state had the right to demandthe lives of its citizens:

Comments on Schwab

he returned to Hobbes' axiomsof obedience and protection and noted that 'ifblizati be 9protection ceases the state too ceases and every 0 g a t l ~ 0 Y c e ~ e sSchwab suggests that Schmitt even came ~ o s e to a constitutional readingHobbes in his s ta tement that 'The specific lawstate elements of Hobbestheory of state and jurisprudence were a l m o s ~ a l w a ~ s ~ s j u d g e d 5 0 underlined a priority of protection over obedience his statement itwould be a peculiar philosophy of state, if its entire chain of thought consistedonly of propelling the poor hwnan beings from ~ t t e r fear of the state ofnature only into the similarly total fear of a dominion by. :Nl010ch .or by aGolem'A' With reference to this Schwab argues that Sclunitt's expenence ofthe one-party 55 state led him finally to understand and appreciate Hobbesindividualism. 'Thisleads Schwab to the conclusion that

49 Ibid., pp. xviii.

Schwab's interpretation of Schmitt's reading of Hobbes in many respectsmakes sense. Schwab's insistence that Schmitt's book on Leviathan to a verylarge degree should be understood as a response to the historicalcircumstances in which it came about is obviously important In this way i tseems correct to read erLeuathan as a critical remark on the Nazi-state, andasa productof Schmitt's own growingfears of and disappointment in its 'true'nature. However, Schwab's analysis seems problematic in its a tt empt toidentify the Hobbesian elements of Schmitt's own concept of a qualitativetotal state, and in its suggestion that Schmitt was coming close to aconstitutional reading of Hobbes. In this way it seems to'me that Schwab inhis reading of Schmitt ends up by underestimating a series of much morecommunitarian and organic elements in Schmitt 's vision of a new state elements that are less Hobbesian in nature. I shall indicate three problemshere:

Carl Schmitt wasundoubtedly closer to an authoritarian form of bourgeois liberalismthan to Hitlerian Nazism. The Schmitt whose writings were published in 1938is moreWeimarind ividualistthanNazi communitarian,more praisingofHobbes asa fatherof astrong liberal state than asone who foanulated a justification for the e ~ e ~ n c e of theHitlerian one-party state. It is true that Schmitt'sconcept of the qualitative total stateobligated citizens to obey the legallyconstituted authority, but their.obediencepredicated on their being provided with security of state....What r m ins of Sdunitt'sstate theory is not totalitarianin nature but authoritarian in foan and content, a theorythat he developed before Hitler'squest of power.5

rlRS SociaL Thought Research

5 Ibid.,pp. xix. The belief in parliamentarism, in governmentby discussion, belongs to the intellectualworld of liberalism.It does not belong to democracy...Every actual demo r y rests on51 Ibid, pp. xix.52 Ibid., pp. xxi-xxii.

53 Carl Schmitt, The Concept thePolitical (Chicago London: The University of ChicagoPress, 1996),pp. 46.

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CarlSchmitt - 20th Centllry Hobbesian?whenit is decided upon, there willbe no further discussion. In other words inpolitics it is more important that decisions aremade, than how they are made.In Schmitt's decisionism the political decisions are neither bound from belowby the opinion of the citizens or from above by the norms of the laws.

From this line of argument's i t is not surprising that Schmitt had noproblems in supporting the use of presidential power WIder Article 48 in theWeimar constitution, but neither is it clear why he should have beenfundamentally sceptical towards the constitutional institutionalisation of thestrong man, expressed the Enabling Act of 1933. On the one hand Schmitt's1932 publication Lega/itat und Legitimitat that d ef ended the use of the

e m e r ~ n y law.s under art icle 48, and Schmit t's proposal to ban the antirepublican parties s?ortly.before Hitler's take over, canbe seen as an attemptto save the repub lic, which would indicate that Schmitt wan ted a kind ofpresidential dictatorship, but not a Fuhrer state. Most of Schmitt's Weimarwritings points to this conclusion, as Schwab and others have rightfully stated.On the other hand, Schmitt's notorious article De r FUhrer schiitzt das Recht(1934), which was pub lished after the n ight of the long knives in whichRohm's SA was erased and Schmitt 's personal friend Kurt von Schleicherkilled, indicates that Schmitt was willing to sacrifice the republic in favour ofstrong man. this article Schmitt was defending the use of (illegal)violence by asserting that the FUhrer had the right in moments of extremedanger to the n ~ t i o n to act.as the supreme judge;distinguishing friend fromenemy, appropnate measures.v Although this article may have eenwotten U1 an attempt to please the new rulers, that is from opportunism,rt only be exp la ined in this way. As G.L. Ulmen has pointed ou tSchmitt's ~ u p p o r t f strong presidential ruler and his later temporal supportof the FUhrer p n n ~ p (for what ever reasons), reveals a general distrusttowards the anonyrruty of the power structures of the modem state. Thisdistrust can also be found in the thoughts of MaxWeber.7 To both Schmittand Weber power remained personalised and concrete bu t in contrast toWeber,it seems that Schmitt thoughtit possible to recreate in the modem eraa personalised power that rested upon the charisma of a national leader. Itseems to me that this b e l i e ~ could have been a crucial factor in his support of

b ~ t h the of p r e s l d ~ t ~ decrees and for Schmitt 's later support of theFUhrer pnnclp at the beguuungof the Nazi reign.

56 Carl Schmitt, Der Fuhrer s C ~ i i t i s Recht in Positionen lind Begri.ffe (Berlin: Duncker Humblot 1994) pp. 227-232. This article was originally published in Deutsche Jllristen Zeihmg 1August 1934, Band 39, Heft 15, pp. 945-950. .

the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will be treated e ~ u l l yDemocracy requires, therefore, first homogenei ty and second - the need ans es -elimination or eradication 0 f heterogeneity.54Thus, to Schmitt the foundation of a decisionist state does no t only lie in

the concentration of power in the state, bu t rests also on a cultural andpolitically exclusive practice of defining who belongs to the friends and whoto the enemies (here alsolies the philosophical background for Schmitt s antiSemitism, which is based on culture and not on race). One could say thatSchmitthere moves beyond Hobbes in thathe reserves less space for culturaldiversity (e.g. Schmitt's critique of Hobbes' distinction between faith andconfession ) Bynot paying attention to this aspect of Schmitt's concept ofthe state , one could accuse Schwab of making Schmitt less communitarianand more individualistic than he actually was.

Finally, I will be slightly sceptical of Schwab's a ttempt to prove thatSchmitt 'expressed reservations about one-man rule'..and held the 'belief that alegal order based on institutional justice had a greater chance of survivingupheavals than any other systems do .55 As Schwab ~ o r r e c d y points out. it i spossible to get this impression in reading Uber i r i Arlen sRechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens. In this respect one can agree with Schwab inthat Ober die reiArten was an indirect criticism or warning against the dangersof the FUhrer cult However one must also pay attention to Schmitt's Weimarcritique of constitutionalism to understand where Schmitt really stood in thequestion of the FUhrer Princip. It seems me thatSchmitt's 1934 warning inOber i drei .Arten was more a warning against the concrete FUhrer thanagainst the idea of a strong man as such, and that the answer Schmitt'sattitude on this point lies in his cri ti que of constitutionalism, as it wasexpressed in his famous rejection of Hans Kelsen's legal-normativism duringthe 1920s.

In Politische Theologie from 1922 Schmitt had criticised the bourgeoisiesociety's unwarranted belief in the legal arrangements of the state and HansKelsen's idea that an all-embracing legislation would guarantee the stability ofthe state. Schmitt's point was that laws cannot anticipate all eventualities, theunpredi ct abl e si tuat ion - the except ion - cou ld by def initi on never bepredicted. nus means that the sovereign authority (the state) cannot alwaysbe restricted by legal norms. Only an active state - no t processual standards can, through its leaders, act efficiently under changing circumstances. Thisway of thinking represents a kind of rule scepticism; the validity of a politicaldecision is established 'unabhangig von der Richtigkeit ihres Inhaltes', and

i\ttARS Social Thought Research

54 Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary D e m o c r a ~ (Cambridge, Massachussets, andLondon England: TheMIT Press, 1985), pp. 8-9.55 Ibid., pp. xvii.

57 For an analysis of the relationship between Weber and Schmitt se GL VIm P EJ: LM h . . en, OU S fJere rwert. Eine Studie iiber x l ~ e b e r lind Carl Schmitt (Weinheim' VCH Acta Hum .1991). aruora,

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60 Ibid., pp. 622

CarlSchmitt - 20th-Century Hobbesian??emgs once confronted with theprospect of their own dangerousnesswill be terrifiedinto the armsof authority.60In the v i ~ w of ~ c ~ r m i c k Schmitt, on the eve of the Weimar collapse,sought to retneve this primal source of political order in order 'to make realthe terror of what is and what might be so as to strengthen the existing

order .61 wanted t ~ ~ l a b o r a t e on Hobbes' view of humanity and revive thefear that IS characteristic m a n ~ natural condition in three ways: 1) byd e m o n s ~ t m g the substantive a f f i n i ~ between his conceptof the politicalandHobbes state n a ~ r e . 2) by making dear the ever-present possibilityof a to that s l ~ n o n m the form of civil war, and 3) by convincingindividuals - partisans and nonpartisans alike - that only a state with a

m o n ~ p o l y on de?sions regarding what is political can guarantee peace ands e c ~ t y . 6 2 Schmitt.wanted the citizens of Weimar to ' reaffirm the pact thatdelivers .hwnan. b e ~ g s . ?u t of the s ~ t e of nature and into civil society bytransfemng ~ e t r illegttm,mtely .exerosed subjectivity regarding friend and

e n ~ ~ y back into the s ~ t e 63 This had been the central argument in Begriff sPolitzschen w ~ e r e noted: 'To the state as an essentially political entitybelongs the JUS belli, i.e., the real possibility of deciding in a concrete situationupon the enemy and the abilityto fight him with the power emanating fromthe entity. 64

~ c o ~ ~ s observations on this relation between myth and fear in~ t t s . s ~ e m s to me to.be very important, in that it does not only

e x p ~ m the histonasm and medieval outlook in Schmitt interpretation ofLeuiU han. It a 1 s ~ becomes .a.way of explaining what Schmitt reallywanted toobtain by reducing the political to the antagonistic distinction between friend

~ n e m y as he did in ~ g r i f f s ~ o ~ t i s c h e n . As Leo Strauss had already noted his c o m m e n ~ .on Bw: s Polia:chen Schmitt's definition of the politicalwas so antagomsnc that It looked like Hobbes' state of nature: 'In Schmitt'stenninology...the status naturalis is the genuinely political status'...Schmittrestores the Hobbesian concept of the state of nature to a place of honor. 65

Ibid., pp.62S.62 Ibid., pp. 623.63 Ibid., pp.625.

64 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of thePolitical (Chicago London: The University of ChicagoPress, 1996), pp. 45. Here from John P. McConnick Fear Technology and the State625. , , pp.

6 Leo Strauss.,.Notes Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, in Carl Schmitt TheConcept hePolitical (Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996),pp. 90.

Schmitt recognizes,as did Hobbes, that by frightening men onecan best instill inthemthat principle- the cognito ergo sum of the state - protego ergoobligo (Conceptof the Political,pp. 52). In other words, fearis the source of politicalorder. Human

The way Schmitt does this is by reading Hobbes historically. UnlikeTonnies and Strauss,Schmitt focuses on the historical circumstances as thekey to Hobbe's Leviathan. According to Schmitt, Hobbes new science ofpolitics should be understood in the context of the religious wars caused bythe ProtestantReformation and the Catholic Counter reformation and theEnglish constitutional and social struggles that ravaged seventeenth centuryEngland. To Schmitt a sentence like'For covenants withoutthe sword are butwords and of no strength to secure a man at all'showed the fear of civil warthat occasioned Hobbes Leviathan. By insisting on the English civil wars asthe historical background for Leuathan Schmitt wanted to show that Hobbesutmost concern in Imathan was not to formulate a scientific theory ofpolitics, but to warn that the state of nature really existed. No t s factualhistoricalpast, but as a politicallypossible event, threatening anyweak state atany time.As Schmitt had stated in BegriJ s Politischen any political theory hasto build on t s assumption, and accordinglyought to have the preservation oforder asa main goal.AsHobbes had argued in Leuaiban and Schmitt in Begriff s Po/itischen the evil nature of man made it necessary to acknowledge theneed for fear in upholding authority. McConnick has pointed to this aspect

In a brilliant essay on the reception of Hobbes by Schmitt and Strauss,John P. McCormick has focused attention to the relationship betweentechnology and myth in Schmitt' s reading of Hobbes. \Vhen Schmittemphasised that Hobbes' Leviathan had not only been a machine, but also amythical monster and a representative person, it, according to MeConnick,had to do with his own theory of politics and the state, as presented in BegriJ

s Po/itischen. To McCormick Schmitt's Begriff s Po/itischen was an 'attempt torefound the state solelyon it's vital ,and inevitably mythic, elementof fear,divorcing it from the neutralising elements of science and technology'.58 Inother words, Schmitt (as well as Strauss) tried to 'reformulate' Hobbes as anintellectual foundation of the state, by freeing 'it from the elements thatHobbes himself had found necessary to employ to construct a state on thisfoundation - natural science and technology'.59

MARS/Social Thought ResearchMcConnick s interpretationSchmitt and the n for myth and fear

2459 Ibid., pp. 620.

58 John P. McConnick, Fear Technology and the State In Political Theory Vol. 22 No 4November1994.pp. 619-652,pp. 645.

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Firstly, Schmitt was in a way trying to overcome the historicaldevelopment that he himself had described, namely the erosion of thesovereign state, thereby reversing history. Although Schmitt on severaloccasions, in radical historicist tenus, argued that political cultures andtheologies were bound to specific epochs, and could not beapplied to others,his own preference for a traditional and authoritarian power structure - thatignored the reflexivity of the enlightenment and the bourgeois revolutions did not harmonise with his view that the present was not reducible to the past.

arl chlnitt - 20th Cel1tury Hobbesian?foundation of a new political order it is strikinghow problematic Schmitt'sproject reallywas. As Gottfried has pointed out Schmitt's reading of Hobbeswas the result 'not of isolated research on a single figurebut from an overviewof Western political theory and statecraft from the Middle Ages on. Schmittthought that he stood at the end of the epoch of sovereign states, an epochthat Hobbes both described and justified.'68 The combination of civil anarchyand dernystified authority signalled this erosion of sovereignty. Thus, asGottfried has put it, 'Schmitt returned to Hobbes, hoping to grasp the fatalf law that overtook the sovereign state in recent history .69 Obviously theproblems in this project were immense.

Secondly, it is a question whether Hobbes political philosophy in itselfharmonised with Schmitt's concept of the political. Where Hobbes hadunintentio.nallypaved the way for the 'desacralisation'of modem politicallifethrough his elements of scientificmaterialism, Schmitttried to 'resacralise' thepoliticalby distancing himself from the liberals of his age. Schmitt's Begriif desPolitischen presented the political as being at the same time intrinsically

c o n ~ c t u ~ e x i s t e n t i ~ y m ~ ~ g f u 1 in that it is the only activity thatreqwres individuals to risk their lives as members of a community. In this~ e s p e c t ~ o v e d beyond Hobbes, who did not require the risking ofl i ~ e m his.protecllon-obedience axiom. In this way one could, as Leo Straussdid, question whether this sacrificialview of the politicalwas congruent withSchmitt's admiration for Hobbes. Schmitt never answered Strauss on thispoint.

I t seems to me that one of the reasons behind Schmitt's acceptance andtemporal support of the Nazi-regime also had to do with this awareness ofmyth. He saw in the Nazi movement a c o m b i n ~ t i o n of fear myth thatcould strengthen the weak German state. Schmitt, however, misjudged thepower of Hider and his movement, as did many other of the G e ~ a nconservatives. Instead of delivering a mythical aspect to the state, Hiderover took the state and created his own violent total quantitative state,disregarding the necessary balance between protection and obedience. Byreturning to Hobbes, Schmitt criticised this development.

Not surprisinglySchmitt's view on the nature of politics in this way to manyrepresents an aestheticization of conflict Many critical commentator:' ofSchmitt have, because of this, characterised Schmitt as an archetypal Wetrnarexponent of political e> l'ressionism , placing him among c o n s e r v ~ t i ~ erevolutionaries like ErnstJiinger. In the words of Richard Wolin, Sclunitt .1Sthus making an aesthetisation of conflict, violence, and death 'as ends Uthemselves.'66 Although this may be true in the case of Jiinger who l o o ~ e d atwar asa kind of process of catharsis, it is not true in the case of Schmitt. AsMcConnick rightly has pointed out, 'Schmitt seeks to make the threat ofconflict _of war - felt and feared no t as an end in itself..but rather so as tomake war's outbreak all the more unlikely domestically, and it's prosecutionmore easily facilitated abroad.v? In other words c ~ ~ s intention ofaestheticizing conflict had a quite different purpose. Pointing to J:I0bbes,Schmitt, in his own mind, was trying to create the fear of conflict, t?atHobbes had showed was a necessary condition for upholding state authootyIn this way Schmitt's Begriff s Politischen was not only an attempt to d e s ~ r i b erealities as Schmitt saw them. It was in i tself an attempt to re-establish amythical framework for the State.This awareness of the importance of mythwas not something Sclunitt only borrowed from Ho?bes, also fromGeorge Sorel, who had made this insight the foundation of his t h ~ o r y ofrevolution. \Vhere Sorel had made the myth of the general strike thefoundation of revolution, Schmittmade the myth of conflict the foundationof the state;that is in order to preventthe revolutionl

j\JtARS SociaL Thought Research

oncluding emarksWhen one looks at Schmitt's interpretation of Hobbes' Leviathan and

Schmitt's own attempt to construct a critique of liberalism that could be a

F u ~ e n n o ~ . S c h m i t t s attempt to establish a decisionist concept of thepolitical m which the constitutional state is seen as a problem, also isproblematic in relation to Hobbes. As Habennas has noted 'Thisscenario... o ~ p l e t e l y disregards the fact that from the beginning Hobbes had

d e v ~ ~ o p e d his cC?ncept of sovereignty in connection with the development ofpositive law. In terms of its very concept, positive law requires a political66 Richard Wolin, The Conservative Revolutionary Habitus and the Aesthetics of Horror, inPolitico/Theory Vol.20, No 3 August 1992,pp. 424-447. 68 Paul Gottfried, arl Schmitt. Politics and Theory (New York Westport, Connecticut &London: Greenwood Press, 1990 , pp. 50.67 John P. McCormick, Fear, Technology, and the State, In Political Theory Vol. 22 No 4November1994. pp. 626. 69 Ibid.,pp. 50.

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Carl Schmitt. the Hobbesian of the 20th Century_Jacob Als Thomsen

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Transcript of Carl Schmitt. the Hobbesian of the 20th Century_Jacob Als Thomsen