Review: Paul Gottfried’s brilliant new work elucidates Schmitt’s view of the state. As Gottfried stresses, Schmitt rejected the pluralism of
Harold Laski, who saw the state as but one of many groups within
society. This anti-political view ignored the essence of the state, its
monopoly of coercive power.
Schmitt maintained that liberals overemphasized legality: their
quest for a precisely organized system oflegal rules was a futile effort to avoid political decision. Thus, Hans Kelsen, the leading liberal jurist of the German-speaking world and Schmitt’s arch-rival, argued that every legal system stems from a basic rule or Grundnorm. From the basic rule, the entire legal system can be logically deduced.
Schmitt questioned the fundamental basis of Kelsen’s Pure Theory
of Law. The key to sovereignty lies not in a system of principles,
but rather in the power to make exceptions to customary legality in
order to deal with emergencies. A state exists not by itself but as one
of a group of contending powers. The chief function of the sovereign
is to preserve order. Rival states need to be contained and internal
factions kept in line…
As Gottfried ably brings out, Schmitt refused to subordinate order
to any “higher” political goals. In spite of Schmitt’s reputation as a
collaborator with National Socialism, “Schmitt in fact expounded a
modified traditionalist view of the state that had little in common
with Nazi theory or Nazi practice” (p. 3).
During the final years of the Weimar Republic, Schmitt strongly
opposed the Nazis as a manifest threat to political stability. In line
with his doctrine of the exception, he urged that a presidential
dictatorship be established to contain both the Nazi and Communist
threats. His advice was of course not followed, and after Hitler
became Chancellor in January, 1933, Schmitt joined the Nazi Party.
His period of effective collaboration with the Nazis came to an end in
1936; he was never the “Crown Prince” of Nazi jurists, as leftist
writers endlessly repeat.
Schmitt’s brand of conservatism differed entirely from the Nazis’
emphasis on race and party above the state. He saw himself in the
tradition of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes…
A leitmotif of Schmitt’s work was his continued efforts to demonstrate
how theology gave birth to political ideas. His association of
doctrines of the Trinity with imperial assertions of power in the
Roman Empire, a thesis that embroiled him in furious controversy
with Erik Peterson, is the most famous instance…
To Schmitt, the analysis of intellectual movements was much
more than an academic exercise. He maintained that the “tyranny of
values” endangered contemporary political order. Intellectuals in the
grip of abstract universals threaten to overthrow political order,
principally by perfervid advocacy of democracy. Rather than view the
state as the preserver of order, the democratic ideology subjects
society to total politicization (p. 80). In this way it bears a close
connection with totalitarianism.
Schmitt traced the contemporary ”tyranny of values” in part to
the ethical universalism of Immanuel Kant, who not coincidentally
favored a world federation of nations.
Gottfried applies Schmitt’s insights in a fascinating way to
neoconservatism. Although supposedly rightwing, the neoconservatives
favor total commitment to democracy in the exact fashion stigmatized
by Schmitt. Their Wilsonian interventionism and worship of democracy
bear no resemblance either to traditional conservatism or libertarianism. Gottfried insightfully compares Allen Bloom’s universalist position with Kant’s (p. 91).
Paul Gottfried has given us not only a lucid account of Carl
Schmitt but also an illuminating analysis of contemporary politics.
In both tasks, he displays remarkably wide-ranging and thorough
scholarship. Gottfried is clearly an original thinker of high rank.
