{"id":164141,"date":"2025-10-06T07:48:03","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T15:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164141"},"modified":"2025-10-06T08:03:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T16:03:53","slug":"thomas-hobbes-and-carl-schmitt-the-politics-of-order-and-myth-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164141","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Hobbes and Carl Schmitt: The Politics of Order and Myth"},"content":{"rendered":"

John P. McCormick writes an essay in this 2013 book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* In both Political theology and Roman Catholicism, [Carl] Schmitt suggests that a dangerous, unqualified belief in humanity\u2019s natural goodness motivates a peculiarly modern agenda bent on tearing down all forms of authority. According to this view, Schmitt writes, once individuals live in complete, unencumbered freedom, all problems will become technical or economic rather than political or moral. This belief finds its definitive home in Soviet Russia, which Schmitt views as a frightening amalgam of irrational Eastern Christianity, radical anarchism, and the basest form of socialist materialism. The Russian Revolution signifies, for Schmitt, nothing less than a rebellion against the theistic notion that good must be granted, encouraged, or at least partially imposed upon man from outside, that is, transcendentally by God.<\/p>\n

* Atheistic anarchists believe without reservation that good resides immanently within man alone, and that evil can be located exclusively in \u2018theological thought and its derivatives, including all ideas concerning authority, state, and government\u2019 (PT, pp. 56\u201357). They tolerate no external constraint, political or otherwise, on human will; the very notion of \u2018form\u2019 is anathema to them. As Schmitt remarks in Roman Catholicism, Russian anarchists and socialists revolt against \u2018the Idea\u2019 as such (RC, p. 39). But for Schmitt, the distinction between good and evil evaporates without moral standards; standards that neither occur nor endure without authority. The revolt against moral authority will inevitably strip human life of meaning, and the rebellion against order, against form per se, can only lead to the greatest abuses of order.<\/p>\n

* Catholic orthodoxy insists that man is not inherently sinful, but rather is capable of good when guided by conscience, grace, reason, as well as authority. <\/p>\n

* Two changes in circumstance seem to have profoundly affected his ideas between the publication of Roman Catholicism and the composition of The concept of the political. Personally, Schmitt had broken bitterly with the Catholic Church after an embarrassing divorce and remarriage. More generally, the drastic economic, social, and political effects of the surrender terms dictated to Germany by the Allies at Versailles in 1919 had become more painfully apparent. These two situations almost simultaneously removed the explicitly Catholic, moral foundation of Schmitt\u2019s intellectual efforts and transformed Western liberalism into an enemy of the same magnitude as Eastern anarchosocialism.<\/p>\n

* This orientation toward European Jews would change after Schmitt endorsed, joined, and actively served the National Socialist regime in 1933. Two points support those who insist that the instances of anti-Semitism expressed by Schmitt at this time were merely rhetorical efforts to better ingratiate himself with the Third Reich: firstly, he never expressed such sentiments in his pre-Nazi career; and, secondly, Schmitt\u2019s anti-Semitism seemed to emerge only when Schmitt came under suspicion as a late-arriving and inauthentic Nazi and then intensified once he was openly denounced by the SS in their publication Das schwarze Korps. Conversely, the main objections to the \u2018opportunism\u2019 thesis can be summed up as follows: Schmitt persisted in the deplorable denunciation of Jews and Judaism in his postwar work (G, p. 18); and his Nazi-era anti-Semitism was too fervent and too deeply entangled with the substance of his arguments to be considered merely cosmetic.<\/p>\n

* Immediately following communism\u2019s fall in 1989, informed observers could be heard to quip, \u2018In Eastern Europe Carl with a C is replacing Karl with a K\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John P. McCormick writes an essay in this 2013 book: * In both Political theology and Roman Catholicism, [Carl] Schmitt suggests that a dangerous, unqualified belief in humanity\u2019s natural goodness motivates a peculiarly modern agenda bent on tearing down all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42763],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-carl-schmitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t