succinctly and poignantly, especially in The Concept of the Political, of
which there are four versions, published in 1927, 1932, 1933, and 1963. He
constitutes identity by way of distancing: friendship and enmity. While
Political Theology highlights the “decisionist” concept of the “decision,”
The Concept of the Political emphasizes the connection between decisions
and the drawing of distinctions and making of identity claims. These
reflections are fundamental to Schmitt’s major legal work Constitutional
Theory, which interprets positive constitutional decisions as “fundamental
decisions” against constitutional alternatives.
The Concept of the Political is Schmitt’s best- known and most in-
fluential work, providing both theory and practice. Schmitt sketches a
“category” and a “criterion” for identification in political action (as op-
posed to the aesthetic realm or economic action), and seeks to identify
the enemy in the political situation of 1927— this conceptually funda-
mental text is also a nationalist manifesto. Even the famous introduc-
tory formula, “The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the
political,”24 has this in mind: political action is “existential” and cannot
be equated with the actions of a state. Political institutions are based
on the political actions of citizens, on the existential forces of political
self- organization. Such forces may also be directed against the state,
and may, for example, identify the institutions of the Weimar Republic
as their political opponent and enemy. Schmitt’s later Theory of the
Partisan,25 which is particularly relevant today, expands on this. But The
Concept of the Political has in mind Germany’s foreign policy situation
after Versailles. Schmitt says:
The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly;
he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may be ad-
vantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he
is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his
nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something
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Carl Schmitt and the Politics of Identity
47
different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him
are possible.26
Schmitt also speaks of the “case of emergency” ( Ernstfall),27 which implies
“the existential negation of another being,”28 and he emphasizes the possi-
bility of fighting and of real war as the “exceptional case” ( Ausnahmefall).29
Schmitt talks of a “war of state against state” and of “civil war,”30 and he
considers the jus belli of states, including the state’s legal and legitimate
demand for “the readiness to die and unhesitatingly to kill,” as a functional
condition for the political achievement of “assuring total peace within the
state.”31 Schmitt affirms a “pluralism of states” and questions the human-
itarian idea of a League of Nations. Following Machiavelli, Hobbes, and
Hegel, he adopts a negative or “pessimistic” political anthropology, which
postulates that constructive political theories should assume that humans
are in need of authority and rule. Ultimately, Schmitt defends the thesis
that liberal thinking ignores this precondition of a constructive politics
because it is biased toward universalist ideologies. He writes:
In a very systematic fashion, liberal thought evades or ignores state
and politics, and moves instead in a typical always recurring po-
larity of two heterogeneous spheres, namely ethics and economics,
intellect and trade, education and property.32
Schmitt believed that a universalist ethics typically conceals economic
interests. His 1932 version of The Concept of the Political ends with a
philosophical-
historical characterization of the early modern period
under the heading “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations,” in
which Schmitt shows how all attempts at neutralization and depolitici-
zation end up in failure. Striving after depoliticization will only trigger
new enmities and lead to the development of new ways of defining one’s
enemy. Liberalism, in particular, should shed the illusion that it acts
unpolitically and has no political effects, and it should not consider its
moral convictions and economic practices to be unpolitical.
This basis for political existentialism would alone have been enough to
turn Schmitt into a classical author of the new nationalism, antiliberalism,
and antiuniversalism. Schmitt always saw himself as a participant and
political actor. His political theory of identity was therefore correctly re-
ceived as an intervention aiming at political polarization and mobilization.
However, Schmitt would have complemented this by saying that a sharp
4
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C L A S S I C T H I N K E R S
articulation of opposing views is a precondition for political acknowledg-
ment, for the institutionalization of a conflict. This is why he later spoke
of “hedged” enmity and— in The Nomos of the Earth— the “bracketing
of war,”33 and argued for a “nondiscriminatory” international law that
would recognize war as a legal and legitimate political means. After 1945,
Schmitt registered the end of “the era of statehood,” and sought a new
understanding of the law, one that saw it from the perspective of “land-
appropriation” and the domination of space as the “unity of order and
orientation.”34 As a witness of the events of the twentieth century, he
described, in retrospect, the constitutional transformation of a liberal law-
governed bourgeois state into an executive state whose democratic legit-
imacy rested on a plebiscite, and the transition from the classical nation
state to a multipolar and supranational order.
Reception
Schmitt was always perceived to be an outstanding intellectual, and he
enjoyed early academic success. Even during his time in Bonn, he was
already seen as a controversial figure due to his juridically programmatic
texts and his generous interpretation of dictatorial powers. His broad
conception of legal studies as including politics and the “history of ideas,”
as well as his terse, proclamatory, and also associative style provoked
vigorous opposition. In the debate about the orientation of state law in
the Weimar Republic, Schmitt soon became the antipode to legal posi-
tivism and Hans Kelsen’s “pure” theory of law. Schmitt’s defense of rule
by presidential decree further isolated him within his profession, and
as a result his work was increasingly taken up by the antiliberal and na-
tionalist circles of the Conservative Revolution.35 In the debates of the
early 1930s, his publications featured practically everywhere. Through his
quick rise to the position of National Socialist “crown jurist,” Schmitt
gained influence over legal policy formation and personnel. Thus, his
pupils, some of whom were brilliant themselves, soon became powerful
within National Socialist jurisprudence. From 1933, beginning with Italy,<
br />
France, and Spain, there was also a strong international response to his
work. The worldwide influence of his constitutional theory on all kinds
of authoritarian and dictatorial theories of the state cannot be separated
from his National Socialist career. But Schmitt’s thought was influential
not only in the context of pre- 1945 European Fascism, and not only in
southern and eastern Europe, but also very much in South America and
4
9
Carl Schmitt and the Politics of Identity
49
Asia, including a demonstrable influence on processes of constitutional
legislation.
In the context of the Federal Republic of Germany, Schmitt, as an in-
spiring partner in debate, influenced highly talented young intellectuals
such as Reinhart Koselleck, Ernst- Wolfgang Böckenförde, and Hermann
Lübbe.36 Böckenförde read Schmitt from a liberal perspective and in the
context of the State of Normality characterizing the Federal Republic, and
so revived the reception of his work in legal studies. Schmitt was thus ac-
tive and present not only before and after 1933 but also after 1945, into his
old age. He had, so to speak, three lives: one before 1933, one after 1933,
and one after 1945.
The secondary literature on him, and the systematic investigation of
his life, already began before 1933 in the form of important review arti-
cles.37 Leo Strauss, Helmut Kuhn, and Karl Löwith criticized Schmitt’s
The Concept of the Political as laying the foundations for a political exis-
tentialism, a sort of counterpart to Heidegger’s Being and Time.38 While
Hugo Ball pursued a “theological” approach to reading Schmitt, Huber
laid the foundation for the discussions of constitutional theory. For a long
time after 1945, Karl Löwith’s critique of “political decisionism” was par-
ticularly influential. More recently, the mimetic exegesis by Leo Strauss,
who compared Schmitt with Hobbes, has increasingly been the subject of
debate.
In the early Federal Republic, Schmitt was criticized as a representative
of antidemocratic thinking in the Weimar Republic and as an intellectual
pioneer of the “total” Führer- state. In 1964, following Löwith’s criticism of
Schmitt’s “political decisionism,” Hasso Hofmann published the first im-
portant comprehensive critique from the perspective of legal philosophy.39
Hofmann’s Legitimacy versus Legality ( Legitimität gegen Legalität) saw
Schmitt’s thinking on legitimacy as addressing a fundamental problem
in legal history. After the student revolution of 1968, the Marxist and left-
wing reception of Schmitt, represented before 1933 by Otto Kirchheimer
and Walter Benjamin,40 was taken up again as part of a critique of the
Federal Republic, and Marxist political economy was supplemented with
the Schmittian perspective of a “political theology.” In his last monograph,
Political Theology II, Schmitt still defended himself against various “the-
ological” appropriations of his work. In the 1970s, in old age, he again
became particularly interested in conversations with Jewish intellectuals,
among them Jacob Taubes and Hans Blumenberg, so that we can say
that the engagement with Judaism, or with stereotypes of what Schmitt
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C L A S S I C T H I N K E R S
considered the “Jewish spirit,” was a political- theological topic throughout
his life, a lifelong riddle, or— in one of Schmitt’s favorite formulations—
his “own question as a form” ( eigne Frage als Gestalt).
Following Schmitt’s death in 1985, the discussions— and the available
sources— changed significantly. The main texts were made available again
and were widely translated. But most importantly, apart from a plethora
of secondary literature, numerous crucial source texts (diaries and corre-
spondence) were published; these changed and deepened the image of
Schmitt. Among the more recent interpretations of Schmitt are both aca-
demic and nonacademic publications; there are contributions to debates
in law, political science, theology, and philosophy; there are attempts to
describe Schmitt’s actual life and put him in historical context; there are
interpretations that make marginal and selective use of his work; and
there are substantial appropriations and transformations of his theories.
While today neonationalist and antiliberal authors everywhere refer
to Schmitt, Schmitt himself only ever addressed his contemporaries
and expressed very clearly the limits to the applicability of his work: he
warned against the resurrection of old answers by later generations. An
intellectual answer, he often said, “is true only once” as a concrete answer
to its own time. His lack of interest in the “national question” regarding
a reunification of Germany after its division in 1945 was intended as a
warning: after 1945 Schmitt no longer propagated an aggressive nation-
alism. His complex and challenging work cannot be reduced to simple
formulas and concepts; he wanted it to be understood primarily as jurid-
ical intervention. Any attempt today to appropriate Schmitt in the form
of political slogans, without putting forward an analysis of the substance
of today’s legal situation, would not do justice to the aspirations and the
status of his work.
The quality of Schmitt’s work means that it ultimately requires an aca-
demic response. Since the 1990s, Schmitt has become part of the classical
canon and one of the major thinkers in great debates. Jürgen Habermas
has repeatedly criticized Schmitt as the main representative of German
neonationalism, and reconstructed Kant’s universalist conception of in-
ternational law in response to Schmitt. Jacques Derrida deconstructed
Schmitt’s category of enmity in the service of a “politics of friendship.”
Giorgio Agamben adapted Schmitt’s State of Exception, and Chantal
Mouffe used Schmitt’s antiuniversalism in her critique of globalization.41
As a classic author of antiliberalism, statism, nationalism, and National
Socialism, Schmitt’s work today is pressed into service by thinkers of
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Carl Schmitt and the Politics of Identity
51
many different political stripes. His analysis of the transition from the lib-
eral constitutional state to an authoritarian and dictatorial system remains
relevant and informative. Today, both within Europe and beyond, there are
again numerous alliances between authoritarian executive regimes and
“populist” mobilizations of the masses. But Schmitt’s work is also relevant
to the search for new forms of politics and new strategies for obfusca-
tion, and to the task of identifying the holders of power operating behind
the scenes. Schmitt wanted to pull down the masks of power and iden-
tify the sovereign. This is the reason he became susceptible to fantasies
and conspiracies. Beyond this contemporary relevance, he remains an ex-
ample of German interwar radicalism, and a paradigmatic case of the en-
tanglement of spirit and power.
Notes
&nb
sp; 1. For the vast literature on Schmitt, see www.carl- schmitt.de/ neueste_
veroeffentlichungen.php. See also Jens Meierheinrich and Oliver Simons, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2016), and Reinhard Mehring, Carl Schmitt zur Einführung, 5th ed. (Junius-
Verlag: Hamburg, 2017); Carl Schmitt: A Biography (Cambridge: Polity, 2014);
Carl Schmitt: Denker im Widerstreit: Werk– Wirkung– Aktualität (Freiburg: Alber-
Verlag, 2017). For jurisprudence, Michael Stolleis, Geschichte des öffentlichen
Rechts in Deutschland, vols. 3/ 4 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999/ 2012), and Horst
Dreier, Staatsrecht in Demokratie und Diktatur (Tübingen: Mohr, 2016). For
historical context, Ulrich Herbert, Geschichte Deutschlands im 20. Jahrhundert
(Munich: C. H. Beck, 2014).
2. Carl Schmitt “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte
Strafrechtswissenschaft 38 (1916): 138–
162; Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen
des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf
(Munich: Duncker and Humblot, 1921); “Die Diktatur des Reichspräsidenten
nach Art. 48 der Reichsverfassung,” Veröffentlichungen der Vereinigung der
Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer 1 (1924): 63– 104.
3. Especially Ernst Rudolf Huber, Ernst Forsthoff, Otto Kirchheimer, and Waldemar
Gurian.
4. Ernst Rudolf Huber, “Carl Schmitt in der Reichskrise der Weimarer Endzeit,” in
Complexio Oppositorum: Über Carl Schmitt, ed. Helmut Quaritsch (Berlin: Duncker
and Humblot, 1988), 33– 50; Gabriel Seiberth, Anwalt des Reiches: Carl Schmitt und
der Prozess: Preußen contra Reich (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2001); Andreas
Koenen, Der Fall Carl Schmitt: Sein Aufstieg zum “Kronjuristen des Dritten Reiches”
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995); Dirk Blasius, Carl
Schmitt und der 30. Januar 1933: Studien zu Carl Schmitt (Frankfurt: Lang, 2009);
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and Carl Schmitt: Preußischer Staatsrat in Hitlers Reich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
and Ruprecht, 2001).
5. Carl Schmitt, “Der Führer schützt das Recht: Zur Reichstagsrede Adolf Hitlers
vom 13. Juli 1934,” Deutsche Juristen- Zeitung 39 (1934): 945– 950.
6. Carl Schmitt, “Die Verfassung der Freiheit,” Deutsche Juristen- Zeitung 40
Key Thinkers of the Radical Right Page 11
