‘Political Theology’: How the State Plays God
A review of ‘Political Theology’, by Carl Schmitt; Duncker & Humblot, 1922.
Carl Schmitt opens his Political Theology with the following claim: ‘Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.’ What makes this rather chilling is that it condenses the philosophy of the state that gave Hitler the theoretical grounds for his rule. Schmitt was a member of the Nazi Party for three years and rejoiced in the burning of books by Jewish authors. It is for this reason that he has been ignored for the most part by thinkers outside of Germany. But this has perhaps been a mistake. For even-handed scholars say that Schmitt, in spite of his unsavoury beliefs, was one of the cleverest men of the 20th century and worthy of comparison to Hobbes. Reading Political Theology goes some way to showing one why this is the case.
Schmitt’s central argument is this. In liberal societies (such as my own), the law assumes conditions of peace. If someone were to bomb London and I had to leave the city, I would not pay much heed of a red light, nor any number of other laws if obeying them put my family at risk. This discloses a problem. Say order were to break down in a serious way. Who, in that case, resolves that order has indeed broken down and — more important still — who acts to restore it?
There are thinkers like Roger Scruton who believe that the law is the basis of political order. In England, we have the Common Law, which draws on Anglo-Saxon customs and works in bottom-up fashion, giving judges the power to deal with disputes as they arise. Over time, this body of case law develops into a working legal order. Thus it is an organic system, responsive to circumstance. The ruling of a given judge is written into law, and becomes precedent. Should a similar dispute take place in future, the presiding judge takes the precedent as the basis of his decision.
In England, we have the Common Law, which works in bottom-up fashion by giving judges the power to deal with disputes as they arise.
In other parts of the world — say, France or Germany — the law is imposed from above, by statute. A group of lawmakers create the draft, pass it into law, and tell the cops to enforce it. But neither the Common Law nor law by statute solve the problem Schmitt sets out. Crises happen; and though they may resemble one another, they are always distinct. Given this fact, someone must have the right to say first, that a crisis is unfolding, and secondly, that he will deal with it in whatever way he deems necessary. This ‘sovereign’ is he who decides on this ‘exception’.
The sovereign thus stands outside of the legal order. He is endowed with extra-legal powers. Thus he is to the state what God is to the world: he is over and above it, and can act on it as required — or desired. Hence for Schmitt, the sovereign is the means by which the transcendent is returned to the ruling order. For politics, at its heart, reflects theology: ‘all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts,’ he writes. Thomas Hobbes, in his Leviathan, conceptualises the sovereign as a terrifying sea-monster from the book of Job. Schmitt sees the sovereign as godlike. Hobbes is in a sense a proto-liberal, in that he grounds the state in the social contract to protect the life of the individual. Schmitt is not a liberal, and thinks the sovereign should be much more energetic and proactive.
Schmitt is not just interested in crises for their own sakes. The state of exception reveals the political order for what it truly is. Institutions and law are underwritten by power. Liberalism, on the other hand, rests on endless discussion. This is why — inspired by Juan Donoso Cortés — Schmitt calls the liberal bourgeoisie la clase discutidora. But one cannot have rules without a ruler, writes Schmitt: politics cannot be boiled down to debate alone. Because liberalism is indecision dressed up as principle, it is shown to be naked and impotent when faced with real danger. At bottom, for Schmitt, liberalism is naïve.
The state of exception reveals the political order for what it really is. Institutions and law are underwritten by power.
For thinkers like Patrick Deneen, John Gray and Yoram Hazony, liberalism is dead after less than a century as the ruling global belief system. Each gives different reasons for this. For Gray, liberalism rests on four ‘truths’ that are in fact half-truths: that society is composed of individuals concerned with self-preservation; that we are equal in being exposed to death at each other’s hands; that human nature is universal, and so divergent cultural identities are unimportant; and that, through reason, government can be improved. They are half-truths, writes Gray, because self-preservation is not our only need; because we will give up our security to assert our way of life; because we sacrifice basic goods to fight for values specific to ourselves; because improvements in society can be lost.
At least part of Gray’s argument, then, has to do with claims about human nature. For Deneen, what has caused liberalism to ‘fail’ is its deracinating, disenchanting character. Hazony—and I simplify a little—sees it as basically ahistorical, doomed from the start. But for Schmitt, liberalism is anti-political. It does not correspond to real life. For it tries to do away with politics, which grows out of a primitive friend/enemy distinction — we are who we are, and they are who they are they are — with procedure and compromise. But then some foreign army invades, or the order breaks down, and liberalism has nothing to say. In Political Theology, he frames liberalism as profoundly philosophically weak.
Schmitt’s point in Political Theology, which was published amid Weimar Germany’s rolling constitutional seizures, is that the liberal order rests on theological concepts in which it no longer believes (if, indeed, it ever did). That attack entails a forensic dissection of the ideas of Hans Kelsen, whose ‘pure theory of law’ attempted to detach law from politics; and the assertion that politics is decision, that decision is theology in disguise, that to claim otherwise is to lie, and to act otherwise is to drift. The liberal faith in what Schmitt sees as free-floating institutions and procedures is suicide.
