1 of 3
|
|
As Carl Schmitt's intellectual reputation continues to rise in scholarly circles, so does the critical heat surrounding his anti-Semitism. The more he is recognized as one of the greatest political thinkers of the 20th century—he is to political thought what Karl Barth is to theology and Martin Heidegger is to philosophy—the more acrimonious the charges become. With every scholar praising him, another—including Raphael Gross—comes to bury him. The plethora of books written about him in recent years is evidence that the race is on to decide whether the essence of his thought can be salvaged from the wreck of his racial prejudices.
Schmitt (1888-1985) joined the Nazi Party in 1933, the same month as did Heidegger. By 1936, he fell out of favor with the Nazi élite. After the war, the Allies did not permit him to resume teaching, and he spent much of his time shoring up his reputation by obscuring the evidence of his anti-Semitic fulminations.
There are two camps warring over Schmitt's anti-Semitism, one defensive and the other prosecutorial. The defense insists that his involvement with the Nazis was purely opportunistic. He was vain and ambitious, his defenders explain, and seized a chance to make history when he should have stuck to the classroom. Besides, he had a deeply fatalistic worldview that led him to disparage resistance to any reigning regime. The prosecution contends that he actively placed his political theory in the service of the Nazis. Even more disturbing is the argument that his political theory found its logical fulfillment in racist ideology. Raphael Gross enters this debate as judge and jury. He condemns Schmitt outright by arguing that every aspect of Schmitt's thought is shaped (and thus contaminated) by his anti-Semitism.
Drawing largely from recently published diaries, letters, and journals, Gross uncovers derogatory remarks and inexcusable behavior that certainly damage Schmitt's defense. Gross' description of the legal conference Schmitt organized in 1936 called "Judaism in Legal Studies" was enough to convince me that Schmitt's involvement with the Nazis was more than just the accidental by-product of a regrettable character flaw. Not content with a guilty verdict, however, Gross overstates his case by finding prejudice lurking behind every serious concept Schmitt devised. He thus slips into the same kind of paranoia that fueled anti-Semitism in Germany in the first place.
Gross' book caused quite a stir in when it was published several years ago in Germany, where young scholars can still make a career out of settling scores with the moral mendacity of their predecessors. In America, it will be important for another reason. Schmitt is the preeminent critic of political liberalism, which makes him a hero to some and an admonitory instance of the inevitable consequences of conservatism to others.
Schmitt developed some of his best ideas during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), Germany's experiment with liberal democracy that ended in disaster. From its beginning, the republic was assaulted by both left- and right-wing extremists. To this day, scholars debate whether Schmitt was a friendly critic of Weimar or one of its most dangerous enemies. Schmitt was certainly sympathetic to authoritarian rule, and he thought that all liberal democracies were hindered by inherent contradictions, but he always claimed that he was trying to support Weimar by drawing attention to its constitutional weaknesses. Some of Schmitt's contemporaries were prescient enough to worry that any rejection of the principles of the republic ran the risk of opening the door to a dictatorship, but being a critic of Weimar did not, alone, put anyone on the side of Hitler. Nonetheless, one of the staples of liberal apologetics, often relying on Schmitt's case, is the claim that conservatism is merely a more moderate form of fascism.
share this page
RSS Feed
