Carl Schmitt

See also: Schmidt, Schmitt, Carl Friedrich Schmidt

Carl Schmitt (July 11th 1888 - April 7th 1985) was a Juriste and German Philosophe. Catholic intellectual and theorist of the right, it adheres to the Nazi party in 1933, of which he was the legal adviser. Shown to have preserved Jewish friendships, it is worried after 1936 by the S but preserves until the end of the war its title of advising State (named by Hermann Göring) and of professor to the university of Berlin. It had organized besides in 1936 a congress against the Jewish spirit in the science of the right which reveals the radicality of sound Antisémitisme - or the width of its opportunism, the culture of Schmitt, fundamentally catholic, having less affinities with a racism biologized than with a Christian Antijudaïsme. During the instruction of the Lawsuit of Nuremberg, he is heard like " accused potentiel" , but is not finally accused.

Its principal works are: political Theology (1922), notion of the policy (1933), Nomos of the Earth (1950), Theory of the partisan (1963), Theory of the Constitution and Léviathan in the doctrines of the State of Thomas Hobbes , (1938).

He is the author of a reflection on the nature of the State and the constitutions. He thus considered, in the filiation of the thought of Jean Bodin, that the official Souveraineté was absolute or was not. Official autonomy, according to Schmitt, rests on the possibility of the State of autoconserver, outwards even of the legal standard, by an action which will prove this Souveraineté.

The controversies related to the thought of Schmitt are closely related to this vision absolutist of the official power.

Biography

Carl Schmitt was born in Germany, in a catholic family, with Plettenberg, in Westphalia, city located in the Sauerland, to approximately 70 km in the east of Bonn; he was the son of a railroad worker.

He studies the theory of the State and the right to the universities of Berlin, Munich and Strasbourg and obtains his university degrees in Strasbourg in 1915. Professor at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, Carl Schmitt takes part closely in the political life of the last years of the Weimar Republic by occupying a post of legal adviser near the chancellery. He plays in particular a leading role in the constitutional discussions which nourish the crisis of the Weimar Republic. He is dependant as of the first months on the Nazi regime of which he approves certain aspects, but with which he takes his distances thereafter, for various reasons, in particular because it was shown to be Opportuniste. Its Antisémitisme raises of the Antijudaïsme religious Christian history but does not have anything racial. He supports the young person Leo Strauss for obtaining a purse Rockefeller so that he will work on Thomas Hobbes in France and England; its intellectual exchanges after the Second world war with the philosopher Jacob Taubes show the ambiguity of its writings where it treats in a negative way the contribution of the Jews with the Occidental culture.

After 1936, become suspect with the eyes of the leaders Nazis, it primarily devotes to its work of political Philosophie. He is imprisoned for 18 months in 1945 - 1946 before recovering freedom. He is not reinstated in the German university, but does not cease publishing.

The route of an intellectual per time of crisis

Carl Schmitt belongs to a generation which knew the German Militarisme and the humiliation of the Traité of Versailles which literally strips Germany after its defeat at the time of the First World War. Its generation passes from the German Empire to the Weimar Republic. Carl Schmitt poses the key question of the political type of constitution which it is necessary for the German nation, which, before 1914, is far from unitairement living itself (in spite of the Pangermanisme which, a contrario, clarifies the political bursting of the Germans, in different the länder, inside, or like minorities outside Germany (in Poland or Austria-Hungary).

Without prejudging what it is necessary to think of Carl Schmitt, have regard to its political commitment in the national-socialisme, it is necessary to point out a certain number of conditions without which one could not understand that national-socialisme could receive the support of intellectuals whom one has of the evil to see to join companies as terrible as the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Among them, Carl Schmitt, but also Martin Heidegger.

In the German Nihilism , Leo Strauss lights how great minds could feel attracted by the Rhétorique of the " décision" , of the " situation urgente" , of the " reaction vitale" , of engagement, etc What is common to many German intellectuals and certain artistic movements of avant-garde of the time like the Expressionnisme, it is the dislike for the middle-class and declining life and the tendency to allot the responsibility for the failure of 1918 to a certain form of liberalism and taste for material comfort. This constant (which one also finds in the French Littérature, which is caught some with the " bourgeois" ) is undoubtedly the mark of children plunged in disturbed times of a company little to light with its own ideological horizons.

In the crucible of the German militarism combined with the nationalist ideology, Pan-German and anti-semite, the Traité of Versailles will polarize the political commitments, either towards the revolutionary gauchism and the Communisme, or towards the populist line and fascistic. Quartered by these centrifugal forces, the social democrat coalition in which takes part the catholic Zentrum, in which Schmitt belongs.

Origins

Carl Schmitt is born the July 11th 1888 in Plettenberg, in the Sauerland in Westphalia, in an large family and modest. His/her father is railroad worker. The family is catholic (three of his/her uncles are priests) in a protesting medium (Westphalia was attached to the Prussia in 1815).

By its religious and provincial origins, Schmitt is member of a minority. The father is member of the Zentrum , a catholic organization which was opposed to Bismarck at the time of the Kulturkampf. Schmitt is thus doubly minority: Prussian and catholic. As of its youth, Schmitt sees the Catholicisme undergoing triple pressure: denominational (on behalf of the Protestantism); antireligieuse (on behalf of the liberal ideologies and socialist) and antiromaine (on behalf of the Pan-Germanism). The Catholicisme of Schmitt will seek its way in some Nationalisme, in which will be required a time the bringing together between Roman Catholicisme Germanic and fascistic Italy. Carl Schmitt, catholic intellectual practitioner, will be a thinker of the counter-revolution, anti-liberal and anticommunist.

Years of training

After a primary schooling in a Catholic school and the college, Schmitt between with the University of Berlin in 1906, rare enough fact for a child resulting from a modest milieu. His/her father wanted that he embraces the sacerdotal way and it is with his/her mother that he must continue academic works. He is registered in right, without true interest, since its taste goes towards the Philologie. As of the first year, it is caught passion for the Philosophie of the right. After one year with Berlin, Schmitt leaves for Munich and Strasbourg where it writes its first thesis on the question of the fault. Schmitt is graduate Summa cum laude in Right in 1910. In 1914, it supports a Thèse of enabling, Der Wert of Staates und die Bedeutung of Einzelnen (importance of the State and significance of the individual).

In parallel, Schmitt attends in Munich as in Strasbourg the artistic mediums of avant-garde. It is impassioned by Gottfried Ben and the Expressionnisme. There will remain all its life a collector of Article He attends also the circles where meet the writers Konrad Weiss, Robert Musil and Theodor Daübler, to which he will devote a book in 1916.

The experiment of the war

In 1915, after having obtained a deferment with its incorporation in the capacity as student, Schmitt engages like volunteer in the infantry. Wounded with the vertebrae during the instruction, he is declared inapt for the combat and is transferred to the military Staff from Munich, because of his university formation. In 1916, it is named warrant officer with the administration of the state of siege. This same year, he marries Paula Dorotic, of Serb origin, which he will divorce later for remarier, in 1929, with Duschka Todorovitch, she also of Serb origin. With Duschka, Schmitt will have an only daughter, Anima. In 1918, he is officer of intendance and receives the Military Cross of second class, the highest distinction for an officer of the back. It directs then office VI of the Bavarian Ministry of the War, office in charge particularly of the monitoring of the press of left and the censure.

The Weimar Republic and the political crisis

The criticism of Schmitt after the Second world war is divided into three tendencies:

the German criticism which rejects Schmitt in block, because of its allegiance with the National-socialisme. Schmitt, after Nuremberg and a few months of prison, will remain prohibited of teaching, contrary to Martin Heidegger;
the Anglo-Saxon criticism which distinguishes Schmitt lawyer from the Weimar Republic of the lawyer national-Socialist;
a third group which sees in Schmitt of the Third Reich a treason of the lawyer of Weimar.

Carl Schmitt is the lawyer of the Weimar Republic. Of 1920 with 1932, its work consists of a reflection on the presidential regime and the constitutional methods around whose Weimar saw its development. Schmitt works especially on article 48 of the Constitution of Weimar. It is named law professor, starting from 1921, in various cities, of which Bonn and Berlin. Schmitt then seems the champion of the plebiscitary democracy and the thinker of the " political dictatorship légitime". Under this phrase, Schmitt thinks of the political situation of exception (in which is enlized the Weimar Republic) which to survive itself itself needs a strong man to the head of a strong State.

The anti-liberalism of Schmitt appears: it is a lawyer, thinker of the providential man supported by a homogeneous State, which can take " décisions" approved directly by the people linked in a nation. Schmitt does not appreciate the Bourgeoisie, " the class discutante" , and one could not say that as a catholic thinker he saw of an good eye the aristotelism of the liberal modes, were of inspiration thomist: the opinions and the political actions inspired by the happy medium only inspire to him mistaken. It turns into to report/ratio “friend-enemy” the keystone of the political Théorie, which does not go without posing problem when it is a question of determining the enemy among his own fellow-citizens (and not only outside the nation). That led to the development of a philosophy of the emergency decision, war and combat, from where the concepts of Badly and Antéchrist are not absent.

In situation urgently economic and social, it is the exceptional state of the presidential Dictature which controls by Order in Council, which must rise above any other fundamental alternative. This situation, Schmitt sees it being carried out 1930 with 1932.

Thought of Schmitt

The political categories opposed to such a design (and such a reality) of the democratic government are called Parlementarisme and mode of the parties, two aspects of the democratic life which Schmitt criticizes severely; on the one hand because parliamentarism is the fruit of the Libéralisme middle-class, incompetent to make noble decisions in times of crisis (because of passivity of " the middle-class discutante" , too worried to defend of the individual interests). In addition, because the mode of the parties seems to him the place where reign the Ploutocratie. The democracy could not be liberal or related in an unspecified way to the individual interests. It should be, quite to the contrary, anti-liberal, rest on decision makings by Plébiscite of sovereign people, pulled by the enthusiasm and the force of the sure nation of itself.

Curiously, the anti-liberalism of Schmitt does not draw with the rousseauist source, but at Thomas Hobbes. Schmitt draws the idea from it from the " war of all against tous". However, whereas Hobbes is a thinker of the entry of the man in the political company, under the aegis of the Léviathan (of the absolute capacity of the State), (to precisely flee the war of all against all of the state of nature), Schmitt does not seem to hold account that it is by fear of violent death that the individual subjects himself to the sovereign capacity. However, Schmitt, while occulting a liberal facet of the philosophy of Hobbes, magnifier death will make of them the starting point at the point of the Civisme: it is necessary to be able to give its life for the nation.

The thesis enemy friend/

It is a question for Schmitt of identifying nature, the contents and the ends of the policy. For Schmitt, the policy is the place of the distinction friendly/enemy. This distinction makes it possible to give to the policy its specific object, its objective. The policy is “what is supposed being reached, fought, disputed and refuted”. A community is identified as such in opposition to what is contrary. A company is defined in opposition to the others. All that becomes antagonistic becomes political. The war is thus the political act par excellence, because to exist oneself it is necessary to locate its enemy and to fight it. So the policy does not merge with the State. The State is a historically transitory form. Today the State is the most complete form of the policy because it has only the capacity to identify and to name the interior and external enemy. The State only can fix the means of fighting it. The State which follows a pacifist policy thus ceases being a political entity. Universalization sees: end of the distinction enemy friend, evolution towards a depoliticization of planet towards a universal company (cosmo polished).

Political theology

August 1st

Works

the dates indicate the years of publication of the French editions. Between hooks, the date of publication in German.

"Romanticism politique" , transl. Pierre Flax, Paris, Bookstore Valois-News national Bookstore, 1928, “French Library of Philosopher” (Jacques Maritain), 165 p. Note of the translator.
" Legality légitimité" , transl. William Gueydan de Roussel, Paris, General Bookstore of Right and Jurisprudence, 1936,102 p.
“With the borders of the policy or the age of neutrality”, transl. William Gueydan de Roussel, in the French and foreign political year, XI, December 4th, th and th 1936, pp. 274-289.
“Neutrality in law of nations and totality `völkish'”, (?), in Review of international law, XXII, July-August 1938, pp. 316 S.
“a study of compared constitutional law. Recent evolution of the problem of the legislative delegations”, Paul Roubier and H. Mankiewicz, in Receuil of studies in the honor of Edouard Lambert, Lyon, 1938, pp. 200-210.
sea against the ground , 1941, text of a conference of C.S., in “Franco-German Books”, T. 8, n.os 11-12, p. 343-349
" Considerations politiques" , transl. William Gueydan de Roussel, Paris, General Bookstore of Right and Jurisprudence, 1942,96 p. Introduction and foreword of the translator.
Sovereignty of the State and freedom of the seas. Opposition of the ground and the sea in the international law of modern time , 1943, in K. Epting, Some aspects of the German right, six conferences , Paris, Sorlot.
“the situation presents jurisprudence”, (text of a conference pronounced in French by Carl Schmitt), in Boletim da Faculdade de Dereito, Coimbra, XX, 1944, pp. 601-621.
notion of the policy - Theory of the partisan , Calman-Levy, Paris (transl. of Marie-Louise Steinhauser of: Der Begriff of Politischen of 1933; Theory of Partisanens.Zwischenbemerkung zum Begriff of Politischen 1963).
“Three types of legal thought”, Julien Freund, in the right of today, J.F ED., Paris, University Presses of France, 1972, pp. 35-39.
“the era of neutralizations and the depoliticizations”, Marie-Louise Steinhauser, in Exile, 3, be 1974, pp. 83-95.
“contrast between community and company as an example of a dualistic distinction. Reflections in connection with the structure and of the fate of this type of entithèse”, Piet Tommissen, in Res Publica, XVII, 1,1975, pp. 105-119.
Of the policy. Legality and legitimacy and other tests , 1980, Puiseaux, ED. Pardès (with a foreword of A. of Benoist, the book contains, in addition to the transl. of Legalität und Legitimität , interesting translations of articles of C.S. on the international law and geopolitics between 1930 and 1960)
Ground and Mer. A point of view on the history of the world , 1985, the Labyrinth, Paris (introduction and postface of J. Freund, transl. of J.L. Pesteil)
“Maintenance on the capacity”, Francoise Manent, in Comment, 32, winter 1985, pp. 1113-1120.
Parliamentarism and democracy , 1988, Threshold, Paris (transl. of Jean-Louis Schlegel of: Die geistesgeschichlitche Lage of the heutigen Parlamentarismus (1923); Der Gegesensatz von Parlamentarismus und modernen Massendemokratie ; Der Begriff DER modernen Demokratie in seinem Verhältnis zum Staatsbegriff (1924); Staatsethik und pluralistischer Staat ; Die Wendung zum totalen Staat (1931); Zu Friedrich Meineckes Idea der Staatsräson (1926).
political Theology , 1988, Gallimard, Paris (transl. of Jean-Louis Schlegel of: Politische Theology (1922) and Politische Theology, II (1970).
right like unit of order (Ordnunng) and localization (Ortung) , 1990, in “Rights”, N. 11, Paris, PUF, p. 77 S.
positive concept of Constitution , 1990, “Rights”, n° 12, PUF, Paris (p. 149 S.).
the situation of the science of the right , 1991, in “Rights”, PUF, Paris (transl. of Olivier Beaud: Die Lage DER europäischen Rechtswissenschaft ).
notion of the policy - Theory of the partisan , 1992, Flammarion, Paris (cf 1972, from which it is a new edition with foreword of Julien Freund).
Hamlet or Hécube , 1992, the Arch, Paris (transl. of Jean-Louis Besson and Jean Jourdheuil: Hamlet oder Hekube (1956).
Theory of the constitution , 1993, PUF, Paris (transl. and préf. of Olivier Beaud: Verfassungslehre (1928).
three types of legal thought , 1995, PUF, Paris.
Of the policy. Legality and legitimacy and other tests , 1996, Pardès, Puiseaux (cf Paris 1980).
State, movement, people - the triadic organization of the political unit , 1997, Kimé, Paris (intr. and transl. of Agnes Pilleul).
the dictatorship , Threshold, Paris, 2000 (transl. by Reflected Köller and Dominique Séglard).
Nomos of the Earth , PUF, Paris, 2001 (transl. by Lilyane Deroche-Gurcel, revised, presented and annotated by Peter Haggenmacher)
Leviathan in the doctrines of the State of Thomas Hobbes. Direction and failure of a political symbol , Threshold, Paris, 2002 (transl. of Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre of the Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols , Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg, 1938).
the value of the state and significance of the individual (editor scientific: Sandrine Balsam), Droz, Geneva, 2003
Ex Captivitate Salus. Experiments of the years 1945 - 1947 , Vrin, Paris, 2003 (Texts presented, translated and annotated by Andre Doremus).
the world civil war, tests 1953 - 1973 , editions è®e, November 2007 (Texts presented, translated and annotated by Celine Jouin).

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