i Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese- Speaking World Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese- Speaking World Reorienting the Political Edited by Kai Marchal and Carl K. Y. Shaw LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB For the cover photos: Carl Schmitt, © Carl-Schmitt-Gesellschaft e.V.; Leo Strauss, courtesy of Jenny Strauss Clay. Copyright © 2017 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Marchal, Kai, editor. | Shaw, Carl K. Y., 1961- editor. Title: Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-speaking world : reorienting the political/[edited by] by Kai Marchal and Carl K.Y. Shaw. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016050832 (print) | LCCN 2017000751 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498536264 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781498536271 (Electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Schmitt, Carl, 1888-1985—Political and social views. | Strauss, Leo—Political and social views. | Schmitt, Carl, 1888-1985— Influence. | Strauss, Leo—Influence. | Political science—China—Philosophy. | Political science—Taiwan—Philosophy. Classification: LCC JC263.S34 C38 2016 (print) | LCC JC263.S34 (ebook) | DDC 320.0951—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050832 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Kai Marchal and Carl K. Y. Shaw PART I: CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM FROM A TRANSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE 15 1 Three Strategies for Criticizing Liberalism and Their Continued Relevance 17 Harald Bluhm 2 Toward a Radical Critique of Liberalism: Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in Contemporary Chinese Discourses 37 Carl K. Y. Shaw PART II: CARL SCHMITT IN THE CHINESE-SPEAKING WORLD 59 3 From “Carl Schmitt on Mao” to “Carl Schmitt in China”: Unsettled Issues and Unsettling Continuities 61 Thomas Fröhlich 4 The Tyranny of Values: Reflections on Schmitt and China 81 Mario Wenning 5 Reading the Temperature Curve: Sinophone Schmitt-fever in Context and Perspective 103 Charlotte Kroll v vi Contents 6 Carl Schmitt Redux: Law and the Political in Contemporary Global Constitutionalism 121 Han Liu 7 Carl Schmitt in Taiwanese Constitutional Law: An Incomplete Reception of Schmitt’s Constitutional Theory 137 Shu-Perng Hwang PART III: LEO STRAUSS IN THE CHINESE-SPEAKING WORLD 149 8 Leo Strauss’s Critique of the Political in a Sinophone Context 151 Christopher Nadon 9 Modernity, Tyranny, and Crisis: Leo Strauss in China 173 Kai Marchal 10 On Leo Strauss as Negative Philosopher 197 Jianhong Chen 11 Mirror or Prism for Chinese Modernity? A Reading of Leo Strauss 211 Kuan-Min Huang 12 Toward a Taiwanese Cultural Renaissance: A Straussian Perspective 231 Chuan-Wei Hu References 243 Index 269 About the Contributors 279 Acknowledgments This volume is the result of the “International Conference on Political Philosophies across National Contexts: Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Sinophone World,” organized by and held at the Center for Political Thought, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Academia Sinica in September 2014. Apart from Charlotte Kroll’s contribution, all chapters collected in this volume were presented at that conference, though Kroll also participated in the conference and acted as a discussant. We would like to express our appreciation to the Academia Sinica and the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC, for their generous financial support of the conference. We are also indebted to Heinrich Meier who, though unable to attend our conference in persona, wrote a splendid Grusswort in German to express his philosophical support for our trans- cultural endeavour and offered his personal perspective on this issue. Many colleagues partook in the conference in various capacities or provided help- ful advice for the organization of our volume and deserve to be mentioned here: Stephen C. Angle, Tongdong Bai 白彤東, Kang Chan 詹康, Hans Feger, Fabian Heubel, Ethan Kleinberg, Qing Liu 劉擎, David J. Lorenzo, Christoph Menke, Eske Møllgaard, Robert B. Pippin, Christoph Thonfeld, and Ying-wen Tsai 蔡英文. All the chapters going back to the conference have undergone substantial revision; we are indebted to Christopher Reid, PhD, and Kent Suarez for meticulous English editing, as well as to Fu-to Chiang 蔣馥朵 for her painstaking work of reformatting the manuscripts and editing the references. vii Introduction Kai Marchal and Carl K. Y. Shaw The history of globalization is almost as old as history itself. Yet we are witnessing a distinctively new phenomenon today, almost thirty years after the end of the Cold War: the economic, political, and cultural domination enjoyed by the West for several centuries over the rest of the world seems to be coming to an end. Our present is characterized by a number of profound transformations, such as the global dissemination of digital technology, the biotechnological revolution, and immense socioeconomic changes. We have, nonetheless, reason to believe that the increased questioning of the supremacy of the West might be as dramatic as any of these. If current trends continue, the shifting of the economic center of gravity from North America and Europe to other parts of the world (especially East Asia) may result in even more radical social and cultural transformations and possibly lead to a new form of modernity, one that is “global” as well as “polycentric.” In such a future, non-liberal political regimes and alternative forms of capitalism and social organization will coexist, as non-Western forms of life and world views assert themselves in increasingly self-conscious, but also fragmented ways.1 It can be expected that these geopolitical shifts of power and influence will introduce a new sense of indeterminacy in Western politics, but also in Western self-descriptions and cultural visions more generally. It is unclear whether political thinking in the West is poised to address such a post-Western global order. Influenced by thinkers like Immanuel Kant and John Rawls, political theory in the Western academia is often understood as a highly abstract inquiry into the normative requirements of a just and well-ordered society. Many contemporary political theorists are convinced that they need to develop an ideal theory of rights and justice that all rational agents across national borders and cultural spheres will recognize. However, it has been contended that these normative theorists are unwilling to think 1