Page iii Political Romanticism Carl Schmitt translated by Guy Oakes Page iv This translation © 1986 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology This book was originally published as Politische Romantik, © 1919, 1925 by Duncker & Humblot, Berlin. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Baskerville by DEKR and printed and bound by Halliday Lithograph in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schmitt, Carl, 1888– Political romanticism. Translation of: Politische Romantik. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Political science—Europe—History—18th century. 2. Romanticism. I. Title. JA84. E9S3313 1986 320.5'094 86-10252 ISBN 0-262-69142-6 Page v Contents Translator's Introduction ix Preface 1 Introduction 22 The German conception: political romanticism as an ideology of reaction and 22 restoration The French conception: romanticism as a revolutionary principle; 25 Rousseauism The explanation of revolution in terms of the esprit romantique and the esprit 28 classique The confusion of the concept of political romanticism and the path to a 29 definition 1 35 The Outward Situation The personal political significance of romantic writers in Germany 35 Schlegel's political insignificance 37 Müller's political development: an Anglophile in Göttingen, a feudal and 39 estatist-conservative anticentralist in Berlin, a functionary of the absolutist centralized state in the Tyrol Page vi 2 51 The Structure of the Romantic Spirit La Recherche de la Réalité 51 The philosophical problem of the age: the opposition of thought and being and the irrationality of the real. Four different modes of reaction against modern rationalism. God, the highest reality of the old metaphysics, and his representation by two new realities: humanity (the people) and history. Humanity as the revolutionary demiurge, history as the conservative demiurge. The romantic subject and the new realities. The opposition of possibility and reality. romanticizing the people and history. Irony and intrigue. Reality and totality. The romantic treatment of the universe. The Occasionalist Structure of Romanticism 78 The disillusionment of subjectivism. The meaning of occasio as the antithesis of causa: the occasional as the relation of the subjectivistic and the fanciful. The nature of the old occasionalism: the suspension of antitheses by means of a higher third factor. The romantic suspension of antitheses by means of another higher factor: true reality and the different claimants to this reality (the ego, the people, history, God). The result: whatever happens to be different as the higher factor; the conflation of concepts. Romantic productivity: the world as the occasion for an experience; the essentially aesthetic mode of this productivity. The blending of intellectual spheres among the intellectualistic romantics. 3 109 Political Romanticism Survey of the development of theories of the state since 1796 109 The difference between the romantic conception of the state and the 115 counterrevolutionary and legitimist conception The state and the king as occasional objects of romantic interest 123 The romantic incapacity for ethical and legal valuation 124 Romanticized ideas in political philosophy 125 Adam Müller's productivity: his mode of argumentation: the rhetorically 127 formed resonance Page vii of significant impressions; his antitheses: rhetorical contrasts The occasional character of all romanticized objects 144 Brief indication of the difference between political romanticism and a 146 romantic politics: In the latter, it is the effect and not the cause that is occasional Excursus: the romantic as a political type in the conception of the liberal 149 bourgeoisie, exemplified by David Friedrich Strauss's Julian the Apostate Conclusion: political romanticism as the concomitant emotive response to 158 political events Notes 163 Index 169 Page ix Translator's Introduction The j'accuse mode of intellectuality: Schmitt and the polemical style of thought By the summer of 1945, Carl Schmitt had witnessed the civil war of 1918 and the collapse of the Wilhelmian Reich, the rise, vicissitudes, and fall of the Weimar Republic, the hazards of public life in the Third Reich, the Allied bombings of Berlin, and the catastrophic end of the Second World War. Along with an acute instinct for survival, he had also demonstrated a remarkable capacity for accommodation. As a professor at Bonn (1922–1928), Schmitt was an active supporter of political Catholicism and the policies of Heinrich Brüning, the leader of the Catholic Center party. In addition, 1 many of his articles on political matters during this period appeared in the Catholic press. Throughout the constitutional crises of the Weimar Republic, Schmitt was the most articulate advocate of discretionary presidential power that would make it possible to defend the Republic under emergency conditions. He also consistently supported a broad interpretation of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which granted the Reich president the authority to suspend basic constitutional rights and 2 take extraordinary measures in order to eliminate threats to public order. With Schmitt's move to Berlin in 1928, his constitutional Page x interpretations acquired more influence. He became a protégé of Johannes Popitz, a Prussian aristocrat and high civil servant, and he managed to establish himself as an informal adviser to General Kurt von Schleicher, a Hindenburg confidant and an influential power broker in Berlin. Finally, Schmitt was eventually engaged as a constitutional adviser to the Hindenburg government under the chancellorship of Heinrich Brüning. From this position, he was able to supply the arguments that formed the legal basis of the presidential system that governed the Republic by means of extraparliamentary decrees during the repeated electoral crises of the period 1930–1932. By 1932, Schmitt's public position on the National Socialists was clear. The ultimate objective of the Nazi party was to destroy the Weimar Constitution and its political order. The government, which was obligated to uphold the Constitution, could not consistently maintain a dispassionate and neutral stance vis-à-vis such a party. This meant that the National Socialists, along with the Communists, had to be denied the "equal chance" to compete for political power that was guaranteed constitutional parties. In Schmitt's view, a decision to place the National Socialists on the same legal footing with parties committed to the Weimar Constitution would amount to a reductio ad absurdum of the Constitution itself. In his essay Legalität und Legitimität, written during the months immediately preceding the general elections of July 1932, Schmitt argued that it would be ridiculous to suppose that the Constitution includes, a legal means of nullifying its own legality, and even more absurd to suppose that it provides a method for authorizing the destruction of the system of order instituted by the Constitution 3 itself. In the context of the political struggles of that year, it did not require a prodigal imagination to read this argument as an admonition against the current electoral strategy of the Nazi party leadership and its attempt to destroy the Constitution by gaining control of the state through legal means. Schmitt made his position on the National Socialists even more unequivocal in a newspaper article published less than two weeks before the general elections. It was called "The Abuse of Legality." Page xi Whoever provides the National Socialists with the majority on July 31 — even though he is not a National Socialist and regards this party only as the lesser evil — acts foolishly. he gives this movement — which is ideologically oriented and politically still quite immature — the possibility of changing the Constitution, setting up a state ecclesiastical authority, dissolving the trade unions, and so 4 on. He delivers Germany completely into the hands of this group. In spite of his support for the Republic, his criticism of the Nazis, and his ties to prominent Jews, in 5 both academia and the government, Schmitt managed to execute a brilliant and astonishingly smooth transition from Weimar to the Third Reich. Although he did not join the party until May 1933, his collaboration with the National Socialist government began less than three months after Hitler's appointment as chancellor, when Schmitt was asked to assist in drafting legislation to legalize the Nazi reorganization and control of state governments. Within a short time, Schmitt was able to secure the patronage of Goering and Hans Frank. Appointment to a number of party posts and party-influenced offices followed, making Schmitt one of the most visible academic sympathizers and intellectual ornaments of the new order. Although General von Schleicher was a victim of the purges of 1934, Schmitt himself was left untouched, and within a month of the so-called Night of the Long Knives, he 6 had an article in print defending the legality of Hitler's actions. In 1936, Schmitt's enemies in both academic and party bureaucracies engineered a Gestapo investigation into his Weimar past and the opportunism of his rapprochement with the Nazis. As a result of this inquiry, Schmitt was stripped of his government and party appointments, but he escaped with his life and his academic career intact. He was also able to survive the aftermath of the twentieth of July conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, the failure of which resulted in the execution of his political ally Johannes Popitz. And in spite of the impressive record he had compiled as a supporter of the Third Reich, Schmitt even managed to escape the complicated legal machinery constructed by the Allied War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg. Schmitt had defended the legality of the National Socialist regime, vindicated Hitler's status as the supreme judge and legislator of the German nation, and elab- Page xii 7 orated a Monroe Doctrine for Europe that would legitimize the new pan-European German empire. Yet after more than a year in internment camps and a period of interrogation at Nuremberg, no indictment was brought against Schmitt, and he was allowed to retire to the comparative tranquillity of his home town in the rural Sauerland. Writing in an apparently introspective mood of self-examination in the summer of 1945, Schmitt describes himself as a contemplative spirit, not inclined to take the intellectual offensive and, for that matter, not disposed to the counterattack either. But I am also weak at defense. I have too little practical interest in myself and too much theoretical interest in the ideas of my opponents, even when they come forward as accusers. I am too curious about the intellectual presuppositions of every reproach, every accusation, and every accuser. This is why I am no good either as a defendant or as an accuser. And yet I always prefer to be the defendant rather than the accuser. The j'accuse types may have their role to play on the world stage. For me, the 8 prosecutorial role is even more uncomfortable than the inquisitorial. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Schmitt was the consummate ''prosecutorial" thinker, and all his major works were developed as attempts to destroy positions he rejected. Schmitt's scholarly career began with an ambitious polemic against the dominant positivist jurisprudence of his 9 time, especially its theory of judicial interpretation and decision making and its conception of the 10 legitimacy of state power. Immediately after the collapse of the Wilhelmian Reich, Schmitt launched an attack on the neo-Kantian interpretation of the nature and limits of legal authority and its theory of 11 the normative basis of the state. Even his most ambitious scholarly work of the Weimar period — the Verfassungslehre (Constitutional theory) — was in part a sustained assault on the formalistic analysis of the Constitution favored by neo-Kantian jurisprudence, and an attempt to refute the conception of the 12 Constitution as ultimately grounded in basic norms or axioms. Schmitt's three most widely discussed books were also clearly polemical in their intent. His analysis of parliamentary democracy was a critique of the political philosophy of liber-