Political Romanticism

209 Pages·1991·1.31 MB·English

by  Carl Schmitt

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Political Romanticism
Carl Schmitt
translated by Guy Oakes
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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."
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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
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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
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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
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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-
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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
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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
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time, especially its theory of judicial interpretation and decision making and its conception of the
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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
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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
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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-