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Volume 36 Issue 3

Summer 2009

Anna Schmidt The Problem o Carl Schmitts Political Theology

James Costopoulos Review-Essay:What Is a Fascist? Goldberg andXenos on Fascism and Leo Strauss

Alan Gibson Beyond Ancients, Moderns,Heroes, and Villains: ThinkingAbout the Founding withRichard Zinman

Christopher LewisLauriello Diodotus and Thucydides

Wayne Ambler Postscript to A Reporton Leo Strausss Course onGiambattista Vico

Emmanuel Patard Addenda and Corrigenda

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2009 Interpretation, Inc. All rights reserved. No part o the contents may be

reproduced in any orm without written permission o the publisher.

ISSN 0020-9635


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I n s t r u c t i o n s f o r C o n t r i b u t o r s

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2 1 9The Problem o Carl Schmitts Political Theology

The Problem of Carl Schmitts Political Theology

A n n a S c h m i d t

University of Munich

[email protected]

Note: The ollowing is a response to Jianhong Chens article What Is Carl Schmitts

Political Theology? (Interpretation, Volume 33, Issue 2, Spring 2006).

In his story The Lightning-Rod Man, Herman Melville

paints an unsettling portrait o a merchant who hustles rom house to house

during rightening thunderstorms, trying to sell the latest model o copperlightning rods. Driven by ear or physical saety, calculations o scientic

probability, and desire or commercial gain, on his sales trips during light-

ning he avoids crowds o men, tall men and high buildings, and he never

rings a bell o any sort. His behavior and advice give away his identity: the

lightning-rod man is a modern-day devil, trying to destroy the orientation

o man towards God and to keep him away rom community and Church

by deceiving him into thinking that science and commerce will protect him

rom Gods omnipotent will. In the story the narrator wins a erocious victoryover the devil and his devilish instrument o power: I seized it; I snapped it;

I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark lightning-king out o my door,

fung his elbowed, copper sceptre ater him. Not everyone, though, has the

narrators clear sight and courage: But spite o my treatment, and spite o my

dissuasive talk o him to my neighbours, the Lightning-rod man still dwells

in the land; still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the ears

o man (Melville 1998, 75-83).

Carl Schmitt would have understood immediately whomMelville was portraying, even without the reerence to church bells. In 1970,

a century ater Melville, in his last book Political Theology II, Schmitt, in

an acerbically satirical essay, characterizes the Promethean position as the

2009 Interpretation, Inc.


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2 2 0 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n

position o the enemy: Eripuit ulmen caelo, nova ulmina mittit / Eripuit

caelum deo, nova spatia struit (Schmitt 1970, 126; see Meier 1998, 5), He

wrested lightning rom heaven and sends out new lightning bolts himsel /

He wrested heaven rom God, and builds new spaces himsel. In doing so,

Schmitt sides with Cardinal de Polignac, who in hisAnti-Lucretius sive De Deo

et Natura (1747) takes a stand against philosophers rom Epicurus to Spinoza.

Polignacs Eripuit ulmen Iovi was an attack on the philosophic hubris o

Epicurus. By taking up Polignac, Schmitt takes a stand against Turgot, who

had used Polignacs words o disdain as praise or the Promethean Benjamin

Franklin: he wrested lightning rom heaven. But mans technological eort

to make himsel the ruler, the dark king o the world, driven by his desire

or security, is doomed to ail. Science can neither account or nor controlthe truly sovereign power. It is no match or the almighty, inscrutable God.

What his enemies celebrate as human achievement and greatness, Schmitt

considers to be anti-godly sel-deication orgetul o mans proper place.

It is rebellion against the Creator who demands obedience.

An age that denies the truth o revelation is living a atal

lie: We live in an age o illusion and deception, a young Carl Schmitt

diagnoses in 1916. Our modern-day state o illusion is the result o a histori-

cal development brought about by people alling or the lie oered by the

Lightning-rod man. But whereas Melvilles portrayal o the devil is openly

ridiculous, Schmitt conceives o evil as deceivingly seductive. The Antichrist

knows how to imitate Christ and makes himsel so similar to him that he

tricks all out o their souls (Schmitt 1916, 65 .; see Meier 1998, 25). He lures

people not by appealing only to their need orphysicalsecurity, butin the

words o Paul in his First Letter to the Thessalonians (5,3)by promising

peace and security. According to Schmitt, one particular historical decision

in the quest or political peace and physical comort has provided the Anti-

christ with a more dangerously ertile ground than he ever had beore: The

strongest and most consequential o all spiritual turns in European history

I consider the step undertaken by the seventeenth century rom traditional

Christian theology to the system o a natural science. Until this day this

has determined the direction that all ensuing development had to take. []

Therewith the direction to neutralization and minimalization was taken and

the law accepted, according to which European humanity has acted and that

has shaped its concept o truth (Schmitt 1963, 88 ., my italics).

Many interpreters, though not all, have taken Schmitts

ormulations o spiritual turns in the orm o neutralization and


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minimalization o the truth as the matter-o-act observations o a social

scientist, a theorist o secularization ree o value judgments. A recent one

is Jianhong Chen in his article What Is Carl Schmitts Political Theology? It

is the goal o this article to demonstrate why the interpretation o Schmitt as

a theorist o secularization is wrong. In order to evaluate Schmitts political

theory correctly, it has to be understood in light o Schmitts own concept o

truth, which is not one based on scientic truth.

Beginning with the abandonment o sixteenth-century the-

ology in avor o seventeenth-century metaphysics, ollowed by the increasing

infuence o economics and technology, Schmitt views the history o moder-

nity as driven by a continuing quest or a neutral and sae haven on earth indenial o the necessity to take a side between good and evil. In this development,

theological concepts have become uninteresting and private, God himsel

is neutralized, reduced to a parasite o ethics and becomes, as Hamann

has said against Kant, a concept, and ceases to be a being (Schmitt 1963,

82, 89). But or Schmitt, a neutral position, the liberal attitude o a value-

ree science, is impossible. His entire work can be understood as taking sides

against all attempts to neutralize the truth, to overlook the distinction o

good and evil, right and wrong: It is the opposites o good and evil, God and

Devil, between which there exists as a matter o lie and death an Either-Or

which knows o no synthesis, o no higher third (Schmitt 1934, 24).

Schmitts concept o the enemy fows directly rom his

concept o truth and is as incompatible with a neutral position: The enemy

is our own question as a gure (Schmitt 1950b, 90; 1991, 217; see Meier 1998,

46, n. 54; my italics)a question each and everyone is existentially con-

ronted with and rom which one cannot hide. Whoever reuses to hear and

to answer this question in the right way, whoever hopes to be able to remainneutral, whoever ails to act and ght a gure like the Lightning-rod man,

sides with evil. Schmitt knows only derision or the liberal metaphysics

or the metaphysics o liberalism that believes it to be possible to answer the

question: Christ or Barrabas? with a motion to adjourn or the instituting o an

investigative committee (Schmitt 1934, 34). By contrast to a revelation that

results in a division o mankind into believers and nonbelievers, riend and

enemy, the liberal discourse o an inclusive mankind suggests the illusionary

neutral ground o a common humanity: whoever says mankind intends todeceive (Schmitt 1933, 37; see Meier 1998, 22 .). Schmitts motto, taking up

Luthers position on the cardinal Christian virtue, is: humilitas rather than

humanitas (Schmitt 1991, 274; see Meier 1998, 89). Or, as Schmitt puts it


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bluntly, quoting Cardinal Newman: No medium between Catholicity and

atheism (Schmitt 1934, 23).

In 1916 Schmitt condemns the illusion o humanity in strongterms. Mans usurpation o Gods position in the process o secularization

has resulted in a disastrous conusion that has mistakenly turned right

into mere might, aithulness into calculability, truth into scientic

correctness, beauty into good taste, and Christianity into a pacist

organization (see Meier 1998, 3 .). More than 50 years later, in his last

bookPolitical Theology II, Schmitt writes o this new, purely worldly-human

science as an autism, nothing other than sel-empowerment, nothing

but sel-authorization, anti-godly sel-deication directed polemicallyagainst a theological transcendence (see Meier 1998, 5 .). Though the spirit

o technicity may be evil and devilish, it is no mere mistake people make

without knowing better. Theydo know better. The truth has been revealed

to them and it is a sin to reuse to submit onesel to it. Even i many theo-

logians today are less uncompromising in their condemnation o modern

lie than theologians used to be, orthodox positions have always denied that

the individual is in any way ree to decide on and pursue his own good and

have instead called or unquestioning obedience to revelationbe it Juda-

ism, Christianity or Islamas the one thing needul. For who can know

that enlightenment is not in act the beginning o the slow but ecient work

o evil to gradually rob revealed religion o its legitimacy by making aith a

private matter, in order to gradually make it disappear entirely? Both Carl

Schmitts political theology and undamentalist political theologies today

oppose enlightenment and the neutral spheres it has carved out where

people try to hide rom the decision between good and evil on which their

lie depends. The central domain o spiritual existence cannot be a neutral

domain (Schmitt 1963, 94).

In the light o Schmitts condemnation o the belie in a

value-ree, neutral position that avoids the core o the political idea, the

morally demanding decision (Schmitt 1934, 83; see Meier 1998, 1 ., 12

.), it is ironic that Chens article attempts once again to establish Schmitt

as an amoral, value-ree, objective scientist. Although political theology is

now widely discussed as never beore, Chen ails to mention what the term

describes todaya political theory or action that understands itsel as basedon aith in revelation. It is also strange that Chen reuses to engage the ques-

tion whether Schmitt, who has written not just one, but two books titled

Political Theologyand speaks o mypolitical theology in Political Theology


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II, may consider himsel to be a political theologian, i.e. a political thinker or

theorist who bases his theorizing on his aith in revelation. Since Chen claims

that political theology in Schmitt has nothing to do with aith-based politi-

cal action, he does not approach the question o how Schmitt understands

himsel and his own theorizing, and o how his statements against anti-

godly sel-deication are to be understood. In an attempt to deend a purely

academic meaning o the term, Chens surace study o a ew o Schmitts

translated writings leads him to conclude that Schmitt uses the term as a

sociologist, ree o any moral judgment, to objectivelydescribe the historical

process o so-called secularization (Schmitt 1965, 61). Political theology in

Schmitt or Chen means a structural correspondence between theological

and juristic concepts, and a structural transormation o traditional theo-logical concepts into modern political concepts (Chen, 159). Chen even

claims that Schmitt defnes political theology as sociology o the concept

o sovereignty (167, my italics). The question Chen ails to conront is pre-

ciselywho in Schmitts thought is sovereign. On the answer to this question

depends how Schmitt judges the possibility o the transormation o divine

sovereignty into human sovereignty, or the correspondence between the

divine and the merely human, or whether they are, in Schmitts view, only

so-called transormations and so-called correspondences. Chen equallyails to ask how the core o the political idea as the morally demanding

decision gures in the lies work o the thinker who wrote The Concept

o the Political. For this thinker, as a result o the increasing incapacity or

God o our age, i the theological disappears [] so does the political

(Schmitt 1934, 82; see Meier 1998, 13). For Schmitt, thereore, the modern

separation o the spiritual and the worldly, o pure aith and impure politics

is merely another hubristic attempt to neutralize the truth (Schmitt 1970,

107), since or him there is nothing more important than to answer the callo God at any given moment in history. We are being tested now by the

God who is present whether we are capable o the morally demanding deci-

sion (Schmitt 1950a, 114).

Chens eorts to present Schmitt as a neutrally observing

scientist are not directed against the attempt to demonize Schmitt by reli-

gious means (Chen, 154). On the contrary, Chen ears that by grounding

Schmitts political action in his Christian aith, the political burden on the

name o Schmitt is shaken oa reerence to his Nazi past (160). But par-ticularly in the light o events since 2001, how can Chen think that aith, be it

Schmitts aith or the aith o a suicide terrorist, is capable o reeing anyone

o the responsibility or murderous deeds?


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However that may be, Chens article is expressly directed

against Heinrich Meiers interpretation o Schmitt. Meiers books have set

the standard not only because they were the rst to draw on the entirety o

Schmitts work, but because they were also the rst to account or the obscu-

rities, turns and contradictions that abound in Schmitts writings, to take on

the diculties and incoherencies that previous interpretations had ignored

and that an interpretation like Chens eels justied to ignore yet again. In his

two books, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue (Meier 1995)

and The Lesson o Carl Schmitt(Meier 1998), Meier meticulously documents

his philosophic interpretation o Schmitt as a political theologian whose

lies work is motivated by his aith in revelation. Chen acknowledges Meiers

groundbreaking work as a detailed, orceul, and provocative analysis(Chen, 160)yet holds, without himsel making the eort o going into any

detail or reuting any o Meiers textual proos, that Meier gets it all wrong,

conjuring up a deep and real meaning that is not there by not limiting

himsel to the statements on the surace o Schmitts texts (Chen, 154). By

reminding Meier, editor o the German edition o the writings o Leo Strauss

and the author o a book on Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem

(Meier 2006), o Strausss hermeneutic maxim that the problem inherent in

the surace o things, and only in the surace o things, is the heart o things(Strauss 1958, 13), Chen sets a high standard or himsel: he implicitly raises

the claim that his interpretation is more in the spirit o Strausss close reading

than Meiers.

Yet Chens interpretation is based on a highly selective read-

ing o only our o Schmitts worksPolitical Theology, Political Theology II

(rom which he quotes one single statement), The Concept o the Political(the

translated second version only), and Ethic o State and Pluralistic State

(rom which he also quotes just once)as opposed to Meiers analysis o

Schmitts entire oeuvre. Chen justies his method with the claim that when

we look beyond Political Theology, we do not nd in Schmitt substantial

changes regarding the meaning o political theology as Chen understands it

(Chen, 159). But Schmitt, in his essay The Completed Reormation alone,

uses the term political theology ve times (Schmitt 1965). For someone

who claims the authority o Strauss to be on his side, Chen understands

Strausss statement as artlessly as he understands Schmitt, orgetting that

there is a problem inherent in the surace. Strauss never said that only theclearest, most explicit statements constitute the suraceand even less that

one sentence in a text makes up the surace o the entire text. To the contrary,

Strauss claimed that the most important things might only be hinted at,


9/116


might be said in a dierent thinkers name, in the orm o a contradiction or

omitted altogether. Every word, clear or obtuse, o the surace has to be taken

into account, as well as the entire surace o a thinkers work.

Precisely by ollowing closely the entire surace o Schmitts

texts a reader unwilling to overlook diculties will discover an abundance

o problems: omissions, contradictions, deliberate alse quotations o even

the titles o his own works, biting polemics, covert hints and traces. Reading

Schmitt is detective work: iPolitical Theologywere a scientic sociological

book, it would be unusual that it does not even, contrary to Chens claim,

dene its title-giving concept, but instead leaves it to the reader to under-

stand what Schmitt means by political theology rom the mere three timeshe uses the term in his book. The omission o any denition becomes even

more curious when one considers that until 1922, when Schmitt rst raised

its fag, political theology was used dierently rom how it came to be

used ater Schmitts book. Contrary to what Chen implies, there had never

beore existed a positive concept by the name o Christian political theol-

ogy to designate political action or theory based on Christian aith (Chen,

160). How then, and why, did Schmitt, to quote his riend, the theologian

Erik Peterson, come to be the one to introduce the term [political theology]

into literature (Peterson 1994, 81)? How did Schmitt provide the oundation

or the veritable career this term has since enjoyed? For an interpretation o

Schmitts thought and intention, a look at the history o the term, the long

way it has come down to our usage o it today, is indispensable.

The term political theology goes back to its classical presen-

tation in M. Terentius Varros theologia tripertitathe division o theology

into mythical, natural and political corresponding to the gods as introduced

by the poets, the philosophers and the statesmen, respectively (Augustinus:De civitate Dei VI.12). With this distinction the philosopher Varro raises the

question o the truth o these theologies: while political and mythical theol-

ogy, in contrast to natural theology, serve a necessary purpose in ounding

and governing a political community, their claims are not true. Augustine,

to whom we owe most o what we know regarding Varros writings, held

this against the Roman ponti (pontiex) Scaevola: to publicly purport or

political purposes what he did not believe to be truein the ace o the truth

o revelation. Ever since Augustines accusation against the pagan pontipolitical theology had been used to decry the use o a alse theology or

political ends. Having been turned into an expression o moral contempt by


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Augustine, no believer in revelation would have made use o it to designate

his own position.

No believer until Schmitt, that isin 1922. In 1871, nearly1500 years ater Augustine, the Russian anarchist Michail Bakunin, ghting

in the name o Satan against God, uses the term to decryThe Political The-

ology o Mazzini in his so titled book (Bakunin 1961). In Bakunin Schmitt

recognizes the real enemy o all traditional concepts o western European

civilization, rebelling openly against all orms o authority and order,

human and divine, in order to propel humankind into a Babylonian unity

o pure this-worldliness that denies all transcendence (see Schmitt 1934, 64

.; Meier 1998, 6 .). Using the term political theology as a weapon to attackall claims to divine authority in the name o an ever-rebellious natural anar-

chy, Bakunin, in Schmitts view, by denying the legitimacy o a divine order,

denies what solely is right. It is rom this atheist revolutionary, the enemy,

that Schmitt takes the termand makes it his own by making it armative:

yes, political theology indeed means aith-based political action, or the God

o revelation is the highest sovereign authority. But since Schmitt does not

mention the title o Bakunins book attacking political theology anywhere in

his writings, it takes some detective work in order to trace Schmitts title back

to its origin. Meier was the rst to ollow Schmitts hints: In the 1922 (rst)

version oPolitical Theology, Schmitt reers to an essay written at the same

time, which became Roman Catholicism and Political Form. There Schmitt

writes o Bakunins ght against Mazzini: or Bakunin, the reemason

Mazzinis aith in God was, just as all aith in God, only proo o slavery

(Schmitt 1923, 75; see Meier 1998, 8 .). Bakunin, ghting Church and State,

uses the term as the most scathing indictment o Mazzini, who supports God

and State; Schmitt disarms Bakunin by turning Bakunins accusation into

a positive term to designate Schmitts own positiona position that knows

it is based on aith and that wants to be based on aith in revelation because

it believes in its truth. The meaning o the term as we use it today, reed o

the accusation o lying and (sel-)deception, is the direct result o Schmitts

redening appropriation o it in his book o 1922.

But Schmitt does something more complicated than this:

while turning political theology into a positive term, he also keeps the

meaning o political theology as a term o attack and adjusts it to his ownpurposes. When speaking o the political theology o the Restoration time

(Schmitt 1934, 56), o my political theology and the distinction o riend

and enemy as the criterion o the political and political theology (Schmitt


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1970, epilogue, 116), he uses the term to designate the grounding o political

action in true aith in revelation. But when speaking o other positions that do

not agree with hisbe they atheistic, humanitarian, liberal, philosophic, or

other politico-theological positions that arrive at dierent doctrines rom his

ownhe considers these positions to be political theologies as well; the last

sentence oPolitical Theologyturns Bakunins term o attack against Mazzini

back against Bakunin himsel: Schmitt there calls his atheistic opponent the

theologian o the anti-theological (my italics). In the same vein, Schmitt

writes reverently about Donoso Corts, who in his radical spirituality only

always sees the theology o the opponent (Schmitt 1950b, 79), because he

knows, just like Schmitt, o the metaphysical core oallpolitics (Schmitt

1934, 65, my italics), even o the politics that denyall metaphysicsbecause,as Schmitt claims, metaphysics is something unavoidable (Schmitt 1922,

23; see Meier 1998, 43). Thus, Schmitt launches invectives against the

religion o technology and the pseudo-religion o absolute humanity

(Schmitt 1950b, 108)against, in other words, the political theologies that

are politically rebellious by turning man into their God.

Considering himsel and his opponents, believers and

nonbelievers, riends and enemies alike political theologians is not sim-

ply a polemical attempt at unmasking the opponent, but a consequence o

Schmitts own position. Since he believes himsel to know that there is no

knowledge o the good outside the truth o aith in revelation, anyposition

that is not one o the rightaith or him is still a position o aith, only o

the wrongaith, a aith with specic belies about God, reedom, progress,

the anthropological ideas o human nature, about the good and the bad,

right and wrong. Whatever position one may takewhether one believes,

like Schmitt, in the unlosable secret o the divine origin o man (Schmitt

1950b, 78) or in a natural origin o mankindall positions amount to an

anthropological proession oaith(Schmitt 1963, 58). With actions based

on belie rather than on knowledge, the liberal deender o individual ree-

dom, the Marxist revolutionary working towards the world State, and the

philosopher living a contemplative lie withdrawn rom political action are

all equally political theologians in the sense that, according to Schmitt, they

all make their decisions based on aith or belie: there is no escaping rom

making decisions, and decisions reveal what the decider believes he is ree or

obliged to do or to not do.

Schmitt believes himsel to know that there is no escap-

ing political theology, that there is no undamental alternative to challenge


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political theology. Any position, no matter how trans-political or anti-

theological it claims to be, is as inevitably political, alling on either side o

Schmitts riend-enemy distinction, as Schmitt asserts that it is based on

some kind o aith, on a decision that can never deend itsel solely on the

ground o reason. Every aith o this kind is measured against Schmitts own

aith in the sovereignty o the Christian God. Believing that Gods authority

cannot be questioned by man without committing the sin o sel-deication,

that the whole process o so-called secularization amounts to sinul rebel-

lion, Schmitts rame o reerence is distinctly moral. Schmitts world is one

o aith against aith, where spirit ghts against spirit, where the spirit o

good ghts the spirit o evil, the spirit o obedience ghts the spirit o disobe-

dience (Schmitt 1963, 95). In Bakunins decision against God, in his decisionagainst decision and authority, his beliein the goodness o human nature,

his own political theology comes to light. But or Schmitt, not only a political

activist like Bakunin, but also a political philosopher like Rousseau is subject

to the measure o Schmitts true political theology: Rousseaus attempt to

demonstrate that he can know the nature o man by the use o his unaided

reason repeats the Fall as rebellion against divine authority and command-

ment. Schmitt cannot allow or the existence o political philosophy since a

position o aith cannot allow or the truth o a position that claims nottobe based onaith but on actual human knowledge. I the only relevant source

o wisdom is revelation, philosophy is not only impossible, but it is the grav-

est human hubris and sel-delusion. It is a sin or man to deny God as the

sovereign source o all good. How does he know that man is good, Schmitt

quotes Donoso Corts, i God has not told him? (Schmitt 1934, 74)

Theologians in his time correctly understood Political The-

ologyas the work o a sel-described political theologian and saw that Schmitt

indeed, as Erik Peterson put it, introduced the term [political theology] into

literature. In 1935, a year ater the publication o the second, slightly altered

version oPolitical Theology, Peterson responds to Schmitt with a book that

denies the possibility o all Christian political theology ater the Trinitya

politico-theological rebuttal o Schmitts political involvement with the Nazis

in orm o a supposedly purely theological treatment o Eusebius (Peterson

1994). Schmitt returns the attack 35 years later with Political Theology II, its

subtitleThe Legend o the Disposal o Every Political Theologydirected

against Peterson. Far rom presenting a theorem o secularization, Schmittargues theologically that the very concept o the Trinity allows or a concept

o stasis understood as upheaval and enmity within the Trinity itsel. To

be sure: Erik Peterson is not an enemy o Schmitt, or Peterson holds, like


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Schmitt, that the liberal thesis that politics and theology have nothing to do

with each other is itsel only a concrete political attitude that includes a cer-

tain theological positionwhich happens to be heretical (Peterson 2004).

Even beore Peterson, Alred de Quervain, a Calvinist

theologian, in 1931 publishes The Theological Presuppositions o Politics:

Foundational Lines o a Political Theologyin response to Schmitt, taking up

Schmitts term exactly as Schmitt uses it: Schmitt sees through the high-

handedness o the morality and o the weltanschauung and o the power

relations which are consolidated in themselves and assert themselves. Here

the knowledge o Gods sovereigntyis not pushed aside. It is the presupposi-

tion (de Quervain 1931, 168; see Meier 1998, 92). With a clear eye or who hisriends are, de Quervain understands that Schmitts Political Theologywith

its subtitle Four Chapters on the Doctrine o Sovereigntyasserts nothing less

than the sovereignty o the Christian God. It is a sovereignty that cannot be

adequately obeyed by sticking to a merely human morality or set o norms:

Theology deals with the ull reality o man; it is not the systematic work-

ing out o timeless truths. I it alls prey to this intellectualist urge, it turns

into a metaphysical system, it becomes unhistorical. Theology and political

knowledge [] are inseparable (de Quervain 1931, 11). In Schmitts words:

Christianity is in its core not a morality and not a doctrine [], but a his-

torical event o innite, unpossessible, unoccupiable uniqueness (Schmitt

1950c, 930).

Although Chen arms that the theory o sovereignty is

the subject matter o Schmitts political theology (Chen, 159), he does not

understand the intention with which Schmitt makes sovereignty the central

issue. For Schmitt, whoever raises the question o sovereignty on its most

serious and demanding level cannot avoid asking who the true, the ultimateauthority is in the ace o the conficting claims o authority man encounters

in the realm o politics. In his words, ound on the very surace oPolitical

Theology II: Whoever decides in concreto [] the question what is spiritual

and what is worldly and how do we deal with the res mixtae that simply, in the

Interim between the arrival and the return o the Lord, make up the entire

existence on earth o this spiritual-worldly, spiritual-temporal being that

is man?(Schmitt 1970, 107). Or, in the words o Leo Strauss in his lecture

Reason and Revelation: human guidance or divine guidance. Tertium nondatur (rst published in Meier 2006, 149).

Whoever thinks about the source o guidance by which to

take ones bearings in lie must think about what constitutes authority or


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sovereignty rightly understood. Precisely because aith in revelation claims it

has the right and authoritative answer, one cannot ignore its claims. Politi-

cal philosophers rom Aristotle to Hobbes, rom Avicenna to Nietzsche have

addressed implicitly or explicitly theproblem that is presented by the demand

or obedience to the highest divine authority (a personal, loving and punish-

ing sovereign authority in history that is not identical with a metaphysical

concept, as Chen claims). For Schmitt, the Biblical claim to Gods sovereignty

is never a question or a problem, but the authoritative answerrom the very

start. To deend the truth o revelation as the decisive event in history, to sal-

vage the moral seriousness guaranteed by the divine demand or obedience

that alone seems to protect human lie rom slipping into a meaningless quest

or pleasure and entertainment, to deend the sovereignty o the ChristianGod in an age o neutralizations and depoliticizations (Schmitt 1963, 79),

to point to the divinely installed order that since the advent o Christ in his-

tory must ground all legitimate juridical orderthat is Schmitts intention.

It is his intention not because he considers it politically useul, but true. How

else can one understand his claim that the denial o original sin destroys

all political order (Schmitt 1933, 45; see Meier 1998, 81 .)? The denial o

this undamental doctrine o aith in revelationa doctrine unknown, or

example, to the political order o the Greeks, in whom Schmitt shows nointerest at allcan destroy all political order only i the political order is

conceived o as a theological order. In what ashion does Schmitt conceive

o the political order as theological and o the theological order as political?

The real political distinction is the distinction between

riend and enemythis is how Schmitt opens the little-known third and

nal version o his most amous work, The Concept o the Political. Accord-

ing to Chen, Schmitts intention is simply to state a plain truth in politics

that there is neither constant enemy nor perpetual riend (Chen, 153). This

plain and simple truth would hardly have gained Schmitts work the ame it

received. I all Schmitt did was state the obvious, why did it take him three ver-

sions oThe Concept o the Politicalto do sothe rst one published in 1927,

the second one in 1932, and the third one in 1933with each version dier-

ing signicantly rom the previous one? Why did Leo Strausss philosophical

criticism o Schmitts second version in 1932 show, according to Schmitt, a

better understanding o Schmitts intention than any other interpretation,

and why did it lead Schmitt to his most radical, most unguarded ormula-tions in the most stringent third version? And why, when The Concept o the

Politicalwas republished in 1963, did Schmitt choose to reprint the theoreti-

cally inerior second version, not giving so much as a hint that there ever had


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been a third one? Chen, unbothered by these problems, takes into account

only the second version, ignoring both the surace constituted by the three

versions oThe Concept o the Politicalas well as Schmitts explicit statement

that The Concept o the Politicalis not a plain truth, but the encadration

o an unathomable problem (Schmitt 1963, 13). Why is the distinction

between riend and enemy and hence the political such a problem, possibly

an unsolvable problem, or Schmitt?

Heinrich Meiers approach in his bookCarl Schmitt and Leo

Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue because it traces the changes, clarications,

and radicalizations Schmitt undertakes throughout the course o the three

versions gets to the heart o what Schmitt calls the common criterion o thepolitical and political theology: the distinction between riend and enemy.

The distinction between riend and enemy is itsel a politico-theologicaldis-

tinction, and the political theologian in Schmitts sel-understanding, as

opposed to a sociologist o secularization, thinks o others in terms o riend

and enemy. When Schmitt sets out to deend what he calls his Concept o the

Politicalor the rst time in 1927, liberalism is on the rise, characterized by a

parliament that is a permanent debating club and a doctrine that replaces

the personally responsible political decision with a set o legal norms that

claim to be o universal legitimacy: In the systematics o liberal thought

that still denitely prevail today, Schmitt says, the political is robbed, with

special pathos, o all validity and subordinated to the normative prescrip-

tions and orders o morals, law, and economics (Schmitt 1927, 3 ., 29; see

Meier 1995, 21 .).

Going against what he calls Political Romanticism (Schmitt

1919, 1925), yet still ar rom proclaiming the political as the total as he does

in the preace o the 1934 re-edition oPolitical Theologyin reerring to thenal third version oThe Concept o the Political, Schmitt, with seeming mod-

esty, asks liberalism to grant the domain o the political merely equal status

with the other existing domains o the economic, the aesthetic, the legal and

the moral. How to make the correct distinction o riend and enemy i the

enemy is not the one who is morally bad, economically harmul, aesthetically

ugly, or breaking the law is a problem circumvented by the possibility that the

enemy may simply be an attacking state. This would suggest that the serious-

ness o the enemy has its reason in the real possibility o physical killing(Schmitt 1963, 33), in the ever-present possibility o war. And it would in part

excuse Chen or thinking that Schmitt states nothing but a plain truth: states

have to be prepared or deadly enemies. But the political is not constituted by


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the threat o physical killing. Schmitt states that the enemy in the case o con-

fict means the negation o ones own way o existence and thereore needs to

be ended o or ought in order to preserve ones own, existential way o lie

(Schmitt 1933, 32; see Meier 1998, 53). The seriousness o the enemy does not

have its reason in the danger o losing ones liethis would be the bourgeois

position Schmitt despisesbut in the danger o losing a distinct way o lie

that makes up ones existential and not merely ones physical being. Does

Schmitt consider the enemy as enemy to the way o lie o a particular nation

as shaped by its particular tradition and laws, a way o lie that any nation has

a right to deend? Is Schmitt a theorist o nationalism?

The second version o 1932 makes clearer than the rst ver-sion that this is not so. As Meier points out, Schmitt is not a nationalist,

nor is the distinction between riend and enemy limited to relations between

states. In the second version, the political is no longer one domain among

others, such as the moral and the legal, but a degree o intensity: the sense

o denoting the most extreme degree o intensity o a bond or separation, o

an association or dissociationwithin the state just as much as between

states (Schmitt 1963, 38; see Meier 1998, 29 .). Hereby Schmitt shows what

he had in mind rom the very beginning: the political is the horizon, the

authoritative case, or all other domains that can all become political. In

the words o Schmitt: the point o the political can be reached rom within

any domain as the most intensive and extreme opposition. In consequence,

everythingis at all times more or less political, every (economic) relationship,

(juridical) tension or (moral) confict within the state can transorm itsel

into the most intensive and extreme opposition. Severed rom its link to an

existing political community, the political springs up wherever two people

join orces in their will to oppose a third, and the more this association is

dened by what Schmitt calls the dire emergency, the more political it

is. The political entity is nota State or a nationfxedby legal convention or

by natural development, but varies with its eectiveness in distinguishing

between riend and enemy in times o emergency. I the political unit is the

authoritative unit, total and sovereign and man is wholly and existentially

grasped in political participationi mans soul is political in its deepest

natureand i the political association in which he participates is con-

stituted by the dire emergency, what does Schmitt understand by the dire

emergency (Schmitt 1933, 21 ; see Meier 1998, 35 .)?

Certainly the reerence to the possibility o physical killing

does not determine the dire emergency and make the enemy existentially


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real. Fear o violent death, Schmitt holds against Hobbes, is not able to grasp

man as man wholly and determine him most deeply. People are willing to

die or political goals, or a way o lie; people are willing to die or what

they think is right, or they are capable o orgoing lie under circumstances

that deny them the way o lie that they have understood to be the best one.

Fear o death cannot account or why Schmitt conceives o the political as

the total. In the 1933 version oThe Concept o the Political, Schmitt makes

this clear beyond doubt by distinguishing the agonalrom thepolitical. The

agonal positionone o its amous representatives is Ernst Jngerunder-

stands confict and war as immanent and belonging to nature, as cyclical

recurrences o an underlying eternal order. Schmitt ridicules the agonal idea

o enmity as one pertaining to animals that lack knowledge o good andevilthe cat is the natural, the agonal enemy o the mouse (Schmitt 1955,

149 .). Enmity or Schmitt is nothing that has its cause in nature or in natural

beings will to power. Man is not an animal without a truth to ght or, and

the dire emergency cannot be caused by natural agonal confict. Thepolitical

position perceives o enmity as something that transcends the natural by

ar: enmity is the result o a supernatural event in history resulting rom an

intentional division o the world into good and evil. The political task con-

sists in ghting against enemies perceived o as evil or the establishment othe true moral ordera moral order that requires a morally demanding

decision to be brought into being. The rst version describes the political

as the ability to distinguish between riend and enemy (Schmitt 1927, 10).

The third version claries the political as the task to distinguish correctly

between riend and enemy (Schmitt 1933, 16; my italics).

I the political as the distinction between riend and enemy

is to grasp every human being wholly and totally, then nding the enemy is

an existential task that no one is ree to escape. For Schmitt, much depends

on the correct identication o the enemynot only to protect onesel and

ones association, but to preserve ones individual identity that is determined

by whom one recognizes as ones enemy: Tell me who your enemy is and I

will tell you who you are (Schmitt 1991, 243). Is the understanding o the

political motivated ultimately by Schmitts desire to know himsel? Is the

political sphere in which the question o the enemy arises a means to that

end?

Schmitt is indeed concerned with the possibility o sel-

deception. But the radical and systematic questioning o everything one

believes is not Schmitts way, nor is it his intention in conronting this


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danger. On the contrary, Schmitt polemicizes against the activity o soli-

tary contemplation as a way o investigating the question o what is right

and what is wrong. For Schmitt it is unquestionable that sel-deception is

part o solitude (Schmitt 1950b, 87; see Meier 1998, 45 .). Not to gain sel-

knowledge in the Socratic way by examining the conficting claims that arise

in the sphere o the political, but to avoid sel-deception as the greatest moral

danger, Schmitt believes he must turn to the sphere o political action. The

question o the right lie, which is at the outset o the quest or sel-knowledge,

is never posed since Schmitt knows the answerrom the very beginning: the

right lie consists in historical, moral action and not trans-historical, trans-

moral contemplation, which in Schmitts rame o mind would equal a moral

transgression: questioning the truth o the morally demanding decision.

The sphere o political action or Schmitt is essentially his-

torical, as he outlines in his article Three Possibilities o a Christian View

o History (Schmitt 1950c). But history or Schmitt is the realm o Provi-

dence, and must be understood as a state in which man is being tested and

tried. Since Schmitt claims that every historical truth is true only once

the structure o the historical is the concrete uniqueness o everything

historicalthe real enemy may change with any new historical constella-

tion, constantly appearing in a deceptive new guise (ibid., 153). But i the

nature o the enemy is deception, the enemy cannot be known. Schmitt

attempts to solve this problem by making a virtue out o the absence o neces-

sity by which the enemy can be known: the enemy must necessarilybe the

one who denies the necessity o enmity. This quasi-nature o the enemy that

Schmitt construes remains unchangeable throughout all historical changes

and deceptions: hence it is not true only once. Schmitt needs to limit the

unknowability o the ever-deceptive enemy as a gure o Providence in order

to salvage his political theology as a guide or concrete political action. I he

wishes to hold on to the highest certainty that surpasses all merely human

certainties and securities and gives his lie an ultimate meaningthat there

is a moral order to the universe, ruled over by an omnipotent God who has

divided it into good and evilSchmitt has to resort to this trick in order to

be able to translate his aith into concrete political actions against whom he

has identied as the enemy.

Yet how can Schmitt be sure that this attempt to identiy theenemy is not an act o sel-deception based on a alse certainty? I Schmitt is

araid o illusion more than anything else and repulsed by deception more

than anything else, yet i the enemy is a master o deception and i everything


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depends on the right decision in the ace o historical uncertainty, then

what prevents Schmitt rom deceiving himsel in thinking that the enemy

is always the one who denies the importance o enmity? All deception is

sel-deception. [] But the enemy is an objective power [] and the real

enemy cannot be deceived (Schmitt 1950b, 89). The real enemy must have

knowledge about Schmitt that Schmitt himsel does not have. He has the

power o calling Schmitt into question that Schmitt would not have on his

own. Whence comes this power o knowledge that the enemy has?

Instead o giving a direct answer, Schmitt answers in the

orm o an example: the moments when the enemy is seen with the utmost

clarity make or the peaks o politics (Schmitt 1933, 48 .; see Meier 1998,58). In order to illustrate what a historical high point o great politics is,

Schmitt reers to Oliver Cromwells speech against papal Spain o September

17, 1656. In this speech, Cromwell gives the reason how he has come to know

the enemy; he reveals that identiying the enemy has its basis in a metaphysi-

cal knowledge. The Spaniards enmity is put into him by God. He is the

providential enemy. Whoever considers Spain an accidental enemy does

not know God, who has said: I will put enmity between your seed and her

seed. To these quotations rom Cromwell Schmitt adds the explicit reerence

to Genesis III:15, reerring the reader to the biblical account o the Fall and

Gods sovereign decision to bring enmity into the world (Schmitt 1963, 67;

1933, 49; see Meier 1989, 57). The providential enemy is my brother because

God wills it so. This is why Schmitt knows that he himsel is inevitably an

enemy to someone else, and why he himsel wants to be an enemy to whoever

does not believe in revealed providential enmity: Woe to him who has no

enemy, or Iwill be his enemy on Judgment Day (Schmitt 1950b, 90). The

enemys existence and identity, in Schmitts political theology, must be o the

highest concern or any believer who takes his bearings by the revealed truth.

The peak o enmity is religious waraith ghting against errant aithand

the paradigm o war is civil warbrother ghting against brother. In light

o Schmitts revealed knowledge o the providential enemy, his enigmatic

assertions can be understood: Spirit ghts against spirit, lie against lie, and

rom the power o an integral knowledge rises the order o human things

(Schmitt 1963, 95).

Schmitts knowledge o enmity is his belie in revelation. Itis the knowledge o divine providence in history, o the real, ever-present

and necessary eschatology (Schmitt 1950a, 76). It is the belie in history as

the state o test and trial in which man must attempt to answer the call


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o God: Do what you must, it has always been done already and you are

only answering (Schmitt 1950b, 53). The distinction between riend and

enemy is not a plain truth, as Chen claims, but the central concept o

any great politics that needs to be understood and adhered to through all

the deceiving and deceptive concealments that the providential enemy

may hide behind. The great historical and signicant distinction between

riend and enemy has to be ound behind the day-to-day politics (Schmitt

1950a, 78). What conceals itsel behind everyday politics is the ever-present

possibility o the ultimate historical, the ultimate political eventthe dire

emergencyin the strongest sensein the orm o the ght between atheism

and Christianity (ibid., 75).

Is this the supposed theoretician o pure politics speak-

ing? Schmitts insistence on enmity instead o peace, on the necessity o the

concrete political decision answering the call o God, is the core o his politi-

cal theology. As such Schmitt must understand his own theoretical activity

as an expression o his obedience, his own concrete way o answering the

call in an age that is becoming increasingly incapable o hearing it. Schmitt

sees his task in keeping alive the knowledge o divinely revealed enmity amid

all Babylonian hopes to bring humanity together on a common, ully

neutralized ground. Because it is out o the question or Schmitt to radi-

callyquestion what may be the right way o lie, the nature and origin o the

political and what may precede and transcend it, he equates his knowledge

with his aith, his participation, his obedience. But can aith, participa-

tion, obedience take the place o sel-knowledge, or is any concrete decision

Schmitt takes essentially blind? What happens when one realizes that one

has ailed at the task o identiying the enemy correctlythat one has invol-

untarily even helped the orces o evil, or harmed a riend? What happens

when, like Schmitt throughout the course o his lie, one has made political

decisions that include support or the Catholic Church in the 1920s, or the

Nazis in the 30s, or partisan warare in the 60s? How does Schmitt, looking

back, judge his own concrete, i.e. ever-changing, political decisions?

The most extensive treatment o this problem can be ound

in Schmitts interpretation o Thomas Hobbes, on whom Schmitt wrote

several texts crucial or understanding his position as a political theologian.

Schmitts understanding o Hobbes became more and more avorable overtime, and he never regarded Hobbes as an enemy like SpinozaSchmitt calls

the sive in Deus sive natura the most audacious insult ever to be inficted

upon God and man (Schmitt 1991, 28; see Meier 1998, 97)but always as


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a riend or whose soul he prays (Schmitt 1950b, 67; see Meier 1998, 100).

Infuenced by the interpretation o Leo Strauss, Schmitt went rom calling

Hobbes by ar the greatest and possibly the only truly systematic political

thinker in the rst version oThe Concept o the Politicalto merely a great

and truly systematic thinker in the nal version in 1933thereby subtly

implying that Hobbes did not share Schmitts understanding o the political.

How then is it possible to exempt Hobbes rom Schmitts scathing criticism

o the anti-godly sel-deication he sees as inherent in individualism and

liberalism? These are the very political doctrines or which Hobbess teaching

is responsible more than any other thinkers, as Strauss had demonstrated

in his critique o Schmitt, Notes on The Concept o the Political (see Meier

1995). How can a thinker who teaches violent death as the greatest o allevils in order to turn ear o violent death into an instrument to support the

liberal secular State not be an enemy o the thinker o the morally demand-

ing decision that overcomes all concerns or sel-preservation in order to

ght or the right nomos? How can the enabler o the bourgeois way o lie in

a community o culture and consumption, the exploiter o mans need or

peace and security, be Schmittsriendor whom he prays?

By showing Schmitt that the political order envisioned by

Hobbes would prepare the way or the nonpolitical lie o entertainment

which Schmitt abhorred, Strauss had indirectly accused Schmitt o not

knowing who his enemy was. Schmitts bookThe Leviathan in the Teaching

o State o Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure o a Political Symbol, written

in 1938 (Schmitt 1938; see Meier 1989, 100 .), can be read as an answer to

Strausss 1932 criticism, an interpretation that Schmitt radicalized 27 years

later in his last work on Hobbes, The Completed Reormation (Schmitt

1965; see Meier 1998, 119 .). Schmitt begins his book on the Leviathan with

Strausss interpretation o Hobbesor with what Schmitt pretends to be

Strausss interpretationand has Strauss introduce the distinction between

politics and religion that Schmitt himsel opposes.

Schmitt says that Strauss wrote in his 1930Spinozas Critique

o Religion that Hobbes regards the Jews as the real authors o the sedi-

tious, State-destructive distinction between religion and politics, between

worldly and religious power which was oreign to the pagans according

to Hobbes because or them religion was a part o politics (Schmitt 1938,21; see Meier 1998, 109 .). But then Schmitt silently supplements Strausss

words by writing: the Jews achieved unityrom the religious side. Only the

Roman papal church and the power-hungry Presbyterian churches or sects


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live o the State-destructive severance o religious and worldly power []

The battle against the Kingdom o Darkness striven or by the Roman papal

church, the restoration o the original unity, is, as Leo Strauss observes, the real

meaning o Hobbess political theory. That is right.

In act, that is not right. This is not Strausss interpretation o

Hobbes, and it is a glaring misquotation o Strausss words. Strauss does not

write that Hobbes is writing against the Catholic Church, but that Hobbes

thinks that revelation as such, be it Jewish or Christian, Protestant or Catho-

lic, makes politics a part o religion: thusas we understand Hobbesit

reverses the natural relationship which was realized in paganism. The dis-

tinction all revelation makes between the lower worldly laws and the higherspiritual laws is, so Strauss understands Hobbes, absurd and has its origin

in superstition. As Strauss writes in his 1954 article on Hobbes, the political

consequence o revelation, the dualism o power temporal and power spiri-

tual [] is incompatible with peace, the demand par excellence o reason

(Strauss 1959, 188). In light o the political consequences o revelation, the

question that presents itsel to Hobbes in the sphere o politics is whether

it is rightthat politics become a part o religion. The answer solely depends

on the question o the right way o lie, or, in other words, it solely depends

on whether revelation is true or not. In the words o Strauss, the alternative

is clear: supremacy o politics or revelation. In Schmitts version, Strausss

and Hobbess philosophically radical either-or, which raises the question o

truth and supremacy, has disappeared into an original unity that obscures

all issues o truth and incompatibility.

Besides Strauss, Schmitt also quotes the German political

thinker Helmut Schelsky, who in his essay The Totality o the State in Hob-

bes interpreted Hobbes as ghting against all political theology in everyormpolitical theology understood in the sense Schmitt had introduced,

as political thought taking its bearings by aith in revelation (Schelsky 1938;

see Meier 1998, 111 .). Although Schmitt quotes Schelskys position cor-

rectly, he is perectly silent about the act that Schelskys essay on Hobbes

is an explicit attack on none other than Carl Schmitts political theology. It

becomes obvious what Schmitt is doing; in order not to conront Hobbess

political theory in his own name, exposing his own position, he uses Strauss

and Schelsky to provide the question that guides his Leviathan interpreta-tion. I Hobbes was indeed trying to re-establish the original political unity

o religion and politics (supposedly Strausss claim) rom the side o politics

against all political theology (Schelskys claim), did he succeed in doing so?


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In more explicit words: Did Hobbes succeed in making Christian revelation

a merely useul tool in the hands o a worldly authority? I Schmitt can show

that Hobbes did notsucceed in making revelation a mere means to the end o

worldly peace and security, then the demonstration o the ailure o Hobbess

supposed intention would serve him as proo or the superiority o political

theologyand the superiority o revelation over all attempts at so-called

secularization.

To cut Meiers long demonstration short: Schmitts verdict

on the ailure o the Hobbesian sovereign is devastating. This must come as

a surprise or anyone who thinks o Schmitts theory as a sociological theory

o secularization. Schmitt, the thinker o decision and sovereigntyderidesthe decision o the personal sovereign in Hobbess political theory? Was the

emphasis on sovereignty not what made Schmitt praise Hobbes originally

as the only truly political thinker, a juridical thinker, in 1922, someone

who understood that ultimately all political order was grounded not in legal

norms but in a personal decision? Why then does the personal sovereign o

the Leviathan become the object o Schmitts polemical spite?

Ater what we know o Schmitts political theology, the

answer is not surprising: It is the question o aith and miracles that causesthe downall o the New God, the rupture in Hobbess supposed attempt

to unite religion and politics rom the side o politics (Schmitt 1938, 48, 96;

see Meier 1998, 108 .). Hobbess sovereign is sovereign only by agreement, by

contract, sovereign only in a juridical, not in a metaphysical sense (Schmitt

1938, 52). For Schmitt, this is not enough: juridical transcendence needs

metaphysical transcendence, and true authority needs metaphysical legiti-

macy. Hobbess sovereign is not the deensor pacis, the deender o a political

order and peace willed by God, but the creator pacis, the maker o a merelyearthly political order and peace, the hybrid product o human reason and

o a contract o atomized individuals driven by nothing but their ear or

physical saety. The sovereign is not omnipotent because he is instituted

by God, he is omnipotent only on earth: Its omnipotence though is not at

all o divine origin: it is the work o man (ibid., 50). The central sentence o

Schmitts Leviathan book sums up Schmitts criticism o Hobbess political

conception: But the idea o the State as a technologically perected magnum

artifcium created by men, as a machine that has its right and its truth onlyin itsel, that is, in perormance and unction, was rst grasped and system-

atically developed as a clear concept by Hobbes (Schmitt 1938, 70 .; see

Meier 1998, 126). What does someone who attempts to read this sentence as a


24/116


neutral observation o a process o secularization make o right and truth

versus true right and truth? What right is right derived rom, what truth

precedes the truth, what true State does the new machine-like State make

a arce o? Schmitt criticizes Hobbess idea o State as an articial product

made by men, a gigantic mechanism that serves to secure the this-worldly,

physical existence o the men whom it rules and protects. But Hobbes is

not really aware o whom he is taking on. By using the notorious, mythical

image o the Leviathan that conjures up all sorts o orces attached to it

rom time immemorial, Hobbes is in act summoning, supposedly without

being aware o it and in a semi-ironic way, the evil enemy as such, the

realenemy. The name o the Leviathan, so Schmitt knows, belongs ater all

among those mythical names that cannot be cited without punishment. It isthe name or the Devil, Satanthe Antichrist (Schmitt 1938, 9, 79; see

Meier 1998, 107; my italics).

But, one may wonder, the Great Animal, the Machine or

which Hobbes provided the blueprint has proven hugely successulwhere

is the punishment that was to ollow rom its institution? How can Schmitt

not acknowledge the success o the modern orm o State? The historical

success o the Great Machine Schmitt distinguishes rom what he consid-

ers the spectacular conceptual ailure o the Mortal God, or whom the

question o aith and o miracles became the undoing (Schmitt 1938, 63,

79 ., 90; see Meier 1998, 108). Just like God, the worldly sovereign demands

unquestioning obedience rom his subjects. But the reason he demands

obedience is not that he is the only source o truth or installed by God, but

that he is the sole guarantor o peace and security on earth. His truth is

solely his unction. But what i someone does not want peace and security

above everything else, at the price o what he believes to be the truth? What

i someone wants to bring about the true political order, at the cost o peace

and security? Is peace and security not the very promise that the Apostle

Paul warned othe promise o the Antichrist?

In this context Schmitts initial claim that it is Hobbess

intention to re-establish the original unity o politics and religion unolds

its relevance. For, according to Schmitt, in order to re-establish this unity,

the worldly sovereign would need to have ull power over peoples thoughts

and conscience. He would need to have the power to compel on the deep-est level, to prohibit the innermost belie that Gods sovereignty is above

all worldly sovereignty. As Schmitt knows, [n]othing divine can be orced

externallyand the Leviathan is equipped with nothing but orce,potestas,


25/116


not divine auctoritas to reach peoples innermost aith (Schmitt 1938, 94; see

Meier 1998, 113). Schmitt, as becomes more clear here than anywhere else,

is not the thinker o decision that interpreters like Karl Lwith have made

him to be. Schmitt in act ridicules Hobbes, the great decisionist and his

typically decisionist turn:Autoritas, non Veritas. [] Nothing here is true,

everything here is command. A miracle is what the sovereign State power

commands should be believed to be a miracle; but alsoand ridicule sug-

gests itsel at this point particularlythe reverse: miracles cease when the

State orbids them (ibid. 82 .; see Meier 1998, 112).

By keeping, as he does, the inward thought, and belie o

men out o the reach o the sovereign, Hobbes allows or a point o rupturein the supposedly desired unity o politics and religion, a rupture that will

become the seed o death or the Leviathan. It can neither ulll the deepest

desire o man nor protect him against the terror that comes rom beyond. But

where man is not wholly grasped, where the political is not the total, the

command o the articial sovereign alls short and, so we learn, the ultimate

superiority o the internal over the external, o the invisible over the visible,

o the quiet over the loud, o the other world over the secular world asserts

itsel (Schmitt 1938, 95; see Meier 1998, 113). Whoever wants to call Schmitt

a theoretician o secularization must admit that Schmitt wants to demon-

strate that this process o neutralization o the truth is not only sinul and

ultimately useless rebellion against the revealed truth, but that mans sel-

empowerment as embodied in the Leviathan will, like the Leviathan himsel,

nd its end with the Second Coming o Christ. The meaning o all history,

so Schmitt knows, is, ater all, salvation (Schmitt 1954, 49).

In 1938, Schmitt demonstrates that the inventor o the

Leviathan is not a political thinker in Schmitts understanding o the politi-cal. Why then does the great decisionist Hobbesunlike his brainchild,

the Mortal Godnot become the target o Schmitts derision? Why does he

allow Hobbes to get away with his political conception that encourages the

orgetting o enmity and a bourgeois lie o nonpolitical entertainment more

than any other thinker beore him? Because Schmitt believes that Hobbes,

unlike Spinoza, did not intend to bring about the historical consequences

his Machine with a Soul, once on autopilot, did bring orth. For one thing,

Schmitt believes he knows that Hobbes kept the innermost thought andbelies o the subjects out o reach o the worldly sovereign in order to pro-

tect Christian aith. Philosophic interpretations have understood the libertas

philosophandibecause thought is ree (Hobbes, Leviathan, XXXVII)as


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Hobbess deliberate attempt to protect the activity o contemplation rom

being persecuted by political, not to mention ecclesiasticall authority, but

Schmitt, on the contrary, interprets it as Hobbess Christian reserve: I

believe that in Hobbes there was genuine piety. But his thought was no longer

devout (Schmitt 1938, 125-26; see Meier 1998, 117). What saves Hobbes in

the eyes o Schmitt is one sentence, the most important sentence o Thomas

Hobbes, that, ar rom being interpreted as Hobbess attempt at neutraliza-

tion, is the sole principle o aith that is essential: that Jesus is the Christ

(Schmitt 1938, 48; 1991, 243; see Meier 1998, 120 .; see also Schmitt 1955, 153;

my italics). A statement that in light o Hobbess undamental philosophic

critique oallmiracles (Strauss 1959, 185 .) can only coherently be under-

stood as an exoteric assertion in the name o political prudence, a reminderdirected at the warring parties that they do agree on the most important

thing, an attempt at political neutralization o the confict between Protes-

tants and Catholics, Schmitt turns into the culmination o Hobbess thought,

his personal creed and deepest motivation or his political theorizing: to save

Christianity rom sel-destruction. According to Schmitt, Hobbes presup-

posedthe Christian aith and a Christian sovereign, and he really intended to

strengthen Christianity in the only way he thought to be possible in his time

o conessional war. That his machina machinarum became the vehicle oprivatization and neutralization o Christian aith rather than its saeguard

is a historical development that Hobbes, in Schmitts opinion, could neither

have oreseen nor intended. Hobbess political theory is nothing but Hob-

bess concrete historical response to the most pressing political confict o the

timeand ceases to be o any relevance as soon as this confict is over.

The price Schmitt pays or his interpretation o Hobbes is to

make him utterly incoherent where there is no need or him to be interpreted

as incoherent. To achieve his interpretation, Schmitt has to split Hobbes

arbitrarily into a pious vir probus, whose aith thatJesus is the Christkeeps

him rom allowing the sovereign access to the innermost aith o its subjects,

and a philosopher, whose irreligious thought comprises a radical critique o

the Bible and all miracleswith Incarnation being the greatest o all mir-

aclesand a philosophy o a state o nature that knows neither Creation,

nor obedience, nor sin. In Schmitts interpretation, the torn thinker Hob-

bes, who cannot reconcile his religious eelings with his irreligious thought,

is turned into a tragic shadow o the political philosopher Hobbes, who,according to Strausss philosophic interpretation o Hobbes, [h]olding the

view o the Bible which he did [] was compelled to try his hand at a natural

explanation o the Biblical religion (Strauss 1959, 188).


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Schmitts interpretation o 1938 is not his last take on Hob-

bes. Towards the end o his lie, Schmitt takes his interpretation one step

urther. He miraculously converts the Hobbes torn between non-religious

thinker and vir probus into Hobbes, the whole-hearted political theolo-

gian. The wholly politico-theological Hobbes is achieved by dropping rom

the picture everything that does not t into this interpretation o Hobbes.

What remains o Hobbes, the political philosopher, is Hobbes, the Chris-

tian Epimetheus who answered to the political-historical challenge o his

age with the daring eat o an anticipation o a commandment that is to be

obeyed (Meier 1998, 124).

With the Marianic view o history that understands thetask o the believer to be that o a Christian Epimetheus, Schmitt takes

up a term o a great German poet, Konrad Weiss, and makes it central to

his own political theology (Schmitt 1950c, 930). The Christian Epimetheus

is diametrically opposed to the hubristic Prometheus who believes in no

divine commandment that is to be obeyed. The Christian Epimetheus has

come to know as the arcanum o ontology that every historical truth is true

only once and that every human word is an answer (Schmitt 1955, 148 .).

The sel-understanding o the Christian Epimetheus is that he has to make

a decision concerning what he thinks the Lord o history is callingon him

to do. Since the Christian Epimetheus bases this decision on his aith, it is

a blind decision insoar as he cannot knowProvidence but can only humbly

anticipate what God is asking o him. Any obedient action on the part o

the Christian Epimetheus runs the risk o having wholly unintended histori-

cal consequences. With the gure o the Christian Epimetheus, Schmitt can

explain why Hobbes eectively sped up the process o secularization when he

in act intended to slow it down. And the gure o the Christian Epimetheus

gives Schmitt a model by which to understand himsel. O his own case

Schmitt said in the summer o 1945 that it can be called by a name a great

poet coined. It is the bad, unworthy, and yet authentic case o a Christian

Epimetheus (Meier 1998, 132, reerring to Schmitt 1950b, 12). The Chris-

tian Epimetheus signies the culmination and collapse o Schmitts political

theology. Since all action is necessarily blind in the ace o Gods almighty,

inscrutable will, everything and nothing is at stake, and all Schmitt can hope

or is Gods grace and orgiveness in judging Schmitts will to obedience or

his good intention o aith (Meier 1998, 128).

In Schmitts interpretation, Hobbespresupposing a

Christian statedared to blindly anticipate the command o God by


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intending the Leviathan to unction as a katechon. The katechon Schmitt

himsel identies as lying at the core o his own activity as a political theo-

logian. The problem o the katechon (Thess. 2,2,6) has been, as Schmitt

writes in a 1974 letter to Blumenberg, or more than 40 years [ ] the central

question o (my) political theology (Schmitt and Blumenberg 2007, 120; my

italics). Schmitt writes this in response to Blumenbergs interpretation o

Political Theology IIin the latters heavily revised edition oThe Legitimacy

o the Modern Age (Blumenberg 1974). Schmitt considers himsel obligated

to correct Blumenbergs interpretation o Schmitts position because it

missed the most important point: like Chen today, Blumenberg interpreted

Schmitts work as an elaboration o a theory o secularization. But ar rom

a theorem o secularization, the katechon is a mysterious gure mentionedor the rst time in Pauls Second Letter to the Thessalonians. It is a his-

torical gure that holds up the coming o the Antichrist by slowing down the

orces o evil. I Chen had taken notice o the importance o the katechon or

Schmitt in many o his writings, making its rst appearance in Land and Sea

in 1942 (Schmitt 1954), he would have been able to understand that it is as

ar removed rom a sociological theorem o secularization as Hobbes is rom

being a Christian Epimetheus.

History or Schmitt is the the Interim between the arrival

and the return o the Lord (Schmitt 1970, 107) and history itsel consists

in concrete questions and answers: By hearing the question and the call o

history and trying to answer it in their actions, human beings dare to enter

the great trial o historical impact and are marked by a judgment (Schmitt

1955, 152). Not being satised with human measures o providing political

order, Schmitt has to believe in particular providence. Ironically, his desire

or a moral order and or a certainty beyond all merely human security

make Schmitt, who stakes the meaning o his lie on the correct distinction

between riend and enemy, on historical action to slow down the orces o

providential evil, air game or the Antichrist. All it takes or Hobbes to win

over Schmitt is to write one pious sentence in order to get away with the irre-

ligious rest o his thought. Does Schmitts desire to nd a riend in Hobbes

cloud his judgment, or is the impossibility o correctly distinguishing riend

and enemy o God inherent in Schmitts political theologya theory that

mandates a lie o historical action and that derides a lie o contemplation

o human problems, a theory that knows only o history and not o nature,a theory that struggles in vain to deny the existence o all necessity, a theory

that orgoes human knowledge or aith in superhuman commandment, a


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theory that never asks the questions: What is virtue? What is God? What is

the good? (Meier 1998, 123)?

With his reading o Hobbes, Schmitt demonstrates whathappens when the most important question in reading a philosopher is

not to try to understand him as he understood himsel, but when the only

concern becomes the eect o this philosophers teaching in and on history,

his role and position in the process o so-called secularization (Schmitt

1965, 61). Schmitt demonstrates the same concern regarding himsel and his

position in that very process. The Christian Epimetheus or the katechon do

not need to be understood by their time in order to have the desired eect

on history. On the contrary, in order to be taken seriously in an age that ischaracterized by an incapacity or God, Schmitt will be more eective i

he does not give away the core o his theorizing so easily. With his style o

writing Schmitt himsel avoids what he considers the explanation or Donoso

Cortss ailure to be heard by his own time (Schmitt 1950a, 69).

Heinrich Meier challenges his critics to consider his inter-

pretation o Schmitts Hobbes the test case or his entire interpretation o

Schmitt as a political theologiana challenge that Chen silently ignores, not

reerring once to Schmitts understanding o Hobbes. I Meiers interpreta-tion o Schmitt stands or alls with his reading o Schmitts Hobbes, more

than that is at stake or Schmitt himsel: i Meiers interpretation is correct,

then Schmitts political theology ails dramatically in its decisive respect, as

it oers no concrete political guidance and no intellectual protection against

alling or what he himsel considers to be the deceptive game o his enemy

(see Meier 1998, 170). How could political action that wants to respond to the

call o history ever rule out that anything may serve the mysterious workings

o the Lord (see Meier 1998, 155)?

What or political theology is an unsolvable problem, or

political philosophy is an invaluable insight into its own necessity. Mistaking

Carl Schmitt or a sociologist, Chen ails to see why Schmitt should be o any

interest to the political philosopher Leo Strauss in 1932, or, or that matter, to

anyone serious about the question o the right lie to which Schmitt has such

an unambiguous answer. In the opening paragraph o his autobiographical

Preace to the American translation oDie Religionskritik Spinozas, Strauss

in 1962 looks back on the late 1920s, calling himsel a young Jew born andraised in Germany who ound himsel in the grip o the theologico-political

predicament (Strauss 1968, 224). In his 1964 preace or the German edition

oHobbess Political PhilosophyStrauss writes that the theologico-political


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problem has since then remained the theme o my studies (Strauss 2001,

7 .). Chen claims that with the theologico-political problem Strauss was

reerring to what he calls the Jewish problem presented by Judaism and theJewish Law. In this vein, he claims that the term Jerusalem and Athensa

dualism that, in the words o Strauss, constitutes the tension o the West

reers only to Judaism, not Christianity or Islam, and Greek philosophy. But

does it not seem highly implausible to state that Renaissance, Enlightenment

and all versions o historicism are caused by the tension betweenJudaism and

philosophy?

In act, the term Jerusalem and Athens goes back to the

jurist and theologian Tertullian (Schmitt 1925, 137), whose thought on thenature o law and right centers in the sovereignty o God. Tertullian amously

pitted obedience against the good in a sentence translated by his ellow jurist

and theologian Schmitt as we are obliged to something not because it is

good but because God commands it (ibid.). It is an equally amous expres-

sion by Tertullian that established the meaning o the term Jerusalem and

Athens: Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? What does the Academy have

to do with the Church? What do the heretics have to do with the Christians?

(Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum, VII, 913). In Schmitts words,Tertullian ound the classical phrase or the opposition between received

Christian theology and the system o a natural scienticity, an oppo-

sition as valid today as it was in the time o Tertullian (Schmitt 1963, 88;

see Meier 1998, 95 .). Both Tertullian, who most amously reerred to the

opposition o Athens and Jerusalem, and Carl Schmitt understand by Jeru-

salem Christian aith. But or the philosopher Strauss, Jerusalem is the city

o revelation and stands or the way o lie o obedience, o all aith as aith.

Strauss stated many times that the undamental dierence between the wayo lie o the believer and the way o lie o the philosopher is innitely greater

than the dierences between the dogmas o the revealed religions on the one

hand or the dierences between the teachings o the philosophers on the

other. This is why Strauss can write that the confict between Judaism and

Christianity or Spinoza was a confict [] o no relevance or him as a

philosopher (Strauss 1968, 244).

The problem or the philosopher is not to know which o the

revealed religions is the true onealthough the investigation o this problemwill lead to undamental insights into the claim that the truth is something

that needs to be revealed by God and cannot be discovered by reason. The

problem or the philosopher is which way o lie is the right one: the one that


31/116


takes its bearings by the highest revealed authority or the one that takes

its bearings by ones own natural capacity or reason? Political philosophy

stands or the way o lie guided by human reason alone, whereas political

theology stands or the way o lie o aith. This is how Strauss understands

and uses both termsor, to be more precise, in this way he himsel intro-

duces the term political philosophy into literature (Meier 2006, xixiii).

Strauss adopts political philosophy to describe his own position as exactly

opposed in meaning to political theology: We are compelled to distin-

guish political philosophy rom political theology. By political theology we

understand political teachings which are based on divine revelation (Strauss

1959, 13). Just as Hobbes, holding the view o the Bible which he did [] was

compelled to try his hand at a natural explanation o the Biblical religion,so Strauss himsel was compelled to do the same, because being based on

belie is a calamity or philosophy (Strauss 1968, 236).

An example o Strausss claim to provide a philosophic

explanation o revelation is his text Reason and Revelation, which contains

a genealogy o aith in revelation that demonstrates, beginning with the

need o man or law, the transormation o a mythical law into a revealed

law. And, what should come as a surprise to Chen, Strauss equally shows the

transormation o the rst Biblical revelation into the second Biblical revela-

tion: Strauss, the philosopher born as a Jew, here tries his hand at a natural

explanation o Christian Incarnation out o the political problems o Jewish

Law (Meier 2006, 165 .). In the same vein Strauss had written a decade ear-

lier, in his unnished text A Recollection o Lessing rom 1937, that he had

the weakness to preer to give his attention to a Jew but did not nd any

Jew in more recent times o the reedom o mind o Lessing, a philosopher

born as a Christian. Strauss writes that much changes in detail, but little in

the main issue, when the reader substitutes the term Judaism or the term

Christianity throughout Strausss text. The benevolent reader is asked to

read in this ashion in the interest o the issue, and hence in his own interest

(Strauss 1997, 607).

The issue o interest is the truth claim o the necessity o

revealed wisdom as the gr

interpretation, vol 36-3

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