Abstract
Peter Uwe Hohendahl presents a critical revaluation of Carl Schmitt’s postwar work. Over the past few decades, there has been a notable rise of interest in Schmitt’s late writings on both the political left and right, in particular in the United States. Indeed, Schmitt ‘has morphed’, as Hohendahl observed, ‘from a specifically German figure to a global phenomenon’. In order to make sense of this development, Hohendahl sets out to explore the tension between the intention behind Schmitt’s late writings and their later reception. He concentrates on five major works: The Nomos of the Earth (1950), The Theory of the Partisan (1963), Political Theology II (1970), the essay volume Ex Captivitate Salus (1950) and Schmitt’s posthumously published diaries, the so-called Glossarium (1991). Hohendahl deserves credit for conveying the complex ideas of these works on the state, international order, modern warfare, and political theology with exceptional clarity. Moreover, he masters the difficult task of contextualizing them in the postwar world with great success. Over the course of this analysis, Hohendahl shows that in fact there are two Schmitts: the historical German Schmitt and a novel ‘Anglo-American Schmitt’.
While the study succeeds in making the contours of the latter very clear, its analysis of the historical Schmitt suffers from a contradiction. Hohendahl shows that many of Schmitt’s later ideas were grounded in his earlier work. The differences, he argues, must be attributed to the changes in the political and intellectual environment. At the same time, however, he a priori assumes that 1945 – the year when Schmitt was forced to relinquish all academic offices due to his involvement with the Nazi regime – was a fundamental caesura in Schmitt’s thinking. In other words: Hohendahl assumes that one can separate the late from the earlier Schmitt. According to this assumption, he discusses, for example, Schmitt’s Großraum theories primarily in the context of the postwar liberation movement. In light of Schmitt’s significant contribution to the intellectual world of the Nazi regime, it seems at least doubtful whether such an approach penetrates to the heart of the matter. Even if we take Schmitt’s later work seriously in its own right, must we not see it in its overall context? Isn’t 1933, the year when Schmitt became a member of the Nazi Party and started to customize his intellectual work to the official ideology, the real caesura, whose impact can be felt even in his postwar publications, either in the form of stubbornly holding on to old ideas and beliefs, making new, but still opportunistic arguments, or constructing apologetic accounts and concepts? As Hohendahl does not concern himself with such questions, he shows us the historical Schmitt only from behind.
His analysis of the Anglo-American Schmitt is much clearer. When the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the United States emerged as the sole global superpower, Hohendahl argues, the international left adopted and reinterpreted Schmitt’s anti-liberal theories as the prime voice against American neoliberalism. Schmitt thus moved into the intellectual space formerly occupied by Western Marxism and Critical Theory. The ‘outlaw of the early postwar years’ became ‘the savior of the Left opposition’. 9/11 and the crisis of American self-understanding it produced, Hohendahl points out, changed Schmitt’s reception again, this time ‘from critical analysis to a wider … appropriation and application’. In this ongoing process, his theories receive increasing attention on the political right. A third Schmitt, one could argue, is evolving: the modern ‘populist Schmitt’. Like Trump, Hohendahl concludes, he is a foster child of globalization. By exposing these changes in the reception of one of the twentieth-century’s most influential and dangerous political thinkers, Hohendahl produces a study that – despite its weaknesses – should be read by anyone interested in and worried about the power of ideas. ‘Perilous futures’ he describes, indeed.