Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Modern European Philosophy)

One of the biggest problems enthusiasts of critical theory have is that their desire to critique usually precedes and therefore overcomes their ability to fully understand and comprehend. This is true of the ambitious task that McCormick sets for himself. In his attempt to synthesize quite a disparate and complicated range of modern philosophical and political thought, McCormick is more eager to critique than he is to comprehend and explain. The result of this disparate look into Schmitt's thought is that much of what McCormick puts forward is far from comprehensive and thus fails to engage the subject matter in a way that would allow one to believe that he has truly mastered as much as he thinks he has. To make matters worse, McCormick engages in what can only be described as syntactical gymnastics and excessive jargon, probably in the hope the appearance of technical competence will impress the reader. Furthermore, despite his claim to be engaging Schmitt theoretically, McCormick's political motives for offering his objections to Schmitt are apparent. For example, in an exhortation to his fellows on the Left to unite against the conservative fascists McCormick writes: "But the advocates of identity and difference qua concrete otherness ought not to leave wholly unexamined there own potential essentializing of themselves or others in their challenges to traditional pluralism. When both sides foreclose the possibility of commonality and mutual rational exchange, they consequently leave the public sphere vulnerable to those who would seek to enforce a stable and unifying order from above and who would exploit concrete otherness, not on behalf of those unjustly marginalized or banished from the redistributive picture but rather in strategy aimed at naked political gain" (310). McCormick neither delineates nor gives a defense of his notion of "justice." You get an idea from this passage what he thinks justice is, but nowhere in his book is there an argument on behalf of his concept of justice or why we should accept it. Rather, McCormick's prejudices are merely assumed and asserted, which is hardly befitting of a study that makes claims like this one does.Schmitt is of course a controversial figure and McCormick seeks to use this to his advantage by often failing to explain Schmitt's arguments and reverting to claims of "authoritarianism" and the like. Such labeling is fine, and may even be true in a certain respect, but it is then incumbent upon McCormick to clearly and fully delineate what he means by such terms and not simply conjure up pejorative images designed to obfuscate the meaning of Schmitt's work. What are the reasons for Schmitt's authoritarianism? Simply saying Schmitt is authoritarian is not a philosophical or theoretical explanation, and does not help us understand Schmitt's thought.McCormick constantly tells the reader that he is seeking to engage Schmitt on a truly theoretical level and not, as he claims others have done, simply offer grist for the mill of those for or against. He fails in this task. McCormick is clearly in the "against" camp and his desire to voice his displeasure with "conservative" political theory and enter into a critique prior to explaining that theory severely mitigates his ability to communicate whatever knowledge he may actually possess about Schmitt's work. This is definitely a case where it is better to go directly to the source, Schmitt himself, and leave the assistant professor to stew in his own tenure driven juices.

Carl Schmitt must have written a tremendous number of brilliant things to be remembered so well for so long. In CARL SCHMITT'S CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM / AGAINST POLITICS AS TECHNOLOGY, John P. McCormick reiterates a few themes which tie Schmitt to now-familiar conservative thoughts of ten years ago, when those who were seeking for ways that America could distinguish itself from all others as a superpower exhibiting technological powers excelling all other forms of thought could look to Schmitt for ideas that would transcend Max Weber's categories of modernity by employing emergency powers to establish absolutely new political conditions that would be more appealing than the flip-flops of liberalism. The collapse of the German fantasy with which Schmitt is most closely associated for supporting the use of emergency powers in Germany is the single most compelling argument frequently mentioned as an aside by McCormick to discredit Schmitt as a theorist of effective politics, but McCormick was writing far too long ago to make reference to the forms of confusion that dominate the news in 2005: Katrina was a natural disaster that made pre-storm evacuation look like the best policy, while voters in Iraq are preparing to vote on a constitution which has already missed a deadline for the Parliament to determine what Iraqis would agree to state in their constitution. This book is philosophical enough to associate Hegel, who was mentioned in the longest footnote in THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL, with what the importance of any particular moment might be, and Chapter 1 of this book will satisfy those who would like the contrast of Schmitt as a student of Max Weber to a Marxist who was also devoted to "secular messianic Judaism" (p. 35) and was denounced by Schmitt as a Jew and a Marxist during the years of National Socialism in Germany. Among the things that I did not previously know about Carl Schmitt, note 12 on pages 35-36 reveals:Schmitt was certainly a believing Roman Catholic in the early twenties, writing frequently in the Catholic press but never officially joining the Catholic Center Party. He was excommunicated by the Church in 1926 because of the complexities of his marital situation. He apparently grew quite bitter toward the Church in the late Weimar Republic, publicly feuding with the more moderate Center party. His antipathy reached its peak under National Socialism, as he is quoted to have said in 1938: "If the Pope excommunicates a nation so therefore does he only excommunicate himself." ...Chapter 2, "Myth as Antidote to the "Age of Neutralizations": Nietzsche and Cultural Conflict as Response to Technology, manages to quote a page of section 373 of THE GAY SCIENCE by Nietzsche, but it omits Nietzsche's conclusion arising out of an understanding of music:But an essentially mechanical world would be an essentially meaningless world. Assuming that one estimated the value of a piece of music according to how much of it could be counted, calculated, and expressed in formulas: how absurd would such a "scientific" estimation of music be! What would one have comprehended, understood, grasped of it? Nothing, really nothing of what is "music" in it!Political existentialism in this book might be associated with realizing that anything people respond to is more mythological than reasoned thought. The Antichrist appears in the index with the note, "see also devil, Mephistopheles, Satan" (p. 343), and associating Nietzsche with the Antichrist works as well for McCormick as his note 85 to support the memory of Carl Schmitt "as the Mephistopheles of Weimar Germany." (p. 116).My Senator Norm Coleman (R-WH) was able to win an election by picturing liberals as standing in the way of whatever progress the United States might still be capable of achieving. Schmitt is portrayed as leading the way for such ideas in Part II of this book, Liberalism as Technology's Infiltration of Politics. Chapter 3, Emergency Powers, probably applies to locking people up right now about as well as when, "to address a large-scale political rebellion in the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was forced to stretch the traditional means of suspending habeas corpus far beyond reasonable limits," (n. 38, p. 151), but when Schmitt supported it, it is seen as "the opportunity to those like Schmitt who would use this particular liberal deficiency as a ruse to scrap the whole legal order. In this sense, Schmitt's leading sovereign can be seen as the violent return of the prerogative repressed by scientific liberalism." (p. 152).Viewing America as a global superpower has a certain dignity that hardly relates to the kind of dignity associated with Representation in Chapter 4, where, `If one grants to Schmitt the point that multinational corporations as the representatives of economic forces have less "dignity" than the Catholic Church as the representative of Jesus Christ and the whole of humanity, he still seems to glide over a major important difference between modern and medieval concepts of representation.' (p. 165). Political theology continues in Chapter 5, Law, in which, `But the peculiar situation of modernity that encourages what he calls in POLITICAL FORM "the antithesis of empty form and formless matter" results in a jurisprudence that has ultimately become form for form's sake." (p. 209). "Even if the norms reflected in a formalist scheme of jurisprudence were to have some ethical resonance, Schmitt demonstrates that the system would nevertheless rob these norms of their substance in the process of application." (p. 217). This is the kind of thing that only a fool would admit, or a deep thinker; take your pick.Chapter 6, The State, is a philosophy clear to Thomas Hobbes. `As Hobbes remarked, "The Passion to be reckoned upon, is fear" [Leviathan I, 14]' (pp. 249-250). Part III of this book has an Epilogue and Summary, then a Conclusion. Here we find, "Thus, there are major lines of succession back to Schmitt in all of the major components of contemporary American conservatism: ..." (p. 304).

If one were planning to read just one secondary source on Carl Schmitt--this should be it. The book provides a broad and fair study of Schmitt's thought (both his legal and political theory), and is generally written in a lively fashion. Moreover, McCormick's thoughts on Hobbes, Weber, Nietzsche, and the Critical Theorists are also illuminating. Much of the other secondary literature on Schmitt is either too polemical (Scheuerman on the left, Gottfried on the right), too focused on his legal theory, or too caught up in bending Schmitt to their own purposes (see the journal "Telos"). This book originated from Prof. McCormick's PhD thesis, and sometimes reads like a first book (the organization and chapter segues are sometimes rough), but if this is his first effort it will be worthwhile to pay attention to his future efforts.