Carl Schmitt at Nuremberg

[Cross-posted to theoria.]

With the revelation of secret and illegal domestic spying in the United States, along with Bush's justification of such actions, people have started talking about Carl Schmitt again.  Afterall, didn't Bush justify his actions in explicitly Schmittian terms?  Recall, it was Schmitt who, in Political Theology, defined the sovereign 'as he who decides upon the exception'.  This sudden interest derives, in large part, from comments made at press conference on Monday, December 19, where Bush said the following:

And having suggested this idea, I then, obviously, went to the question, is it legal to do so? I swore to uphold the laws. Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely.

As I mentioned in my remarks, the legal authority is derived from the Constitution, as well as the authorization of force by the United States Congress.

If the liminal relationship between sovereignty, legality and illegality is in question (i.e., whether or not illegal acts can be legally justified as exception within the Patriot Act deemed legal as seen by the Constitution), then commentators are right to wonder if Bush's policy is, at the core, Schmittian.  It is, I think, a fair question.

Two issues invariably rise: (1) we know that much 'national security' policy is in the control of those who deny being part of the international Straussian conspiracy, that Strauss was a student of Schmitt's, and that Schmitt only ended the relationship when it became impossible for him (as a Nazi party member) to remain friends with a Jew (there is no indication that Strauss wanted the relationship to end; he continued sending letters -- unanswered -- to Schmitt well after Schmitt assisted him in fleeing Germany to London) and (2) when people start talking about Schmitt they start talking about Nazis and fascism.  Thus, rather than spending time on (1) Schmitt's intellectual output, (2) potential relations between Schmitt, Strauss and Straussians, (3) whether or not recent policy can be characterized as 'Schmittian', people rather (4) discuss "Hey, wasn't he a Nazi?  How Nazi was he?  Doesn't that make his philosophy 'Nazi philosophy'? Isn't anyone who talks about Schmitt also a Nazi?".

Not wanting to fuel this -- despite it being a moderately interesting question that we've already been over a number of times with Heidegger and then de Man -- I'll nonetheless contribute the following, taken from Schmitt's interrogations at Nuremberg.

Fortunately for us, there are people who are interested in Schmitt without writing him off as a Nazi.  Joseph Bendersky is one such person, having written, among other things, an 'intellectual biography' on him, as well as a number of articles.  Bendersky, of course, was central in the 1980s/early 1990s Schmitt revival in the journal Telos (the Schmitt revival often being written-off as a right-turn in editorial policy at Telos).  Telos, of course, continues to publish articles on and by Schmitt, as well as publishing his The Nomos of the Earth. In a short article entitled "Carl Schmitt at Nuremberg", Bendersky introduces the context of Schmitt's interrogation and provides the (known) transcripts of his interrogation.

Without reproducing the article in its totality, Bendersky contextualizes as follows:

Carl Schmitt was arrested by the Russians in Berlin in April 1945, interrogated and released.  In September 1945 he was arrested by the Americans and held in internment camps until March 1947, when he was brought to Nuremberg as a potential defendent in the War Crimes Trials.  Although he was released in a matter of weeks without being charged, this episode has created further suspicion about Schmitt's role in the Third Reich.  Without oversimplying the complexity of the question, since everything about this enigmatic jurist and political thinker defies simple or even concise explanation, the decision to interrogate him at Nuremberg was largely due to the infamous reputation he had acquired abroad.  A mixture of reality and myth, with the latter clearly dominating, had created the perception of Schmitt as the 'Crown Jurist' of the Third Reich and the theorist of Nazi expansionism. Thereafter, dubious assumptions and superficial analyses based on myth rather than fact led to false conclusions.

While I am not inclined to reproduce Bendersky's article in full, I am inclined to reproduce the transcripts (minus Bendersky's notes -- editorial, informational, etc).  Schmitt was interrogated by Robert Kempner three times, on April 3, April 21, and April 29, all in 1947.  Three answers were given in written form, appended to Bendersky's article as such; the pages which I've since lost from my photocopy.  At any rate, here is the entirety of Schmitt's interrogations.

(1)
Kempner: You do not have to testify, Professor Schmitt, if you do not want to, and if you think you are incriminating yourself. But if you do testify, then I would be grateful if you would be absolutely truthful, would neither conceal nor add anything.  Is that your wish?
Schmitt: Yes, of course.
K: And if I come to something you might find self-incriminating, you can simply say you prefer to remain silent.
S: I have already been interrogated by the C.I.C. [U.S. Army counter-intelligence] and in the camp.  I would be glad to tell you all I know.  However, I would like to know what I am being blamed with. All previous interrogations ultimately ended in academic discussions.
K: I do not know why anyone else has questioned you.  I will tell you quite candidly what I am interested in: your participation, direct and indirect, in the planning of wars of aggression, of war crimes and of crimes against humanity.
S: Planning wars of aggression is a new and very broad concept.
K: I take it for granted that, as a professor of public law, you know exactly what a war of aggression is.  Do you agree with me on the fact that Poland, Norway, France, Russian, Denmark, Holland were invaded? Yes or no?
S: Of course.
K: Did you not provide the ideological foundation for those kinds of things?
S: No.
K: Could your writings be so interpreted?
S: I do not think so - not by anyone who has read them.
K: Did you seek to achieve a new international legal order in accordance with Hitlerian ideas?
S: Not in accordance with Hitlerian ideas and not sought to achieve but diagnosed.
K: What is your attitude toward the Jewish Question, in general, and how it was handled by the Third Reich?
S: It was a great misfortune and, indeed, from the very beginning.
K: Did you consider the influence of your Jewish colleagues, who were teachers of international law, a misfortune?
S: With the exception of Erich Kaufmann, there were no Jewish legal scholars there [in Nazi Germany].  He was a belligerent militarist.  He originally coined the phrase "The social ideal is the victorious war," in "Die Clausula rebus sic stantibus."
K: Now, however, Erich Kaufmann is not here, but you are.
S: I do not want to incriminate him.  I also would not like to create the impression of incriminating this man.
K: Would you say there was a definite discussion between international and constitutional law influenced by Jews and that which you taught and advocated?
S: The standpoint of Jewish colleagues was not sufficiently homogeneous for that.
K: Have you ever written such things?
S: I wrote only once that Jewish theorists have no understanding of this territorial theory.
K: Where did you write that?
S: In a little essay in the Zeitschrift fur Raum-Forschung, 1940-41.
K: What was that essay called?
S: I cannot recollect the title.
K: Who published the journal?
S: The Reich Office for Raum Research.
K: How long is the essay?
S: Volkerrechtliche Grossramordnung had 50 large octavo pages.
K: How many editions?
S: I believe 5 or 6.  The essay was reprinted there from the Zeitschrift fur deutsche Raumforschung, published by Deutscher Rechtsverlag, a press of the National Socialist League of Jurists.
K: It had a swastika on its publisher's insignia?
S: Yes, of course.
K: Reading your writings creates a completely different impression from the one you are now providing.
S: If one reads them completely, they have very little to do with the Jewish Question.
K: You admit, however, that it [Volkerrechtliche Grossramordnung] is clearly an international legal theory of Lebensraum?
S: I call it Grossraum.
K: Hitler was also for Grossraum.
S: All of them were probably for it, including the citizens of other countries.
K: A reading of this essay shows it was written in the purest Hitler syle.
S: No.  I am proud of the fact that since 1936 I had nothing to do with that.
K: Previously, therefore, you wrote in the Hitlerian style.
S: No, I did not say that.  Until 1936 I considered it possible to give meaning to these catchwords.
K: You assumed the editorship of various journals, which previously you had not.  Die deutsche Juristenzeitung, for example?
S: From 1934 to 1936.
K: Would it not have been better to have avoided becoming involved with that?
S: Yes, now one can say that.
K: The accused is confronted with his publication Volkerrechtliche Grossramordnung, 4th Edition, and the following passage from page 63 is read to him: "The Jewish authors had, of course, as little to do with the previous development of Raum theory as they had with the creation of anything else.  They were also here an important cause of the dissolution of concretely-determined territorial orders."  Do you deny that this passage is in the purest Goebbels-style?  Yes or no?
S: I do deny that the content and form of that is in Goebbels' style.  I would like to emphasize that the serious scholarly context of that passage should be taken into consideration.  In its intent, method, and formulation it is a pure diagnosis.
K: Do you want to say anything else?
S: I am here as what?  As a defendent?
K: That remains to be determined.
S: Everything I stated, in particular this passage, was intended as scholarship, as a scholarly thesis I would defend before any scholarly body in the world.
K: Here, however, we are before a criminal court.  You were the directing, one of the leading jurists of the Third Reich.
S: Someone who in 1936 was publicly defamed in Das Schwarze Korps [the S.S. journal] cannot be described in that fashion.
K: How does your interpretation fit with the fact that, after 1936, you delivered lectures financed by the Nazi Reich in Budapest, Bucharest, Salamanca and Barcelona; in the notorious espionage and propaganda institute, "The German Instiute in Paris," and other places.  Did you deliver lectures?  Yes or no?
S: Yes, I did deliver lectures.  They were not paid for.
K: Who paid for the trip?
S: Part [was paid] by the inviting societies, part by German agencies.
K: Therefore: the Nazi Reich.
S: That was a forum for me; I had no other.
K: You see that there is in this fact of your defamation, on the one hand, and your lectures, on the other, a certain contradiction very difficult for me to comprehend.
S: If you are interested in an explanation, I would be pleased to give you one.  This is the first conversation I have had about it since 1933.  I would like to discuss that.
K: It is related to what extent you provided the scholarly foundation for war crimes, crimes against humanity, the forceful expansion and widening of Grossraum.  We are of the opinion that the executing agencies in the administration, the economy and the military are not more important than the men who conceived the theory and the plans for the entire affair.  Maybe you would like to write down what you have to say.  To what extent did you provide the theoretical foundation for Hitlerian Grossraum policy?
S: I will write it down.  This is thus the question to be answered.

(2)
K: Were you so kind to write your answers?
S: It took a long time, because I was given a table so late.  May I give it to you?
K: I must, of course, read through this later.  Who invited you to the German Institute in Paris?
S: The director, Dr. Epting, on the suggestion of certain gentlemen whom he knew.  The lecture was a pretext for the trip.  I was accompanied by Pierre Linn, a Jewish friend and his wife.
K: I am interested in the German Institute.
S: I had very little to do with that.  The director was Epting.  The motivating force behind my invitation was Dr. Bremer.  He had many friends, including Frenchmen such as Alfred Fabre-Luce.
K: Would you be so good as to sign the pages with your initials C.S.?  Are all the facts correct?  Then please write: The truth of the above statements is pledged on my word of honor.
S: Yes.  May I ask something else?
K: What questions do you still have?
S: You wanted to lend me Volkerrechtliche Grossramordnung.
K: You still have not received it?
S: No, I still have no answer from my wife.  May I request that my wife send me the manuscript of the lecture on the "Lage der europaischen Rechtswissenschaft"?  The manuscript is still with the publisher.  The lecture was basically intended for a Fetschrift for Popitz.  I have not said anything that is not contained in the manuscript.  That provides perhaps the best account of the remarks I made in Bucharest, Budapest, Madrid, Barcelona Coimbra.
K: Have you now been able to reconcile yourself in any way to the role you played in the Third Reich and in the preparation of criminal offenses, as I interpret them?
S: Here we are not really disputing facts.  I accept them.  It is a question of interpretation and legal evaluation.  As a long-standing professor of jurisprudence, I cannot stop thinking.
K: Nor should you.  To clarify again what the theory of the public prosecutor is: Did you participate in the preparation, etc. of wars of aggression and in other punishable offenses related to these at the point of decision-making?  What is your answer to that?  Could you state it concisely in a single sentence?
S: I neither served in a decision-making capacity, nor did I participate in the preparation of wars of aggression.
K: Our theory about the term "point of decision-making" is as follows: is not one of the leading university professors in this field as least as important in the decision-making-process as other high state or party officials?
S: Also in a totalitarian state?
K: Yes, particularly in a totalitarian system.  And furthermore: what we understand by wars of aggression is very clearly expressed in the decision of the IMT [International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg], with which you are familiar.
S: Yes, it would be good if I could have the complete text.  I have no material at all.  I have one final question, which is not connected with the preceding.  You mentioned the name Radbruch.  I hardly know him.  If you want to inquire about my activity as a professor during the last 10 years, I would request that you question colleagues who really have known me.
K: Who, for example?
S: Carl Brinkmann.  He was in Berlin until 1944 and is now in Erlangen.
K: I will be glad to question him.  Was he a party member?
S: No, otherwise he would not now be a professor in Erlangen.  I do not believe he was a party member.  It may not be pleasant for him to do that.  The Dr. Carl Schmitt myth is pure myth.  Carl Schmitt is quite a peculiar individual, not just a professor; he is also a composite of various other individuals.  I observed this when I was interrogated by Dr. Flechtheim.  You can inquire about that.
K: I have my sources.
S: Radbruch is a politician.  He sees things in a particular way and does not understand that a person can sit quietly at a desk.
K: Did Rousseau leave his desk?
S: No.
K: Who else did not leave his desk?
S: Thomas Hobbes.
K: It is very difficult to render a criminal judgment.
S: May I speak frankly?  I have no been in solitary confinement for 3 weeks...
K: You do not want to be alone?
S: I would like to be even more alone.  All possible questions were asked of me at the time I was placed under arrest.  I said then only: I would like to be able to speak about my case from my own perspective.  I desire only to clarify things to myself.  But my name, my physiognomy is too famous for me to be left alone.  I had hundreds of students in all countries, thousands of listeners.
K: To the extent that it relates to audience, your reputation vacillates in history.
S: That will always be the case when someone takes a position in such situations.  I am an intellectual adventurer.
K: You have the blood of an intellectual adventurer?
S: Yes, that is how thoughts and knowledge develop.  I assume the risk.  I have always accepted the consequences of my actions.  I have never tried to avoid paying my bills.
K: If, however, what you call the pursuit of knowledge results in the murder of millions of people?
S: Christianity also resulted in the murder of millions of people.  One does not know unless one has experienced it oneself.  I by no means feel, as do many others, an innocent victim to whom something horrible has happened.
K: But this is no comparison.  And is it not, simply stated, a criminal investigation of your personal make-up?
S: I can tell you a great deal about that.  If  I were asked, I would be glad to express my honest opinion.
K: I would like to ask you something without touching on your own matters.  Let us for a moment consider a case from another area.  You are familiar with Mr. Lammers and, as a constitutional lawyer, his position.  You know what a Reich Minister is?
S: Personally, I have only seen him once, in 1936.  He was Chief of the Reich Chancellery, where everything was concentrated.
K: How do you explain psychologically that a man like Lammers, as an old professional civil servant, signed hundreds of horrible things?
S: I do not understand that.  I have not done that.
K: That does not relate to you, you avoided such things?  How do you explain that a diplomat like von Weizsacker, as a state secretary, signed hundreds of such things?
S: I would like to give you a nice answer.  The question has great significance, a distinguished man like von Weizsacker...  Only I must protect myself...
K: This theme could get us into constitutional matters.  At present, I am not questioning you about Lammers personally, but about the position of Chief of the Reich Chancellery in a totalitarian state.  I am asking you neither as a defendent nor as someone accused or as a witness, but as a constitutional lawyer.  I am asking you here purely as an expert, why this position is more important than that of another Reich Minister?
S: Perhaps Bormann was more important.
K: That is not completely correct.  The position of Bormann first became important in 41-42.
S: I would like to formulate this for you as best as possible in writing.
K: In the Bismarckian Reich I would have stated: Lammers had the key to lawmaking in his hand.  In the dictatorship he had more in his hand: the handle to the door of the dictator.  Does this explain the significance of his position?
S: Yes.
K: Write that up in a small essay.

(3)
K: How are your Professor Schmitt?  Have you written something?
S: Yes.  I have brought along both written elaborations and have signed them.  I no longer recall the exact wording of your question: "Did you participate in the preparation of wars of aggression, etc."
K: Do you pledge the accuracy of your statements on your word of honor?
S: On my word of honor I pledge the accuracy of the statements from pages 1-17.  That is a written elaboration, a legal opinion.
K: Please write at the end of your elaboration: I pledge that I have given the above legal opinion according to the best of my knowledge and conscience.
S: Yes.  The legal opinion is on pages 1-15.
K: I will examine this very closely.
S: I am happy to have found a reader once again.  In general, my writings have been read very poorly.  I fear the superficial reader.
K: I will read through it not only form the standpoint of criminal law, but also from the standpoint of constitutional law.
S: I have written it with great interest.  Can it be indicated that I did not do that on my own initiative?
K: Professor Carl Schmitt made the assessment of the constitutional position of the Reich minister and chief of the Reich chancellery at the instigation of the interrogator.  Are you afraid of doing that on your own initiative?
S: Not that.  Maybe it is improper in my circumstances.
K: Prof. Carl Schmitt submits, in addition, his own comments on the subject of participating in wars of aggression.  Were you a member of the SS?
S: No.
K: To what extent did you participate in the ideological preparation of SS ideology?
S: Not at all.  I was an opponent of the SS.  [Bendersky notes that the feeling was mutual for the SS.]  I was publicly assaulted and defamed in Das Schwarze Korps.
K: Do you know Gottlob Berger?
S: I have never seen him.
K: Were you not the idol of SS professors such as Boehm, etc.?
S: When a state concillor in a totalitarian system is publicly spat at by the Schwarze Korps, that cannot be said.
K: After you were spat at, did you not travel to Salamanca, Paris, Madrid, etc.?
S: That occrred in 1943 on special invitation from the faculties.
K: You had nothing to do with the SS?
S: I was strongly opposed to it.  I was secretly observed and controlled by the SS.
K: Did you state that German legislation and the German administration of justice must be carried out in the spirit of National Socialism?  Yes or no?  Did you state that between 1933 and 1936?
S: Yes.  I was from 1935 to 1936 head of the professional organization.  I felt superior at that time.  I wanted to give the term National Socialism my own meaning.
K: Hitler had a National Socialism and you had a National Socialism.
S: I felt superior.
K: You felt superior to Adolf Hitler?
S: Intellectually, of course.  He was to me so uninteresting that I do not want to talk about that at all.
K: When did you renounce the devil?
S: 1936.
K: Are you not ashamed to have written these kinds of things at that time, such as, for example, that the administration of justice should be National Socialist.
S: I wrote that in 1933.
K: Do you deserve good or poor grades for that?
S: It was a thesis.  The National Socialist League of German Jurists extracted it, so to speak, from my mouth.  At that time there was a dictatorship with which I was not yet familiar.
K: You were not familiar with any dictatorship.
S: No.  This total dictatorship was actually something new.  Hitler's method was new.  There was only one parallel, Lenin's Bolshevik dictatorship.
K: Was that something new?
S: Yes, certainly.
K: In your own library you have writings about totalitarian dictatorship.
S: Not totalitarian.
K: Are you not ashamed that you wrote these kinds of things at that time?
S: Today, of course.  I do not consider it appropriate to continue to rummage around in the disgrace we suffered at that time.
K: I do not want to rummage around.
S: Without question, it was unspeakable.  There are no words to describe it.
K: I consider it better if we converse about such matters outside, not here in custody.
S: That would be agreeable to me for reasons of health.  I also consider it better in the interest of the case.  This professional opinion suffers from this situation.
K: I want to see that you return home.
S: My wife gave up the apartment in Berlin.  We have no other lodging that with my sisters in Westphalia.  Could you see that I go there and not automatically be sent to Berlin?
K: That will be taken care of today.
S: I would appreciate it.

Comments

[Kenneth Rufo]

Thank you for this. Absolutely fascinating.

I don't know which is more terrible: Heidegger's horrific silence or Schmitt's arrogant posturing.

[Phil]

Thanks for the post. While I am only beginning to read Schmitt and having read Balakrishnan's work on Schmitt, I do think what is of interest is, in a Kierkegaardian parlance, Schmitt-in-becoming. According to Balakrishnan, Schmitt began as a supporter of Catholic Center Party, that is, an anti-liberal right-winger with sympathies towards the Italian fascists, under the disintegrating tendencies of the Weimar Republic. Given this starting point, the question becomes how does Schmitt move from this earlier position and with a disdain for the Nazis, to an official in the Nazi legal establishment (even if only for a few years at the beginning)? Is it mere opportunism? Balakrishnan clearly does not believe that Schmitt's positions can be reduced to this, although opportunism almost certainly played a role. I believe that his position would have to be reconstructed out of his starting points of the disintegrative tendencies of the Weimar Constitution and the inability for a stable rechtstaat to be formed out of private, yet political, organizations in an anarchic civil society (Church, trade unions, parties). Schmitt developed, in reaction to the course of events in Weimar, a strong preference for increasing the powers of the executive as the locus of sovereignty for the state. This state would be in a higher relationship to the rest of society, able to provide order through executive prerogative in the formation of law (as law and decree would effectively become identical). This is where the comparison with the Bush Administration's positions and Schmitt, I believe, is strongest. The legal reasoning of the administration, under a percieved state of emergency following 9/11, is to increase the prerogative of executive, at the expense of the judiciary and legislature, in order to ensure the survival of the state.

[Jodi]

Interesting. At the same time, no one has ever been able properly to respond to or answer in a convincing way Schmitt's critique of parliamentary democracy.

[old]

much thanks

[old]

... right, parliamentary democracy will never ever save us. To the alternatives!

[Matt]

As you know, Jodi, I think Derrida does make a convincing start, in Politics of Friendship (what say you, Ken), at least in casting some important doubt around the foundational friend/enemy distinction. Thanks very much for transcribing this, Craig.

[Craig]

(Despite my claim in my last comment, I haven't made it to the grocery store yet. Time for one more. Maybe two.)

I was a little annoyed with the post at Crooked Timber (oops: almost wrote "Crooked Sunday" -- maybe Mr. Kaufman wants to make that one too? "Long Timber" is likely too dirty) where Schmitt's 'main idea' was identified as the exception and not as the friend/enemy. It, clearly, is an identification made on the basis of, well, Agamben and ignores twenty-years of Schmitt Studies in the english speaking world where, of course, the friend/enemy distinction reigned supreme.

I'll be a stick in the mud: I don't think one concept has priority over the other, but, rather, the issue is how does the exception, enemy and the nomos (the third major concept) relate to one another in a given legal order? This is why I think Land and Sea and The Nomos of the Earth are much better than Political Theology and The Concept of the Political. Mind you, the two books on nomos are 'mature' works compared to the earlier ones.

Finally, we can't isolate the enemy, the exception, and the nomos from his attack on liberal democracy and representation. (The book on representation being nearly impossible to find.)

If I'm really ambitious and want to give to the world a wonderful present, I'll transcribe the Schmitt/Kojeve correspondence, most noteworthy for some dirty things Kojeve seems to say about Schmitt's daughter. Not sure if they were ever published or not. (I have a draft translation.) If they were published, it was likely in "Political Theory".

[Adam Kotsko]

How far does Schmitt's critique of parliamentary democracy apply to the United States? We don't have a parliamentary democracy, strictly speaking (or, arguably, loosely speaking).

Perhaps Schmitt's assessment depends on there being a situation in which a king was directly gotten rid of, but that is not really the case in the US, at least not in the same way it was true in the French revolution or in the gradual transformation of the monarch of England into a figurehead.

I'm not a Schmitt scholar by any means -- maybe he did a study of the American polity as well, but if he did, you'd think it'd be cited more.

[old]

Adam, I think we are probably pretty carelessly working with a hodge podge of state of exception stuff and critique of parlimentary democracy stuff. I assume that they are related to each other in Schmitt, but should be more careful. The state of exception stuff applies just fine and dandy to the U.S. (as shown by Agamben) which means trouble for parlimentary or U.S. style liberal democracy, but a more thorough look at Schmitt's critique with a view toward the U.S. is probably in order.

[nnyhav]

Having redefined 'American exceptionalism', shall we refer to it henceforth as the Bush Antinomistration?

[Kent]

I assume you mean the Cheney Antinomistration.

Say, what is that supposed to mean?

[bj83r@yahoo.com]

It's wrong to say that liberalism fails to take account of the exception. Hobbes, for instance, bases his entire Staatslehre on
the state of exception, ie the absence of order. In his Hobbes book Schmitt argues that this accounts for the weird combination of personalism and mechanism in Hobbes. Both the personalism (the decisionistic sovereign) and the mechanism (the state as machina machinarum) are built on the state of exception, which is related to the idea that the state is constructed. The liberal state as the machine that ensures the preservation of bare life is built on the exception. As a machine, it is not a political concept--it is not a friend or an enemy. Hence liberalism is not, according to Hobbes, a political doctrine, but instead an anti-politics. The antithesis of the liberal anti-politics is the rootless terrorist, who is equally as invisible.

As for the Schmitt/Strauss relation, they are agreed in this, that a world-wide liberal state is an abomination. Schmitt believes it would be a world of entertainment without politics and the possibility of struggle. Strauss agrees because Strauss too is an old European conservative, like Schmitt. In the exchange with Kojeve he sees it as a world in which biological engineering has obliterated natural inequality and turned everyone into a Phd (hence the Straussian phd's and their opposition to cloning (Kass, Fukuyama, Kristol, etc.) But the idea that the Straussians are all secretly Schmittians is, I think, false. They tend to think Strauss arrived in Chicago fully formed in 1948 and do not have much interest in the pre-US Strauss.

[CR]

Interesting, this:

Schmitt believes it would be a world of entertainment without politics and the possibility of struggle.

Where would I look for this, bj83r?

[bj73R@yahoo.com]

Look at Strauss's commentary on Concept of the Political.

[Sebastian Barros]

Giorgio Agamben "Stato de eccezione" might be useful to understand Schmitt's decisionism and its links to Bush admin.

[nnyhav]

Seen today on commuter train, homeward bound: Hispanic worker with a glossy from LaRouchePAC entitled Cheney's 'Schmittlerian' Drive to Dictatorship stuffed halfway down the front of his trousers.

[Matt]

Blogged before, but this review from one of the editors of n+1 may be of interest, especially to those who may have missed it.