Memo #7: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism
And my critique of Carl Schmitt
Hi there,
Yesterday, I briefly mentioned “The Straussian Moment” — Peter Thiel’s most obscure and underrated piece of writing. In that essay, he draws on ideas from a few key philosophers – René Girard, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt.
In today’s edition, I’d like to continue down this rabbit hole and tell you about Carl Schmitt, specifically, Schmitt’s scathing critique of Liberalism.
What is Liberalism?
First things first, let’s define what the term Liberalism means to Schmitt. He does not use the word Liberalism in the contemporary US political sense of being on the left vs. right axis that we’re familiar with. Instead, Liberalism is defined as the very essence of the process that emerged out of the Enlightenment Rationality that we now use to determine political legitimacy.
Liberalism marks a departure from the Pre-Liberal political processes. Instead of Divine Revelation, Liberalism uses Reason. Instead of interpreting religious scriptures, Liberalism interprets The Constitution and The Law. Instead of maintaining The Sovereign, Liberalism places checks and balances on the power of the government. Keep these in mind as we go through the rest of the essay.
Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism
Schmitt attacks Liberalism from so many angles that it’s hard to know where to start. Perhaps the best course of action is to just jump into it.
Liberalism weakens The State.
This may be Schmitt’s strongest and most analytical criticism of Liberalism. Schmitt claims that Liberalism weakens The State until it is eventually incapable of dealing with adversaries that don’t share the Liberal ethos at all.
One of Liberalism’s major delusion is that there is no political difference so extreme that cannot be resolved by Reason, Rationality, and Debate. However, consider for a moment, what happens when you try to reason with someone who is unreasonable? What happens when you sit down to debate someone whose entire belief system is that “I should be the ruler of the Earth, and you all my slaves.”? Reasoning with such a person, organization, or movement is like taking an olive branch into a gunfight.
Peter Thiel, in writing his essay against the backdrop of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, emphasizes and hones this very point. He writes,
And so, a religious war has been brought to a land that no longer cares for religious wars.
Thiel continues,
Where [President] Bush downplays the differences, Bin Laden emphasizes them, contrasting the world of pure Islam and the world of the decadent West in the most extreme way imaginable: “[T]he love of this world is wrong. You should love the other world . . . die in the right cause and go to the other world.”
Where did The Sovereign go?
The Sovereign is no more, or so does Liberalism claim. Schmitt says that Liberalism hasn’t done away with The Sovereign but merely hidden it away from the collective consciousness. If you look closely, The Sovereign is always there. We just turn a blind eye to the authoritarianism that actually goes on under the hood. With emergency extra-constitutional powers, The Sovereign kicks in anytime we need to get anything actually done. The best recent example of this is this COVID-crisis. Many people were surprised that the US government could dictate which businesses would close down and which would remain open.
Liberalism strips us of our core identities
Schmitt claims that Liberalism leads to the dissolution of our core identities like nationality and religion, thereby leaving a gaping void of identity and meaning.
Further, Liberalism even claims to do away with the “friends vs. enemies” distinction. We are all supposed to be global cosmopolitan consumers now. Except, that’s not how politics works. The entire political system is based on out-group vs. in-group. The reason you’re pro-[X] is that there exists an out-group that is anti-[X]. I mean, why would you be pro anything if everybody agreed already? So the underlying political process is still just as divisive and polarized, but most of it is now hidden behind a facade of rationality, reason, and debate.
What this ultimately does is that it strips us of our core identities like that of our nation and religion, leaving a hole that can now be fulfilled by the forces clamoring for authoritarian power.
My Critique of Schmitt’s Critique
Schmitt believes that Liberalism produces this weakened, apolitical citizen that knows nothing but to consume. To that, I’d ask the counter-question – is life’s true purpose really to engage in politics? What about art, science, love, and children? I mean, should we be surprised that a political philosopher is telling us we need to engage in more politics? If you ask a barber if you need a haircut, what else would he say except “Yes, you do”. A political philosopher will of course tend to overrate the degree to which people want to engage in politics. I claim that what we rather seek is meaning, belonging, and identity. Politics is but one way of getting to these needs, and a particularly insidious one.
Schmitt says that The Sovereign hasn’t gone away at all and it kicks in any time we need to get things done. That said, there is indeed a difference between the “default authoritarian” vs “authoritarian only in select emergencies with lots of checks and balances”. How could one argue that these two are the same, or that we should just cut it and go for the former system?
The big takeaway from Strauss and Schmitt
Here’s my primary takeaway from Strauss’ and Schmitt’s critique of Modernity and Liberalism – we cannot ignore the crisis of meaning and identity that Modernity brings with it. We cannot keep arguing that “look, here are all the objective, material progress metrics that are going up and to the right, therefore Everything is Fine”.
We're already seeing the consequences of this looming disaster. Look around yourself and see the current political chaos and polarization. To me, a lot of it seems to have religious-warfare like fervor.
People don't want to have children anymore, asking what good is to bring a child into a world that is going to be destroyed by climate change in 12 years anyway. Evolutionarily, that's the one thing a species is incentivized to do. Imagine how bad we must have it to not want it against our most primordial genetic instructions.
In our current political moment, here is the appealing palette of choices we are presented with –
1) A violent Socialist revolution where one by one, we all go under the guillotine for not being Marxist enough.
2) Ultra-nationalistic visions of some rosy past that we want to retreat to by Making America Great Again.
3) A slow and steady descent into Nihilism that makes us think that having children is evil.
Proceed with Caution
Here’s something you should know about Carl Schmitt. He was a raging anti-semitic member of the Nazi party who openly advocated for Fascism.
That’s a lot to just dump on you. But, I waited to let you in on Schmitt's extremely problematic associations until the end of the essay for a reason. It is because I want you to only evaluate Schmitt’s arguments, and not Schmitt himself.
That said, proceed with caution.
Bonus links
Until tomorrow,
Ayush
These memos are very well done. I am reading Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy" and you beat him cold.
Awesome read !