The Language of Postwar Intellectual Schmittianism

Abstract

The article analyzes the work of Hanno Kesting, Reinhart Koselleck, Roman Schnur, and Nicolaus Sombart—four young followers of Carl Schmitt in postwar Germany. Their “intellectual Schmittianism” was less than a full commitment to Schmitt’s political positions, yet had more than an arbitrary similarity with them: it pertained to assumptions, categories, and modes of thought. Drawing on Pocock’s terminology, I identify a particular “language” of intellectual Schmittianism, introduce its key components, and analyze their interaction. I focus on six categories derived from Schmitt’s narrative of European political modernity: discrimination, historical parallels, secularization, global civil war, open/latent civil war, and category blurs. The analysis shows that these categories were interlinked argumentative devices rather than mere rhetoric and that they systematically upheld the postwar scholars’ arguments. While the Schmittian language enabled the young scholars to express their political skepticism without necessarily rejecting the newly adopted institutional forms, it also constrained their choices. Linguistic resources can always be used for novel purposes, yet the dense internal structure of the language of postwar intellectual Schmittianism hindered revaluation and selective utilization. Kesting excluded, the young scholars gradually grew critical of Schmitt to varying degrees, but they never directly confronted his problematic language.

Keywords:

• Political theory
• postwar Germany
• Carl Schmitt
• Hanno Kesting
• Reinhart Koselleck
• Roman Schnur
• Nicolaus Sombart

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The essay also benefited from Heta Moustgaard’s pertinent observations on substance and structure. An earlier version of the article was presented at the International Political Sciences Association World Congress in Montreal, July 19–25, 2014, and I thank the participants and the audience for their feedback. The research was conducted under the auspices of the research project “The Intellectual Heritage of Radical Cultural Conservatism” at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, funded by the Academy of Finland.

Notes

1. All translations from the German are by the author unless indicated otherwise. Müller, “Introduction,” 9.

2. Kilian, Demokratische Sprache.

3. Müller, Dangerous Mind; Van Laak, Gespräche.

4. Missfelder, “Gegenkraft,” 312.

5. Van Laak, Gespräche, 225–26; Scheuerman, “Unsolved Paradoxes”; Müller, Dangerous Mind, 104–15; Palonen, Entzauberung, 51–59, 180–89; Missfelder, “Gegenkraft”; Mehring, “Begriffsgeschichte”; Pankakoski, “Conflict”; Pankakoski, “Reoccupying Secularization”; Olsen, “Carl Schmitt”; Olsen, History; Egner, “Begriffsgeschichte”; Imbriano, Le due modernità.

6. The only source in English on all four thinkers is a perceptive but short chapter in Müller, Dangerous Mind, 104–15. Olsen, in History, 23–36, comments briefly on Koselleck, Kesting, and Sombart. Van Laak, in Gespräche, 266–76, 281–88, introduces Sombart, Kesting, and Schnur but mentions Koselleck only in passing. The description of the trio without Schnur in Sombart’s autobiography, Rendezvous, 255–76, is illuminating but subjective.

7. See Specter, Habermas, 3–8.

8. Forsthoff, Totale Staat.

9. Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 510.

10. Müller, Dangerous Mind, 103.

11. Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 510.

12. For further contextualization of postwar Heidelberg as an intellectual hub, see van Laak, Gespräche, 186–92, and Remy, Heidelberg Myth.

13. See Meinel, Jurist, 402–10.

14. Günther, Denken, 150.

15. Günther, Denken, 112–58.

16. Van Laak, Gespräche, 282.

17. Cited in Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 512.

18. Günther, Denken, 225–28.

19. Sombart, Rendezvous, 268–76.

20. Schmitt et al., Schmitt und Sombart, 218; cf. Müller, Dangerous Mind, 104–5.

21. See particularly the case of Hans Freyer in Muller, Other God.

22. Olsen, History.

23. Pankakoski, “Conflict.”

24. Sombart, Rendezvous, 217.

25. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 333–34.

26. Habermas, “Verrufener Fortschritt.”

27. Pocock, “Concept,” 100–101.

28. Ibid., 89.

29. Pocock, “Working,” 25.

30. See Olsen, “Reinhart Koselleck.”

31. Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 514–16.

32. Hacke, Philosophie, 45–52 and passim.

33. Müller, Dangerous Mind, 111.

34. For open/latent civil war and blurred categories in Schmitt, see Pankakoski, “Conflict,” 243–46, 253, 261; For secularization in Schmitt and Koselleck, see Missfelder, “Gegenkraft,” 317, 321; Olsen, History, 53; Pankakoski, “Reoccupying Secularization,” 234–43. For global civil war in Schmitt, Koselleck, and Jünger, see Missfelder, “Gegenkraft,” 328–34, and Olsen, History, 69–74; for global civil war in Koselleck, Kesting, and Sombart, see Imbriano, Le due Modernità, 102–4.

35. Van Laak, Gespräche, 271.

36. Cited in Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 492, and in Van Laak, Gespräche, 271–72.

37. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie.

38. Kesting, Öffentlichkeit, 23–24, 39, 54–58, 67, passim.

39. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, 156–57, 163–64.

40. Ibid., 164, 248.

41. Ibid., 233.

42. Schmitt, Nomos, 227–355; Schmitt, “Wendung”; Schmitt, “Über das Verhältnis.”

43. Olsen, History, 25.

44. Pankakoski, ”Conflict.”

45. Olsen, History, 75, 87.

46. Schmitt, Donoso Cortés, 110–13.

47. Koselleck, “Historisch-politischen Semantik,” 258–59.

48. Schnur, “Land und Meer,” 34.

49. Schmitt, Nomos, 309–12.

50. Schnur, “Land und Meer,” 40–41, 43, 46.

51. Schnur, “Weltfriedensidee,” 11, 19–20, 27–30.

52. Schmitt, Nomos, 119–25.

53. Schnur, Individualismus, 45–47; Schnur, “Carl Schmitt,” 725–26.

54. Schnur, “Pressefreiheit,” 106 note 11, 107 note 12, 111 note 21.

55. Cited in Günther, Denken, 150.

56. See Sombart, Rendezvous, 249–76.

57. Armin Mohler in Schmitt, Carl Schmitt—Briefwechsel, 217 note 265.

58. Sombart, “Ursprung.”

59. Schmitt et al., Schmitt und Sombart, 34.

60. Sombart, “Patriotismus,” 74, 79–80, 83.

61. Sombart, “Friedensforschung,” 822–23, 825, 827.

62. Forsthoff and Schmitt, Briefwechsel, 281.

63. Sombart, deutschen Männer.

64. Schnur, französischen Juristen, 66; Koselleck, Critique, 11.

65. Sombart, “Planung,” 61; Sombart, “Ursprung,” 12.

66. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, 21, 88–89, 95.

67. Schnur, Rheinbund, 18; Schnur, “Weltfriedensidee,” 21; Schnur, französischen Juristen, 63; Schmitt, “Tyrannei.”

68. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie,149, 227; Kesting, Öffentlichkeit, 54–55; Koselleck, Critique, 50, 60, 67–70, 80–85, 91–97, 146, 183; Schmitt, Leviathan, 113–18.

69. Schmitt, Concept, 30.

70. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, 6, 163, 320; Kesting, Öffentlichkeit, 67; Sombart, “Patriotismus,” 75; Koselleck, review of Raynal et sa machine de guerre, 127.

71. Schmitt, Concept, 66; Schmitt, Nomos, 122–24.

72. Sombart, “Patriotismus,” 71.

73. Schmitt, Nomos, 104; Schmitt, Ex Captivitate, 110–12.

74. Koselleck, Kritik, 218 note 72 (unavailable in the English translation).

75. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, 6, 8, 14.

76. Kesting, Öffentlichkeit, 25, 38, 68.

77. Koselleck, “Historisch-politischen Semantik,” 212.

78. Koselleck, “Historisch-politischen Semantik,” 258–59.

79. Kesting, “Lenin,” 132.

80. Schmitt, Concept, 79; Schmitt, Legalität, 91.

81. Blumenberg, Paradigms.

82. Koselleck, Critique, 5, 12.

83. Kesting, Herrschaft, 96.

84. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, xi.

85. See Pankakoski, “Reoccupying Secularization,” 222–29.

86. Schmitt, Ex Captivitate, 68–75.

87. Schnur, französischen Juristen, 32–35, 66, 71; Schnur, Individualismus, 39.

88. Schnur, französischen Juristen, 71.

89. Schnur, “Weltfriedensidee,” 30.

90. Koselleck, Critique, 39.

91. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, 3, 29, 57.

92. See Schmitt, “Wendung,” 518; Schmitt, Nomos, 296.

93. Cf. Missfelder, “Weltbürgerkrieg,” 273.

94. Sombart, “Ursprung,” 77, 82.

95. Schnur, “Weltfriedensidee,” 11, 31.

96. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, 233, 263.

97. Cited in Olsen, History, 69.

98. Koselleck, Critique, 185.

99. Koselleck, “Revolution,” 787; Koselleck, “Hinter den tödlichen Linie,” 240.

100. Olsen, History, 72.

101. Missfelder, “Weltbürgerkrieg,” 286.

102. Schmitt, Hugo Preuß, 26 note 1; Schmitt, Ex Captivitate, 13–14, 56; Schmitt, Nomos, 128 note 1.

103. Kesting, review of Jean Jacques Rousseau, 188; Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, 7.

104. Kesting, “Utopie,” 213, 216.

105. Sombart, “Ursprung,” 13, 23.

106. Koselleck, Critique, 110; Sombart, “Patriotismus,” 75.

107. Schmitt, Begriff, 11, 15, 18–19 (unavailable in the English translation).

108. Kesting, Geschichtsphilosophie, 6, 168–69, 82, 148, 248, 232.

109. Koselleck, Critique, 42, 53, 92, 114, 166.

110. Schnur, französischen Juristen 67; Schnur, Individualismus, 83.

111. Schmitt, Concept, 73–76.

112. Schnur, “Weltfriedensidee,” 28, 30.

113. Sombart, “Patriotismus,” 81–82.

114. Koselleck, review of Christianity, Diplomacy and War, 591.

115. Koselleck, “Revolution,” 787.

116. Pocock, “Concept,” 88.

117. Missfelder, “Gegenkraft,” 279.