New authority: Hamlet’s politics with (and against) Carl Schmitt

Abstract

Carl Schmitt’s political thought has attained centrality in contemporary discussions of authority. Despite this, his complicated view of the interaction between religion and politics remains less well explored. We argue that his 1956 essay Hamlet oder Hekuba is essential to an understanding of Schmitt’s thought on authority because it is precisely this nexus of religion and politics which is at stake in his Hamlet reading. Schmitt depicts Shakespeare – through Hamlet – as standing in the unique historical position to see the political problem (or catastrophe) of modernity: the separation of theology from politics. For him, Hamlet depicts the borderland ‘in between’ competing and transforming worlds – or what he terms ‘the barbaric and the political.’ Hamlet must resolve conflicts within himself between politics inspired by Protestant (indebted specifically to Martin Luther) and Roman Catholic religious beliefs. We argue that it is only by attending to the Hamlet of Wittenberg that the point of Schmitt’s essay is revealed: modernity itself creates the problem of authority. Recognizing this core of Schmitt’s thought allows us to theorize democratic authority.

Keywords:

• democratic theory
• Carl Schmitt
• Shakespeare
• theology
• authority

Notes

1. This discussion is framed by Stephen Greenblatt’s ‘New Historicist’ reading, where Hamlet as a problematic Catholic, occupying a space between life and purgatory that itself becomes a double of purgatory (Greenblatt, 2001; Ch. 5). For the debate on Shakespeare’s religious affiliation and the effect on his writings, see also John Schwindt (1985).

2. Schmitt did not believe that it was possible to use Roman Catholicism to re-establish political unity. Nevertheless, Schmitt sees the Church as modeling political authority uniquely and correctly (Schmitt, 1996c, pp. 18, 26, 29). This paper is not alone in seeing Schmitt in sectarian in his political theology (see Balakrishnan, 2000, pp. 239–240; Faber, 2001; McCormick, 2007; Mehring, 1989; Taubes, 1987.

3. Indeed, while both Kahn (2003) and McCormick (1994) make mention of this paradox, neither adequately resolves the tension inherent to it.

4. For an excellent discussion of the development of a discourse on myth in German thought, see George Williamson’s The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche, (Williamson, 2004). Not unrelated here is Mussolini’s speech on ‘The Myth of Nation,’ October 24th, 1922, Naples Italy; on Schmitt’s relationship to Mussolini, see Habermas (1989).

5. Victoria Kahn (2003) speculates that Schmitt’s turn to Hamlet is in part an apologia for Schmitt’s own failed political judgments, his own inversion of his allegiances with National Socialism. But such a reading ignores Schmitt’s own justification for rejecting Hobbes (see Kahn, 2003, p. 88).

6. In Hamlet oder Hekuba, Schmitt explicitly rejects the concept of inventive artistic genius (dichterische Freiheit) embraced in German Romanticism. For Schmitt, the genius of Shakespeare is his ability to recruit historical circumstances to tragic effect (Schmitt, 1956, p. 35).

7. This is at issue in Schmitt's reading of Hobbes as well as Leo Strauss' critique of that position. Strauss wants to maintain, against Schmitt, that human beings are wholly evil (in a political as well as moral sense). See McCormick (1994) for further discussion on this point.

8. Aligning Claudius with the ‘Catholic’ perspective has both historical and textual precedent. Much of Claudius’ political and religious leanings can be gleamed from his preference for France and Laertes (Hamlet, I.ii). France was, during the late sixteenth century, the site of great Catholic oppression of the protestant Huguenots (with the ‘Wars of Religion’ ending in 1598). For discussions of Catholic dominance and the idea of ‘France’ in the late sixteenth century, see Fatovic (2005), Smither (1991), and Parmelee (1994).

9. Habermas claims, ‘Today Carl Schmitt’s objection to the ‘general significance of the belief in discussion’ has once again become relevant. At this point, his critique touches the core of Western rationalism. That his tune is the same as it was before is enough reason to pale at it’ (Habermas, 1989, p. 139).