Encounters at the end of the world: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and the Tyranny of Values

Abstract

This essay aims at throwing new light on a decades-long controversy over the intellectual relation between Weber and Schmitt. This debate over time has been characterized by polar positions, with the “Weberians” who exclude any continuity between the theorist of Wertfreiheit and the Kronjurist of the Third Reich; and those who not only emphasize similarities, but also a true intellectual filiation between them. Without denying legitimacy to these interpretations, I shall argue that the similarities as well as the differences between Weber and Schmitt are to be found and located in the larger context of the crisis of modernity. Both theorists lived and witnessed the dilemmas caused by the process of rationalization, the neutralization of politics, the technocracy it entailed, and the emergence of a secular polytheism of values. The crisis of modernity – and of political mediation – is the background against which these two thinkers have shaped their conceptual tools but, as I shall explain, the intellectual weapons they used to address this epochal crisis are different. Between the Weberian “ethics of responsibility” and the Schmittian “neutralization of values,” there is an abyss crossed by an ideology: the political.

Keywords:

• Max Weber
• Carl Schmitt
• theory of values
• disenchantment
• philosophy of history
• political theology

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Arthur Bradley, Bülent Diken, Michael Dillon, Charlie Gere, and Gavin Hyman for their invaluable intellectual support and friendship; Jonathan Colman and Martin O’Brien for being always willing to discuss new research ideas; and Timo Pelz for helping me with the German translation.

Notes

1. “Das Böse ist der Sternhimmel des Guten.”

2. Cf. Weber (1949, pp. 55, 112) and Schmitt (1929/2007, pp. 82–89).

3. This is the guiding idea of the seminal works by Ulmen (1985, 1991). For a similar interpretation, which analyses the Weber–Schmitt relationship within the larger frame of the crisis of modernity, see Galli (1996, pp. 77–122).

4. For an overview, see Engelbrekt (2009).

5. I follow the analytical distinction developed by Colliot Thélène but I don’t agree with her conclusions. First, it is an oversimplification to define Weber an “economist” (even though Weber sometimes defines himself – for intellectual humility – in this way). Second, it is misleading to stigmatize Weber’s theory of rationalization as a teleological and irreversible process (on this point see, Weiss, 1987). Finally, as I shall explain, if Schmitt, unlike Weber, fights against the “disenchantment” is just because he “ideologizes” politics and law in a way that would be too one-sided to Weber.

6. The original text is a lecture delivered by Schmitt in a seminar organized by his friend Ernst Forsthoff in the town of Ebrach on 23 October 1959. Along with Schmitt, other important scholars attended the meeting including Joachim Ritter, Julien Freund, Reinhard Koselleck, Arnold Gehlen, Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. The original theme of the seminar was “The Dissolution of the Unity of Science” (cf. Mußgnug, Mußgnug, & Reinthal, 2007, p. 149). However, after Forsthoff’s speech on “Virtue and Value in the Theory of the State” (Tugend und Wert in der Staatslehre) the debate shifted on this topic. Schmitt’s contribution was first printed in a volume “not for sale” dedicated to those who were in Ebrach, cf. Schmitt, C. (1960). Die Tyrannei der Werte. Überlegungen eines Juristen zur Wert-Philosophie, 200 copies. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. A shorter German version was released, without Schmitt’s knowledge, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 146 (27 June 1964). For this reason, the “unaltered” [unverändert] document, with a new introduction, was included in a volume issued in honor of Forsthoff’s sixty-fifth birthday, cf. Schmitt, C. (1967). Die Tyrannei der Werte. In S. Buve (Hrsg.), Säkularisation und Utopie. Ebracher Studien. Ernst Forsthoff zum 65 Geburstag (pp. 37–62). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Schmitt’s borrows the expression Tyranny of Values from Nicolai Hartmann’s Ethics (1926/1932, p. 423): “Every value – when once it has gained power over a person – has the tendency to set itself up as sole tyrant of the whole human ethos, and indeed at the expense of other values, even of such as are not inherently opposed to it.” I have translated the German word Werte with “values” and not with “valors” to respect Schmitt’s intension. For, in one of his last public appearances (9 November 1982), Schmitt (2005, pp. 177–8) interviewed by Fulco Lanchester for the Italian journal Quaderni Costituzionali pointed out that “the essay [The Tyranny of Values] is focused on the conflict among values. I argue that value is a concept that leads ineffably to economization. What is the highest value? An answer can be found only if you have already rightly economized. You see, this is my thesis. And now the new Pope John Paul II speaks of values and doesn’t know what he is talking about referring to German philosophers such as Max Scheler. It is so sad and I feel very sorry for this. What should we do? This is very dangerous.”.

7. The expression appears in the Inaugural Lecture delivered by Weber in May 1895 at Freiburg University. Cf. Weber (1895/2007, p. 27). On the various meanings of this concept, see Roth (1984).

8. On Weber and Lukács, see Gluck (1985) and Weber (1988, pp. 465–466).

9. See also Gerth’s reply (1945).

10. It is not my intention to criticize Mommsen. Moreover, in the preface to the English edition (1984, p. vii), he recognizes some of the limitations of his work: “This book was written in a political climate of a rather specific kind, colored by the determination of a whole generation of Germans to make democracy work after all. Those historians who began their academic work in the 1950s were especially influences by the West European and American examples; ‘reeducation’ had left an intellectual mark on many of them. (…) These historians tended to adopt a fundamentalist conception of democracy, which emphasized its base in the inalienable rights of natural law. (…) The writing of this book was strongly influenced by this trend, and it undoubtedly owes some of its strengths, but possibly also some of its shortcomings, to the singular intellectual constellation that existed in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s.”.

11. Cf. Weber (2012), pp. 3–94. On the formal and substantive unity of Weber’s work, see Wolin (1981).

12. See also Schmitt (1919/1985, p. 52): “Modern philosophy is governed by a schism between thought and being, concept and reality, mind and nature, subject and object, that was not eliminated even by Kant’s transcendental solution.”.

13. See also McCormick (1997, pp. 31–82).

14. For an attempt to reconstruct the “fragmented” relationship between Weber and Schmitt, see McCormick (1997, pp. 206–12).

15. In my short genealogical reconstruction of the word “value”, I consider only those authors who are crucial in order to contextualize Weber and Schmitt’s positions. For further discussion, see the entries “valŏur” and “valūe” in Middle English Dictionary, ed. R.E. Lewis (Ann Arbour, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 501–3; The Oxford English Dictionary, vol. XIX, ed. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 414–18; Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, vol. X, ed. F. Godefroy (New York: Krauss, 1961), pp. 828–9; and “Wert” in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Band XII, ed. J. Ritter and R. Eisler (Basel: Schwabe, 2004), pp. 556–91. See also Volpi (2008), which I partially follow here.

16. On Weber’s reservations concerning the term “value”, see his letters to Marianne Weber and Heinrich Rickert, and the “Nervi’s Fragment” in Weber (2012, pp. 374–5, 413–4).

17. Schmitt’s borrows this idea from Heidegger (1943/2002, p. 170). As a matter of fact, the influence of Heidegger on Schmitt’s “critique of values” is crucial.

18. It is worth pointing out that in Hobbes’ system there are no clear traces of the transition from the Good – understood as an objective fulcrum upon which to establish the Commonwealth – to values – understood as expression of free subjectivities. In this regards, he writes: “I observe the Diseases of a Common-wealth, that proceed from the poyson of seditious doctrines; whereof one is, That every private man is Judge of Good and Evill actions” (Hobbes, 1651/2005, p. 255).

19. Cf. the Latin edition, Hobbes (1668/1961), p. 137.

20. For a critical account of the Weber–Rickert relation, see Oakes (1988).

21. It is worth citing a passage of the so-called “Nervi fragment” in which Weber’s (2012, pp. 413–414) intellectual distance from Rickert is evident: “As soon as one tries to look for something different, something objective, behind the fact that, in any given instance, historical interest will be limited and graduated, one enters in the domain of norms; that is to say: one is then looking for a principle from which it would be possible to deduce not only what should, once and for all, be the object of our interest, but [also] to what degree we sh[ould] graduate our interest in the various el[ements] of reality. Precisely that is in fact the meaning – translated into everyday terms – of the ‘value metaphysics’ with which R[ickert] concludes. Here it must suffice to express doubts as to the possibility of grasping the substance of such norms, and simply to add that such doubts might be consistent with the view that the ‘absolute validity’ of certain ‘values’ (what we would call ‘interests’) could be taken to be more than simply a limiting concept. The logical possibility of a ‘formal ethics’ at least shows us that the concept of norms [covering] the infinite multiplicity of the object of these norms does not in itself guarantee that [such norms] can be formulated in substance.” On this point, see also Bruun (2001).

22. For a similar view, see Hampel (1965), pp. 81–96.

23. It is not a coincidence that Strauss (1953, p. 53–54) uses ideal-typical examples of the Western ethical tradition (prostitution, bravery, nobility of spirit, etc.) to develop his own “objective criticism” of Weber’s position. Obviously, these interpretations are value-related and not universal, to say the least. In this regard, it is worth quoting a passage of Heidegger (1955/2003, p. 122–123) to clarify the question of the ratio and its alleged objective foundation: “The [ratio] is by no means a just judge. It unscrupulously pushes everything not in conformity with it into the presumable swamp of the irrational, which it itself has staked out. Reason and its conceptions are only one kind of thinking and are by no means determined by themselves but by that which has been called thinking, to think in the manner of the ratio. That its dominance arises as rationalization of all categories, as establishing norms, as leveling in the course of the unfolding of European nihilism, provides food for thought, just as do the concomitant attempts at flight into irrational.”.

24. For similar remarks, see Weber (2012, pp. 314–15).

25. Cf. Weber (1922, p. 246): “[…] nur das formale Element gemeinsam, daß ihr Sinn darauf geht, uns eben die möglichen »Standpunkte« und »Angriffspunkte« der »Wertung« aufzudecken.” In the English editions “Angriffspunkte” is translated either as “evaluative approaches” (Weber, 1949, p. 144) or “points of application” (Weber, 2012, p. 157).

26. “Der Feind ist unsre eigne Frage als Gestalt./Und er wird uns, wir ihn zum selben Ende hetzen./Doch aus der Volksbesonnenheit kommt Gewalt./Auf Vorgebirgen treffen sich verwandte Ahnen/Und bleiben stumm, wenn Flut an Flut zerprallt.”.