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CARL SCHMITT AND THE CHALLENGE OF SPINOZA’S PANTHEISM BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2014

RENE KOEKKOEK
RENE KOEKKOEK*
Affiliation:
Research Institute for History and Art History, Utrecht University E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Focusing on Carl Schmitt's early work, this article argues that Schmitt's relatively unfamiliar mystical interpretation of Spinoza's pantheism, in combination with his use of the abbé Sieyès's notion of pouvoir constituant, deeply informed his particular conception of anti-liberal, dictatorial democracy. Although it is often argued that, in Carl Schmitt's view, Spinoza heralded the end of political theology, this essay suggests that, even though it may be correct to say that Schmitt by 1938 deemed Spinoza “the corrupting spirit of modern liberalism”, there is a prior crucial, yet relatively unexplored, story to tell about Schmitt's reading of Spinoza—a story that leads to the heart of Schmitt's reconceptualization of democracy. While in Schmitt's view Spinoza's pantheism was detrimental to divine and kingly transcendentalism, it also served as a bold mystical foundation of Schmitt's notion of democratic homogeneity that would be capable of competing with contemporary “political theories of myth”.

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , August 2014 , pp. 333 - 357
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Duncan Kelly for advice and encouragement, and the anonymous reviewers and Anthony La Vopa for their helpful comments.

References

1 Schmitt, Carl, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947–1951 (Berlin, 1991), 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 In fact, the expression deus sive natura is in these specific wordings nowhere to be found in Spinoza's writings. In the preface of part IV of his Ethica Spinoza writes, “infinitum Ens, quod Deum, seu Naturam appellamus”. Spinoza, Opera, ed. Carl Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg, 1925) 2: 374. In the demonstration of proposition IV in the same part one can also find “ipsa Dei, sive Naturae potentia” and “infinitae Dei seu Naturae potentiae”. Ibid., 2: 388. These latter phrases suggest that Spinoza meant that the power (potentia) of God is the same as the power of nature, rather than simply that “God = nature”. But since for Spinoza God's power is his (or its) essence itself (“Dei potentia est ipsa ipsius essentia” – ibid., 2: 76), the more concise phrase “deus sive natura” captures the central idea: namely that the essence of God and the essence of nature are one and the same.

3 Schmitt, Carl, Politische Romantik (Munich, 1925), 80–82Google Scholar. The first edition appeared in 1919. A concise summary and selection of passages of Politische Romantik (that included the references to Spinoza) also appeared as a separate article in 1921: Schmitt, Carl, “Politische Theorie und Romantik”, Historische Zeitschrift, 123 (1921) 377–97Google Scholar.Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

4 Schmitt, Carl, Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Munich, 1928), 142Google Scholar. The first edition was published in 1921. Schmitt would restate this analogy in his Verfassungslehre, 79–80.

5 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 157.

6 Rosenthal, Michael A., “Spinoza and the Crisis of Liberalism in Weimar Germany”, Hebraic Political Studies, 3 (2008), 94–112Google Scholar; Vatter, Miguel E., “Strauss and Schmitt as Readers of Hobbes and Spinoza: On the Relation between Political Theology and Liberalism”, CR: The New Centennial Review, 4 (2004), 161–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Heerich, Thomas and Lauermann, Manfred, “Der Gegensatz Hobbes–Spinoza bei Carl Schmitt”, Studia Spinozana, 7 (1991), 97–160Google Scholar; Walther, Manfred, “Carl Schmitt contra Baruch Spinoza oder Vom Ende der politischen Theologie”, in Delf, H.et al. (eds.), Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte (Berlin, 1994), 422–41Google Scholar; and Walther, , “Carl Schmitt et Baruch Spinoza ou les aventures du concept du politique”, in Bloch, O. (ed.), Spinoza au XXième siècle (Paris, 1993), 361–72Google Scholar.

7 Schmitt, Carl, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes: Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols (Cologne: Hohenheim, 1982Google Scholar; first published 1938). Quotations are taken from Schmitt, Carl, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a political Symbol, trans. Schwab, G. and Hilfstein, E. (Chicago, 2008Google Scholar; first published 1938), 56.

8 Rosenthal, “Spinoza and the Crisis of Liberalism in Weimar Germany”, 101; Vatter, “Strauss and Schmitt as Readers of Hobbes and Spinoza”, 163, 192.

9 Alexander Somek speaks of Schmitt's “political Spinozism” as a form of political monism that stands in opposition to Hans Kelsen's formalistische Aufklärung. Somek, Alexander, “Politischer Monismus versus formalistische Aufklärung: Zur Kontroverse zwischen Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen”, in Paulson, S. and Walter, R. (eds.), Untersuchungen zur Reinen Rechtslehre (Vienna, 1986), 109–36Google Scholar.

10 Schmitt, Carl, Politische Theologie: Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität (Berlin, 1993Google Scholar; first published 1922), 43. Translation is taken from Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. Schwab, G. (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 36Google Scholar.

11 Christi, Renato, “Carl Schmitt on Sovereignty and Constituent Power”, in Dyzenhaus, D. (ed.), Law as Politics: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism (Durham, 1998), 179–95Google Scholar; Robbins, Jeffrey W., Radical Democracy and Political Theology (New York, 2011), 12–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vatter, “Strauss and Schmitt as Readers of Hobbes and Spinoza”, 202; Walther, “Carl Schmitt contra Baruch Spinoza oder Vom Ende der politischen Theologie”, 422, 436–7.

12 Heinrich Meier's well-informed and influential theological interpretation of Schmitt neither mentions nor discusses Schmitt's Spinozist–Sieyesian understanding of the pouvoir constituant. Meier, Heinrich, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss und “Der Begriff des Politischen”: Zu einem Dialog unter Abwesenden (Stuttgart, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meier, , Die Lehre Carl Schmitts: Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung politischer Theologie und politischer Philosophie (Stuttgart, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio, Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2000)Google Scholar; Hardt and Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York, 2004)Google Scholar; Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA, 2009).

14 Negri, Antonio, Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the modern State, trans. Boscagli, M. (Minneapolis, 1999), 24Google Scholar.

15 Müller, Jan-Werner, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-war European Thought (New Haven, 2003), 177Google Scholar–80. Ilse Staff does not pay any considerable attention to Negri in her Staatsdenken im Italien des 20. Jahrhunderts: Ein Beitrag zur Carl Schmitt-Rezeption (Baden-Baden, 1991).

16 Negri, Insurgencies, 24. See also Maschke, Günter, “Carl Schmitt in Europa: Bemerkungen zur italienischen, spanischen und französischen Nekrologdiskussion”, Der Staat 25 (1986), pp. 576–99Google Scholar.

17 Negri, Insurgencies, 1–2, 304–5. For Negri's most extensive elaboration of the relationship between metaphysics and politics in Spinoza's thought see his The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics, trans. M. Hardt (Minneapolis, 1991). The Italian original came out in 1981: L’anomalia selvaggia (Milan, 1981).

18 Cf. Maschke, “Carl Schmitt in Europa”, 576. Recently, Kalyvas, Andreas, in his Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (Cambridge, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, also has drawn on (parts of) Schmitt's understanding of constituent power for a theory of “democratic constitutionalism”. Here he follows “the path opened up during the early 1980s by Italian thinkers such as Mario Tronti, Toni Negri” and others. Kalyvas, Andreas, “Who's afraid of Carl Schmitt?”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 25 (1999), 87–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 123 n. 113. For Schmitt as a source for left-wing radicalism see also Arato, Andrew, “Forms of Constitution Making and Theories of Democracy”, Cardozo Law Review, 17 (1995), 202–4Google Scholar.

19 Lazier, Benjamin, God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars (Princeton, 2008), 10–1Google Scholar, 62–132; see also Smith, Steven B., “How to Commemorate the 350th Anniversary of Spinoza's Expulsion, or Leo Strauss’ Reply to Hermann Cohen”, Hebraic Political Studies, 3 (2008), 155–76Google Scholar.

20 Schmitt's Der Leviathan was published eight years after Strauss's book-length discussion of Spinoza's critique of religion Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas theologisch-politischem Traktat (Berlin, 1930). For Schmitt's relation to Strauss see Heerich and Lauermann, “Der Gegensatz Hobbes-Spinoza bei Carl Schmitt”; Meier, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss und “Der Begriff des Politischen”; Rosenthal, “Spinoza and the Crisis of Liberalism in Weimar Germany”; Vatter, “Strauss and Schmitt as Readers of Hobbes and Spinoza”; Lazier, God Interrupted, 80–82.

21 Schmitt only plays a minor (contextual) role in Lazier's otherwise brilliant book. In that respect this essay can be read as picking up this loose end, offering a further exploration of the influence of the revival of Spinozistic pantheism on political thinking in early twentieth-century Germany.

22 The interest in Spinoza in Catholic circles in the 1920s and 1930s is an interesting chapter in the history of the reception of Spinoza. In 1932 the Catholic intellectual Hans Hartmann, for example, suggested that Spinoza, like Catholicism, aimed at the “unity of all religions” and an “original simplicity”, so that “many people of the world could satisfy their desire for the true catholic (dem wahrhaft katholischen) in Spinoza, if they cannot find it in the Catholic Church”. Hartmann, Hans, “Der Spinozismus: Zugleich eine Betrachtung zum internationalen Spinozakongreß”, Preußischer Jahrbuch, 231 (1932), 39–49Google Scholar, 46. Cf. Lazier, God Interrupted, 67–72. I should emphasize that I think that Schmitt turned to Spinoza for other reasons than Catholics like Hartmann.

23 van der Tak, W. G., “Spinoza bij de 300ste verjaring zijner geboorte”, in Bierens de Haan, J. D.et al. (eds.), Benedictus de Spinoza Amstelodamensis: Drietal redenen ter gelegenheid van de 300ste verjaring zijner geboorte uitgesproken in de Agnietenkapel te Amsterdam (Leiden, 1932), 318–25Google Scholar, 325.

24 In his Pensées diverses sur la comète, Pierre Bayle called Spinoza “le plus grand Athée qui ait jamais été”. Bayle, Pensée diverses sur la comète, ed. A. Prat (Paris, 1994; first published 1682), 134, as cited in Israel, J., Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001), 299CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Christian Wolff in his Theologia Naturalis (1736) wrote “the Ethics of Spinoza is a unique system of atheism”. Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, ed. J. École et al. (Hildesheim, 1962–), 716, as cited in Morrison, J. C., “Christian Wolff's Criticisms of Spinoza”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 31 (1993) 405–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 414. Jacobi's was probably the most famous attack on Spinoza, claiming that Spinozism ultimately leads to fatalism and atheism. See Snow, D. E., “F. H. Jacobi and the Development of German Idealism”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 25 (1987), 397–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 On this topic see Walther, Manfred (ed.), Spinoza und der deutsche Idealismus (Würzburg, 1992)Google Scholar; Zac, Sylvain, Spinoza en Allemagne: Mendelssohn, Lessing et Jacobi (Paris, 1989)Google Scholar.

26 See, for example, Cross, George, “The Influence of Schleiermacher on Modern Theology”, American Journal of Theology, 10, (1906), 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar–5.

27 Schleiermacher wrote two essays on Spinoza: Spinozismus and Kurze Darstellung des spinozistischen Systems. Both can be found in volume 1 of Schleiermacher, F. D. E., Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. H. Birkner et al. (Berlin, 1980)Google Scholar. For contemporary discussions of the relationship between Schleiermacher and Spinoza, see Schmidt, P., Spinoza und Schleiermacher: Die Geschichte ihrer Systeme und ihr gegenseitiges Verhältniss /ein dogmengeschichtlicher Versuch (Berlin, 1868)Google Scholar; and Camerer, T., Spinoza under Schleiermacher: Die kritische Lösung des von Spinoza hinterlassenen Problems (Stuttgart, 1903)Google Scholar.

28 Dilthey, Wilhelm, Leben Schleiermachers (Berlin, 1922; first published 1870), 173–88Google Scholar, 174.

29 Ibid., 186–7. For a recent discussion of Schleiermacher's appropriation of Spinoza in the context of Spinozism in German Idealism see Lamm, Julia A., The Living God: Schleiermacher's Theological Appropriation of Spinoza (University Park, PA, 1996)Google Scholar.

30 Mulert, H., “Schleiermacher über Spinoza und Jacobi”, Chronicon Spinozanum, 3 (1923), 295–316Google Scholar, 312–3.

31 Carp had also been given the honour of holding a speech at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Vereniging het Spinozahuis in 1922. This speech was published as “Psychologische beschouwingen in verband met het wezen van het spinozisme”, Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, 16 (1922), 280–301. His 1932 speech “Spinoza as a Mystic” at the tercentenary of Spinoza's birth was delivered at the Dutch Kant-Gesellschaft. On Carp see Krop, H., “Filosofie als levensleer: De spinozistische en hegelsche beschouwingswijze in het interbellum”, Geschiedenis van de Wijsbegeerte in Nederland, 9 (1998), 26–42Google Scholar; Krop, , “Johan Herman Carps spinozistische kritiek op de parlementaire democratie: Een wijsgeer tussen nationaal-socialisme en conservatisme”, Geschiedenis van de Wijsbegeerte in Nederland, 10 (1999), 62–74Google Scholar.

32 The 1927 speech appeared as the article “Belgium: Wezen en waarde van het Spinozisme”, Chronicon Spinozarum, 5 (1927), 3–13, 9. Compare his “Tijdgeest en staatsrechtswetenschap”, Handelingen van de Vereeniging voor wijsbegeerte des rechts, 11 (1926), 1–35, in which he refers to both Politische Theologie and Politische Romantik. It is intriguing, moreover, that next to their shared interest in Spinoza's “mysticism”, Carp – similar to the way Schmitt made a career in Nazi Germany – became a member of the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB) in the late 1930s, the right hand of its leader Anton Mussert and eventually the most important jurist and theoretician of Dutch National Socialism. See E. J. M. Kerkhoven, “Johan Herman Carp, Nationaal-socialisme van Nederlandse snit”, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1980; and Kerkhoven, , “Historici en landverraders: over J. H. Carp (1893–1979)”, Theoretische geschiedenis, 26 (1999), 445–69Google Scholar.

33 Carp, “Belgium: Wezen en Waarde van het Spinozisme”, 12.

34 Carp, Johan H., “Naturrecht und Pflichtbegriff nach Spinoza”, Chronicon Spinozarum, 1 (1921), 81–90Google Scholar; Carp, , “Über das Emotionale und Rationale im Spinozismus”, Chronicon Spinozarum, 2 (1922), 131–7Google Scholar; Carp, , “Der Gemeinschaftsgedanke im Spinozismus”, Chronicon Spinozarum, 3 (1923), 196–203Google Scholar; Carp, , “Die metaphysische Grundlage der spinozanischen Politik”, Chronicon Spinozarum, 4 (1924–6), 68–78Google Scholar; Carp, “Belgium: Wezen en waarde van het Spinozisme”.

35 Carp, “Psychologische beschouwingen in verband met het wezen van het spinozisme”, 288; Carp, , “Christian Janentzky: Mystik und Rationalismus’ (book review), Chronicon Spinozanum, 2 (1922), 269–71Google Scholar.

36 Janentzky, Christian, Mystik und Rationalismus (Munich, 1922), 11–12Google Scholar.

37 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 83; Schmitt, , Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (Berlin, 1926; first published 1923), 68Google Scholar.

38 The influence of the torrent of mystical interpretations of Spinoza can also be inferred from the reactions it prompted. In 1926, for example, Heinz Pflaum lamented that in contemporary Spinoza literature too much has been made of his mysticism. “The strict rationalistic character of his philosophy”, Pflaum claimed, had to be restored. Next to Gebhardt's article, Pflaum cited three other interpretations of Spinoza that highlighted the mystical trait in his philosophy: Tumarkin, A., Spinoza: Acht Vorlesungen gehalten an der Universität (Leipzig, 1908)Google Scholar; Mauthner, F., Spinoza: Ein Umriß seines Lebens und Wirkens (Dresden, 1921)Google Scholar; and Mehlis, G., Spinozas Leben und Lehre (Freiburg, 1923)Google Scholar. Pflaum, Heinz, “Rationalismus und Mystik in der Philosophie Spinozas”, in Altwicker, N. (ed.), Texte zur Geschichte des Spinozismus (Darmstadt, 1971), 216–31Google Scholar, 217. This article originally appeared in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 4 (1926), 127–43.

39 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 23. Translation taken from Schmitt, Carl, Political Romanticism, trans. Oakes, G. (Cambridge, MA, 1986), 17Google Scholar.

40 Meier, Heinrich, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy (Chicago, 1998), 14Google Scholar.

41 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 170, 205.

42 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 83. Translation is taken from Schmitt, Political Romanticism, 56; Janentzky, Mystik und Rationalismus, 9.

43 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 81 n. 1.

44 Between 1918 and 1921 the Weimar Republic had to contend with several mutinies and rebellions, a coup d’état (the Kapp-Putsch, 1920) and direct threats of communist takeovers (such as happened in Munich, where in early 1919 the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed). On this period see Weitz, Eric D., Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, 2007), 7–40Google Scholar. See also McElligot, Anthony, ‘Political Culture’, in McElligot, Weimar Germany (Oxford, 2009), 26–49Google Scholar.

45 Schmitt, Die Diktatur, vii; Cf. John P. McCormick, “The Dilemmas of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and Constitutional Emergency Powers”, in Dyzenhaus, Law as Politics, 217–51, 220.

46 McCormick, “Dilemmas of Dictatorship”, 223.

47 Schmitt, Die Diktatur, 31.

48 Ibid., 127.

49 Ibid., 129.

50 Ibid., 129.

51 Ibid., 137 (italics are mine).

52 Ibid., 136–37.

53 Ibid., 137.

54 Ibid., 119.

55 Ibid., 142. The German reads, “Die Vorstellung des Verhältnisses von pouvoir constituant zu pouvoir constitué hat ihre vollkommene systematische und methodische Analogie in der Vorstellung des Verhältnisses der natura naturans zur natura naturata, und wenn diese Vorstellung auch in dem rationalistischen System Spinozas übernommen ist, so beweist sie doch gerade dort, daß dieses System nicht nur rationalistisch ist. Auch die Lehre vom pouvoir constituant ist als bloß mechanistischer Rationalismus unbegreiflich.”

56 Ibid., 142.

57 Ibid., 143–44.

58 Ibid., 147.

59 Cf. McCormick, “Dilemmas of Dictatorship”, 227; Schmitt, Die Diktatur, 146.

60 Ellen Kennedy, “Introduction” to Schmitt, C., The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, MA, 1985), xxiiGoogle Scholar.

61 Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 50–51.

62 Politische Theologie, 43 (italics are mine). Translation is taken from Schmitt, Political Theology, 36.

63 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 50–51, 55.

64 Cristi adds, “In a democratic setting ‘the theistic and the deistic idea of God is unintelligible’”. But what Schmitt meant is that in contrast to absolute monarchies which bring about unity by deciding on the battle of conflicting interests, the unity of a people lacks this decisionist capacity. From that perspective “the theistic and the deistic idea of God is unintelligible”. Renato Christi, “Carl Schmitt on Sovereignty and Constituent Power”, in Dyzenhaus, Law as Politics, 179–95, 182; Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 53.

65 Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtligen Lage, 41; cf. Breuer, Stefan, “Nationalstaat und pouvoir constituant bei Siéyès und Carl Schmitt”, Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, 70 (1984), 495–517Google Scholar, 511–12.

66 Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 51.

67 Ibid., 53–4.

68 Schmitt, The Leviathan, 32. For this distinction between potestas dei and potentia dei see Marin Terpstra, “Das theologisch-politische Problem und die Illegitimität der Neuzeit: Spinoza, Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss zum theologisch-politischen Komplex”, unpublished paper presentation Spinoza Tagung, September 2006, 1–15, 2, available online at http://marinterpstra.ruhosting.nl/publicaties.html, accessed 6 March 2011. See also his “De wending naar de politiek: Een studie over de begrippen ‘potentia’ en ‘potestas’ bij Spinoza”, unpublished PhD thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen, 1990.

69 Schmitt, Carl, “Der Gegensatz von Parlamentarismus und moderner Massendemokratie”, in Schmitt, Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar, Genf, Versailles 1923–1939 (Berlin, 1988Google Scholar; first published 1940), 52–66, 65. This essay was first published in Hochland, 23 (1926), 257–70. It served as a new introduction to the second 1926 edition of Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus. The first edition of Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage was published in 1923, but was for the most part written in the period directly after November 1918. Kennedy, “Introduction”, xviii.

70 Compare the view of the left-wing socialist jurist Otto Kirchheimer (1905–65): “The political myth has the capacity to bring about an extremely decisive grouping according to political values.” Kirchheimer, Otto, “Zur Staatslehre des Sozialismus und Bolschewismus”, in Kirchheimer, Von der Weimarer Republik zum Faschismus: Die Auflösung der demokratischen Rechtsordnung (Frankfurt am Main, 1976), 32–57Google Scholar. As cited in Kennedy, E., “Schmitt and the Frankfurt School”, Telos, 71 (1987), 37–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 49. On Schmitt and “irrational” politics see also McCormick, Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism, 189–203.

71 Carl Schmitt, “Die politische Theorie des Mythus”, in Schmitt, Positionen und Begriffe, 9–18. This essay originally appeared in a festschrift for P. Krüger, Ernst Zitelmann: (ed.), Bonner Festgabe für Ernst Zitelmann (Munich, 1923)Google Scholar. It is the same text as chapter 4 of Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage, but under a different title: “Irrationalistische Theorien unmittelbarer Gewaltanwendung” (Irrational Theories of Direct Use of Power). For the influence of Sorel in the Weimar Republic see Gangl, Manfred, “Mythos der Gewalt und Gewalt der Mythos: Georges Sorels Einfluß auf rechte und linke Intellektuelle der Weimarer Republik”, in Gangl, M. and Raulet, G. (eds.), Intellektuellendiskurse in der Weimarer Republik: Zur politischen Kultur einer Gemengelage (Frankfurt am Main, 2007), 243Google Scholar–66.

72 Kennedy, “Introduction”, xviii.

73 Schmitt, “Der Gegensatz”, 66.

74 Ibid., 59 (italics in original).

75 Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtligen Lage, 41

76 Schmitt, Politische Romantik, 17. Translation is taken from Political Romanticism, 13.

77 Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage, 10, 21.

78 Ibid., 13–4.

79 Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 53.

80 Schmitt, “Der Gegensatz”, 65 (italics are mine).

81 Schmitt, Carl, Verfassungslehre (Berlin, 1970Google Scholar; first published 1928), 80.

82 As cited in Müller, A Dangerous Mind, 192. The phrase “nonrational commitment” is John McCormick’s. McCormick, John, ‘Post-Enlightenment Sources of Political Authority: Biblical Atheism, Political Theology and the Schmitt–Strauss Exchange’, History of European Ideas, 37 (2011), 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar–80, 176.

83 Schmitt, Geistesgeschichtliche Lage, 76.

84 Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 79.

85 Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form (revised 1925 edn), trans. G. L. Ulmen (Westport, 1996; first published 1923), 21, 17. As cited in Kelly, D., “Carl Schmitt's Political Theory of Representation”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 65 (2004), 113–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 115.

86 Carl Schmitt, “Staatsethik und pluralistischer Staat” (Vortrag, 22 Mai 1929), Kant-Studien 35 (1930), 28–42. As cited in Walther, “Carl Schmitt contra Baruch Spinoza”, 422. “Magnum latrocinium” refers to the “Robber Council”, a church synod held at Ephesus in 449 CE that was later repudiated because of its controversial proceedings.

87 Schmitt, The Leviathan, 65.

88 Ibid., 33–5.

89 Ibid., 82.

90 Schmitt, , “Der Staat als Mechanismus bei Hobbes und Descartes”, Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, 30 (1936–7), 622–32Google Scholar.

91 Schmitt, The Leviathan, 55–7.

92 Ibid., 58.

93 For a modern expression of the intimate (or necessary?) connection in Spinoza's philosophy between one-substance metaphysics and democracy, while at the same time embracing him as the founder of “liberal democracy”, see Jonathan Israel's trilogy on the “Radical Enlightenment”: Israel, J. I., Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1650–1752 (Oxford, 2006); Israel, Democratic Enlightenment. Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750–1790 (Oxford, 2011).

94 Kennedy, Ellen, Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar (Durham, 2004), 178–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 182; Müller, A Dangerous Mind, 202–6, 205.

95 Gangl, “Mythos der Gewalt und Gewalt der Mythos”, 260–66.