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Schmitt and Tocqueville on the Future of the Political in Democratic Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2012

Anaïs Camus  and
Tristan Storme
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Abstract

Tocqueville can easily be seen as the symbol of the French liberal thought whereas Schmitt is considered as the brightest opponent of the liberal doctrine. Trying to reconcile their theories might thus seem counterintuitive. However, delving into Schmitt's work reveals that the German thinker admired his French counterpart. As the question of their potential intellectual proximity becomes relevant, this article offers a first glance into what appears as a somehow connected interpretation of the democratic phenomenon in relation to their fear of possible depoliticizations. While they elaborate on distinct and almost contradictory questions which develop along diverging architectonics, the historian and the jurist show a deep problématique convergence. Furthermore, their reservations concerning the enlargement of national borders, individualism, and popular sovereignty reinforce this intuition with one notable exception: Schmitt keeps on ousting the variable “liberty” from Tocqueville's democratic equation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 74 , Issue 4 , Fall 2012 , pp. 659 - 684
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2012

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References

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53 Schmitt, “Historiographia in Nuce: Alexis de Tocqueville,” 29.

54 Schmitt, Concept of the Political, 53.

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57 Ibid., part 1, chap. viii, 247.

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63 Ibid., conclusion, 598.

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67 Ibid.

68 Ibid., 107.

69 Ibid., 108.

70 See Schmitt, “Historiographia in Nuce: Alexis de Tocqueville,” 30–31. Apparently, Schmitt identified with Tocqueville on that point. He too was defeated: he was arrested and incarcerated in 1945. In his journals, written right after World War II, he never ceased to describe himself as a “defeated” and humiliated man.

71 Ibid.

72 Schmitt, Carl, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996), 31Google Scholar.

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74 Schmitt, “A Pan-European Interpretation of Donoso Cortés,” 104.

75 Tocqueville's original text speaks for itself : “After every successive mutation, it was said that the French Revolution, after achieving what was presumptuously called its goal, was over: it was said, it was believed in. Alas, I hoped it was true after the restoration, and even after the restoration government fell; and here is the French Revolution starting over again, and it is always the same” (Souvenirs, 89).

76 Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 1, introduction, 41.

77 Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 2, part 3, chap. xi, 361.

78 Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947–1952 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1991), 240 (7 June 1949; italics added)Google Scholar.

79 Schmitt, Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage, 33.

80 Schmitt, Concept of the Political, 69–70. A few lines later he writes: “The negation of the political … is inherent in every consistent individualism” (ibid., 70).

81 Tocqueville's interpretation of individualism is the subject of debate. We favor a nuanced reading of the concept, developed by Wolin, as both a potential source of diversity and a dangerous isolating element; see SWolin, heldon S., Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 350–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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83 Ibid.

84 Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 1, part 2, chap. vii, 385.

85 Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 2, part 2, chap. viii, 173.

86 Ibid., part 2, chap. viii, 174.

87 Ibid., part 2, chap. i, 137. See also Meuwly, Olivier, Liberté et société: Constant et Tocqueville face aux limites du libéralisme moderne (Genève: Droz, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which the author develops the concept of “symbiotic equilibrium” in his analysis of Tocqueville's need for a balance between liberty and equality.

88 Schmitt, “C.S.s Tocqueville Notizen,” 108 (italics added).

89 Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 1, part 2, chap. x, 543.

90 Ibid. See also part 1, chap. viii, 258: “A certain uniformity of civilization is not less necessary to the durability of a confederation than a uniformity of interests in the states that compose it.”

91 Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 2, part 4, chap. viii, 455.

92 See Schmitt, Constitutional Theory, 235–36.

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94 Ibid., 68.

95 Ibid. French in the original.

96 Schmitt, “Historiographia in Nuce: Alexis de Tocqueville,” 31.

97 Ibid.

98 Schmitt writes that “men of such eminence as Montalembert, Tocqueville, and Lacordaire represented liberal Catholicism at a time when many of their fellow Catholics still saw in liberalism the Antichrist or at least his forerunner” (Schmitt, Carl, Roman Catholicism and Political Form, trans. Ulmen, Gary L. [London: Greenwood, 1996], 4Google Scholar).

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