Nazi Criticism Against the Normativist Theory of Hans Kelsen: Its Intellectual Basis and Post-Modern Tendencies

Izhak Englard

doi:10.1017/S002122370001565X

1 Translation of the text after the biographical data: “Radical representative of the ‘Pure Theory of Law’, the typical expression of the corroding Jewish spirit during the after-war period in the field of Law and State theory. By a total depletion of his general formal concepts of all real content, Kelsen denies all substance from Law and State. His community-destroying conceptions contrast as political nihilism most acutely with the national-socialist view. Still influential in legal-philosophical logicism”. The encyclopedia uses the — in legal context — unusual term “Logistik”; the latter is defined in a special item as mathematical, symbolic logic. There the authors remark: “The most recent representatives [of modern ‘Logistik’], who philosophically are occasionally close to materialism, embrace often a most intolerant individualism, especially the ‘Vienna Circle’”. As a matter of fact, in Vienna the philosophers of mathematics were at the time split into three factions: the formalists, the “logicists”, and the intuitionists.

2 For a bibliography see Maus, I., Bürgerliche Rechtstheorie und Faschismus — Zur sozialen Funktion und aktuellen Wirkung der Theorie Carl Schmitts (1976) 38 Google Scholar, n. 74; see also Dubber, M.D., “Judicial Positivism and Hitler's Injustice”, (1993) 93 Colum. L.R. 1807 CrossRef Google Scholar. Among the legal philosophers maintaining this view, one finds also Gustav Radbruch who himself adhered to positivism during the Weimar Republic, see id., “Five Minutes of Legal Philosophy”, in J. Feinberg and H. Gross, eds., Philosophy of Law (3rd ed., 1991) 109; id., “Gesetzliches Unrecht und übergesetzliches Recht”, in Radbruch, Rechtsphilosophie (Wolf and Schneider, eds., 8th ed., 1973) 339, at 344. For a more differentiated assessment of Radbruch's successive positions see Ward, I., Law, Philosophy and National Socialism — Heidegger, Schmitt and Radbruch in Context (Bern, 1992) 175–199 Google Scholar (arguing that Radbruch's criticism of legal positivism after 1945 did not represent a “conversion”, but rather an “evolution”). See on the whole topic the detailed critical analysis of the various positions by Paulson, S.L., “Lon L. Fuller, Gustav Radbruch and the ‘Positivist’ Theses”, (1994) 13 Law and Philosophy 313 CrossRef Google Scholar; concerning Radbruch, the author states: “On balance, the elements of continuity in Radbruch's thought appear to be more pervasive than the elements suggesting a complete break, lending credence, then, to the view that the earlier and post-war writings reflect different aspects of a single position” (at 320); see also id., “Radbruch on Unjust Laws: Competing Earlier and Later Views”, (1995) 15 Oxford J. of Leg. Studies 498. See in addition the following note. Another author who blamed Kelsen's theory for failing in the Nazi period is Taubes, J., Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin, 1987) 56–58 Google Scholar: “Aber verstanden hat [Schmitt], was hier geschieht, dass, wer reine Rechtslehre vertritt, Opfer des absoluten Positivismus ist, d.h. jeder Staatsordnung gehorchen muss”. [“But Schmitt understood what happens here: he who adopts the pure theory of law becomes the victim of absolute positivism, i.e. he must obey every regime”]. (Incidentally, this Jewish author's personal attitude towards Schmitt is most ambiguous; it is a peculiar mixture of strong intellectual attraction and intuitive repulsion — the former clearly overcoming the latter — causing him to make rather strange apologetic statements about Schmitt's views and behavior; cf. Stemeseder, H., Der politische Mythus des Antichristen — Eine prinzipielle Untersuchung zum Widerstandsrecht und Carl Schmitt (Berlin, 1997) 60 Google Scholar, n. 76. The latter author notes that it seems strange that the Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes appears to feel actually honoured by the fact that Schmitt perceives him as an existential enemy). Finally, in a recent book on the legal and political culture in the Weimar Republic the same argument on the failure of Kelsen's theory is repeated: Dyzenhaus, D., Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen and Hermann Heller in Weimar (Oxford, 1997) 5 Google Scholar: “With Heller, I will argue that Kelsen's legal positivism, while not exactly paving the way for Nazism, offered no legal resource which could be used to resist fascist seizure of power in Germany”.

3 Hart, H.L.A., “Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals”, (1957–1958) 71 Harv. L.R. 593, at 615–621 Google Scholar; Fuller, L., “Positivism and Fidelity to Law — A Reply to Professor Hart”, (1957–1958) 71 Harv. L.R. 630, at 659–660 Google Scholar; cf. Dyzenhaus, D., “Hermann Heller and the Legitimacy of Legality”, (1996) 16 Oxford J. of Leg. Studies 641, at 648–649 CrossRef Google Scholar.

4 Wieacker, F., “Der Stand der Rechtserneuerung auf dem Gebiete des bürgerlichen Rechts”, (1937) 2 Deutsche Rechtswissenschaft 3 Google Scholar; id., Privatrechtsgeschichte der Neuzeit (1952) 272. Compare equally Carl Schmitt's post-war half-hearted apology in Tommisen, P., Over en in zake Carl Schmitt, (1975), reprinted in Noack, P., Carl Schmitt: Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1993) 169 Google Scholar: “Ich möchte gerne wissen, was Hans Kelsen in meiner Lage getan hätte, der ja überzeugter Positivist ist ….. Ich weiss es: Er hat immer betont, seit dem Augenblick, in dem dieser Würfel gefallen sei, gebe es für einen positivistischen wissenschaftlichen Juristen überhaupt keine Frage mehr. Natürlich hätte man gehen können.…Nun bin ich selber kein Positivist im Sinne dessen, was Kelsen unter Wissenschaftlichkeit versteht; aber anderseits gibt es auch kein anderes als positives Recht” [“I would like to know what Hans Kelsen would have done in my situation, he who is a convinced positivist.…I know, he has always emphazised that from the moment the die is cast, there is no more any question for the positivist scientific jurist. Of course, one could have left ….. Only, I am not a positivist in the sense of Kelsen's conception of science; but, on the other hand, there exists no other than positive law’].

5 Müller, I., Hitler's Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich (transl. Schneider, D.L., Cambridge, Mass., 1991) 219–223 Google Scholar; the author remarks at p. 222: “A conscious lie or unconscious repression of the truth? Since the fairy tale of positivism whitewashed the entire profession, it was seized upon most gladly by those who should have been held responsible for the crimes they had committed during the Nazi era, and the courts readily accepted their self-justification”. See also Franssen, E., “Positivismus als juristische Strategie”, (1969) JZ, 766, at 767 Google Scholar; for an additional representative of the apologetic trend see Weinkauff, H., “Die deutsche Justiz und der Nationalsozialismus: Ein Überblick”, Die deutsche Justiz und der Nationalsozialismus, vol. 1 (ed. Weinkauff, , Stuttgart, 1968) 17, at 27–36 Google Scholar, quoted in Paulson, S.L., “Lon L. Fuller, Gustav Radbruch and the ‘Positivist’ Theses”, (1994) 13 Law and Philosophy 313, at 358–359 CrossRef Google Scholar.

6 Maus, supra n. 2, at 39, n. 78; see also “Symposium: Nazis in the Court Room: Lessons from the Conduct of Lawyers and Judges under the Laws of the Third Reich and Vichy, France”, (1995) 61 Brooklyn L.R. 1121, at 1141–1142 Google Scholar; Grimm, D., “Die ‘Neue Rechtswissenschaft’: Über Funktion und Formation nationalsozialistischer Jurisprudenz”, in Lundgreen, P., ed., Wissenschaft im Dritten Reich (Frankfurt/M, 1985) 31, at 40–41 Google Scholar; Mantl, W., “Hans Kelsen und Carl Schmitt”, in Krawietz, W., Tropitsch, E. and Koller, P., eds., Ideologiekritik und Demokratietheorie bei Hans Kelsen (Berlin, 1982) 185, at 188–192 Google Scholar.

7 Kelsen, H., Allgemeine Staatslehre (Berlin, 1925) 44–46 Google Scholar; and see especially id., “Juristischer Formalismus und reine Rechtslehre”, (1929) II DR 1723; id., Der Staat als Integration — Eine prinzipielle Auseinandersetzung (Wien, 1930) 31-32: “[N]iemand hat so energisch wie ich die liberalen Werturteile aus der Staatslehre ausgemerzt”. [Nobody has as vigorously eliminated the liberal value judgments from state theory, as I have done”].

8 Cf. Kelsen, H., Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie (Tübingen, 2nd ed., 1929) 98–103 Google Scholar.

9 Kelsen, H., Hauptprobleme der Staatsrechtslehre entwickelt aus der Lehre vom Rechtssatz (Tübingen, 1911)Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., at XI: “Da sich dabei meine Resultate mit manchen der älteren liberalen Staatstheorie berühren, so möchte ich mich auch keineswegs dagegen verwahren, wenn man etwa in meiner Arbeit ein Symptom jenes Neoliberalismus erblicken sollte, der sich in jüngster Zeit allenthalben vorzubereiten scheint”. [“Since my conclusions come close to some of the older liberal state theory, I would not in the least object to one's viewing my work as a symptom of neo-liberalism that seems to be everywhere under way’].

11 H. Kelsen, “Juristischer Formalismus und reine Rechtslehre”, supra n. 7, at 1724-1725. He asked for indulgence for a beginner's work: “Man darf nicht nur die Vorrede einer Erstlingsschrift lesen, wenn man das Lebenswerk eines Autors beurteilen will” [One should not read only the Preface of a first work, when evaluating the life work of an author”].

12 See Dreier, H., Rechtslehre, Staatssoziologie und Demokratietheorie bie Hans Kelsen (Baden-Baden, 2nd ed., 1990) 249–294 Google Scholar. Compare Kelsen's own comments on the relationship between a specific epistemology and a specific ideology in id., Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts (Tübingen, 1920) 317.

13 See especially Dietze, H.H., Naturrecht der Gegenwart (1936)Google Scholar; for a critical analysis of this work, see Anderbrügge, K., Völkisches Rechtsdenken — Zur Rechtslehre in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (1978) 179–203 Google Scholar; some Nazi authors indeed affirmed straightforwardly: “A National-Socialist adheres to natural law”; see Anderbrügge, ibid., at 181, n. 11.

14 Lochak, D., “La doctrine sous Vichy ou les mésaventures du positivisme”, (1989) Les usages sociaux du droit 252 Google Scholar; id., “Ecrire, se taire… Réflexions sur l'attitude de la doctrine française”, (1996) Le droit antisémite de Vichy 433; Troper, M., “La doctrine et le positivisme”, (1989) Les usages sociaux du droit 286 Google Scholar; Weisberg, R.H., Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France (1996) 393–399 Google Scholar.

15 Camy, O., “La doctrine italienne”, (1996) Le droit antisémite de Vichy 497 Google Scholar.

16 See in this sense Hart, H.L.A., “Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals”, (1957–1958) 71 Harv. L.R. 593, at 617–618 Google Scholar: “[There] is an extraordinary naïveté in the view that insensitiveness to the demands of morality and subservience to state power in a people like the Germans should have arisen from the belief that law might be law though it failed to conform with minimum requirements of morality”.

17 Quoted in I. Müller, Hitler's Justice, supra n. 5, at 220 (Entscheidungen des Reichgerichts in Strafsachen, vol. 72, p. 9); see generally Rüthers, B., Die unbegrenzte Auslegung — Zum Wandel der Privatrechtsordnung im Nationalsozialismus (1968, 1973)Google Scholar.

18 See the thoughtful book review on Müller, I., Hitler's Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich (transl. Schneider, D.L., 1991)Google Scholar, by Dubber, M.D., “Judicial Positivism and Hitler's Injustice”, (1993) 93 Colum. L.R. 1807 CrossRef Google Scholar. The author concludes that positivism did not enter Nazi legal theory, but nevertheless played a limited role: “The significance of positivism lay not in theory but in practice. It did not shape Nazi legal theory; it helped effectively maintain the Nazi legal system. To borrow a phrase from Robert Cover, it was ‘judicial positivism’, not jurisprudential positivism, that mattered between 1933 and 1945”; ibid., at 1828. I doubt even this limited role of positivism, since it does not imply any moral obligation to apply the law or to abide by it. Thus, contrary to the reviewer's assumption (ibid., at 1829), positivism does not preclude judges from questioning the justice of positive law, nor does it force them to ignore their ethical judgments in applying the law. Cf. in this sense Hart, supra n. 16, at 616-618; Shklar, J.N., Legalism: Law, Morals, and Political Trials (2nd ed., 1986) 71–72 Google Scholar. Cf. equally H. Dreier, supra n. 12, at 174-183, at 228-247; see also the comments on Müller's book by Posner, R.A., Overcoming Law (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1995) 145–159, at 156–157 Google Scholar: “It is tempting to turn the conventional story on its head and attribute some of the misconduct of the judiciary during the Hitler period to legal realism and pragmatism.… Anyway it seems unlikely that ‘isms’ had much to do with the German judges' behavior. The judges were swept up in powerful emotional and political currents that probably owed little to legal theories”. See finally Richards, D.A.J., “Terror and the Law”, (1983) 5 Human Rights Q. 171–185 CrossRef Google Scholar. However, this author's defense of Kelsen is based, in my view, upon a misconceived notion of the latter's normative positivism. The suggestion that Kelsen's motivation included an “escapist impulse from the subjectivity of moral and political ideology to the objectivity of law” is unfounded. Contrary to the author's view, Kelsen did not assume that the “rule of law, untainted by the arbitrariness of political ideology, was morally preferable” (ibid., at 178).

19 Arendt, H., Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft (1958) 505–506 Google Scholar, and n. 53; the slightly different English version: id., The Origins of Totalitarianism (1958) 339, and n. 65. She affirms: “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty”. Arendt belittles the influence of the intellectual elite: “… what these desperate men of the twentieth century did or did not had no influence on totalitarianism whatsoever, although it did play some part in earlier, successful, attempts of the movements to force the outside world to take their doctrines seriously” (ibid.). Maybe that Arendt's motive for that — in my view unfounded — acquittal of the elite, was her striving to absolve her mentor and onetime lover Martin Heidegger. See generally on that relationship, Ettinger, E., Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger (1994)Google Scholar.

20 Krockow, Christian G. v., Die Entscheidung: Eine Untersuchung über Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger (1958, 1990), Vorwort zur Neuausgabe, p. VII–VIIIGoogle Scholar. For the same argument see Sternhell, Z., with Sznajder, M. and Asheri, M., The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution (Princeton, 1994) 250–258 Google Scholar. The authors, mentioning Heidegger, “one of the prophets of postmodernism”, claim that “theoretical discussions never take place in a vacuum and there can be no philosophical thought without political consequences” (p. 250); see also ibid., at 252, 255 (naming Carl Schmitt); Sternhell, Z., “Modernity and Its Enemies: From the Revolt against Enlightenment to the Undermining of Democracy”, The Intellectual Revolt against Liberal Democracy 1870-1945, Sternhell, Z., ed., (Jerusalem, 1996) 11, at 28 Google Scholar: “No writer can be held responsible for consequences he did not intend. But on the other hand, an intellectual operates in a specific historical context, and his work does have consequences”.

21 Schmitt's powerful and suggestive language constitutes a special problem for translations. In my feeling, much of the reader's fascination with the original is lost in the English translation. For that reason, I have decided to add to some of the more important quotations in the text of my paper the German original for the sake of the reader who understands German.

22 See in this sense J.Z. Muller, “The Radical Conservative Critique of Liberal Democracy in Weimar Germany: Hans Freyer and Carl Schmitt”, The Intellectual Revolt against Liberal Democracy 1870-1945, supra n. 20, at 190, 194: “Moreover, Carl Schmitt was a powerful rhetorician. His works abound in strikingly suggestive key terms and definitions that turn out, upon closer inspection, to be ambiguous, such as his representation of democracy as the identification of ruler and ruled, or of politics as characterized by the distinction between friend and enemy”. I would add a number of additional central notions in Schmitt's thought that lack clarity, such as “political theology” (infra n. 58), the idea of “representation” (cf. Böckenförde, E.-W., “The Concept of the Political: A Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory”, (1997) 10 The Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 5, at 17)CrossRef Google Scholar, “konkretes Ordnungsdenken” (infra nn. 105, 108). Cf. also the evaluation of Mayer, Hans, Ein Deutscher auf Widerruf: Erinnerungen (Frankfurt a/M, 1982), vol. 1, p. 148 Google Scholar: “Schmitt brillierte als Formulierer, Kelsen war ein Denker” (Schmitt excelled in formulations, Kelsen was a thinker); D. Dyzenhaus, supra n. 2, at 41: “… Schmitt usually drew back from a decisive clarification of his conclusions, I think both out of a genuine obsession with the arcane and the aphoristic and because he did not want to reveal his hand too clearly”.

23 Muller, ibid., at 193-194. On Schmitt's ambiguous style see especially the introduction in Meuter, G., Der Katechon: Zu Carl Schmitts fundamentalistischer Kritik der Zeit (Berlin, 1994)Google Scholar, entitled “On the Unintelligibility of Carl Schmitt: Some Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Schmitt”. In the author's view, Schmitt's “double-talk” is intentional, but behind the apparent contradictions lies an “esoteric dialectics of deep structure”. Schmitt's penchant to use an enigmatic style is revealed in his early literary work Schattenrisse (1913) published under the pseudonym Johannes Negelinus; see generally Villinger, I., Carl Schmitts Kulturkritik der Moderne: Text, Kommentar und Analyse der “Schattenrisse” des Johannes Negelinus (Berlin, 1995)CrossRef Google Scholar.

24 Kervégan, Jean-François, “La critique schmittienne du normativism kelsénien”, in Le droit, le politique autour de Max Weber, Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt (1995) 229 Google Scholar: “In one sense, it is undoubtedly anti-normativism that characterizes in the most precise and permanent way Schmitt's theory”; id., Hegel, Carl Schmitt: Le politique entre spéculation et positivité” (Paris, 1992) 29-46; cf. Taubes, J., Ad Carl Schmitt: Gegenstrebige Fügung (Berlin, 1987) 56–57 Google Scholar: “‘Rein’ heisst frei von Erfahrung, frei von Sprache, von Geschichte. Das war schon ein Kampf zwischen Kant und Hamann ……Schmitt hat eines bekämpft: die reine Rechtslehre. Die reine Rechtslehre war nämlich die Lehre ohne Rücksicht auf die Realgeschichte” [“‘Pure’ means free of experience, free of language and of history. This was already the battle between Kant and Hamann.…Schmitt combatted one thing: the pure theory of law. The pure theory of law was the theory without regard to concrete history”].

25 Schmitt, C., Gesetz und Urteil (1912) 56 Google Scholar et seq.

26 See Hofmann, H., Legitimität gegen Legalität — Der Weg der politischen Philosophie Carl Schmitts (1964) 33 Google Scholar. For an excellent analysis of Schmitt's theory of adjudication, see Hofmann, op. cit., 32-39. See also Jean-François Kervégan, supra n. 24, at 233-235; Wolin, R., “Carl Schmitt: The Conservative Revolutionary Habitus and the Aesthetics of Horror”, (1992) 20 Political Theory 424, at 430–431 CrossRef Google Scholar (the latter author sees a vitalist dimension in Schmitt's approach under the influence of the cultural criticism of the so-called “philosophy of life”).

27 Schmitt, C., Gesetz und Urteil (1912) 97 Google Scholar et seq. In my view, there seem to be in Schmitt's approach to the judicial task certain affinities to Ronald Dworkin's concerns. For a short description of Schmitt's view see Caldwell, P.C., Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law: The Theory & Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism (Durham and London, 1997) 52–53 CrossRef Google Scholar; see especially Scheuerman, W.E., “Legal Indeterminacy and the Origins of Nazi Legal Thought: The Case of Carl Schmitt”, (1996) 17 History of Political Thought 571, at 576–581 Google Scholar. See equally Schmitt's elaborations on the function of the judge in his subsequent book Der Wert des Staates und die Bedeutung des Einzelnen (1914, 1917) 72–74 Google Scholar; see especially H. Stemeseder, supra n. 2. Indeed, a comparison between Schmitt and Dworkin on this topic could be of considerable interest. For a comparison between the two on the problem of liberalism, see Dyzenhaus, D., “‘Now the Machine Runs Itself’: Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and Kelsen”, (1994) 16 Cardozo L.R. 1, 16–19 Google Scholar.

28 For an outstanding analysis of the affinities and differences between the two scholars in relation to Schmitt's early works see H. Hofmann, supra n. 26, at 41-56. Compare Schmitt's post-second-world-war reflections Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951 (Berlin, 1991) 209 Google Scholar (12.12.48): “Meine Ablehnung des Positivismus kam mit dem Alter. Wäre es in der Jugend sinnvoller gewesen? Vergleiche damit die Ablehnung der ‘Positivität’ durch den jungen Hegel. Positivität = Gesetzlichkeit = Judentum = Despotie = Kampf des Sollens und der Norm” [“My rejection of positivism came with age. Would it have been more meaningful in the youth? Compare with it the rejection of ‘positivity’ by the young Hegel. Positivity = legality = Judaism = despotism = fight of the ought and the norm”].

29 Schmitt, C., Der Wert des Staates und die Bedeutung des Einzelnen (1914, 1917)Google Scholar. Kelsen is positively mentioned in connection to his theory of interpretation (at 77). Schmitt describes Kelsen's analysis on the place of the notion of purpose in legal interpretation as “meritorious and significant”.

30 See Weyr, F. in ÖZöR, 1. Jg. 1914, S. 578, 579 Google Scholar; the intention is to Kelsen's important work Hauptprobleme der Staatslehre entwickelt aus der Lehre vom Rechtsatze (1911). On the other hand, the reviewer welcomes the fact that Kelsen's approach gains ground among the scholars. See also Löwith, K., “Der okkasionelle Dezisionismus von C. Schmitt”, in Gesammelte Abhandlungen: Zur Kritik der geschichtlichen Existenz (Stuttgart, 1960) 93, at 117 Google Scholar. The latter author claims — in an article originally published in 1935 — that Schmitt's book expresses “an extreme normativism”. For a short discussion in English of Schmitt's book and its relationship to Kelsen see Scheuerman, W.E., “Legal Indeterminacy and the Origins of Nazi Legal Thought: The Case of Carl Schmitt”, (1996) 17 History of Political Thought 571, at 581–584 Google Scholar.

31 Schmitt-Dorotic, C., Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (1921) XI–XIIGoogle Scholar: “… entsprechend [Kelsens] relativistischen Formalismus, der verkennt, dass es sich hier um etwas ganz anderes handelt, nämlich darum, dass die Autorität des Staates von seinem Wert nichtgetrennt werden kann” [… according to Kelsen's relativistic formalism which fails to see that we are dealing here with a completely different issue, namely, that the authority of a state cannot be separated from its value]. On Schmitt's (unsuccessful) endeavor to base the legitimacy of state authority on value as distinguished from purpose see H. Hofmann, supra n. 28, at 72-79. Hofmann uses the Weberian notion of Wertrationalität as distinguished from Zweckrationalität. He claims that Schmitt was forced — in his later writings — to shift from the first concept to the second. It should be noted that at this period of time, Schmitt, notwithstanding his critique of Kelsen, still expressed his high esteem of the latter's scholarship, see Die Diktatur, op. cit., at 148. In his book on dictatorship, Schmitt develops the thesis that there are two forms of dictatorship: a “comissarial dictatorship” and a “sovereign dictatorship”. The former acts in the framework of an existing constitution, the latter goes beyond it by assuming the very power to establish the constitution. In Kelsenian terms, the second type would be described as being of the nature of a (revolutionary) change of the basic norm.

32 Politische Theologie — Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität (1922, 2nd ed., 1934)Google Scholar; Political Theology — Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (transl. Schwab, G., 1985)Google Scholar.

33 Political Theology, supra n. 32, at 29. In the German original: Politische Theologie, supra n. 32, at 39-40: “Kelsen widerspricht sich selbst, wenn er einmal einen solchen kritisch gewonnenen subjektivistischen Formbegriff zum Ausgangspunkt nimmt und die Einheit der Rechtsordnung als eine freie Tat juristischen Erkennens auffasst, dann aber, wo er sich zu einer Weltanschauung bekennt, Objektivität verlangt und selbst dem Hegelschen Kollektwismus den Vorwurf des Staatsubjektivismus macht. Die Objektivität, die er für sich beansprucht, erschöpft sich darin, dass er alles Personalistische vermeidet und die Rechtsordnung auf das unpersönliche Gelten einer unpersönlichen Norm zurückführt”.

34 Political Theology, supra n. 32, at 34-35.

35 Ibid., at 35.

36 Ibid., at 21.

37 McCormick, J.P, Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge, 1997) 218–219 CrossRef Google Scholar: “Schmitt's ‘decision’ is similarly unconstrained and is therefore potentially as ‘substanceless’ as Kelsen's positivist formalism”.

38 Political Theology, supra n. 32, at 31-32; Politische Theologie, supra n. 32, at 42-43: “Von dem Inhalt der zugrundeliegenden Norm aus betrachtet ist jenes konstitutive, spezifische Entscheidungsmoment etwas Neues und Fremdes. Die Entscheidung ist, normativ betrachtet, aus einem Nichts geboren. Die rechtliche Kraft der Dezision ist etwas anderes als das Resultat seiner Begründung. Es wird nicht mit Hilfe einer Norm zugerechnet, sondem umgekehrt; erst von einem Zurechnungspunkt aus bestimnit sich, was eine Norm und was normative Richtigkeit ist. Von der Norm aus ergibt sich kein Zurechnungspunkt, sondern nur eine Qualität eines Inhaltes. Das Formale im spezifisch-rechtlichen Sinne liegt in einem Gegensatz zu dieser inhaltlichen Qualität, nicht zu der quantitativen Inhaltlichkeit eines Kausalzusammenhanges”. See Jean-François Kervégan, “La critique schmittienne du normativisme kelsénien”, supra n. 24, at 235: “Cela conduit à soupçonner que la décision joue chez Schmitt un rôle comparable à celui de la Grundnorm dans la théorie pure du droit: l'une et l'autre vise à garantir la consistence et la complétude de l'ordre juridique en évitant à la fois le risque d'une regressio ad infinitum et le recours à une axiomatique jusnaturaliste de type classique”.

39 Political Theology, supra n. 32, at 36-37; compare also ibid. at 59. Schmitt sees in the liberal constitutional monarchy the same inconsistency that besets Deism: the former attempts to paralyze the Monarch through Parliament; the latter excludes God from the world but holds onto His existence, (ibid., at 40-41).

40 Political Theology, supra n. 32, at 41; Politische Theologie, supra n. 32, at 54: “Denn seiner [Kelsens] rechtstaatlichen Identifikation von Staat und Rechtsordnung liegt eine Metaphysik zugrunde, die Naturgesetzlichkeit und normative Gesetzlichkeit identifiziert. Sie ist aus einem ausschliesslich naturwissenschaftlichem Denken entstanden, beruht auf der Verwerfung aller “Willkür” und sucht jede Ausnahme aus dem Bereich des menschlichen Geistes zu verweisen”.

41 Ibid., at 42.

42 Ibid., at 49-50. Kelsen himself assimilated the identity of state and law under the pure theory of law to the pantheistic conception of God's identity with nature: Kelsen, H., Der soziologische und der juristische Staatsbegriff (Tübingen, 1922) 247–253 Google Scholar. For additional aspects of political theology see Schmitt, C., “Das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen”, Der Begriff des Politischen (2nd ed., 1932) 75–76 Google Scholar (God became in the metaphysics of Deism a neutral instance in relation to worldly conflicts; correspondingly, in the 19th century first the Monarch then the state became neutral forces); Schmitt-Dorotic, C., Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedanken bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (1921) 102 Google Scholar (The enlightenment viewed the state like the deistic metaphysics viewed the cosmos: the transcendent God established the world in a way that it run like a perfect machine according to the once enacted laws; in the same way the legislator sets up the state-machine).

43 Ibid. at 40-41. The intention is with all probability to Kelsen, H., Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts (Tübingen, 1920) 21 Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., at 37. But see Gross, R., “Jesus oder Christus?: Überlegungen zur ‘Judenfrage’ in der politischen Theologie Carl Schmitts”, (1995) in Göbel, A., van Laak, D., Villinger, I., eds., Metamorphosen des Politischen: Grundfragen politischer Einheitsbildung seit den 20er Jahren 75, at 82 Google Scholar. The author is of the opinion that Schmitt's mentioning of Kelsen's merits has an ironical overtone. Schmitt assumedly plays with the double meaning of the word “accent”: “Kelsen hat das Verdienst, seit 1920 mit dem ihm eigenen Akzent auf die methodische Verwandschaft von Theologie und Jurisprudenz hingewiesen zu haben”. (In the English translation the argument is completely lost). However, in my reading of the text, I do not get the impression of any irony. In the text (appearing already in the first edition of 1922, at 39), Schmitt, , critically referring to Kelsen's recent book on Der soziologische und juristische Staatsbegriff: Kritische Untersuchung des Verhältnisses zwisechen Staat und Recht (Tübingen, 1922)Google Scholar, speaks of “diffuse analogies” (at 41). It is noteworthy that Schmitt did not alter his references to Kelsen in preparing the second edition, contrary to his treatment of Erich Kaufmann. All the references to the latter were omitted in the second edition because of the letter's Jewish origin; see Gross, ibid., at 83, n. 42.

45 H. Kelsen, supra n. 44, at 219-253.

46 Kelsen, ibid., at 220-221. Kelsen refers to his “Über Staatsunrecht: Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Deliktsfähigkeit juristischer Personen und zur Lehre vom fehlerhaften Staatsakt”, (1913) 40 Zeitschrift für das Privat- und öffentliche Recht der Gegenwart 1–114 Google Scholar. For additional references of Kelsen to affinities between theology and political systems see infra nn. 56, 59.

47 Kelsen refers to Schmitt in his Allgemeine Staatslehre, supra n. 7, at 359, 415-417 (relatively extensive quotations from Schmitt, C., Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (1923))Google Scholar. Kelsen rejects Schmitt's criticism of parliamentarianism, but qualifies the latter's argumentation as “geistreich”. See equally for a similar reference Kelsen, H., Das Problem des Parlamentarismus (Wien, 1925) 39 Google Scholar n. 17. An additional work where Schmitt is briefly referred to is Kelsen, H., Der Staat als Integration — Eine prinzipielle Auseinandersetzung (Wien, 1930) 32 CrossRef Google Scholar n. 76. It is possible that Kelsen also indirectly refers to Schmitt in his caustic critical comments on the behaviour of “younger, career-devoted authors”; ibid., at 3. But cf. Schmitt's complaint infra at n. 126.

48 Sander, F., “Die transzendentale Methode der Rechtsphilosophie und der Begriff der Rechtserfahrung”, (1920) 1 Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht 468–507 Google Scholar.

49 Kelsen, H., Rechtswissenschaft und Recht: Erledigung eines Versuches zur Überwindung der “Rechtsdogmatik” (Wien & Leipzig, 1922) 129 Google Scholar, n. 1.

50 Sander, F., Kelsens Rechtslehre: Kampfschrift wider die normative Jurisprudent (Tübingen, 1923) 58–67 Google Scholar. Sander does not mention Carl Schmitt among the predecessors dealing with jurisprudence and theology, but he names Stahl, , Philosophie des Rechts (1854)Google Scholar.

51 See Kelsen's, immediate reaction “In eigener Sache”, (1922/1923) 3 Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht 33 Google Scholar. On the painful affair between teacher and pupil see generally Métall, R.A., Hans Kelsen: Leben und Werk (Wien, 1969) 39–41, 68–69, 72–73 Google Scholar. It seems that Kelsen discussed with Sigmund Freud the difficult relationship with his brilliant disciple. Kelsen and Sander met again in 1936 at the University of Prague. Sander died suddenly in 1939 after the occupation of Prague by the Germans.

52 Cf. R. Gross, “Jesus oder Christus?: Überlegungen zur ‘Judenfrage’ in der politischen Theologie Carl Schmitts”, in A. Göbel, D. van Laak, I. Villinger, eds., supra n. 44, at 82.

53 Kelsen, Der soziologische und juristische Staatsbegriff, supra n. 44, at 222: “Die vollkommene Parallelität in der logischen Struktur des Staats- und des Gottesbegriffes manifestiert sich in einer verblüffenden Gleichartigkeit der Probleme und Problemlösungen in Staatslehre und — Theologie, wobei deren Hauptproblem: das Verhältnis von Gott und Welt (oder Gott und Natur) in vollkommenster Weise der Kernfrage der Staatslehre nach dem Verhältnis von Staat und Recht entspricht”. [The perfect parallelism between the logical structure of the concepts of state and God manifests itself in an amazing similarity of the problems and the solutions in state theory and theology. The main problem in theology of the relationship between God and the world (or God and nature) corresponds in a perfect way to that in state theory of the relationship between state and law”]. Kelsen's objective is to overcome the “theological” method in state theory, namely the idea of duality between state and law. He adds: “Soferne die Theologie als blosse Theorie eines Systems religiöser Normen auftritt (in welchem Falle sie freilich nichts als Ethik ist), soll und kann ihre methodische Verwandtschaft mit der Rechtsnormenlehre nicht geleugnet werden” [Insofar theology presents itself as a mere system of religious norms (in case of which it is, indeed, no more than ethics), its methodical affinity to the theory of legal norms should not and cannot be denied’], (ibid., at 253). See also id., Allgemeine Staatslehre, supra n. 7, at 76-80; see especially id., “Gott und Staat”, (1923) 11 Logos 261, English translation in H. Kelsen, Essays in Legal and Moral Philosophy (transl., P. Heath, Dordrecht, 1973) 61-82. Compare also H. Dreier, supra n. 12, at 214-218.

54 On the various meanings of political theology see Böckenförde, E.-W., “Politische Theorie und politische Theologie — Bemerkungen zu ihrem gegenseitigen Verhältnis”, Taubes, , ed., Religionstheorie und Politische Theologie, I, Der Fürst dieser Welt. Carl Schmitt und die Folgen (1983) 16, at 19–21 Google Scholar.

55 Political Theology, supra n. 32, at 36. In his Vefassungslehre (1928) 285–286 Google Scholar, Schmitt — if I understand him correctly — denies the political significance of the religious justification of monarchy: “Where the monarchy is religiously justified and the monarch becomes a divine being or one with a special relationship to Divinity, the idea does not move in the political, but in the theological or ideological sphere. Where the world is ruled as a unity by a unique God, and the unity of the state under a monarch is conceived as something similar or analogous, the primary notion is evidently God and the world and not the monarch and the state”. One would have expected in this context the concept of political theology (apparently not mentioned in the book), and not mere theology.

56 Political Theology, ibid., at 45: “There is no question here whether the idealities produced by radical conceptualization are a reflex of sociological reality, or whether social reality is conceived of as a result of a particular kind of thinking and therefore also of acting”. The possibility that the political system influences theology is mentioned also in H. Kelsen, supra n. 44, at 228, n. 2. The fact that metaphysical systems influence political ones is referred to by H. Kelsen, Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie, supra n. 8, at 118, n. 45: “Das gewaltige metaphysische Lehrgebäude der mittelalterlichen Scholastik lässt sich von deren autokratischen Politik systematisch nicht trennen. Denn wenn die Organisation der menschlichen Gesellschaft als Universalsmonarchie — mit dem Kaiser oder dem Papst an der Spitze — gedacht wird, geschieht dies durchaus, weil man diese Organisation nach Analogie der göttlichen Weltherrschaft dachte. Vgl. dazu meine Schrift: Die Staatslehre des Dante Alighieri, 1905.” [“The enormous metaphysical system of medieval scholasticism cannot be methodically separated from its autocratic policy. If the organization of human society was conceived as a universal monarchy — at its head the emperor or the pope — then the reason for that was that one conceived this organization in analogy to the Divine rule over the world. Compare my work: Die Staatslehre des Dante Alighieri, 1905”]. Kelsen's doctoral dissertation on Dante Alighieri's political theory contained indeed many references to the theological foundations of the political system. Incidentally, one can discern already in this early work a striving for systematic unity, so typical of Kelsen's later pure theory of law (principium individuationis).

57 Ibid., at 45-46. Schmitt himself returned to the issue of political theology after the war defending its actuality against Erik Peterson's theological (trinitarian) objections: Schmitt, C., Politische Theologie II: Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder Politischen Theologie (Berlin, 1970)Google Scholar. Of special interest is Schmitt's discussion of Hans Blumenberg's denial of political theology; ibid., at 109-126. See the latter's qualified response in Blumenberg, H., The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (transl. Wallace, R.W., 1983) 89–102 Google Scholar.

58 Many attempts have been made to explain Schmitt's notion of political theology and the connected method of “radical conceptualization”. See H. Ball, “Carl Schmitts politische Theologie” (1924) reprinted in Religionstheorie und Politische Theologie, I, Der Fürst dieser Welt. Carl Schmitt und die Folgen, supra n. 54, at 100, esp. 113-115; E.-W. Böckenförde, “Politische Theorie und politische Theologie — Bemerkungen zu ihrem gegenseitigen Verhältnis”, ibid., at 16; Nicoletti, M., “Die Ursprünge von Carl Schmitts ‘Politischer Theologie’”, Complexio Oppositorum: Über Carl Schmitt, Quaritsch, H., ed., (Berlin, 1988) 109 Google Scholar; see also the other contributions, ibid., by K. Kroger, E. Kennedy, G.L. Ulmen, C. Meier. See equally Jean-François Kervégan, Hegel, Carl Schmitt: Le politique entre speculation et positivité, supra n. 24, at 100-105. An important attempt to analyze the notion of political theology has been made by Tal, Uriel, Political Theology and the Third Reich (Tel Aviv, 1991)Google Scholar (collection of papers in Hebrew, partly translated from English). Tal convincingly demonstrates the internal contradictions of certain modern conceptions of political theology that by secularizing religious concepts sacralize secularity (ibid., at 70-71). However, in relation to Carl Schmitt's specific notion of political theology, Tal's description does not contribute to its clarification (ibid., at 62-63). Thus, in my eyes the mentioned issue still remains obscure.

59 Meier, H., Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss und “Der Begriff des Politischen”: Zu einem Dialog unter Abwesenden (Stuttgart, 1988) 85 CrossRef Google Scholar; see also id., Die Lehre Carl Schmitts — Vier Kapitel zur Unterscheidung Politischer Theologie und Politischer Philosophie (Stuttgart, Weimar, 1994) 258-259.

60 An especially intriguing question relates, in my view, to Kelsen: Why was he so preoccupied by theology? Why did he chose to use the conceptual-logical weaknesses of theological arguments in order to refute state theories? My intuition is that Kelsen — as an Agnostic of Freudian stance — intended to combat simultaneously the conception of a personal transcendent God. Some support to this idea may be found in the fact that Kelsen wrote much later in his life (in the 1950s) a manuscript on “Religion without God” that was planned to be published by the University of California Press. Eventually, Kelsen, upon the advice of colleagues, withdrew the manuscript. I owe the information on Kelsen's manuscript to Professor Stanley Paulson.

61 Political Theology, supra n. 32, at 3; in the German original: “Der sogenannte Positivismus und Normativismus der deutschen Staatsrechtslehre der Wilhelminischen und Weimarer Zeit ist nur ein degenerierter — weil statt auf Naturrecht oder Vernunftrecht begründeter, an bloss faktisch “geltende” Nornen angehängter — daher in sich widerspruchsvoller Normativismus, vermischt mit einem Positivismus, der nur ein rechtsblinder, an die “normative Kraft des Faktischen” statt an eine echte Entscheidung sich haltender, degenerierter Dezisionismus war”.

62 Schmitt, C., Verfassungslehre (München & Leipzig, 1928) 8–11 Google Scholar.

63 Ibid., at 9: “Hier hört plötzlich das Sollen auf und bricht die Normativität ab; statt ihrer erscheint die Tautologie einer rohen Tatsächlichkeit: etwas gilt, wenn es gilt und well es gilt”.

64 Ibid., at 9-10. See also Schmitt's critique of the normative conception of the principle of pacta sunt servanda in international law. He denies its normative significance: “Solche fiktiven Addierungen und Hypostasierungen sind in unbegrenzter Zahl möglich; jede Norm gilt, weil die allgemeine Norm gilt, dass es Normen gibt, die gelten sollen usw. Für die Begründung einer konkret existierenden politischen Einheit sind sie ganz bedeutungslos” (ibid., at 69-70) [“Such ficticious additions and hypostatizations are possible in a unlimited number; each norm is valid because a general norm is valid that states that there are norms that should be valid etc. They are completely meaningless for the foundation of a concretely existing political entity”].

65 Schmitt, C., Der Hüter der Verfassung (1931, 1969)Google Scholar. Cf. the comments of Mehring, R., Carl Schmitt zue Einführung (Hamburg, 1992) 63 Google Scholar: “Dieser Prozess der Personalisierung und polemischer Verschärfung seines Denkens lässt sich bei allen Streitfragen verfolgen” [This process of personalization and polemic intensification of his thought can be traced in all controversies].

66 Kelsen, H., Wer soil der Hüter der Verfassung sein? (1931)Google Scholar. For a short analysis in English of the controversy see P.C. Caldwell, supra n. 27, at 107-116; for a more detailed critical analysis, especially of Kelsen's approach, see D. Dyzenhaus, supra n. 2, at 108-123. The author who makes no secret of his dislike for the Pure Theory of Law, basically sides with Schmitt in the latter's critique of Kelsen. Thus the author affirms (at 122): “Kelsen held that constitutional adjudication is as highly a political and legislative an act as an original act of legislation, but he also insisted that it is determined by norms in a way that such original legislation is not. And that for Schmitt simply illustrated liberalism's peculiar pathology: Kelsen's strategy was an instance of liberal recognition of the reality of politics and the way that decision breaks through the normative, at the same time as it is a futile and purely formal attempt to contain that breakthrough. Kelsen thus illustrated perfectly liberalism's desire always to subsume politics under a norm and its substantive inability to do so”. This is a clear misinterpretation of Kelsen's approach. The difference between a legislative body and a constitutional court is a descriptive-factual statement, not a prescriptive one; political decision does not “break through” the normative against a formal attempt to contain it. Moreover, contrary to the author's claim, Kelsen's conclusion that Schmitt should have presented his argument as a political one and not one of legal science — does not “let Schmitt off the hook” (ibid., at 120). The author further elaborates his critical comments on Kelsen's theory in the concluding comments of this chapter (at 157-160) describing what he considers to be the “inner heterogeneity of Kelsen's thought”. Futile to say that I disagree, but a discussion of the author's general objections to Kelsen's theory would exceed the limits of this paper.

67 Schmitt's attitude towards judicial constitutional review seems to have undergone some changes. In his Verfassungslehre, supra n. 62, he is critical of entrusting such a political task to the judiciary, preferring, in principle, a political organ like the Sénat conservateur under the Napoleonic constitutions (at 118-119). On the other hand, later in his book (at 196), he pronounces himself in spite of all in favor of judicial constitutional review.

68 C. Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung, supra n. 65, at 38 (Gänsebeinlogik). The reference is to an article written by Hofacker, , Gerichtssaal, (1927) vol. 94, at 213 Google Scholar where the latter mentions the following syllogism: “Human beings have two legs, hence whoever has two legs is a human being, hence a goose is a human being”.

69 Ibid., n. 2.

70 Ibid., n. 2, in fine.

71 Ibid., at 39.

72 Schmitt argues that Kelsen commits the “typical liberal confusion between liberalism and democracy”; ibid., at 63, n. 1.

73 Ibid.

74 Schmitt strongly resented Kelsen's critique as revealed in the former's Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951, supra n. 28, at 39 (9.11.47): “Erschrak vor der beziehungslosen Anmassung, mit der Kelsen meine Lehre vom neutralen Hüter der Verfassung kritisiert und als unwissenschaftlich zu diffamieren versucht hat” [“Got frightened at the relationless pretentiousness with which Kelsen criticized my theory of the neutral guardian of the constitution and tried to defame it as unscientific”).

75 Kelsen, H., Wer soll der Hüter der Verfassung sein? (1931) 15 Google Scholar.

76 Ibid., at 21; compare Maus, supra n. 2, at 106, n. 113. For a critical analysis of the controversy between Schmitt and Kelsen with special emphasis on the problem of adjudication and judicial review see Paulson, S.L., “The Schmitt-Kelsen Dispute on the ‘Guardian of the Constitution’: The Issue of Subsumption”, (1995) 5 Diritto e Cultura: archivio di filosofia e sociologia 169–188 Google Scholar; see also id., “On the First and Second Exchanges between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt”, (forthcoming).

77 H. Kelsen, ibid., at 21-22. For an analysis of Schmitt's “conceptual” argumentation and Kelsen's “political” response see Paulson, S.L., “Arguments ‘conceptuels’ de Schmitt à l'encontre du côntrole de constitutionalité et réponses de Kelsen”, Le droit, le politique autour de Max Weber, Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt (1995) 243 Google Scholar.

78 Ibidem, at 24-25. He recommends the use of more precise constitutional notions and guidelines.

79 Ibid., at 54.

80 Ibid., at 56. Kelsen was evidently fully aware of law's political dimension. It is, therefore, odd that scholars continue to misconceive Kelsen's theory. Thus, Kennedy, Ellen in a recent paper “ Hostis not Inimicus: Toward a Theory of the Public in the Work of Carl Schmitt”, (1997) 10 The Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 35, at 41 CrossRef Google Scholar, counts Kelsen among those positivista whose “work largely ignored the insights of sociology and political science into modern government and society, focusing instead on the formal study of laws, the state and constitution. Kelsen's ‘pure theory of law’ went further, making the expurgation of all historical and political aspects from the constitution into a first principle of jurisprudence. His idea of a ‘Justizstaat’ [a phrase coined by Schmitt] was normative positivism. Essentially liberal in political intent, Kelsen's positivism developed the concept of the rule of law to a near-caricature”. The authoress adds that liberal circles asserted, in relation to the constitutional court, the need for an unpolitical decision-maker. This is all a gross misunderstanding of Kelsen's approach whose work is replete with sociological, political and psychological insights and who never omitted to emphasize the political dimension of court decisions. Hence, most to the point is the comment of Seitzer, J., “Carl Schmitf's Internal Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism: Verfassungslehre as a Response to the Weimar State Crisis”, (1997) 10 The Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 203, at 216 CrossRef Google Scholar, n. 47: “Kelsen is arguably the most misunderstood legal theorist of the 20th century. Kelsen's relativism was far from naive about the nature of power. The pure theory of law seeks the depolitization of legal scholarship, but not of law, which Kelsen considers inseparable from politics. And his emphasis on formalism seeks to derail the tendency to use legal scholarship for ideologist purposes”. See in addition H. Dreier, supra n. 12, at 92-104.

81 Schmitt, C., Staat, Bewegung und Volk (Hamburg, 1933)Google Scholar.

82 Ibid., at 39-41.

83 Sterling, E., “Studie über Hans Kelsen und Carl Schmitt”, (1961) 47 ARSP 569, at 571 Google Scholar.

84 Schmitt published in 1919 the autobiographical thoughts of a rather unknown German scholar turned into an adherer of Pietism: Kanne, J.A., Aus meinem Leben 1773-1824, Schmitt-Dorotic, C., ed., (Berlin 1919)Google Scholar. In his introductory remarks to the book Schmitt observes (at 4): “Die geistige Aktualität dieses Mannes liegt darin, dass er aus den ewigen Kreisen naturphilosophischer Gesetzmässigkeit und aus den unendlichen Wiederkünften und Entwicklungen der Geschichte entschlossen den Sprung in die Paradoxie des Christentums tat und dadurch auch den Weg aus dem Gefängnis seines rücksichtslosen Egoismus fand: die Anklagen, die er bisher gegen andere gerichtet hat, kehrte er nunmehr gegen sich selbst” [“The intellectual actuality of this man lies in the fact that he resolutely took a jump into the paradoxicality of Christianity out of the eternal circles of natural-philosophical regularity and the endless recurrences and developments of history. He found through it the way out of the prison of his ruthless egoism: the accusations he had hitherto levelled against others, he turned henceforth against himself”]. The affinity of this remark to Kirkegaard is substantiated by Schmitt's reference to the latter at the end of his introduction. See Mehring, R., Pathetisches Denken: Carl Schmitts Denkweg am Leitfaden Hegels: Katholische Grundstellung und antimarxistische Hegelstrategie (Berlin, 1989) 40 CrossRef Google Scholar. [On the relationship between Schmitt and Kirkegaard see generally Kramme, R., Helmut Plessner und Carl Schmitt: Eine historische Fallstudie zum Verhältnis von Anthropologie und Politik in der deutschen Philosophie der zwanziger Jahre (Berlin, 1989) 160–178 Google Scholar]. Kanne himself described his painful life experience as the outcome of the contradiction between his desire to be a follower of Christ and his actual living for science (ibid., at 25, 33, 63). See also Schmitt's references to Kanne in Schmitt, C., Politische Romantik (2nd ed., 1925) 76, at 81 Google Scholar; Political Romanticism (transl. Oakes, G., 1986) 49 Google Scholar (the translation has omitted a number of footnotes). Kanne's autobiographical notes are rather primitive and shallow from a literary point of view. The fact that Schmitt found it worthwhile to publish the booklet, the content of which he himself described as one of “primitiver Schlichtheit” (“primitive simplicity), is most telling. Schmitt must have identified himself with the author's predicament of living between faith and scientific rationality. In his Politische Romantik, op. cit., Schmitt repeatedly distinguishes mysticism from his severely criticized notion of romanticism (ibid., at 83); Political Romanticism, at 152.

85 Schmitt, C., Theodor Däublers “Nordlicht” — Drei Studien über die Elemente, den Geist und die Aktualität des Werkes (München, 1916, Berlin, 1991)Google Scholar.

86 Ibid., at 70: “[T]he last negation results in the overcoming of all relativity, in transcendence”.

87 See notions such as: Verklärung (transfiguration) (p. 54), mystische Befreiung (mystical deliverance) (p. 56); Überschwang der Seele (rapture of the soul) and Anti-Christ (pp. 61-63).

88 See the analysis of Schmitt's essay on Däubler: R. Mehring, supra n. 84, at 41-50. The author describes Schmitt's conception as an eschatological notion of the political (at 44): “Eine uralte religiöse Kategorie hat sich in eine politische verwandelt” (“An antique religious category has been transformed into a political one”, quoting Sternberger, D., Drei Wurzeln der Politik (Frankfurt, 1978) 282)Google Scholar. Later (at 52) the author states that “one may understand Schmitt as a secularized cleric who finds in National-socialism a substitute church. This interpretation is plausible and perhaps true”.

89 H. Ball, “Carl Schmitts politische Theologie” (1924) reprinted in Religionstheorie und Politische Theologie, I, Der Fürst dieser Welt. Carl Schmitt und die Folgen, supra n. 54, at 100.

90 Ibid., at 101: “Die Juristik, wie Schmitt sie interpretiert, ist die rationale Präsenzform der Ideen”. On the relationship between Ball and Schmitt see Kennedy, E., “Carl Schmitt und Hugo Ball: Ein Beitrag zum Thema ‘Politischer Expressionismus’”, (1988) 2 Zeitschrift für Politik 143 Google Scholar.

91 Schmitt, C., Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus (1923, 2nd ed., 1926)Google Scholar; The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (trans. Kennedy, E., 1985, 1988)Google Scholar. References are to the second edition.

92 Ibid., at 76: “Der neue Rationalismus hebt auch sich selber dialektisch auf, und vor ihm steht eine furchtbare Negation. Die Gewaltanwendung, zu der es dabei kommen wird, kann nicht mehr die naive Schulmeisterei Fichtescher Erziehungsdiktatur sein. Der Bourgeois soll nicht erzogen, sondern vernichtet werden”. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, supra n. 91, at 64: “The new rationalism destroys itself dialectically, and before it stands a terrible negation. The kind of force to which it must resort cannot any longer be Fichte's naive schoolmasterly ‘educational dictatorship’. The bourgeois is not to be educated, but eliminated”.

93 Ibid., at 76, 78; The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, supra n. 91, at 64, 66.

94 Ibid., at 79-80; The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, supra n. 91, at 67 (translation with slight alteration by the present author).

95 Ibid., at 88-89; The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, supra n. 91, at 76.

96 Ibid., at 89; The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, supra n. 91, at 76.

97 See in this sense the review on Schmitt's book by Thoma, R., “Zur Ideologie des Parlamentarismus und der Diktatur”, (1925) 53 Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 212–217 Google Scholar; translated in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, supra n. 91, at 77-83, at 82: “The sympathy of the author is with the ‘irrationalism of the mythical’, which in spite of its origins in anarchism has worked to reconstruct the foundation for ‘a new feeling for order, hierarchy and discipline’”. Thoma suggested that Schmitt was in favor of an alliance between a nationalistic dictator and the Catholic Church. To that latter suggestion Schmitt replied briefly in his preface to the second edition: “The utterly fantastic political aims that Thoma imputes to me at the end of his review I may surely be allowed to pass over in silence” (The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, supra n. 91, at 1). Schmitt does not reply to the argument of his sympathy with the “irrationalism of the mythical”. Moreover, passing over in silence is too easy an answer on the background of Schmitt's various writings. Ellen Kennedy's introduction to the translation is in my eyes too apologetic of Schmitt's pronounced anti-liberal views. Equally apologetic is Bendersky, J.W., Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich (Princeton, 1983) 92 CrossRef Google Scholar: “Schmitt was not advocating any irrational political philosophy, but presenting a stark, realistic, and rational analysis of political behavior”. See the pertinent critique of this argument in Jay, M., “Book Review”, (1984) 56 Journal of Modern History 558, at 561 Google Scholar. For a rather onesided Marxist critique of Schmitt's irrationalism see Lukács, G., The Destruction of Reason (transl. Palmer, P., 1981) 652–661 Google Scholar; and on Schmitt's post second-world-war attitude and intellectual role, ibid., at 838-843. It has to be noted, however, that the author agreed with Schmitt's criticism of neo-Kantian normativism; ibid., at 653-654. On the affinities between Schmitt and Lukács on the background of Max Weber's theory see J.P. McCormick, supra n. 37, at 32-42, 54-82. For additional significant evidence of Schmitt's inclination to the mythical and irrational see Sombarts reminiscences about his talks with the former on the conception of truth; Sombart, N., Jugend in Berlin (München & Wien, 1984) 257–258 Google Scholar, quoted in Rüthers, B., Entartetes Recht: Rechtslehren und Kronjuristen im Dritten Reich (München, 2nd ed., 1989) 169–170 Google Scholar. Schmitt declares that truth is something that is in its essence secret. It can not be elicited through logical-discursive thought, but by beholding it (man “erschaut” sie). The medium of communicating truth is the mythical image. The irrational dimension of Schmitt's approach has been equally alluded to by Kaufmann, Erich, ”Carl Schmitt und seine Schule”, (1958) 84 Deutsche Rundschau 1013-1-15, at 1014 Google Scholar, repr. in Kaufmann, O. Schwartz, ed., Gesammelte Schriften, (vol. 3, 1960) 375–377, at 377 Google Scholar (“take the leap into irrationality”). (However, Kaufmann himself tended towards irrationality in his political theory; see Zelger, R., “Der Staatsrechtler Erich Kaufmann — Von der konstitutionellen Monarchie bis zur parlamentarischen Demokratie”, Nehlsen, H. and Brun, G., eds., Münchener rechtshistorische Studien zum Nazionalsozialismus (1996) 313, esp. at 318–319, 325–327 Google Scholar). On the broader cultural background in art and literature of Schmitt's view on the place of myth see I. Villinger, supra n. 23, at 324-325.

98 II Thessalonians 2, 7. On the controversial interpretation of the notion see G. Meuter, supra n. 23, at 255 n. 220.

99 Cf. Schmitt, C., Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (Köln, 1950) 28–32 Google Scholar; id., “Drei Stufen historischer Sinngebung”, (1950) 5 Universitas 927, at 929-930. On the ideological background of the theory of Katechon in the intellectual circles who adhered to the so-called Reichstheologie see Koenen, A., Der Fall Carl Schmitt: Sein Aufstieg zum “Kronjuristen des Dritten Reiches” (Darmstadt, 1995) 584–598 Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that the medieval idea of the Empire's role to delay the accession of the Antichrist is equally mentioned in Kelsen's, doctoral dissertation Die Staatslehre des Dante Alighieri (Wien & Leipzig, 1905) 364 Google Scholar: “Im Antichrist sah man allgemein den Nachfolger der römischen Herrschaft. Und Jordanus von Osnabrück z.B. steht durchaus nicht vereinzelt da, wenn er in seinem Traktate die Feinde des Imperiums warnt, see mögen in ihrem Bestreben, das Kaisertum zu vernichten, die Ankunft des Antichrist nicht herbeiführen” [“One generally viewed the Antichrist as the successor of the Roman rule. And Jordanus of Osnabrück was by no means standing alone when he warned in his tractate the enemies of the Empire not to bring about the coming of the Antichrist in their endeavor to destroy the Empire”].

100 Schmitt's basic approach to Judaism has, indeed, deeper roots than mere opportunism. See in this sense the important work of Gross, R., Carl Schmitt und die Juden: Strukturen einer deutschen Rechtslehre (Doctoral Dissertation submitted 1997 to the University of Essen, Department of History) 10–13 Google Scholar, et passim; see also id., “‘Jüdisches Gesetz und christliche Gnade’: Carl Schmitts Kritik an Hans Kelsen”, (1997) 6 Mittelweg 36, 79, 85; see equally Meier, H., Die Lehre Carl Schmitts — Vier Kapitel zur Umterscheidung Politischer Theologie und Politischer Philosophie (Stuttgart, Weimar, 1994) 231–241 Google Scholar; Paulson, S.L., “Lon L. Fuller, Gustav Radbruch and the ‘Positivist’ Theses”, (1994) 13 Law and Philosophy 313, at 348 CrossRef Google Scholar, n. 85: “The Glossarium … Schmitt's diary from the years 1947 to 1951, makes it abundantly clear that his anti-Semitism persisted into the post-war years. This gives the lie to those apologists who would have us believe that Schmitt's expressions of anti-Semitism in the early years of the Nazi regime were nothing more than a reflection of his wish to curry favor with the Nazi party”. See also D. Dyzenhaus, supra n. 2, at 98-101; J.P. McCormick, supra n. 37, at 270: “Nevertheless, the fact that he left behind as his final thoughts on the Jewish question the despicable sentiments expressed in his postwar diary and not instead some attempt at an apology for, or at least a retraction of, his National Socialist words and deeds ultimately necessitates classifying him as an anti-Semite and a figure who must be held to some degree culpable in the Third Reich's destruction of European Jewry”; H. Stemeseder, supra n. 2, at 161-166. Schmitt himself claimed after the war that his book on the Leviathan was a retreat into inner opposition to the regime; id., Ex Captivitate Salus: Erfahrungen der Zeit 1945/47 (Köln, 1950) 21; see the critical analysis of Schmitt's manipulation of his own text G. Meuter, supra n. 23, at 191-192. Similar to his anti-Semitism, Schmitt's support of the Nazi regime has equally deeper ideological reasons. I, therefore, disagree with S.L. Paulson, supra n. 76, at 176, who, referring to Kaufmann's view, claims that “Schmitt's carefully calculated moves to ally himself with the new regime are better understood in terms of sheer opportunism”.

101 For a profound analysis of Schmitt's conception of the Katechon see R. Gross, supra n. 100, at 228-285. The author correctly points out that the notion of the Reich as an existing political entity was not central in Schmitt's conception. Significant was the historical, “delaying” function of the state of his particular understanding, the bulwark against liberalism and technical modernity; ibid., at 252, 257.

102 Schmitt, C., Über die drei Arten des rechtwissenschaftlichen Denkens (1934, 1993)Google Scholar.

103 The term is difficult to translate into English; literally: “concrete order thinking”.

104 C. Schmitt, ibid., at 55. Translation: “All the modifications of a type of legal thinking … stand in the great historical and systematic context that integrates them into the actual situation of the political life of the community”.

105 “Konkretes Ordnungs-und Gestaltungsdenken”, ibid., at 48. The compound actually implies two different outlooks: the concrete ordering, i.e. the institutional approach is to derive conclusions from pre-existing notions; the “forming” has an innovative dimension that is closer to “decisionism”. See on Schmitt's intention in relation to this combination K. Anderbrügge, supra n. 13, at 118. On the significance of Schmitt's shift from decisionism to “concrete ordering” see the controversy between H. Hofmann, supra n. 28, at 177-187, and Christian G. v. Krockow, supra n. 20, at 94-106.

106 Ibid., at 9.

107 So explicitly in Schmitt, C., “Nazionalsozialistisches Rechtsdenken”, (1934) 4 Deutsches Recht 225, at 226 Google Scholar; the Jewish people is “existentially normative”.

108 Ibid., at 48. For an analysis of Schmitt's concept of “konkretes Ordnungsdenken” and its actual impact on the judicial process of Nazi courts, see the seminal work of B. Ruthers, supra n. 17, at 293-302. The author comes to the conclusion that the practical effect of the rather vague theory was limited, but the suggestive force of its political-ideological assumptions was considerable. Some Nazi scholars reacted sceptically to the theory; ibid. at 299-300.

109 Ibid., at 11.

110 Ibid., at 12.

111 Ibid., at 13. It is probable that Schmitt's use of lex and rex alludes to a quotation of Brutus, Junius, Vindiciae contra tyrannos (Edinburgh, 1579) 113 Google Scholar, mentioned in Schmitt-Dorotic, , Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (1921) 20 Google Scholar: “Rex a lege an lex a rege pendebit?” (Should the King depend on the Law, or the Law on the King?).

112 Ibid., at 16.

113 Ibid., at 18.

114 Ibid., at 19, 42-43.

115 Ibid., at 20.

116 Ibid., at 33.

117 The suggestive power of Schmitt's thinking, combined probably with a charismatic personality, are witnessed by the elaborations of one of his disciples, Günther Krauss, who in his post-war memories describes Schmitt's work on the Three Modes with continuing enthusiasm, claiming that the final disposal (Erledigung) of normativism is as clear as noonday (mit den Händen zu greifen); Krauss, G., “Erinnerungen an Carl Schmitt”, Schmittiana — II (ed., Tommissen, P., 1990) 82–85 Google Scholar.

118 It has been suggested that Schmitt was striving for a different kind of rationality, that of theology: Colliot-Thélène, C., “Carl Schmitt contre Max Weber: rationalité juridique et rationalité économique”, in Le droit, le politique autour de Max Weber, Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt (1995) 205 Google Scholar; cf. also J.P. McCormick, supra n. 37, at 224-225.

119 For a different interpretation of Schmitt's endeavors see Scheuerman, W.E., “After Legal Indeterminacy: Carl Schmitt and the National Socialist Legal Order, 1933-1936”, (1998) Cardozo L.R. 1743 Google Scholar. In that author's view Schmitt's striving was to overcome legal indeterminacy inherent to the liberal conception of law. In my view, Schmitt's concerns went much deeper than the suggested, merely instrumental, objective of legal interpretation.

120 C. Schmitt, “Nazionalsozialistisches Rechtsdenken”, supra n. 107, at 225.

121 Schmitt referred critically to the “belief” in “idées générales” already in his work Legalität und Legitimität (1932) 15 Google Scholar, where he called it “typically Cartesian”. In his view, the belief in the rationality of normativism permits it to rely on the ethos of age-old distinctions, like: nomos against mere thesmos, ratio against mere voluntas, intelligence against blind, normless will, rationalism against pragmatism and emotionalism, idealism against utilitarianism. In the same spirit see id., “Unsere geistige Gesamtlage und unsere juristische Aufgabe”, (1934) 1 Zeitschrift der Akademie für deutsches Recht 11 Google Scholar.

122 For a similar idea, see Nicolai, H., Die rassengesetzliche Rechtslehre (München, 3rd ed., 1934)Google Scholar. According to this author, who had published his racist ideology before Hitler's accession to power, the positivist theory of law was a result of the racial decadence of the Roman Empire. Positivism, characterized by the assumption that the state is the origin of all law, was typical of Judaism. Positivism constituted the complete renunciation of any review of the correctness of a legal rule, turning the judge into a slave of statutes; ibid., at 29.

123 “Nazionalsozialistisches Rechtsdenken”, supra n. 107, at 228.

124 “Wir denken die Rechtsbegriffe um”. This phrase served as title to a book: Rüthers, B., Wir denken Rechtsbegriffe um.… - Weltanschaung als Auslegungsprinzip (1987)Google Scholar. It is a critical analysis of theories of judicial interpretation on the background of Germany's historical experience.

125 Ibid., at 229.

126 Schmitt, C., “Die deutsche Rechtswissenschaft im Kampf gegen den jüdischen Geist”, (1936) 41 DJZ 1193, at 1195 Google Scholar.

127 Schmitt revealed his hostility against Kelsen also in his post-war Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951, supra n. 28, at 59 (11.12.47): “Der Gegensatz von Sein und Sollen ist doch schon Diktatur; intellektuelle Instinktlosigkeit Kelsens. Du kannst nicht, aber du sollst. Deshalb ist seine demokratische Weltanschauung einfach postiche” [“The contrast between is and ought is already dictatorship; the intellectual instinctlessness of Kelsen. You cannot, but you should. Hence, his democratic ideology is simple postiche”]; see especially at 162 (11.6.48), where Kelsen's view of the existence of a new Germany is vilified: “Kelsen's Raisonnement, um zu beweisen, dass Deutschland ein völkerrechtliches Nichts, aber wirklich nichts als Nichts ist und dass nur durch die Alliierten ex nihilo ein völlig anderes Deutschland geschaffen werden könnte, das nichts, aber auch nichts mit dem früheren zu tun hat — der Anblick dieses eifrigen Veranstalters von juristischen Vernichtungsmitteln erinnert mich an die kleinen Gehilfen in den Höllen des Hieronymus Bosch. Da wir aber noch ganz andere Vernichter, Ausrotter, Ausradierer und Zertreter erlebt und überlebt haben, wollen wir ihn sich selbst überlassen” [Kelsen's reasoning aimed at establishing that Germany is under international law a non-entity. Nothing, but really nothing else than nothing, and that only a completely different Germany could ex nihilo be created by the Allies, a Germany that had nothing, but nothing whatsoever to do with the earlier one. The sight of this eager producer of legal means of destruction reminds me of the little assistants in the hells of Hieronymus Bosch. Since we have survived even quite different destroyers, exterminators, erasers and crushers, we shall leave him on his own”].

128 For a more recent work see Carty, A., “Interwar German Theories of International Law: The Psychoanalytical and Phenomenological Perspectives of Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt”, (1995) 16 Cardozo L.R. 1235 Google Scholar. The author states (at 1237): “It is my intention, perhaps tentatively, to use psychoanalytical concepts to critique Kelsen's and Schmitt's anthropologies. In their works, the concepts of purity and paranoia run into one another. Kelsen's purity is an escape from the mass hysteria of the German people, while for Schmitt paranoia is all that stands between that people and the specter of extinction”; Schmitt's vision is one of “paranoid opaqueness” (at 1284). See especially Sombart, N., Die deutschen Männer und ihre Feinde: Carl Schmitt — ein deutsches Schicksal zwischen Männerbund und Matriarchatsmythos (1991)Google Scholar. Schmitt's controversial personality and intellectual biography have been the object of an already rather extensive literature. For a critical analysis of the various, partly contrasting, interpretations of his conduct during the Nazi regime as well as of his scholarly works see B. Rüthers, supra n. 97, at 150-180; for a more recent biography see Noack, P., Carl Schmitt: Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1993)Google Scholar; A. Koenen, supra n. 99; see especially Gross, R., “Politische Polykratie 1936: Die legendenumwobene SD-Akte Carl Schmitt”, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte XXIII/1994, 115 Google Scholar, and the bibliography at 117, n. 11. See in addition the recent introduction by G. Schwab to the translation of Schmitt's book on the Leviathan: The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (Transl. Schwab, G. and Hilfstein, E., 1996)Google Scholar. In my opinion, Schwab's description of Schmitt's conduct and views is much too apologetic, to say the least. This is true also in relation to the question of Schmitt's antisemitism. The author somehow implies that theological antisemitism is preferable to racial antisemitism. Without entering into the known controversy about the historical, causal connection between traditional Christian anti-judaism and modern, racial antisemitism (in view of the letter's antichristian tendencies), I object to the author's assumption that adherents to the former should be judged more leniently. See generally R. Gross, supra n. 100, at 37-40; see also id., “‘Jüdisches Gesetz und christliche Gnade’: Carl Schmitts Kritik an Hans Kelsen”, supra n. 100, at 79. For a critique of Schwab's apology see also D. Dyzenhaus, supra n. 2, at 98-101; cf. J.P. McCormick, supra n. 37, at 268-270; Scheuerman, W.E., “After Legal Indeterminacy: Carl Schmitt and the National Socialist Legal Order, 1933-1936”, (1998) Cardozo L.R. 1743–1744 Google Scholar.

129 Nevertheless, I permit myself to comment on one aspect of Schmitt's intellectual personality. I was struck by the fact that Schmitt insisted numerous times on his being a jurist and (sometimes) only a jurist. Reading his works, the impression I got was that his inclination was to use his enormous capacities in fields other than law in the traditional sense. His very first book, the doctoral dissertation on the notion of criminal culpability ( Über Schuld und Schuldarten — Eine terminologische Untersuchung (Breslau, 1910)Google Scholar) reveals a basically formal-conceptual approach, explicitly discarding broader philosophical issues (cf. e.g., at 51). The book impresses by the author's vast erudition and analytical power. The same is true for a topically related paper on the physician's criminal liability for non-negligent treatment: Schmitt, C., “Über Tatbestandsmässigkeit und Rechtswidrigkeit des kunstgerechten operativen Eingriffs”, (1911) 31 Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft 467–478 CrossRef Google Scholar (Schmitt, adopting a rather positivistic approach, is in favor of a legislative solution). But, in his later works, Schmitt shifts emphasis: He uses his outstanding multiple gifts as a literary man, well versed in the arts, as a philosopher, a historian, a political scientist, but scarcely as a lawyer. He made no secret of his disdain for positive law (Gesetz) (see e.g. C. Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951, supra n. 28, at 162: “Entsetzen vor den Gesetzen”: “Horror of laws”), for the rule of law, and for the (normal) application of statutes. His arguments about law were basically political ones. True, he defined himself as a jurist of public and international law, but he consistently abstained from applying the lawyer's specific craft, that of conceptual reasoning. Moreover, he openly expressed his aversion towards lawyers (Justiz-Juristen); see A. Koenen, supra n. 99, at 315-316, n. 240 (in fine). Maybe that his persisting claim of being a jurist (and, more specifically, not a theologian) has a deeper psychological significance. See in this context the peculiar comment of Schmitt in a letter written in 1965 to the French philosopher Julien Freund: “Vous voyez le problème comme philosophe, moi, je le vois comme juriste. Cette ancienne revalité entre philosophe et juriste m'a toujours préoccupé. Pour moi philosophie de droit, c'est une philosopie émanant d'une connaissance parfaite théorique et pratique du droit. Conséquence: seul un très vieux, très expérimenté “all round”-juriste (par exemple: moi) saurait écrire la philosophie du droit qui me suffit. KELSEN est plutôt philosophe (méthodologie) que juriste. Max WEBER était (sauf ses erreurs et égarements méthodologiques primairement juriste et non philosophe. CICERON n'était pas juriste mais avocat etc. etc.” ( Schmittiana - II (Tommissen, P., ed., 1990) 62–63 Google Scholar).

130 For an indication of that attitude see Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, supra n. 62, at 158: “Der antike Staat kannte keine Freiheitsrechte, weil eine private Sphäre mit einem selbständigen Recht gegenüber der politischen Gemeinschaft undenkbar schien und der Gedanke einer Freiheit des Einzelnen, die von der politischen Freiheit seines Volkes und Staates unabhängig wäre, als absurd, unmoralisch und eines freien Mannes unwürdig betrachtet wurde”. [“The antique state did not know any rights of freedom, because the existence of a private sphere with independent rights towards the political community seemed unthinkable, and the idea of a freedom of the individual that would be independent of the freedom of his people and state, would have been considered absurd, immoral and unworthy of a free man”]. From the sequel it is clear that Schmitt identifies himself with that view. Speaking of the phenomenon of privatization of religion as the origin of fundamental rights, he affirms: “Das bedeutete aber nicht, dass die Religion ihren Wert verlor, sondern umgekehrt, eine Relativierung und sogar Entwertung des Staates und des öffentlichen Lebens überhaupt. Die Religion als das Höchste und Absolute wird Sache des Einzelnen, alles andere, jede Art sozialen Gebildes, Kirche wie Staat, wird etwas Relatives, das seinen Wert nur als Hilfsmittel jenes allein massgebenden absoluten Wertes ableiten kann”. [This does not mean that religion has lost its value, but to the contrary, it means a relativization and even devaluation of the state and of public life in general. Religion as the supreme and the absolute thing becomes the affair of the individual, everything else, every kind of social structure, Church as well as State, becomes something relative that can derive its value only from being the instrument of that exclusively relevant absolute value”]. The idea of the instrumental nature of the state and its limited powers in face of fundamental rights runs against Schmitt's general political convictions. See in this sense G. Meuter, supra n. 23, at 197; H. Stemeseder, supra n. 2, at 86-87; on the relationship between Schmitt and Hobbes see equally M. Schmoeckel, “Staatslehre und Mythos bei Carl Schmitt und Thomas Hobbes”, in H. Nehlsen and G. Brun, eds., supra n. 97, at 133 (in Schmitt's view, the pursuit of ethical objectives could only be achieved through the state which bundled the faith of its citizens, transcended it, and through its opposition to other states elevated it unto the sphere of the political; ibid., at 178).

131 Schmitt, C., Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes — Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols (1938) 20–23 Google Scholar; English translation: id., The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol (transl. G. Schwab and E. Hilfstein, 1996) 10-11. The author refers to Leo Strauss and Helmut Schelsky.

132 Ibid., at 22-23 [11] (the number in brackets refers to the English translation).

133 Ibid., at 62-63 [42]. The author affirms that though the positivist conception of statehood evolved only in the 19th century, the idea of a technically perfect state, a humanly created magnum artificium, a machine exclusively legimitated by its function and performance — this idea was first conceived and systematically developed by Hobbes; ibid. at 70 [45].

134 Ibid., at 70 [46]. See generally D. Dyzenhaus, “‘Now the Machine Runs Itself’: Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and Kelsen”, supra n. 27, at 5-10.

135 Schmitt, C., Leviathan, at 86–87 Google Scholar [57], For a succinct critical analysis of Schmitt's view on Hobbes and the origins of Jewish liberalism see Holmes, S., The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (1993) 50–53 Google Scholar. However, I am not convinced that Schmitt implied even remotely that by the very description of the state as a biblical monster — i.e., by his borrowing of a Jewish myth — Hobbes paved the way for Modern Jewish liberalism in the person of Spinoza (cf. Holmes, at 52).

136 Leviathan, ibid., at 88-89 [58] [translation with slight alterations by this author]. For an original and fascinating psycho-political comparison between the treatment of the Leviathan in Heinrich Heine's poem: Disputation and in Schmitt's mentioned work see Sombart, N., Die deutschen Männer und ihre Feinde: Carl Schmitt — ein deutsches Schicksal zwischen Männerbund und Matriarchatsmythos (1991) 233–237 Google Scholar. Schmitt himself added a short reference to the Leviathan in Heine's poem in the 1981 edition of Schmitt, C., Land und Meer — Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung (1942, 3rd ed., Maschke, 1981) 17 Google Scholar.

137 Leviathan, ibid., at 92-93. [60]. Schmitt describes in the first chapter of his Leviathan the “Jewish-cabbalistic interpretations” of the sea monster: it represents, together with the land monster Behemoth, the Pagan nations fighting among themselves and serving, after mutual killing, as kosher food for the Jews (ibid., at 17-18); in his Land und Meer (1942) 9–10 Google Scholar, Schmitt repeats the mentioned myth of the “Cabbalists” defining it as the Jewish interpretation of world history. Schmitt remarks that the “Cabbalist” mostly quoted for this interpretation of the feast of Leviathan is Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508), ibid., at 10. To the best of my knowledge Avrabanel, though describing the battle among nations in messianic times, never mentions the meal of the Leviathan in this connection. See generally Shirman, J., “The Battle Between Behemoth and Leviathan According to an Ancient Hebrew Piyyut”, Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, (vol. 4, 1971) 327 Google Scholar. On Schmitt's antisemitic use of the Jewish mythology, see R. Gross, supra n. 100; see also Rother, R., Wie die Entscheidung lesen? Zu Platon, Heidegger und Carl Schmitt (Wien, 1993) 94–96 Google Scholar.

138 Ibid., at 106-110 [69-70]. Schmitt had already previously denounced Stahl for the creation of the formal notion of Rechtsstaat: Schmitt, C., “Über die neuen Aufgaben der Verfassungsgeschichte (1936), in Positionen und Begriffe: im Kampfmit Weimar — Genf — Versailles 1923-1939 (1940) 229, at 232–234 Google Scholar. Schmitt's major thrust there was to denounce the “Jew” Laband for having developed Stahl's notion into the formal notion of law (Gesetzesbegriff); see also C. Schmitt, “Die deutsche Rechtswissenschaft im Kampf gegen den jüdischen Geist”, supra n. 126, at 1195-1198 (Schmitt speaks of Stahl-Jolson's dreadful, sinister and demonic change of mask grounded in the tatter's total existence. Schmitt claims that Germans have no access to the innermost essence of Jews; they can only conceive the consequences of the mimic virtuosity of the Jews). It is noteworthy that in his earlier works Schmitt repeatedly referred to Stahl's scholarly works, even if critically, with due respect and without any resentment; cf. Schmit, C., Der Wert des Staates und die Bedeutung des Einzelnen (1914, 1917) 66–67, 100–101 Google Scholar; see especially C. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, supra n. 62; id., Hugo Preuss (Tübingen, 1930) n. 5, at 27-28: “So erscheint in dem nach allen Seiten hin klugen Plädoyer dieses gewandten Apologeten [J.F. Stahl] folgende Wesensbestimmung des Staates…”. [“The following characterisics of the state appear from this in all directions clever pleading of a resourceful apologist”]. The antisemitic change in Schmitt's approach towards Stahl seems to coincide with the accession of Hitler to power in 1933; see the probably first negative reference to Stahl (as Jew) in C. Schmitt, Staat, Bewegung und Volk, supra n. 81, at 30: “Weder die Mischung von Rhetorik und Sophistik, die Friedrich Julius Stahl — sein wahrer Name ist Joll Jolson — den preussischen Konservativen lieferte, noch der zynische Positivismus eines Laband war deutsche Stoats- und Rechtstheorie; trotz aller scheinbaren Gegensätzlichkeiten waren sie schliesslich alle nur die Wegbereiter der im Namen des ‘Rechtsstaates’ vordringenden politischen Kräfte und Mächte der Liberaldemokratie und des unmittelbar nachrückenden Marasmus”. [“Neither the mixture of rhetorics and sophistry which Friedrich Julius Stahl — his real name is Joll Jolson-delivered to the Prussian conservatives, nor the cynical positivism of a Laband, constituted a German theory of State and Law; in spite of all apparent contrasts, they all ultimately paved the way for the — in the name of the ‘Rechtsstaat’ — advancing political forces and powers of the liberal democracy, and the immediately following Marxism]. The change seems to be at least partly connected to the notorious personal strife between Schmitt and Koellreutter; see Caldwell, P., “National Socialism and Constitutional Law: Carl Schmitt, Otto Koellreutter, and the Debate Over the Nature of the Nazi State, 1933-1937”, (1994) 16 Cardozo L.R. 399, at 414 Google Scholar. Koellreutter had indeed ranked Stahl with Hegel and “other great men” of political thought. It is probable that by debasing Stahl, Schmitt intended to hit at Koellreutter. Schmitt himself deleted a reference to Stahl in the second edition (1934) of his Politische Theologie (see in the first edition of 1922, at 45); see equally the difference in relation to Stahl between the second and third edition of Schmitt's, Begriff des Politischen (München & Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1932) 50 Google Scholar (Hamburg, 3rd ed., 1933) 44. (The changes, disingenously made by Schmitt, were already negatively noted in 1935 by Lüwith, K., “Der okkasionelle Dezisionismus von C. Schmitt”, Gesammelte Abhandlungen: Zur Kritik der geschichtlichen Existenz (Stuttgart, 1960) 93, at 113)Google Scholar. The revilement of Stahl made part of radical conservatism as represented by van den Bruck, A. Moeller, Das dritte Reich (1923, 3rd ed., by Schwarz, H., Hamburg, 1931, 1934) 116–118 Google Scholar: “Der Parteikonservativismus vernahm, dass hier ein Konvertit, redlicher Charakter mit starker Intelligenz, ihn in seinen konservativen Grundanschauungen bestätigte — und er fragte sich nicht lange, ob dieser rabulistisch-zelotische Geist nicht aus blutlichen und geistigen Gründen viel zu unvertraut mit den Werten war, die beim Konservatwismus erhaltenswert zu sein schienen, als dass sie seiner Hut überlassen werden konnten. In Wirklichkeit war Stahl nicht der Begründer, sondern der Zerstörer des Konservatwismus in Deutschland”. [“Party-Conservatism learned that here a convert of honest character and strong intelligence confirmed its fundamental conservative outlook; and it did not stop to ask itself if that pettifogging, zealotic spirit was not much too unfamiliar — because of racial and spiritual reasons — with the values deemed worth to be preserved by Conservatism, so as not to leave them under his protection. In reality, Stahl was not the founder of Conservatism in Germany, but its destroyer”]. (This passage has been omitted in the “Authorized English Edition (condensed)”: Germany's Third Empire (transl. Lorimer, E.O., New York, 1971) 105 Google Scholar). See generally A. Koenen, supra n. 99, at 368-370. There are remarkable affinities between the anti-liberal, nationalist ideas of A. Moeller van den Bruck (1876-1925) and those of Schmitt; see Koenen, ibid., at 111, n. 141 et passim.

139 For a similar negative, antisemitic evaluation of Stahl, see Heckel, J., “Der Einbruch des jüdischen Geistes in das deutsche Staats- und Kirchenrecht durch Friedrich Julius Stahl”, (vol. 155, 1937) Historische Zeitschrift 506, especially at 540–541 CrossRef Google Scholar, excerpt in Poliakov, I. and Wulf, J., Das dritte Reich und seine Denker (1959, 1978) 371 CrossRef Google Scholar. Heckel's analysis of the life and work of Stahl is based on racist, anti-Jewish prejudices. On the relationship between Heckel and Schmitt, cf. R. Gross, “Politische Polykratie 1936: Die legendenumwobene SD-Akte Carl Schmitt”, supra n. 128, at 127. It is ironical that Heckel used in the defence of Schmitt against internal Nazi intrigues the “famous” saying: incende quod adorasti; adora quod incendisti (Gross, ibid.), but denied its validity in relation to Stahl's conversion to Christianity (Heckel, ibid., at 517). See also H.-G. Hermann, “‘in äusserlich anerkennenden Formen dem Nazionalsozialismus Aufgabe und Verpflichtung vorzuhalten’: Beobachtungen zu Hans Erich Feine (1890-1965) im Nazionalsozialismus und der frühen Nachkriegszeit”, H. Nehlsen and G. Brun, eds., supra n. 97, at 279-280.

140 Compare D. Dyzenhaus, “‘Now the Machine Runs Itself’: Carl Schmitt on Hobbes and Kelsen”, supra n. 27, at 10. The destructive influence of Jews is again mentioned in C. Schmitt, Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951, supra n. 28, at 290 (12.1.50): “Salus ex Judaeis? Perditio ex Judaeis? Erst einmal Schluss mit diesen vordringlichen Juden. Als wir unsuneins wurden, kaben die Juden sich subintroduziert. Solange das nicht begriffen ist, gibt es kein Heil. Spinoza war der erste, der sich subintroduzierte. Heute erleben diese Subintroduzierten eine Restauration mit kolossalen Entschädigungsansprüchen und Rückzahlungen. Aber die Subintroduzierten sind trotzdem noch schlimmer als die zurückkehrenden Emigranten, die ihre Roche geniessen. Sie sollten sich was schämen, den Dollar anzunehmen”. [“….First of all, no more of these pushy Jews. When we became divided, the Jews sub-introduced themselves. As long as one does not understand that, there is no salvation. Spinoza was the first who sub-introduced himself. Today, these sub-introduceds know a restoration with colossal compensation claims and restitutions. But the sub-introduceds are still worse than the returning emigrants who enjoy their revenge. They should be ashamed to accept the Dollar”].

141 Leviathan, ibid., at 116-118.

142 Ibid., at 20, n. 1, 126-127. Schmitt emphazises — against Spinoza — the Christian foundation of Hobbes's political theory. The major blame for undermining the Christian dimension of statehood is therefore attributable to Spinoza who approaches it “from the outside”; see the critical analysis of Schmitt's position H. Meier, supra n. 100, at 180-186. In R. Smend's opinion, Schmitt's “brilliant” opposition of Hobbes and Spinoza is “the most impressive and beautiful” insight of the book (ibid., at 181, n. 149).

143 Ibid., at 20 n. 1. In his Glossarium: Aufzeichnungen der Jahre 1947-1951, supra n. 28, at 243 (23.5.49), Schmitt compares Hobbes's ideas to those of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor: “Hobbes spricht aus und begründet wissenschaftlich, was Dostojewskis Grossinquisitor tut: die Wirkung Christi im sozialen und politischen Bereich unschädlich machen; das Christentum ent-anarchisieren … Wir können uns also fragen: wer ist dem Grossinquisitor Dostojewskis näher: die römische Kirche oder der Souverän des Thomas Hobbes? Reformation und Gegenreformatwn erweisen sich als richtungsverwandt. Nenne mirDeinen Feind, und ich sage Dir wer du bist. Hobbes und die römische Kirche: der Feind ist unsere eigene Frage als Gestalt”. [“Hobbes expresses and scientifically establishes what Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor does: to render harmless the impact of Christ in the social and political sphere; to de-anarchize Christianity.…we only can ask ourselves: who is closer to Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor: the Roman Church or the Sovereign of Thomas Hobbes? Reformation and Counter-Reformation prove to have similar directions. Tell me who your enemy is and I shall tell you who you are. Hobbes and the Roman Catholic Church: the enemy is our own question as figure”]. By referring to Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, Schmitt is obviously implying that the Hobbesian state will eventually lead to the Antichrist. On Schmitt's use of the metaphor of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor see R. Gross, supra n. 100, at 137-144, 160.

144 In this sense see R. Gross, supra n. 100, at 226: “In Schmitts Kritik von Kelsens Rechtslehre erscheint dieser als Inbegriff eines Theoretikers, der jüdische Form säkularisiert in die Staatsrechtslehre des modernen christlich-säkularen Staates hineinträgt. Schmitts Polemik gegen den Rechtspositivismus sowie gegen die reine Rechtslehre suggeriert, dass sich im Liberalismus Kelsens in Wahrheit die säkularisierte Theologie des Feindes verberge”. [“In Schmitt's critique of Kelsen's legal theory, the latter appears as the essence of a theoretician who imports Jewish secularized form into the legal state theory of the modern Christian-secular state. Schmitt's polemics against legal positivism, as well as against the pure theory of law, suggests that inside Kelsen's liberalism hides in reality the secular theology of the enemy”]. On the antisemitic character of Schmitt's Leviathan see equally H. Meier, supra n. 100, at 231-241. I, however, disagree with D. Dyzenhaus, supra n. 2, at 94, who claims that Schmitt identified the state with Christ “who has thus been killed twice by the same Jewish hands”. The reference to Schmitt's statement (Der Leviathan, at 118) that the mortal God has died a second time, is misconceived by Dyzenhaus. Schmitt's intention is not to Christ (as mortal God), but to the state who first died as magnus homo in the eighteenth century (see at 99), and then a second time as the great machine.

145 Schmitt returns many times to Hobbes's forceful metaphor. Thus, in one of the later works C. Schmitt, Politische Theologie II: Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder Politischen Theologie, supra n. 57, at 41, he observes that it constitutes a polymorphous metaphor: “Der grosse Leviathan, der Staat des Thomas Hobbes, ist tetramorph: er ist sowohl der grosse, aber sterbliche Gott, wie auch ein grosses Tier, ausserdem ein grosser Mensch und eine grosse Maschine”. [“The great Leviathan, the state of Thomas Hobbes, is tetramorphous: it is as well the great but mortal God as well as the great animal, moreover a great man and a great machine”.].

146 Another interpretation is suggested by G. Schwab in his introduction to the English translation: Schmitt's Leviathan is a critique of the Nazi “quantitative total one party SS-state” that had failed to protect the individual security (i.e., Schmitt's) notwithstanding obedience. I doubt very much the correctness of this interpretation. As mentioned above, according to my reading Schmitt was aspiring to a pre-Hobbesian concept of polity. In this context cf. also J.P. McCormick, supra n. 37, at 276-277, especially n. 59. However, I agree with the latter author's comment (at 285): “Schmitt criticizes Hobbes's choice of myth in the foundation of his state theory but not the enterprise of myth-making itself”.

147 This aspect of Kelsen's theory has been mentioned in the seminal work of Neumann, F., Behemot: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933-1944 (1944, 1966) 46 Google Scholar: “The critical impact and debunking force of the Austrian school cannot be denied. Its insistence on the sole validity of positive law and on the complete ejection from the science of law of all moral considerations of a sociological or political character make it impossible to cover political demands with the cloak of law”. However, the author criticizes Kelsen's relativistic concept of parliamentary democracy defined as a merely organizational framework for reaching decisions without recourse to any universally accepted values. Thus, in his view, pure science of law shares the defects of logical positivism and every other “pure science”: It s virginal in its innocence. The author's conclusion is that the pure science of law has done as much as decisionism to undermine any universally acceptable value-system; ibid., at 47. The author blames even more the “arrogant claims of post-Kantian idealism, which … veils the very acceptance of given facts by transferring all decisive problems into the sphere of metaphysics”; ibid., at 463. See also ibid., at 379: “More than anything else, the divorce of Kant's legal and political philosophy, with its insistence on duty, from the rest of his doctrine provided a means of surrounding every perfidy with the halo of idealism … By banishing the idea of law into the sphere of transcendence, Kant left actual law and actual morals at the mercy of empiricism and the blind forces of tradition”. Contrast the author's defence of Hegel against Nazi endeavors to rely on the letter's philosophy; ibid., at 77-78. Later (at 463) the author affirms that “no philosophy can be held responsible for National Socialism”.

148 H. Kelsen, “Juristischer Formalismus und reine Rechtslehre”, supra n. 7, at 1724; in the same spirit see Kelsen's critique of Triepel, “Staatsrecht und Politik”, (1926) in H. Kelsen, Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie, supra n. 8, at n. 18, p. 109-110. In his recent book D. Dyzenhaus, supra n. 2, actually repeats the old critique of the pure theory of law's lack of political and moral substance, a critique referred to by Kelsen in the above quotation. But Dyzenhaus finds in addition an article of faith which Kelsen and Schmitt assumedly share: the thought that ethics and politics are deeply irrational (ibid., at 106). I completely disagree: Kelsen's relativism of values does not imply that values are irrational; the non-scientific is not identical with the irrational.

149 See the poignant critique of Rüthers, B., “Anleitung zum fortgesetzten methodischen Blindflug”, (1996) NJW 1249 Google Scholar, reviewing the new (3rd) textbook edition of Larenz, and Canaris, , Methodenlehre der Rechtswissenschaft (1995)CrossRef Google Scholar. For biographical data on Larenz, see K. Kastl, “Neuhegelianismus und Nationalsozialismus bei Karl Larenz”, H. Nehlsen and G. Brun, eds., supra n. 100, at 347; Jakobs, H.H., “Karl Larenz und der Nationalsozialismus”, (1993) Juristenzeitung 805 Google Scholar. Karl Larenz was a disciple of the neo-Hegelian scholar Julius Binder (1870-1939) who equally joined the Nazi party. See the short comment on Larenz in Joerges, Ch., “Demos vs. Ethnos in Private Law: Friedrich Kessler and His German Heritage”, (1995) Yale L.J. 2137, at 2140–2141 Google Scholar.

150 Larenz, Karl, Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie der Gegenwart (2. Aufl., 1935)Google Scholar.

151 Ibid., at 41.

152 Ibid., at 42.

153 Ibid., at 49.

154 Ibid., at 49-50. See in the same vein Larenz, K., “Sittlichkeit und Recht: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des deutschen Rechtsdenkens und zur Sittenlehre”, in Larenz, K., ed., Reich und Recht in der deutschen Philosophie I (Stuttgart & Berlin, 1943) 169, at 368 Google Scholar: “Mit der begrifflichen Herauslösung des Rechts aus dem Ganzen einer sittlichen Lebensordnung, aus dem es bis dahin mindestens seit den Tagen der griechischen Naturrechtslehre verstanden worden war, beginnt zugleich der Verfall nicht nur der deutschen, sondern der abendländischen Rechtsphilosophie. Sein Endstadium erreichte dieser Verfallsprozess in der sogenannten ‘Reinen Rechtslehre’, von der ihr Uhrheber bemerkt, dass sie ‘den Begriffder Rechtsnorm von dem der Moralnorm, aus dem er hervorgegangen, völlig loslöst und die Eigengesetzlichkeit des Rechts auch gegenüber dem Sittengesetz sicherstellt’”. [“Contemporaneously with the conceptual detachment of law from the totality of a moral life order — out of which law was conceived, at least since the days of the Greek natural law theory — begins the decay of not only German, but Western philosophy of law. This process of decay reached its final stage with the so-called ‘Pure Theory of Law’, in relation to which its author remarked that ‘it completely detached the concept of legal norm from that of moral norm out of which it had resulted, and thus equally assured the autonomy of law as against moral law”].

155 Karl Larenz, Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie der Gegenwart, ibid., at 159-162.

156 Ibid., at 162-167.

157 Larenz considered himself a neo-Hegelian and claimed after the war that he had attempted to develop an independent theory of law and state for the Nazis, which was acceptable for them, in order to impose upon them the limitations of a legal system. For a critical evaluation of Larenz's use of Hegelian ideas and on the validity of the former's suggestion to have tried to attach strings to the absolute power of the Nazi regime see K. Kastl, “Neuhegelianismus und Nationalsozialismus bei Karl Larenz”, in H. Nehlsen and G. Brun, eds., supra n. 97, at 347. In the authoress's view, Larenz knowingly abandoned central postulates of Hegel's philosophy, especially those concerning individual freedom. She equally denies the limiting effects of Larenz's theory. Larenz himself described his attitude during this period as “contradictory and essentially incomprehensible” (ibid., at 347, 376).

158 For an excellent analysis of the significance of these notions, their mutual relationship and their impact on Nazi and post-war legal theory see B. Rüthers, supra n. 17, at 302-322. Larenz was a member of the so-called “Kieler Schule”, an intellectual center of Nazi legal thought and education at the University of Kiel. On that school and the influence of Schmitt's ideas on it see Frassek, R., “Karl Larenz (1903-1993) — Privatrechtler im Nazionalsozialismus und im Nachriegsdeutschland”, (1998) JuS 296, at 297–300 Google Scholar.

159 Larenz first required the interpenetration of mind and sensuality, law and impulse, spirit and nature, rational and irrational forces in a dialectical way, but later regretted the exclusion of conceptual thinking; see K. Anderbrügge, supra n. 13, at 231.

160 Larenz, K., Deutsche Rechtserneuerung und Rechtsphilosophie (Tübingen, 1934) 4 Google Scholar. The booklet equally criticizes Kelsen's normativism.

161 Ibid., at 44.

162 Ibid., at 34.

163 Swoboda, E., Das österreichische Allgemeine bürgerliche Gesetzbuch I (2. Aufl., 1944) 17, at 24 Google Scholar. This extremely antisemitic author — who added on the front page of his book his being SA-Sturmbannführer — justifies the racist anti-Jewish legislation with the argument that the Jewish religion constitutes an eternal declaration of war against the Gentiles aiming at the subjugation of the whole non-Jewish world. Hence the right of the German people to self-defence; ibid., at 50-51.

164 On Forsthoff's involvment with Nazism and his post-war career, see Mauz, G., “Ernst Forsthoff und andere …”, Intellektuelle im Bann des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, 1980) 193 Google Scholar.

165 Forsthoff, E., “Der Formalismus im öffentlichen Recht”, (1934) DR 347 Google Scholar. The argument that the assumedly unpolitical pure theory of law fulfilled itself a political function was already voiced by Schmitt, C., Der Begriff des Politischen (1932) 8 Google Scholar, n. 2; see also Hohn, R., “Form und Formalismus im Rechtsleben”, (1934) DR 346 Google Scholar.

166 Schönfeld, W., “Die Geschichte der Rechtswissenschaft im Spiegel der Metaphysik”, in Larenz, K., ed., Reich und Recht in der deutschen Philosophie II (Stuttgart & Berlin, 1943)Google Scholar; esp. at 64-65, speaking of the formal positivism of Kelsen that distinguishes between is and ought: “In diesem Nihilismus, der das Recht entrechtet, den Staat entstaatlicht, den Menschen um seine Würde und das Volk um seine Ehre bringt, lebt gar nichts anderes als der Ungeist von Ludwig Feuerbach, auf den er sich daher mit Recht beruft”. [“Inside this nihilism that empties law of law and the state of state, that deprives man of his dignity and the people of its honor — dwells nothing else than the nefarious spirit of Ludwig Feuerbach on whom he rightly relies”]. See also, ibid., at 125, 142 (Judaism agrees with and influences upon legal positivism). On Schönfeld's ideas see also B. Rüthers, supra n. 97, at 27, 28, 30, 84.

167 See, e.g., the book of the Hudal, Catholic Bishop A., Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus: Eine ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung von katholischer Warte (Leipzig & Wien, 1937)Google Scholar. The author analyzes the positive and negative aspects of Nazi ideology from a Catholic viewpoint. Thus, he affirms (at 178-179): “Nobody will deny that the abstract normativism — introduced into German legal thought by the reception of Roman law and by the 19th century constitutionalism — should be replaced by concrete legal thinking that is determined by a German collective order. But also here, danger looms from radicaiization or from the revival of liberal ideas”. The argument is clearly influenced by Carl Schmitt's very similar formulation. The latter author is indeed explicitely mentioned by Hudal: ibid., at 164, n. 122, and n. 124. For a reference to Larenz, see ibid., n. 128.

168 See the concluding remarks of K. Anderbrügge, supra n. 13, at 225-231; Gernhuber, J., “Das völkische Recht: Ein Beitrag zur Rechtstheorie des Nationalsozialismus”, (1968) Tübinger Festschrift für Eduard Kern 173, at 179 Google Scholar. But see F. Neumann, supra n. 147, at 464, arguing that a political theory cannot be non-rational: “If it claims to be non-rational, it is a conscious trick. … It may not be exaggerated to say that National Socialism acts according to a most rational plan, that each and every pronouncements by its leaders is calculated, and its effect on the masses and the surrounding world is carefully weighed in advance”. In my view, here the author is completely mistaken. Not only does there exist non-rational theories, but the assumption of total rationality of Nazi activities is a strange illusion.

169 This author seems to have distanced himself later from the Nazi movement; see B. Rüthers, supra n. 97, at 20-21.

170 Emge, C.A., “Ideen über die Aufgaben der wissenschaftlichen Rechtsphilosophie”, (1934) Deutsche Akademie 210 Google Scholar.

171 Emge, C.A., “Ueber die Beziehungen der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung zu Rechtswissenschaft und Recht”, (1934) DR 31 Google Scholar. The paper is written in a bombastic style replete with irrational emotionalism. He demands that notions like Blut, Boden, Rasse should become symbols of actual reality and not remain mere propagandists formula; ibid., at 33. Emge refers in one of his articles to the (Schmittean) notion of konkretes Ordnungsdenken: Emge, C.A., “Über die Aufgabe der Rechtswissenschaft im neuen Staat”, Die Rechtswissenschaft im neuen Staat (Wien, 1938) 3, at 9 Google Scholar. With more explicit emphasis on Carl Schmitt's mentioned notion, see P. Ritterbusch, “Die rechtswissenschaftliche Aufgabe unserer Zeit und die juristische Fakultät”, ibid., at 15,18-21. (Ritterbusch was first at the University of Königsberg, later at Kiel; cf. B. Rüthers, supra n. 97, at 42).

172 Krieck, E., “Das Ende einer Wissenschaftsideologie”, (1934) DR 297 Google Scholar.

173 In the same year he was appointed to a chair at the University of Heidelberg as successor of Rickert. On the biography and works of this prolific Nazi theorist see Kunz, W., Ernst Krieck: Leben und Werk (Leipzig, 1942)Google Scholar; Hördt, P., Ernst Krieck: Volk als Schicksal und Aufgabe (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1936)Google Scholar.

174 For a maudlin and smug self-description of his “intellectual” development see Krieck, E., Erlebter Neuidealismus (Heidelberg, 1942)Google Scholar; for additional material of this author on the relationship between science and ideology, see W. Kunz, supra n. 173, at 84-98; some excerpts of other writings in I. Poliakov and J. Wulf, supra n. 139, at 173-175, 269-270; see also the central part of Krieck's lecture on “The Intellectuals and the Third Reich” published in Tal, U., “Violence and the Jew in Nazi Ideology”, in Baron, S.W. and Wise, G.S., Violence and Defence in the Jewish Experience (Philadelphia, 1977) 205, at 211–215 Google Scholar. On law and adjudication see in addition Krieck, E., “Der Weg zum völkisch-politischen Richter”, (1936) 6 DR 434 Google Scholar.

175 Jaensch, E., Die Wissenschaft und die deutsche völkische Bewegung (1933)Google Scholar.

176 Memrah is the Aramaic term for “word”, logos (). The author, ibid. at 21-22, refers in a footnote to an article on the Mandaeans, a Gnostic sect in Iraq and Iran of possibly Jewish origin: Schlier, H., “Zur Mandäerfrage”, (1933) 1 Theologische Rundschau 69, at 22Google Scholar. The reference is without substance, since that author merely observes in a footnote that the concept of logos does not come from Judaism, since Memrah does not signify a specific person of Divinity. In the article the Memrah speculation is once more mentioned, at 16, as the most noble manifestation of God, being not of rabbinic origin, but of Jewish-gnostic one. Jaensch's description of the Memrah theory must therefore be based on other sources.

177 Ibid., at 27.

178 The author mentions the opposition of the two Nobel-prize winners Ph. Lenard (1862-1947) and J. Stark (1874-1957) against Einstein's theory and deals with its implications, ibid., at 36-39. These two antisemitic physicists expressed early sympathy for Hitler and the Nazi movement. For some excerpts of their antisemitc writings see I. Poliakov and J. Wulf, supra n. 139, at 293-301; see in addition especially Stark, J., “Jüdische Physik und deutsche Physik”, (1941) in Müller, W., ed., Jüdische Physik und deutsche Physik 21 Google Scholar. The author contrasts the “Jewish dogmatic spirit” with the “German pragmatic conception” and deplores the continuing Jewish influence on German physics. In his introductory remarks, the editor of the booklet, W. Müller, Professor of Physics, calls Einstein's theory “the great Jewish world-bluff”. Müller had previously published an extremely antisemitic book on Judaism and Science where he praised the work of Jaensch: Müller, W., Judentum und Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1936) 37, n. 1Google Scholar. In reward of this booklet, Müller was appointed in 1939 as A. Sommerfeld's successor in theoretical physics at the University of Munich; the latter preferred Müller over the candidacy of W. Heisenberg. For an analysis of these national-socialist scientific movements in physics and chemistry see Richter, S., “Die ‘Deutsche Physik’”, in Mehrtens, H. and Richter, S., eds., Naturwissenschaft, Technik und NS-Ideologie (Frankfurt/M, 1980) 116 Google Scholar (the sources of the approach were romantic ideas of natural philosophy, extreme nationalism and racial antisemitism combined with personal reactions to what Th.S. Kuhn has described as “change of paradigm” in physics, namely the revolution of quantum physics and Einstein's relativity theory); M. Bechstedt, “‘Gestalthafte Atomlehre’: Zur ‘Deutschen Chemie’ im NS-Staat”, ibid., 142. For a detailed biographical description of Lenard and Stark and the Heisenberg affair see Beyerchen, A.D., Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich (New Haven & London, 1977) 79–122, at 156–167 Google Scholar.

179 The author's psychological “type” approach was adopted by Bieberbach, L., Professor of Mathematics in Berlin, who combined it with race theory: “Stilarten mathematischen Schaffens”, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1934, Physikalisch-Mathematische Klasse (1934) 358–359 Google Scholar, excerpts in I. Poliakov and J. Wulf, supra n. 139, at 312-313. See H. Lindner, “‘Deutsche’ und ‘gegentypische’ Mathematik. Zur Begründung einer ‘arteigenen’ Mathematik im ‘Dritten Reich’ durch Ludwig Bieberbach”, in H. Mehrtens and S. Richter, eds., supra n. 178, at 88.

180 Ibid., at 43-45.

181 Jaensch, E.R., Der Gegentypus (Leipzig, 1938)Google Scholar.

182 Ibid., at 68-75.

183 The author adds some short comments on to the nature of the legal system when dealing with the features of a “countertype culture”. He refers to Schmitt's article On the Three Modes of Legal Thinking and mentions Kelsen's pure theory of law; ibid. at 81-82.

184 Ibid., at 82-92; on mathematics see also ibid., at 53-56.

185 Wiskemann, E., “Die Wirtschaftswissenschaft im nationalsozialistischen Staat”, Die Rechtswissenschaft im neuen Staat (Wien, 1938) 26 Google Scholar.

186 Ibid., at 30.

187 Ibid., at 31-32.

188 Ibid., at 40.

189 On this scholar see F. Neumann, supra n. 147, at 105: “Friedrich List, the first articulate National Socialist — he was not just a forerunner but a full-fledged National Socialist — urged a system of state capitalism”.

190 A.D. Beyerchen, supra n. 178, at 134-135. On the internal Nazi controversy about the role of technology see ibid., at 135-140; see especially on the contrast between ideological antimodernism and the striving for modern technology in Nazi Germany: Herf, J., “Reactionary Modernism Reconsidered: Modernity, the West and the Nazis”, in Sternhell, Z., ed., The Intellectual Revolt Against Liberal Democracy 1870-1945 (Jerusalem, 1996) 131 Google Scholar. On the phenomenon of using rational means in order to achieve irrational ends see Tal, U., Structures of German Political Theology in the Nazi Era (Tel Aviv, 1979)Google Scholar.

191 Wolin, R., “Carl Schmitt: The Conservative Revolutionary Habitus and the Aesthetics of Horror”, (1992) 20 Political Theory 424, at 428–429 CrossRef Google Scholar.

192 On the impact of this connection upon the contemporary discourse about post modernism see Nägele, R., “The Scene of the Other: Theodor W. Adorno's Negative Dialectic in the Context of Poststructuralism”, in Arac, J., ed., Postmodernism and Politics (Minneapolis, 1986) 91, at 93 Google Scholar: “… Nietzsche and Heidegger, both eminently important for poststructuralist theory, touch on a particularly sensitive spot of German political and intellectual history. Both philosophers and philosophies are overshadowed by a historical association with fascism and national socialism. At stake, however, is not simply the historical association — the use and abuse of Nietzsche by the Nazis and Heidegger's public support of the Third Reich — but the question to what degree the partial integration of both philosophies is not merely due to a historical accident, but to an immanent element of both philosophical discourses…At the basis of such debates are not so much specific contents and concepts, but rather certain modes of discourse, frequently opposed in a rigorous scheme of rationality versus irrationality … The history of irrationalism becomes the prehistory of fascism”. In relation to Nietzsche see also Taureck, Bernhard H.F., Nietzsche und der Faschismus: Eine Studie über Nietzsches politische Philosophie und ihre Folgen (Hamburg, 1989)Google Scholar. Another figure in post-modern thought is Paul de Man whose Nazi connections provoked a controversy a few years ago. See generally Rosenau, P.M., Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions (Princeton, 1992) 12–14, 155–156 Google Scholar.

193 Holmes, S., The Anatomy of Antiliberalism (1993)Google Scholar.

194 Mehring, R., Carl Schmitt zur Einführung (Hamburg, 1992) 152 Google Scholar: “Während [Schmitts] religiöse Absichten heute kaum noch nachvollziehbar sind, ist die kritische Methode doppelt lehrreich und aktuell.…Schmitt beherrschte zwei kritische Methoden, die die siebziger und achtziger Jahre charakterisieren: Ideologiekritik und Dekonstruktion”. [“Whereas Schmitt's religious intentions are today hardly understandable, the critical method is doubly instructive and topical.… Schmitt commanded two critical methods that characterized the seventies and the eighties: critique of ideology and deconstructionism”].

195 For an interesting essay on Schmitt's impact on a contemporary intellectual current see Kennedy, E., “Carl Schmitt und die “Frankfurter Schule”: Deutsche Liberalismuskritik im 20. Jahrhundert”, (1986) 12 Geschichte und Gesellschaft 380 Google Scholar. See equally Wolin, R., “Left Fascism: Georges Bataille and the German Ideology”, (1996) 2 Constellations 397–400 CrossRef Google Scholar (noting the affinities between the German radical conservatives — among them Carl Schmitt — and French poststructuralists).

196 P.M. Rosenau, supra n. 192, at 5-6. I found this book's balanced, succinct and precise description of post-modernism most helpful for my immediate concerns. It contains a multitude of references to a most extensive literature.

197 Ibid., at 13-14.

198 The relationship between romanticism and Volkish thought as a rejection of modernity has been extensively analyzed by Mosse, G.L., The Crisis of German Ideology (N.Y., 1964)Google Scholar.

199 Rosenau, supra n. 192, at 77-91.

200 See ibid., at 128-129; the authoress refers to specific sources in post-modern literature. See especially at 129, the quotation from Graff, G., Literature Against Itself (1979) 25 Google Scholar.

201 Ibid., at 86. For a randomly chosen passage of feminist understanding of postmodernism see Chandler, Christie, “Race, Gender, and the Peremptory Challenge: A Postmodern Feminist Approach”, (1995) 7 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 173, at 174–175 Google Scholar: “As a successor to the Enlightenment and the influences of Rousseau and Montesquieu, postmodern theory rejects the idealization of rational thought. Postmodernist deride such rationality as artifice that validates the idea of the ‘foundation of society upon natural reason, the self-evident rights of man, and the confidently expressed will of the collectivity of emancipating itself from superstition, tradition and blind acceptance of authority’. Postmodern theory delights in internal contradiction and irrationality. … By rejecting binary oppositions as limitations on thought and knowledge, postmodern feminism provides a way of being, thinking, and speaking that allows for openness, plurality, diversity, and difference. Postmodern feminism views universal definitions as useless, challenging traditional dichotomies such as emotion/reason, beautiful/ugly, and self/other. There is neither essential woman nor essential truth. In fact, because language and reality are socially constructed, the concept of truth is inherently subjective and contested” (footnotes omitted).

202 Rosenau, ibid., at 153.

203 For a description and analysis of this movement see Minda, G., Postmodern Legal Movements: Law and Jurisprudence at Century's End (1995) 167 Google Scholar; see also: Crenshaw, K.W. et al. , eds., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement (New York, 1995)Google Scholar; reviewed in “Book Note”, (1996) 96 Col. L.R. 1363 Google Scholar.

204 Douzinas, C., Warrington, R. and Mcveigh, S., Postmodern Jurisprudence: The Law of Texts in the Texts of Law (London and New York, 1991) 21, at 27, 28 Google Scholar.

205 For a detailed analysis of these affinities see Th. Gutman, “Wiederkehr der Gemeinschaft? Rechtshistorisch gebotene Fragen an die kommunitarische Philosophic”, in H. Nehlsen and G. Brun, eds., supra n. 97, at 9-61. The author analyzes first the structure and function of the notion of community (Gemeinschaft) in Nazi legal philosophy, and contraposes it then critically to the theories of communitarian thinkers, such as A. Maclntyre, M. Sandel and Ch. Taylor. The author finds significant parallels, especially with ideas voiced by Karl Larenz. In his view, these affinities require more concrete answers by the Communitarians of how to prevent the totalitarian conclusions that can be drawn on the basis of their theoretical premises. My short exposition of Communitarianism relies on the mentioned paper.

206 Kelsen, H., Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Naturrechtslehre und des Rechtspositivismus (Charlottenburg, 1928) 77 Google Scholar.

207 Ibidem. Kelsen considers the contrast between positivism and natural law theory as rooted in the ultimate depths of ideology and character. It constitutes a never-ending conflict of the human spirit; ibid., at 78.

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