LeQuire, Peter Brickey.

From Political Theology to Political Christology: The Figure of Hegel in Carl Schmitts Political Theology II. Paper presented at the conference Actuality and the Idea, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, May 2012. [Minor revisions July 2013.]1 Introduction Carl Schmitts historical significance and contemporary relevance are widely acknowledged. However, scholars have yet to reach a consensus interpretation of his political theory, partly because of Schmitts terse writing and fluid thinking, and partly because of his notorious yet nuanced relationship with National Socialism. This paper identifies one unifying strand in Schmitts thought by explicating a cryptic selfcharacterization found in Schmitts final book, Political Theology II (1970): The thematic development of my political theology from 1922 takes a general direction which departs from the ius reformandi [right of reformation] of the sixteenth century, culminates in Hegel and is evident everywhere today, from political theology to political Christology. My analysis of Schmitt's explicit references to Hegel shows that Schmitt specifically endorses Hegel's thesis that human beings realize freedom through a distinctly religious submission to a modern, Germanic state. According to Schmitt, Hegel successfully creates a mythical foundation for state sovereignty (one that Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan was ultimately too rational to provide). By situating this approbation of Hegel in historical context and in Schmitt's oeuvre, I argue that the mature Schmitts political Christology is even more troubling than the authoritarianism that first led him to take up the banner of political theology as a young man in the 1920s.

This paper is a report on work in progress. The author welcomes questions and criticisms: pblequir@samford.edu, or Department of Political Science, 800 Lakeshore Drive, Birmingham, AL 35229, USA.

2 Toward a Political Theology of the Right Early in his career, Schmitt seeks to emulate Hobbes, although he also argues that the symbol of the divine-human Leviathan has ultimately failed as a political mythimplying that a replacement myth is needed.2 In many respects, Political Theology II (1970) is a continuation of this attempt to do in the twentieth century what Hobbes did in the seventeenth. Its final chapter concludes with a reiteration of the theme of the first Political Theology: Until the Day of Judgement, the Augustinian teaching on the two kingdoms will have to face the twofold open question: Quis judiciabit? Quis interpretabitur? [Who will decide? Who will interpret?] Who answers in concreto, on behalf of the concrete, autonomously acting human being, the question of what is spiritual, what is worldly[,] and what is the case with the res mixtae, which, in the interval between the first and the second arrival of the Lord, constitute, as a matter of fact, the entire earthly existence of this spiritual-worldly, spiritual-temporal, double-creature called a human being? This is the big question posed by Thomas Hobbes, which is at the centre of my treatise Political Theology from 1922 and which led to a theory of decisionism [Dezisionismus] and of the inner logic of the act. That is, as one can see, the question about the legitimation of any reformation and revolution; the question of the ius reformandi and then, in the later phase, the structurally different question of the ius revolutionis.3 The terms in which Hobbes poses this decisive question require a certain type of answer. Both Schmitt and Hobbes hold that there must be someone empowered to decide, authoritatively, on questions religious and political, because both God and state are authoritative; no man can serve two masters, and a theology not controlled by the existing political powers is potentially subversive of concrete, temporal authority. Hobbess answer in 1651, during the sectarian strife of the English Civil Wars, is the figure of the Sovereign, represented symbolically by the Leviathan. Schmitts Political Theology is an attempt to restore

2 Schmitt, The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of Political Symbol, translated by George Schwab and Erna Hilfstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 5, 99. 3 Schmitt, Political Theology II, 115.

3 a robust (and even mysterious) concept of state sovereignty in the atmosphere of the ideologically and religiously fractured Weimar Republic. From Political Theology to Political Christology Schmitts thought evolves over the course of his career. By Political Theology II, his position has become more theologically intricate, and more specifically Christian. Summarizing his own intellectual trajectory, Schmitt writes: The thematic development of my political theology from 1922 takes a general direction which departs from the ius reformandi [right of reformation] of the sixteenth century, culminates in Hegel and is evident everywhere today, from political theology to political Christology [von der Politischen Theologie zur Politischen Christologie].4 Taken alone, this self-characterization is opaque, but in its context Schmitts cryptic identification of his own thinking with Hegels can be fleshed out by looking at his explicit appeals to Hegel in the text, and his references to his own earlier writings. I disagree with Hoelzl and Ward, who regard the theological dimension of Political Theology II as an intervention in current ecclesial affairs, that is, as a commentary on the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and its intellectual aftermath.5 On the contrary, I will suggest that (in addition to whatever relation it might have to Vatican II) the theology of Political Theology II is no less political than Schmitts earlier work, and that Schmitts position here is one of political theology, understood as normative political discourse essentially grounded (at least ostensibly) in divine revelation. Political Theology II is an elliptical, vituperative retort to Erik Petersons Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem, written thirty-five years earlier as an oblique criticism of the

Schmitt, Political Theology II, 32-33; Politische Theologie II, 11. Political Theology II, 16. Hoelzl and Ward base their position on Schmitts dedication of the book to Hans Barion, a critic of the Roman Churchs modernization; however, puzzlingly, they mention (ibid., 5) but fail entirely to account for Schmitts identification with Hegel.
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4 Nazi regime.6 Petersons thesis is that the doctrine of the Trinity makes political theology a theological impossibility. Against this, Schmitt responds that The legend of the closure of political theology cannot be refuted, but it can be challenged by an alternative myththat political theology is written into Christianity because of the Incarnation.7 Schmitt offers the counterexample of Joachim of Fiores theology of history, which is a theologico-political interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity.8 Joachim was, and remains, a controversial figure in church history. He formulated and championed the concept of a coming Third Kingdom: According to this notion, Christianity so far represented the second Kingdom, that of the Son, which was better than that of the Old Testament, the Kingdom of the Father, but had to be succeeded by the third Kingdom, the age of the Spirit.9 Obviously, the example of Joachim is a valid objection to Peterson only if there is some propriety to Joachims teaching, and Schmitt clearly thinks there is. In an essay from 1950 (to which Schmitt here refers), in fact, he identifies the present age as a pale, inverted, self-deceived version of Joachims third Reich, that of the Spirit.10 The appropriation of Joachim is poetically imprecise: Schmitt is not interested in schematizing all of sacred or profane history, but rather in recent crises in modern European consciousness.11 The present age,

6 The English edition bears all the marks of having been hurried too quickly to press, and a careful reader must consult the German. 7 Hoelzl and Ward, editors introduction to Political Theology II, 27. 8 Schmitt, Political Theology II, 101. Milbank, too, cites Joachim approvingly. Theology and Social Theory, 386. 9 Dante, for instance, grants Joachim a spot in heaven (Paradiso 12.37-38), but according to modern, orthodox Christian thought, his historical speculation is misguided, if not heretical: The struggle for the irrevocability of Christianity was fought and won in the Middle Ages as a struggle against the idea of the Third Kingdom. Faith in the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ can admit no Third Kingdom; it believes in the finality of what has already occurred and knows that for this very reason it is open to the future. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, rev. ed., trans. J. R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 264-265. 10 Carl Schmitt, Donoso Corts in gesamteuropischer Interpretation: Vier Aufstze (Cologne: Greven Verlag, 1950), 11. Translations from this text are my own. 11 Drei harte Schlge haben die Wurzel Europas getroffen: der europische Brgerkrieg von 1848, der Ausgang des ersten Weltkriegs von 1918 und der globale Weltbrgerkrieg der Gegenwart. Schmitt, Donoso Corts, 7.

5 that of the Cold War, seems to need no theological or secularized theological concepts; the masses assume that pure secularity is self-evident.12 Leviathan and Geist What does it mean for Schmitt to identify himself with Hegel in this context? In Political Theology II, the only passage in Hegel to which Schmitt provides a bibliographic reference is cited twice. This is Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences 552, which Schmitt says has to be understood as a politico-theological statement... (as I will address below, in his discussion of 552, Schmitt also quotes without attribution a passage in The Philosophy of History)13 The specific claim of Hegels that Schmitt refers to is that it is the stupidity of the younger generation to make a revolution without reformation and to assume that it is possible to make an alternative constitution for a state, based on quietness and harmony with the old religion and its sacred values.14 We cannot simply take Hegels views for Schmitts own, even if Hegels works could be interpreted definitively and without difficulty. However, if Schmitts intellectual development finds its culmination in the Hegel who is specifically identified as the author of the politico-theological statement in Encyclopaedia 552, a brief look at Hegels text should give us a general sense of the position of political Christology that Schmitt publicly adopts.

Schmitt, Donoso Corts, 11. Schmitt, Political Theology II, 101. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830) together with the Zustze in Boumanns Text (1845), translated by William Wallace and A. V. Miller, with a foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). Hegel, Werke II, online ed., vol. 10, Enzyklopdie der philosophischen Wissenschaften III (Charlottesville: InteLex Corporation, 2003), http://www.nlx.com/collections/60. 14 Schmitt, Political Theology II, 101. Hegel, Enzyklopdie 552: Es ist nur fr eine Torheit neuerer Zeit zu achten, ein System verdorbener Sittlichkeit, deren Staatsverfassung und Gesetzgebung ohne Vernderung der Religion umzundern, eine Revolution ohne eine Reformation gemacht zu haben, zu meinen, mit der alten Religion und ihren Heiligkeiten knne eine ihr entgegengesetzte Staatsverfassung Ruhe und Harmonie in sich haben und durch uere Garantien - z. B. sogenannte Kammern und die ihnen gegebene Gewalt, den Finanzetat zu bestimmen (vgl. 544 Anm.) u. dgl. - den Gesetzen Stabilitt verschafft werden.
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6 Broadly speaking, 552 is a defense of the unity of religious and political authority in the state. There is present here a Hobbesian argument for this unity. And indeed, this is found immediately following the sentence about revolution and reformation that Schmitt explicitly cites. It suggests that religion has a firmer psychological grip on mans conscience than does merely manmade law. A political order without religious sanction is bound, eventually, to lose legitimacy: It is nothing but a modern folly to try to alter a corrupt moral organization by altering its political constitution and code of laws without changing the religion At best it is only a temporary expedientwhen it is obviously too great a task to descend into the depths of the religious spirit and to raise that same spirit to its truthto seek to separate law and justice from religion. Those guarantees are but rotten bulwarks against the consciences of the persons charged with administering the lawsamong which laws these guarantees are included. It is indeed the height and profanity of contradiction to seek to bind and subject to the secular code the religious conscience to which mere human law is a thing profane.15 Thomas Hobbess sovereign, symbolized by the Leviathan, is endowed with absolute civil and ecclesiastical authority. Hobbes calls up the figure of the Leviathan to conquer individuals pride; this Leviathan is a composite entity made up of all the individuals in the state, and wields their collective power. The sovereign is the source of all law, and can adjudicate all legal disputes, and exclusively interpret Gods will. Hegel seems to approve the main contours of this political-theological solution to the problem of disorder. However, the reasoning behind Hegels position is ultimately quite different. Hobbess absolutism notwithstanding, there is one individual right that he takes to be unalienable: the right to self-preservation. Ultimately, the source of the sovereigns authority is his ability to protect his subjects from death and discomfort. An individual whom the sovereign can no longer protect is no longer bound to obedience. Hegel is critical of what he

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Hegel, Encyclopaedia 552, 287-288.

7 regards as an individualistic, atomistic understanding of political power. In Encyclopaedia 552, he refers the reader to 544, which reads, in part: The aggregate of private persons is often spoken of as the nation [Volk]: but as such an aggregate it is vulgus, not populus: and in this direction it is the one sole aim of the state that a nation should not come to existence, to power and action, as such an aggregate. Such a condition of a nation is a condition of lawlessness, demoralization, brutishness: in it the nation would only be a shapeless, wild, blind force, like that of the stormy, elemental sea. Yet such a condition may be often heard described as that of true freedom.16 For Hegel, the individualistic basis of Hobbess thought means that the unity of subjects in a Hobbesian state will always be a weak one. From Hegels perspective, Hobbesian order is described in terms reminiscent of those Hobbes uses to describe the chaotic state of nature. While Hobbess commonwealth is built from the ground up out of individuals who preexist it logically, if not also chronologically, Hegel is a theorist of the State as an organic whole greater than and prior to its parts.17 Church, State, and History The passage twice cited in Political Theology II concludes the sub-section of the Encyclopaedia devoted to modern ethical life (Sittlichkeit). This sub-section has three subdivisions: (a) the Family, (b) Civil Society, and (c) the State. The third and final further subdivision of subdivision (c) is 548-552, which appears under the heading Universal history [Weltgeschichte]. This textual structure reflects a conviction that Hegel and Voegelin
Hegel, 544, emphasis mine. If there is to be any sense in embarking upon the question of the participation of private persons in public affairs, it is not a brutish mass, but an already organized nationone in which a governmental power [Regierungsgewalt] existswhich should be presupposed. The desirability of private persons taking part in public affairs is partly to be put in their concrete, and therefore more urgent, sense of general wants. But the true motive is the right of the collective spirit to appear as an externally universal will. Hence the will-reason [wollende Vernunft] exhibits its existence in them as a preponderating majority of freemen. But it is not in the inorganic form of mere individuals as such (after the democratic fashion of election), but as organic factors, as estates, that they enter upon that participation. In the state a power or agency must never appear and act as a formless, inorganic shape, i.e. basing itself on the principle of multeity and mere numbers. To fit together the several parts of the state into a constitution after the fashion of mere understandingi.e. to adjust within it the machinery of a balance of powers external to each otheris to contravene the fundamental idea of what a state is. Hegel, 544, (273-274; 342-343) emphasis added.
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8 share: namely, that political theory is possible only as the philosophy of history. Hegels historical narrative, unlike Voegelins, is both axiological and teleological, and culminates in the present; modern values are rational and normatively binding, and represent the completion of an ages-long narrative of intellectual progress toward the goal of freedom. In Hegels account, the object of universal history is Spirit (or Mind, Geist). To say just what Spirit is, is a complicated task, but it is clear that the concept encompasses both individual human consciousness and the philosophical, historical self-consciousness of mankind as such. Spirit manifests itself in human ethical and political institutions, and is embodied most fully in the type of freedom found in the modern German or Germanic state.18 What Schmitt finds in Hegel that was lacking in Hobbes is this: an account of the state as a necessary and sufficient condition of human freedom. Per Hobbes, individuals agree to give up their freedom in order to preserve their lives; a measure of liberty is retained by subjects, but only to the extent that the sovereign chooses to allow it. Personal freedom and political authority are thus set at odds with one another, and defined against each other. Hegel, on the other hand, argues that only through an authoritative state are we free. Further, the degree of freedom that modern Europeans can hope for is historically unprecedented; in fact, it is the climax, the fulfillment of history. Finally, history is no mere chronology of human deeds and affects. Rather, it has definitive normative weight precisely because it is a narrative of divine action through man. Hegels history is sacred history, the history of
18 Hegel has in mind, specifically, a constitutional monarchy in which the people are represented through established Estates. However, it is doubtful that Hegel had any existing state in mind as a model: This is a theory of monarchy which, at the time Hegel formulated it, was far from being actualized anywhere in Europe. It is surely not a paradigm of the Prussian monarchy. Shlomo Avineri, Hegels Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 188. See Hegel, Encyclopaedia 549 (280-281); Enzyklopdie, 352: But, really, if Rome or the German empire [das deutsche Reich], etc. are an actual and genuine object of political history, and the aim to which the phenomena are to be related and by which they are to be judged; then in universal history the genuine spirit, the consciousness of it, and of its essence, is even in a higher degree a true and actual object and theme, an aim to which all other phenomena are essentially and actually subservient. In The Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), the final sections (357-360) speak of das germanische Reich.

9 salvation. If Schmitt is truly in the business of myth-making, as he seems to claim, then perhaps our attempt to interpret Political Theology II is a Sisyphean undertaking; perhaps we can give no precise meaning to the formula from political theology to political Christology. Yet simply by following Schmitts footnotes, I would argue, we find intimations of a politico-theological constellation so monstrous as to make a pollywog of Hobbess Leviathan.19 In Hegels world-historical narrative, Spirit wants to be free, and finds this freedom through religion as well as politics. Christianity, and specifically Lutheran Christianity, is the religion of human freedom.20 It reconciles God and man, thereby freeing Spirit from external authority. And on Hegels readingcruciallyit does this by straightforwardly identifying religious institutions with political ones: true religion sanctions obedience to the law and the legal arrangements of the statean obedience which is itself the true freedom. The precept of religion, Give to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is Gods is not enough: the question is to settle what is Caesars [was des Kaisers ist], what belongs to the secular authority. The divine spirit must interpenetrate the entire secular life [das Weltliche immanent durchdringen]: whereby wisdom is concrete within it, and it carries the terms of its own justification. But that concrete indwelling is only the aforesaid ethical organizations. It is the morality of marriage the morality of economic and industrial action the morality of an obedience dedicated to the law of the state.21

19 Schmitts writings elsewhere give us further reason to regard his appeal to Hegel against Hobbes as singularly important for interpreting his political-theological claims: the temporal divinity that Hegel ascribes to the leading people in world history is especially apt to represent the totality in the specific meaning of finite infinity and of the typical connection between immanence and transcendence. Hence the temporal god of Hegels philosophy is also a present god, numen praesens, and not a representation. He has no spiritual kinship with the mortal god of Hobbes philosophy of the state. On this contrary, [Hobbess] deus mortalis is a machine whose mortality is based on the fact that one day it may be shattered by civil war or rebellion. Schmitt, The Leviathan, 100. In this passage from 1938 Schmitt explicitly deploys Hegel against Voegelins Der autoritre Staat (CW4), and apophatically refrains from replying to Peterson. 20 Catholicism misses the mark by locating God outside man and state: in Catholicism this spirit of all truth is in actuality set in rigid opposition to the self-conscious spirit. God is in the host presented to religious adoration as an external thing. From that first and supreme status of externalization flows every other phase of externalityof bondage, non-spirituality, and superstition. It leads to a laity, receiving its knowledge of divine truth, as well as the direction of its will and conscience from without and from another order.Hegel, Encyclopaedia 552 (284-285). 21 Hegel, Encyclopaedia 552 (286-287), emphasis mine.

10 Embedded, as it is, in a narrative of sacred history, Hegels identification of church and state has the metaphysical underpinnings that Hobbess lacks. Spirit is not only human, but also divine. It creates itself as a world-immanent God.22 The Hobbesian sovereign is empowered to judge and to interpret, but he remains an all too human figure whose authority springs only from his ability to satisfy material needs and desires. The Germanic, Protestant state, however, consists in the march of God in the world; in the organization of the state the divine has broken through into the sphere of actuality.23 This complex of God-Spirit-State represents a specifically Christian understanding of divinity. In fact, the idea of the Trinity is the substance of history, its origin and its goal, the axis on which the History of the World turns.24 In order to make man fully self-conscious of himself as Spirit, God had to appear in the world as flesh.25 But the upshot of the statement that God became man is the converse statement that man has become God. In arguing that Spirit is reconciled to itself in the state, Hegel is, in effect, offering modern man a concrete, this-worldly salvation; and not only is he offering it, but as the one to make us aware of the salvation already present in modern ethical life, he is bringing it about, and inviting his reader to help do the same. The Hegel Schmitt cites is the intellectual who brings us freedom by identifying true religion as obedience to the law as something holy, not made by merely human hands:
Hegel, Enzyklopdie 549 (352): und der Geist ist es, der nicht nur ber der Geschichte wie ber den Wassern schwebt, sondern in ihr webt und allein das Bewegende ist. Cf. Genesis 1:2 in Luthers translation: und der Geist Gottes schwebte auf dem Wasser. 23 Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 279, addition (G) to 258. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, one-volume edition, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, J. M. Stewart, and H. S. Harris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 264n. 24 Gott wird nur so als Geist erkannt, indem er als der Dreieinige gewut wird. Dieses neue Prinzip ist die Angel, um welche sich die Weltgeschichte dreht. Bis hierher und von daher geht die Geschichte. Als die Zeit erfllet war, sandte Gott seinen Sohn, heit es in der Bibel. Das heit nichts anderes als: das Selbstbewutsein hatte sich zu denjenigen Momenten erhoben, welche zum Begriff des Geistes gehren, und zum Bedrfnis, diese Momente auf eine absolute Weise zu fassen. Hegel, Werke, vol. 12, Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Geschichte, 386-387; The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1991), 319. 25 Hegel, Philosophy of Religion, 237-8 (454-5).
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11 Only in the principle of mind, which is aware of its own essence, is implicitly in absolute liberty, and has its actuality in the act of self-liberation, does the absolute possibility and necessity exist for political power, religion, and the principles of philosophy coinciding in one, and for accomplishing the reconciliation of actuality in general with the mind, of the state with the religious conscience as well as with the philosophical consciousness. In the Protestant state, the constitution and its code embody the principle and the development of the moral life, which proceeds and can only proceed from the truth of religion. The moral life of the state and the religious spirituality of the state are thus reciprocal guarantees of strength.26 The foregoing rough sketch should serve to flesh out Schmitts description of his own mature thought as political Christology finding a culmination in Hegel.27 A Myth for the Present Age In his discussion of Encyclopaedia 552 Schmitt also quotes Hegels comment in The Philosophy of History that We may say that nowhere are to be found such revolutionary utterances as in the Gospels.28 Schmitt, of course, is not calling for revolution by taking political Christology as his political-theological position. Writing in December of 1969, and looking back to 1848, Schmitt sees the revolutionary transformation of European politics as a fait accompli, and seems to be casting about for the basis of a religious reformation to simultaneously catch up with it and counteract it. Intellectually, post-WorldWar-II Europe is confronted by the (for Schmitt, mutually opposed) alternatives of anarchy and nihilism, and politically, by liberalism and communism.29 By invoking this passage in the

Hegel, Encyclopaedia 552, 287. Again, how Hegel himself is to be understood is another matteran honest attempt to interpret his political thought would of necessity take the form of a separate treatise. This has been an admittedly one-sided reading of Hegel, following Schmitts references to a problematic passage that runs against the left-leaning interpretations of Hegel like that of Alexandre Kojve, with which Schmitt was no doubt familiar. See Hoelzl and Ward, 19. 28 Schmitt, Political Theology II, 147n11. Schmitt gives no citation, and omits the second half of the sentence, which in full runs: Man kann sagen, nirgends sei so revolutionr gesprochen worden als in den Evangelien, denn alles sonst Geltende ist als ein Gleichgltiges, nicht zu Achtendes gesetz. Hegel, Werke, vol. 12, Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Geschichte (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986), 396. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 328: We may say that nowhere are to be found such revolutionary utterances as in the Gospels; for everything that had been respected, is treated as a matter of indifferenceas worthy of no regard. 29 Schmitt, Donoso Corts, 9-13.
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12 Encyclopaedia, Schmitt turns to an extremely theological moment in Hegels philosophy of world history in order, it seems, to provide a new political myth commensurate with the challenges of the age. The rhetoric found here lends itself easily to a reading of Hegel as a Joachitic thinker pointing to world-immanent salvation in a coming realm of the spirit.30 This is in keeping with Schmitts ambiguous appeal to Joachim, mentioned above, which is found in the very same sentence.31 The political implications of Political Theology II are not clear. The text is, in part, a response to specific circumstances, a contribution to contemporary public debates. Probably, Schmitt means to endorse West Germanys Notstandgesetze of 1968, which provided for the governments assumption of extra-legal emergency powers in a state of exception.32 Another possibility is that Political Theology II is meant, in part, as a sympathetic critique of

For a treatment of the influence of Joachim on Hegels philosophy of history, see Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 236-246. A broader, sympathetic reading of Hegel as a political-theological thinker is Andrew Shanks, Hegels Political Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); a critical stance is taken in Mark Lilla, Hegel and the Political Theology of Reconciliation, The Review of Metaphysics 54, no. 4 (June 2001), 859-900. 31 Schmitts adoration of Corts, as well, is rooted in an affinity for Christian theology of history: Sein Expos ber die orientalische Frage von 1839 ist ein universalgeschichtelicher Traktat ber das Sterben des ottomanischen und das unwiderstehliche Wachstum des russischen Reiches, ber den Kolo, der von Europa her dem anderen Kolo, Amerika, die Hand reicht. Nichts fesselt ihm mehr als das Geheimnis geschichtlicher Schicksale. Sein unersttliches Staunen ber dieses Geheimnis ist bei ihm strker als Prinzipienhaftigkeit, Doktrinarismus und Rhetorik. Es ist zu bedauern, da er nach 1848 als eigentlichen Gegner immer nur Proudhon im Auge hatte, das heit einen Revolutionr, der seinem geistigen Typus nach kein Geschichtsphilosoph, sondern ein Moralist war. Jedenfalls sind die berhmten Voraussagen, die seit 1848 den fast mythischen Ruhm Donosos bewirkt haben, nur uerste, folgerichtige Steigerungen seines Staunens vor dem Rtsel der Geschichte. Es sind zugleich Zeugnisse fr die unerhrten Mglichkeiten eines christlichen Geschichtsbildes, wenn dieses im Kampf mit andern Geschichtsbildern die bloe Geschichtsphilosophie berwindet. Introducing his own work on Corts, Schmitt underscores the relevance of this approach to history to contemporary Europe: Die folgenden vier Aufstze erscheinen hier unter dem Gesamttitel Donoso Corts in gesamteuopischer Interpretation. Damit ist zum Ausdruck gebracht, da sie den groen Spanier in einer bernationalen, europischen Entwicklung sehen, die sich seit 1848 zu immer tieferen und immer einfacheren Gegenstzen steigert. Als Deutsche haben wir das Recht, zu diesem Thema zu sprechen. Schmitt, Donoso Corts, 14-15. 32 In the wake of acts of terrorism (from the Red Army Faction) and in the global climate of students contesting authority, the Coalition in Germany (of CSU and SPD) passed the infamous Notstandgesetze on 30 May 1968. By this they fully restored the sovereignty of the German state and reinserted the essence of Article 48 into the new constitution. Political Theology II was written during this time, and it is likely that Schmitt felt some satisfaction when he read Article 115e and Article 155a of the new German constitution. Hoelzl and Ward, 15.
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13 these laws, which vested the decision about the exception in a cabinet, not an individual.33 There is certainly a critique of the Second Vatican Council in Schmitts appreciation of Hans Barion, as well.34 But further, this text is also a work of theology, and its message has general applicability. However, what this message is, in concrete terms, is hard to say. Perhaps, as in Roman Catholicism and Political Form, Schmitt means to suggest that Christian ecclesiology provides a model for the form of a political society such as West Germany, or a larger European state or confederation united against enemy liberal and communist regimes. Perhaps he wants to energize the Catholic Church to act within existing political societies against the forces of anarchy and nihilism. One almost suspects that the pregnant vagueness is the entire point. Political Christology as Gnosticism But vague political discourse in the soteriological tradition of Christianity is dangerous. It goes without saying that in most cases, the reductio ad Hitlerum is a hyperbolic rhetorical trope, but in Schmitts case, it is not entirely inappropriate. He actively supported the National Socialist rise to power in the 1930s, and the language of his later work suggests an unapologetic attitude toward this phase in his careera fact that becomes more disturbing the more we know about Schmitts political Christology. Schmitt disapproves the obliqueness of Petersons opposition to the totalitarian ambitions of [Hitlers] National Socialist regime: The treatise from 1935 does not deal with the crisis [which, predictably, followed Hitlers coming to power in 1933] explicitly and ex professo, but in a way, one might say, that is disguised in terms of a very erudite historico33 Schmitts adopted view of sovereignty (a view following Bodins, and evident in his reading of Hobbes)namely that sovereignty can never be dividedhad been contradicted. Is this the reason why he takes up a problem he was working on in 1922 in 1969, calling again on the Political Theology? Hoelzl and Ward, 15. 34 See, especially, Political Theology II, 46-49.

14 theologico-philological focus on the early centuries of the Roman Empire.35 Schmitt has a point. Petersons text is couched as an Augustinian critique of Eusebius of Caesarea, a political theologian who sought to provide exclusive, divine legitimation for the reign of the Christian Emperor Constantine. In order for Petersons argument to apply to the political situation of Germany in 1935, there must be a strong analogy between the Nazi regime and the Roman Empire of the fourth century. As Schmitt writes: The paradigmatic nature of such as figure [as Constantine] and of its entire context, including Bishop Eusebius himself, and therefore also the possibility of comparing Constantine the Great with, for example, Hitler or Stalin, is very limited. It is inadmissible in scientific and theological scholarship to explain the relevance of 1935 through historical parallels drawn from 325at least not without explaining in concreto the intended exemplary nature of the evidence.36 It is fair enough to insist on the disanalogy between Constantine and Hitler, as Schmitt does. What is troubling, however, is Schmitts enthusiasm about the analogy between Eusebius and himself: To be named alongside Eusebius is an undeserved honor for me although I would not deny the compliment, which implies a validation [of my position].37 Even assuming that the validated position he speaks of is that of Political Theology from 1922, and not also that of Der Fhrer schtz das Recht, for instance, one has to wonder what Schmitt was thinking.38 Who could Schmitts Constantine have been? Perhaps not Hitler himself, but nevertheless, the regime Schmitt decided to defend as a scholar and public intellectual was the Third Reich. If Eusebius praised Constantine in order to serve the greater interests of the church, then perhaps Schmitts support for the Nazis was meant to

Schmitt, Political Theology II, 43. Schmitt, Political Theology II, 64. 37 Schmitt, Political Theology II, 47. 38 Schmitt, Der Fhrer schtz das Recht: Zur Reichstagsrede Adolf Hitlers vom 13, Juli, 1934, Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung 39, no. 15 (1934), 945-950.
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15 do the same, or to insist on the primacy of the political. Yet as we saw above, Schmitt is happy to cite Joachims doctrine of a coming third Reich of the Spirit, and coyly but seemingly deliberately identifies his own position with the political theology of Hegel, calling the readers attention to a passage where Spirit is finally reconciled to itself in a theologically legitimated Germanic, if not German, state.39 One would think that with the gift of hindsight, Schmitt would recognize the impropriety of language evocative of the Nazi regime which, in the end, served neither the interests of the Catholic Church, nor of Germany, nor of the political. Hegels argument in the early nineteenth century that freedom comes through obedience to an authoritative state is, of course, understandable, to the extent it is comprehensible; a former Nazis seeming advocacy of the unity of church and state in a specifically Germanic political society in 1969 is perverse, especially given the Protestant and Catholic churches failure to prevent the Nazi governments injustices and atrocities, beginning with Hitlers seizure and consolidation of power, and ending only in 1945.40 Schmitt was one of the twentieth centurys foremost legal scholars. His work as a whole cannot be dismissed merely because of his affiliation with the Nazi party. It is a contested question to what extent Schmitts political views actually coincided with those of the NSDAP; perhaps Schmitt was a Eusebius without a Constantine, that is, without a regime or a ruler worthy of full and unqualified endorsement. But he did choose to endorse National Socialism, and his rhetoric in Political Theology II hardly suggests remorse for this decision. In fact, his political Christology seems intended to grace the authoritarian statism

39 Avineris point that Hegels state bears only a small resemblance to any state existing at the time bears repeating. Nevertheless, the modern state depicted in Encyclopaedia 544 is expressly contrasted with England, and in Encyclopaedia 552 Hegel speaks of the Protestant state only a few pages after an endorsement of the Lutheran Church (284-285, 291). 40 The degree of the churches complicity with the regime is still contested, but in any event it was considerable. See CW31, especially the fourth and fifth chapters: Descent into the Ecclesiastic Abyss: The Evangelical Church, and Descent into the Ecclesiastical Abyss: The Catholic Church.

16 that led him to support the Nazis with an ephemeral soteriology redolent with the immanentism of Hegel and Joachim. In Carl Schmitts thought, we can see a disturbing conflation not only of politics and religion, but also of God and state. By the time Schmitt publishes Political Theology II, this has become a specifically Christian political theology of the right. Schmitt invokes a Trinitarian deity in support of worldly political aims, and, in his own fashion, looks for the presence of Christ or his Spirit in modern political institutions. This claim may strike some readers as odd. While Schmitts name is the one most closely associated with the term political theology, the preponderance of his work is juristic in nature and scholarly in tone; in fact, the question whether Schmitts work is fundamentally theological is still contested. His writings are all but devoid of the overtly eschatological language employed by political theologians of the left such as John Milbank. Nevertheless, by simply taking Schmitt at his word, we see that Schmitts intellectual position is not only theological, but that it, too, fits squarely in the tradition of Christian (or post-Christian, Christian-influenced) political soteriology. My reading of Schmitt owes much to Eric Voegelins critique of a phenomenon he infelicitously called gnosticism, which is perhaps better characterized as immanent eschatology. This is a critique Voegelins followers have frequently applied to thinkers of the left, but it is equally applicable herea fact that, incidentally, calls into question the dominant misunderstanding of Voegelin as a proponent or ally of the American conservative movement. Our appraisal of Schmitt's political thought must take into account the practical implications of his heterodox, theoretically sophisticated yet avowedly religious extremism. Further, if Schmitt's reading of Hegel is correct, then contemporary interpreters of Hegel must again consider whether and how his practical philosophy might be stripped of its

17 original theological garb. Finally, I would argue, the specifically Christian or Christological trajectory of Schmitts thought offers us a lesson of considerable relevance today. A number of theorists on the left (Agamben, Badiou, Milbank, !i"ek) have suggested that the revolutionary and egalitarian dimensions of Christianity might be radically reinterpreted and, freed from the strictures of religious tradition, serve as points of departure for contemporary political thought. This conviction motivates much of the current academic interest in political theology. However, the case of Schmitt shows that the most politically promising elements of Christianity are attended by even greater perils. The prospect that Jesus Christ might be present in a hypothetical Schmittian stateactually or metaphoricallyshould be enough to turn us away from the theological elements in Schmitts thought, at the very least. More generally, however, it gives us reason to question any political theory that relies on the rhetoric or theology of salvation. The message of salvation that undergirds Christian thought and experience can be liberating. But if we think of it as an idea to be actualized we run the risk of following Schmitt who, as we will see, identifies freedom with submission toand complicity inpolitical monstrosity.