The Sunic Journal: Carl Schmitt

New Right intellectual Tomislav Sunic has dedicated an episode of his radio journal to Carl Schmitt.

Link to mp3: The Sunic Journal: Carl Schmitt

Dr. Sunic's official site: tomsunic.info

Schmitt on Monarchy and Historicism

In Constitutional Theory Schmitt enumerates the various types of justification presented for monarchy and separates them into two classes: political and nonpolitical.

Religiously grounded justifications for monarchy only have polemical meaning for enlightenment opponents because the source of the monarch's power is not owed to any man or institution. But the significance is greater for the traditionalist, who recognizes in the monarch an analogy to God who governs the world. The religious justification goes beyond mere analogy, though, as the monarch is also considered to have supernatural attributes. Schmitt explains that “[t]he last attempt to work seriously in practical terms with these religious images of monarchy falls in the year 1825, when Karl X of France still wanted to heal the sick through the laying on of hands, an attempt, however that only produced a somewhat embarassing romantic imitation.”

The patriarchal justification exemplified in the work of Filmer takes a similar approach through analogy, and is therefore also misunderstood by enlightenment opponents. Schmitt categorizes these justifications:

“All principled justifications of monarchy contain at the core only two ideas, which lead in a distinctive sense directly to monarchy: the idea of a personal god and image of the father. None of these ideas belongs essentially to the political sphere. Where the monarchy is religiously justified and the monarch becomes a divine creation or one standing in a special connection with God, the idea moves in the theological realm or on the terrain of worldviews, not in the political sphere. If the world is governed as a unity by a single god, and the unity of the state is understood under a monarch as something equivalent and analogous, the primary concept is obviously God and world and not monarchy and state. If the monarch is understood as the father of the state family and the dynastic concept of a hereditary monarchy is derived from it, the idea of first importance is family and not state. Always, therefore, it is nonpolitical ideas and images that constitute the core of the argumentation.”

To this understanding Schmitt contrasts 19th- and 20th-century justifications for monarchy, which turn on pragmatic-political justifications. Under this tradition of thought Schmitt surprisingly places both enlightenment and certain counter-enlightenment thinkers:

”In the nineteenth century, the rationalistic and empirical justifications of monarchy are distinguished by the fact that they incorporate the monarch into the rechtsstaat system of separation of powers. These justifications make a mere governmental form out of the monarchy and render it into the more or less influential chief executive. The justifications are different here, but they always take proving the usefulness and appropriateness of the monarchy as their point of departure...Every consideration of appropriateness and usefulness, just like all arguments deduced from historical experience, whether they are presented by liberal theorists like Benjamin Constant and Guizot or by antiliberal monarchists like Charles Maurras, are necessarily relative.”

Schmitt proceeds to criticize the historicist arguments because if one takes such an approach, then “[o]ne can only say that monarchy arises and passes away like everything in history.”

Interestingly, this criticism can be raised against de Maistre, who advances certain historicist and pragmatic justifications for the monarchy.

Eiserne Krone: Carl Schmitts Hobbes-Interpretation

Eiserne Krone reports on a new book that investigates Schmitt's Hobbes. The popular description of Schmitt as the "20th Century Hobbes" is rather misleading unless one understands how Schmitt's Hobbes differs from the social-contract Hobbes we usually associate with the author of Leviathan.

Eiserne Krone: Carl Schmitts Hobbes-Interpretation

Some observations on Schmitt's early constitutional theory and de Maistre's analysis of constitutions.

“Government is a true religion; it has its dogmas, its mysteries, its priests; to submit to the individual discussion is to destroy it; it has life only through the national mind, that is to say, political faith, which is a creed.” - Joseph de Maistre, “Study on Sovereignty”


In his "Study on Sovereignty," Joseph de Maistre argues that no nation is constituted a priori because a constitutive act requires a presupposed common ground for compromise and the mutual recognition of duties and rights amongst the people. This common ground is the essence of the constitution because the force of the prescriptions codified in the document derives from the capacity and will of the constitution-writing people to enforce and assent to those laws. This will depends in turn on the pre-formal customary duties observed by the constituting people. For example, Americans have rights because the original constituting force was bound by the customary duty to subordinate itself to whatever prescriptions were given in the constitution. If this original duty is subjected to critical thought – to rational discussion – then it is possible that this duty may be attacked and destroyed institutionally. That is, if the initial conditions of a constitution-making people, such as the customs antecedent to the written constitution, are subject to the same procedures as ordinary constitutional laws – abrogation though amendment or even indictment through public discourse – then it is possible that the basis of the social order may be eliminated. Since the preservation of social order is an axiom of statecraft, this problem has to be confronted by all administrations.


This possibility leads de Maistre to champion the necessity of national dogmas and prejudices that are unimpeachable through discussion and rational political procedure. In practice, this would entail restrictions on certain bourgeois liberties like freedom of speech, and on the scope of laws.


Schmitt employs a similar pattern of reasoning in the development of his constitutional theory. The distinction between "constitution" and "constitutional law" that Schmitt emphasizes against legal-positivists aims at limiting the scope of legislation and adjudication in order to reinforce the foundation of the political order against corrosive legal and administrative activism. The constitution, for Schmitt, is qualitatively different from a constitutional law, but it also determines the validity of constitutional laws. Schmitt, like de Maistre, believes that a constitution presupposes existing social forms and agreements. A constitutional convention does not create a new political unity but instead gives a constitution to an already-existing concrete political community in a decisive act, and through that process determines a specific form of political life for the community:


“[T]hat the constitution establishes itself is obviously nonsensical and absurd. The constitution is valid by virtue of the existing political will of that which establishes it. Every type of legal norm, even constitutional law, presupposes that such a will already exists.” - Constitutional Theory, 76


Schmitt justifies this assertion through a comparative analysis of various constitutions and then explains that constitutional laws are valid only if they are consistent with existential values:


”Every existing political unity has its value and its “right to existence” not in the rightness or usefulness of norms, but rather in its existence. Considered juristically, what exists as political power has value because it exists. Consequently, its “right to self-preservation” is the prerequisite of all further discussion; it attempts, above all, to maintain itself in its existence, “in suo esse perseverare” (Spinoza); it protects “its existence, its integrity, its security, and its constitution,” which are all existential values.” - Ibid.


If the political community in America decided on the political form of democracy against monarchy (as stated in the preamble to the constitution), then any subsequent constitutional law must be consistent with this decision and not establish, for example, sovereign bodies that are unaccountable to the "people" mentioned in the preamble. From a purely normative standpoint, it might be "legal" for the constitution to be amended so that it enables an absolute sovereign and terminates democracy, but for Schmitt, this amendment would be unconstitutional because it was inconsistent with the initial political form chosen by the constituting force. Indeed, Schmitt explains that, although the Weimar constitution could be changed through constitutional amendment [Art. 76], this procedure “should not be taken to mean that the fundamental political decision that constitutes the substance of the constitution can be eliminated at any time by parliament and be replaced through some other decision. The German Reich cannot be transformed into an absolute monarchy or into a Soviet republic through a two-thirds majority decision of the Reichstag. The “legislature amending the constitution” according to Art. 76 is not omnipotent at all” (Ibid, 79). Such a radical change in the form of political existence can therefore never be brought about through the legal process; the change is only possible through a radically new, extra-legal political event.

Some notes on de Maistre's Considerations

Joseph de Maistre's Considerations on France contains an interesting sketch of realist anti-formalism. Below are some citations and reflections.

”1. No constitution is the result of deliberation. The rights of the people are never written, or at any rate, constitutive acts or fundamental written laws are never more than declaratory statements of anterior rights about which nothing can be said except that they exist because they exist." (Maistre's note: “It would take a fool to ask who gave liberty to the cities of Sparta, Rome, etc. These republics did not receive their charters from men. God and nature gave them to them.”) (Considerations, 49)

Analysis: Rights consist in the power to act within a certain sphere defined by the observance of duty by others (see Hohfeld's analytic). If this sphere has not been created, then they do not exist. In addition, this sphere cannot be created by formalization, because written laws are inert and do not enforce themselves.

One deficiency of this explanation is that it doesn't account for the possibility that a formal declaration of rights produced by deliberation can precede the enforcement of rights. However, one can still say that these rights potentially existed, because the power to enforce them existed, and the declaration only brought out the latent possibility.

”The rights of the people, properly so called, often enough proceed from the concessions of sovereigns and in this case can be verified historically; but the rights of the monarch and the aristocracy, at least their essential rights, those which we may call constitutive and basic have neither date nor author.” (Considerations, 50)

Analysis: The second part of this sentence references Divine influence on the origin of right, but it also conforms with Maistre's realist analysis of law. In a monarchy characterized by dynastic legitimacy, the sovereign gives the constitution to a nation and possesses the power to legislate. Hence, the rights of the people proceed from the power of the sovereign. However, the rights of the sovereign and the nobility cannot proceed in this same manner, because they are presupposed by the very capacity to legislate and give rights. This means that any declaration of the rights of the aristocracy or the monarch would be tautologous in the sense that they would be the formal declaration of powers that already exist de facto.

”5. Although written laws are merely declarations of anterior rights, it is far from true that everything can be written down; in fact there are always some things in every constitution that cannot be written and that must be allowed to remain in dark and reverent obscurity on pain of upsetting the state." (Ibid)

Analysis: Maistre cites Hume to this end: “[Parliament's right to remonstrate against the king] touched upon the circumstance in the English constitution which is most difficult, or rather altogether impossible, to regulate by laws, and which must be goverened by certain delicate ideas of propriety and decency, rather than to any exact rule or prescription.” To this principle Maistre opposes Thomas Paine's assertion that a constitution doesn't exist unless it can be put in his pocket.

For Maistre, like Bodin before him, the penumbral darkness endemic to all legal forms calls upon existing, anterior principles presupposed but not expressed by the law.

”6. The more that is written, the weaker the institution becomes, and the reason for this is clear. Laws are only declarations of rights, and rights are declared only when they are attacked, so that a multiplicity of written constitutional laws proves only a multiplicity of conflicts and the danger of destruction.” (Ibid)

Analysis: Codification has a specific purpose consisting in the preservation of principles that may otherwise be ignored or forgotten. In other words, codification confers moral qualities on principles by the act of formalization. Thus, if an entity declares its own rights, it is revealing that it needs to defend those rights through other means besides those normally characteristic of its being.

Maistre continues: ”This is why the most vigorous political system of secular antiquity was that of Sparta, in which nothing was written.”

”7. No nation can give itself liberty if it is not already free. When a nation begins to reflect on its existence, its laws are already made. Human influence does not extend beyond the development of rights already existing but disregarded or disputed. If imprudent men overstep these limits with reckless reforms, the nation will lose what rights it had without attaining those it hopes for. From this follows the necessity of innovating only rarely and always with moderation and trepidation.” (Ibid)

Analysis: As mentioned earlier, formal procedure and legislation confer a special moral quality on principles that need to be defended. However, if this moral legitimacy inherent in legality comes to dominate the presupposed legitimacy of the constitution-giving power, then it is possible that rights may be legislated that impinge on the rights of the original institutions. This is how a nation loses its original, fundamental rights.

The Maverick Philosopher on Political Romanticism

An adequate exposition of Schmitt's theory of political romanticism from the Maverick Philosopher

The author of that blog has since moved here.

Thomas Kuhn on Deism and Political Theology

"Other reflections of the new science can be discovered in the political philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Several recent writers have pointed to the significant parallels between the seventeenth-century conception of a mechanically functioning solar system and the eighteenth-century conception of a smoothly running society. The system of checks and balances incorporated in the Constitution of the United States, for example, was intended to give the new American society the same sort of stability in the presence of disruptive forces that the exact compensation of inertial forces and gravitational attraction had given to the Newtonian solar system. Also, the eighteenth century's determination to derive the characteristics of a good society from the innate characteristics of the individual man may well have been fostered in part by the corpuscularism of the seventeenth century. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thought the individual appears again and again as the atom from which the mechanism, society, is fabricated. In the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson dervied the right to revolution from the God-given or inalienable rights of the social atom, man, and his derivation seems to parallel the one in which Newton, a century earlier, had derived the mechanism of nature from the God-given or innate properties of the individual physical atom."
- Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, 263