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April 12, 2006
I've just noticed that my edition of Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political (The University of Chicago Press) contains Leo Strauss's 1932 review of that text entitled 'Notes of Carl Schmitt:The Concept of the Political'
In this review Strauss showed that the underlying basis of Schmitt's affirmation of the political was a profound dissatisfaction with liberalism----that is, with liberal universalism and its aspirations for boundless security and a life that seeks fulfillment in the "interesting and entertaining." Liberalism, according to Schmitt, was above all a rejection of the political, had become submerged in concepts such as "economics" and "culture". In essence, the political had
disappeared as a theme of social science.
As we know Schmitt held that the characteristic distinction of the political is held to be the division into "friends" and "enemies." Such a life--lacking the passion and commitment that would lead one to die for a cause--seemed to Schmitt a rejection of all that was high and vital in human beings. So, Schmitt preached commitment and enmity; in Strauss's words: "He who affirms the political as such respects all who want to fight." The affirmation of the political is Schmitt's negation of liberalism.
Strauss says that Schmitt undertakes the criticism of liberalism in a liberal world, his critique of liberalism occurs in the horizon of liberalism and the critique introduced by Schmitt against liberalism can therefore be completed only if one succeeds in gaining a horizon beyond liberalism.
So Strauss was no more attracted to a debased liberalism than was Schmitt, but he sought not to negate it but to ascend from it. Like Schmitt, he asked, "What is the right way of life?" Yet unlike Schmitt, Strauss was unwilling to rest satisfied simply with any form of political commitment. When he raised the Socratic question, he did so in a Socratic manner--with a view to discovering the true answer.
According to Strauss, this ordering of the human things in terms of the right way to live is equivalent to the the question regarding the best way of life. For Strauss, there are only two alternatives that represent the best way of life. These are the life dedicated to perfecting one’s reason, i.e. the philosophic life, and the life dedicated to biblical faith. These two fundamental alternatives can be reduced to "reason", represented by Athens and to "faith", represented by Jerusalem. Strauss sometimes used the expression "the theologico-political problem” to indicate the problem regarding who or what should rule a community. The ultimate theologico-political problem, for Strauss, is whether biblical faith (Jerusalem) or reason (Athens) should be the highest authority for human beings.
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