Meier, Heinrich. The Lesson of Carl Schmitt.

Simpson, Peter

MEIER, Heinrich. The Lesson of Carl Schmitt. Translated by Marcus Brainard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. xxiv + 210 pp. Paper, $25.00--One might be forgiven for thinking this book written by Leo Strauss. It has the obliqueness and indirection of Strauss, and its (unspoken) thesis is the Straussian nihilism that philosophy and faith are unfounded choices. Philosophy cannot refute faith because it begs the question against faith by assuming reason is superior. Faith cannot refute philosophy because it begs the question against philosophy by assuming faith is superior. One just has to choose. This thesis, which goes by the name of fideism, is false. Faith without reason is absurd, even for the believer, and reason without faith is unfulfilled, even for the philosopher. Ancient philosophers, at least, did not think philosophy sufficient to grasp the whole; ancient believers too did not think faith is believable without sufficient reason. Meier can only assert his fideist thesis about faith by quoting modern Protestant theologians. Catholics, at least, are not fideists because fideism has been condemned as a heresy by the Church. If Schmitt was a fideist, he was not a true Catholic, and since he thought himself a true Catholic, he must have failed to understand himself. Meier gives no evidence for the charge.

At the center of Schmitt's thinking, says Meier, is political theology, by which Meier means politics understood from the unargued assumption of faith. The thesis is novel to the extent that Schmitt is often presented as adopting the view that at the center of politics is the opposition of enemy and friend. Meier shows that behind that opposition lies a more fundamental claim about the truth of faith, and a more fundamental opposition, that between Christ and Antichrist. Schmitt had an abiding concern with the katechon of 2 Thessalonians 2.6-7 where Paul speaks of the one who "holds" the Antichrist from arriving.

The Church Fathers interpreted the katechon as the Roman Empire. Schmitt speculated that there might be more than one katechon, whether at the same time or at different times. But he was concerned to support the katechon, whatever it was. What is the katechon now? Not liberalism which, because it is political and not theological, marginalizes faith and removes it from the political sphere; for Schmitt, politics has to be political theology because it can leave nothing out. But it leaves nothing out because it orientates politics to theology and so to the role of the katechon--the one who holds back the ultimate enemy who is Antichrist.

Schmitt is notorious for being a supporter of National Socialism. Meier deals with the question at length, including Schmitt's antisemitism. But anti-semitism is a word that obfuscates. It cannot mean anti-Jew because Christ and the entire early Church were Jews. The Church still today includes Jews among its members. The Nazis too, at least at the beginning, supported the Church. Further, the Nazis did not persecute the Jews called Karaites. They persecuted the Jews connected with the Talmud (which Karaites reject). The founding premise of the Talmud is that Christ is not the Messiah. One cannot be a Talmudic Jew and a Christian, but one can be some other sort of Jew and a Christian. Meier leaves these facts obscure.

He also leaves obscure the possibility that if Schmitt was focused on the katechon he was focused on National Socialism as perhaps the katechon of his own time. National Socialism claimed, after all, to be the Third Reich, successor to the First Reich, and the First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire that the Church Fathers identified with the katechon. The Third Reich, as Schmitt could not fail to realize, failed to be the katechon. It ended in mass murder. But then all the protagonists of the Second World War were mass murderers. The Soviet Communists (not a few of whom were well known at the time to be Talmudic Jews) were mass murderers from the beginning. The Allies became mass murderers when they insisted on unconditional surrender, since they engaged in mass murder (the blanket bombing of German cities, the atomic bombing of Japan) to enforce unconditional surrender.

Meier's book is about Schmitt to the extent that it analyzes all his writings. It is, in this respect, an invaluable source-book for exploring the nature and development of Schmitt's thought. It is not about Schmitt to the extent that it is pressed into the service of Straussian fideist propaganda. But the unreason in Meier's book seems to be on Meier's part, not Schmitt's. For instance, Meier takes for granted that to believe in the resurrection is a matter of faith and not of reason. Schmitt, as a good Catholic, could not have believed such a thing. That the man Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead is not a matter of religious faith but of historical fact. It is as well established a historical fact as that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. What is a matter of faith is that the man Jesus of Nazareth is the Second Person of the Trinity. Meier does not understand Schmitt's faith (a further sign of which is his misleading discussion of the doctrine of original sin). To reject faith for philosophy without understanding faith is hardly rational.--Peter Simpson, City University of New York.