Hidden Dialogue: Schmitt and Strauss

Author: (German) Mayer
Translator: Zhu Yanbing et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-07-01
Features: "The dialogue between Schmitt and Strauss is one of the most significant events in the field of political thought in the 20th century, understanding this event is crucial for the repositioning of the human spirit in the postmodern context." The eight essays collected here were written between 1987 and 2001, discussing Schmitt and Strauss, touching on the relationship between religion and politics, the entanglement of philosophy and theology, as well as the tension between politics and philosophical life. They collectively revolve around the theological-political question, clarifying this issue through the distinction between political theology and political philosophy, and strive to draw out answers. Excerpt: Strauss's Critique of Hobbes
With the publication of Volume 3 of the Strauss Gesamtausgabe, the editing and publication of Strauss's early works have also been completed. This volume for the first time collects all the monographs, essays, articles, and essays written during the period before Strauss moved to the United States in 1938, including posthumous works, published in the language used at the time of writing (translator's note: i.e., German). It is divided into two parts: The first part consists of works written in German between 1934 and 1935 in London and Cambridge, which were published in English translation in 1936, The Origins of Hobbes's Political Theology, which established Strauss's early reputation in the Anglo-American academy. The text presented to the readers here is the German version published in Hobbes's Political Theology in 1965, but it has been thoroughly revised and corrected based on the original typescript and materials, incorporating the appendix from the 1936 English edition. In addition to the 1932 Commentary on Schmitt's The Concept of the Political (with Strauss's marginal notes written on his own copy), there are four previously unpublished articles: the Outline for the book Hobbes's Political Theology—Excerpts from Natural Law, the Preface for the planned book on Hobbes, both written in Berlin in 1931; and two other articles: Some Notes on Hobbes's Political Theology, written between 1932 and 1933 in Paris, and the Religious Critique of Hobbes: On the Understanding of the Enlightenment, begun in Paris in 1933 and continued in London in 1934 but never completed (over 100 printed pages). The second part of the volume consists of letters, collecting all preserved and known correspondence between Strauss and Krug, Klein, L?with, and Solms, without any. These letters were written between 1928 and 1973, totaling 320 letters (translator's note: including letters from Krug, Klein, L?with, and Solms to Strauss); they shine like a bright beam of light, refracting with unexpected intensity the path of Strauss's thought, and are considered one of the most important philosophical correspondences of the 20th century. The articles in Strauss Gesamtausgabe up to Volume 3 fully demonstrate that Strauss's in-depth study of Hobbes's philosophy, though sometimes interrupted, was never abandoned. This research, which spanned from the mid-1920s to 1936, lasted for over a decade. In 1964, Strauss reflected, "The background of my Hobbes research is: to examine the beginning of biblical criticism in the 17th century, particularly to examine Spinoza's theological politics" (preface to the German first edition, Gesamtausgabe, page 7). One of the research results is the chapter on Hobbes in the 1928 completed, 1930 published monograph Spinoza's Religious Critique, which holds a key position for Schmitt's 1938 published book The Leviathan in Hobbes's Political Theory. On January 8, 1930, Strauss informed Krug that he "wanted to now continue" the examination that he had "begun in the book on Spinoza" in the form of a Hobbesian anthropological analysis"; the following October 3, Strauss similarly mentioned to Krug that his book on Hobbes still required a year of intensive work (pages 382, 393). The writing plan for the book on Hobbes had taken a concrete form during this period, so Strauss was able to outline the book in detail at the end of October and early November 1931, titled Hobbes's Political Theology: Excerpts from Natural Law. A few days later—in other words, on November 16, Strauss informed Krug: "Moreover, I am writing an (unprepared for publication) preface, where I attempt to explain natural law (Naturrecht) and what is missing in the history of the critique of natural law. I believe it is most important to emphasize that the only prerequisite for today's attitude toward natural law is historical consciousness" (see Gesamtausgabe, page 396, also see page 394). At the end of 1931 in the "Preface to the planned book on Hobbes," Strauss launched a deep critique of the arguments against natural law from positivism and historicism, targeting Hans Kelsen and Karl Bergbohm. A year later in Paris, when Strauss was writing a "literature review on natural law" for the "Social Science and Social Policy Library," he was still thinking about how to carry out this critique. Due to political events in Germany, the publication of this "literature review on natural law" did not come to fruition. Instead, the "planned book on Hobbes" made significant progress. In early 1932, Schmitt used it as the basis for his research plan to apply for the urgently needed Rockefeller Fellowship. Strauss later said that at that time, over 100 pages had already been written. Among the unpublished manuscripts in Chicago, there is a manuscript of similar length, mostly typed. A comparison with the 1931 Outline fully demonstrates that a separate published work on Hobbes did not exceed one-third of the remaining drafts of the planned book. The last sentence in the manuscript is: "Hobbes does not begin to explore the question of order or law because he denies the existence of order or law prior to human will." Including the entire manuscript in this volume would expand its length by over 150 pages; the main reason for not doing so is twofold. First, to avoid excessive cross-references and repetition, because some topics discussed in Strauss's 1931–1932 manuscripts (such as the antagonistic relationship between vanity and fear in anthropology) were not as thoroughly explored as in the 1933 (published in 1936) monograph on Hobbes; second, after Strauss's research and study in Paris and London, this "outline" needed to be revised as early as 1934. In later works on Hobbes, Strauss revised the "outline" but did not return to the previous text.