ABSTRACT
At a time when liberal democratic politics are apparently waning in the West, this chapter will offer a constructive critique of mainstream liberalism focusing on the doubly sacrificial character attributed to it by Carl Schmitt. As Schmitt presented it in his Weimar-era work, liberalism is sacrificial in two senses. Firstly, it is sacrificial in the same sense that all political theories are sacrificial, i.e. insofar as they involve selective legitimations of sacrifice. Secondly, and even more crucially, liberalism is sacrificial in the sense that liberal theorists often conceal or deny the sacrificial dynamics of liberalism, thereby sacrificing (or attempting to sacrifice) the right of opponents to contest the selective legitimations of sacrifice that they present. In support of Schmitt’s diagnosis, this chapter will provide a detailed reading of John Rawls’s Political Liberalism, one of the key texts of the modern liberal canon. At root, Rawls’s text is an attempt to provide a model of liberal politics that could plausibly appeal to all “reasonable” persons (liberal and non-liberal), and that can therefore be imposed on all persons non-coercively (since it is linked to their “common human reason” and not some alien, dictatorial will). By overemphasizing the reasonableness of political liberalism, Rawls glosses over its sacrificial and coercive dynamics. In light of this reading, and more broadly in light of Schmitt’s critique, the chapter suggests that liberalism needs to shift its priorities. What is valuable about liberalism—and what sets it apart from the anti-liberal populism now ripping through the West—is not its capacity to transcend a politics of sacrifice (it cannot), but its capacity for a certain reflexivity in its opposition to sacrifice.
