ABSTRACT
The point of departure of Schmitt’s theory is a diagnosis of the general political crisis of the European world after World War I, a diagnosis whose acumen, with the benefit of hindsight, we cannot now question. The constituents of this crisis are as follows. First, the prevailing system which was inherited from the nineteenth century transpired as a confused mixture of democracy and liberalism. Second, in Schmitt’s view, two false conceptions of the political had transpired in the nineteenth century European polity under the impact of liberalism: “social politics” and “cosmopolitan politics.” Third, there is a further cause of incompatibility in the problematic marriage of democracy and liberalism: the former is repressively collectivist, insofar as its inherent tendency is the creation of social, cultural, moral homogeneity within the community, while the latter is individualist and an instinctive champion of difference. Schmitt’s predilection for political theology is therefore neither accidental nor is it a mere vestige of his waning political Catholicism.
