The incisive criticisms Schmitt aimed at both liberalism and democracy, and their role in the collapse of the 1919 Weimar Constitution and the Nazi takeover of Germany (all discussed a bit in my last post) are discussed at greater length and depth in two relatively recent books, one by David Dyzenhaus the other by William Rasch. I have reviewed them here.
The books substantially differ in their tones. The first, Legality and Legitimacy, reads a bit like a carefully constructed legal brief, the second, Carl Schmitt: State and Society is more of an intellectual history and is somewhat more rhapsodic. However, both display impressive scholarship.
Now, there is room, in my view, both for J.S. Bach's Art of the Fugue and Cecil Taylor's Spring of Two Blue-J's. Both of those works are praiseworthy in spite of their extremely different styles. That's true of these two fascinating books on Weimar as well. However, leaving their undeniable artistic merits aside, one may ask: Was either of their authors able to rehabilitate parliamentarianism after Schmitt's devastating assault? Please remember that I don't claim that that was the goal of either work, or that it is generally acceptable to criticize a work for failing to reach a bar that was never sought by its creator. Nevertheless, the question of the soundness of Schmitt's critique is not only a matter of particular interest to me, but is today something that should be of prime importance to...well...everyone. So, without claiming this as a demerit of either book (after all, neither the Bach nor the Taylor does much on this front either), I feel the need to mention that I think the answer to the question of whether either book manages to restore democracy to a solid footing is NO.
But, to be honest, I'm not sure that anybody can pull that off. Because, of course, it remains quite possible that, however wrong Schmitt was about any number of things, and however disingenuous and otherwise reprehensible he was as a person, he actually DID mount unanswerable objections to both democracy and liberalism. In any case, I hope to take my own crack at a more directed response to his refutation in upcoming work on those subjects.
