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Transcending Weber's Categories of Modernity? The Early Lukács and Schmitt on the

Rationalization ThesisAuthor(s): John P. McCormickSource: New German Critique, No. 75 (Autumn, 1998), pp. 133-177Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488581

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TranscendingWeber Categoriesof Modernity?TheEarlyLukdcsandSchmitton the RationalizationThesis

JohnP. McCormick

Max Weber'sunrivaled tanding n American ocial science is perhapsdue as much to the ideological predicament f post-WorldWarII aca-

demia in the United Statesas to the staggeringbreathand depthof his

writings.Duringthe cold war,Weber's work was revivedconsciously,if

not always explicitly,as scholarlyvalidationof western liberalpluralismagainsteasternCommunism nd also as a methodologicalweaponagainstthe perceived hreatof orthodoxmarxistsocial science.1 It is a testament

to the successof this enterprisehattodayWeber s consistentlyacknowl-

edged as a "liberal"n northAmericanscholarship.2Howeverscholarly

approaches n other national contexts or from differenttheoreticalper-

spectiveshave long interpretedhe ideologicalstatusof Weber'swritingsmore fluidly:Weber'sworkis recognizednot only as the sourceof con-

temporaryiberal social theory,but also as the principal ntellectualmir-

ror in which the most sophisticatedheoristsof this century'spreeminent

1. See The ProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalism, rans. TalcottParsons

[1904-5] (New York:Scribner,1958),hereafter ited as PEparentheticallywithinthetext;andmuchof Economyand Society:An Outlineof Interpretive ociology (1920), eds. G.Roth andC. Wittich Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1978),hereafter eferred o as ESparen-theticallywithinthe text.

2. For examinations f this issue,see DavidBeetham,"Weberand the LiberalTra-

dition,"andTracy Strong,"Max Weberand the Bourgeoisie,"TheBarbarismof Reason:Max Weber nd TheTwilight f Enlightenment,ds. A. Horowitzand T. Maley (Toronto:U of TorontoP, 1994).

133



134 Transcending Weber

sociopolitical alternatives to liberalism - socialism and fascism -

examined themselves: namely, Georg Lukacs3and Carl Schmitt.4This essay examines the historical moment when Weber's method-

ological and political liberalism was forcefully challenged by the criti-

cal theory of Lukacs and the political existentialism of Schmitt soon

after the sociologist's death in the early 1920s. It explores how two of

Weber's most famous students attempt to come to terms with their

teacher's most important thesis: modernity as a process of increasing"disenchantment" and "rationalization."In 1923, Lukacs, in History and

Class Consciousness, and Schmitt, in Roman Catholicism and Political

Form, energetically confront Weber's thesis as expressed most notablyin his Protestant Ethic collection, his essays on world religions, and his

"Vocation" lectures.5 Both students had previously appropriatedWeber's thesis of modernity as an increasingly formal, abstract rational-

ization of society in their early socioliterary studies. Yet in the works

from 1923 they come to view Weber's approach as insufficiently one-

sided, for it cannot adequately account for the existence of the con-

crete, qualitative manifestations of social reality, and relatedly, the per-sistence of the

irrational,the

romantic, and the mythical in modern

3. The intellectualrelationshipof Lukacs and Weberis well-covered in the best

English-language tudies of the former's social and politicaltheory:see Andrew Aratoand Paul Breines, The YoungLukacsand the Origins of WesternMarxism New York:Pluto, 1979);StefanBreuer,"TheIllusionof Politics:PoliticsandRationalizationn MaxWeberandGeorgLukacs,"NewGermanCritique26 (Summer1982);MartinJay,"GeorgLukacsand the Originsof the WesternMarxistParadigm,"Marxismand Totality:TheAdventures f a Conceptrom Lukacsto Habermas Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1984);andAndrewFeenberg,Lukics,Marx,and theSourcesof CriticalTheory Oxford:OxfordUP, 1986). Theirpersonalrelationships examined n biographical tudiesof the respec-tive figures:ArthurMitzman,TheIronCage:An HistoricalInterpretationf Max Weber(Oxford:Transaction, 985)andArpadKadarkay,GeorgLukdcs:Life,Thought nd Poli-tics (Cambridge:Blackwell,1991).

4. In a controversial tatement,JiirgenHabermasremarked hat Schmitt was a"true tudent," r at leasta "naturalon,"of Weber.See Max Weber ndSociology Today(1965), ed. Otto Stammer, rans.K. Morris(New York:Harper& Row, 1971) 66 n4.

RegardingWeber's nfluenceon Schmittmoreelaborately, ee WolfgangMommsen,MaxWeber nd GermanPolitics, 1890-1920,trans.M. S. Steinberg 1959](Chicago:U of Chi-cago P, 1984); GaryL. Ulmen,Politische Mehrwert:Eine Studieuber Max WeberundCarlSchmitt Weinheim:VCH Acta humaniora,1991). See also JohnMcCormick,CarlSchmitt Critiqueof Liberalism:AgainstPolitics as Technology Cambridge:Cambridge

UP, 1997),Chapter1 of whichis anabridged ersionof this article.5. FromMaxWeber:EssaysinSociology,ed. andtrans.H. H. GerthandC. Wright

Mills (New York:OxfordUP, 1958).The "Vocation"ectureswill be cited as "Science"or"Politics" espectively.



John P. McCormick 135

society. Weber claims that the phenomena associated with this latter

categoryare either modem remnants of an irrational

pastor

contempo-rary flights from an overly rationalized present. Lukacs and Schmitt

attempt to show that such irrationality and neo-mythology are intrinsi-

cally linked to the abstract rationality that Weber describes - that

modernity, rather than fostering the "disenchantment" of politics or the

banishment of cultural superstition, itself rather manufactures them.

Their evidence for this argument is in many ways derived from Weber

himself: the battle of "warring gods" to which the discussion of values

is reduced in Weber's theory is, for them, the latent irrational subjec-

tive will that serves as a mere complement to the irresistible objec-tively-rational structures of the "iron cage" of modernity. I hope to

explore these themes in a way that transcends the terms of the well-

known debates over the normative and historical ramifications of the

late Weber's theorizing of charisma and Fuhrerdemokratie. However,what must be addressed in the course of this analysis is the fact that

Lukacs and Schmitt themselves - each in their own way, to be sure -

endorsed twentienth-century political mythologies that most vigorously

championed politicalwill: left- and

right-wingauthoritarianism in the

forms of, respectively, Soviet Communism and National Socialism.

Lukdcs, Schmitt, and Weber

Andrew Arato and Paul Breines observe that in central Europe, "the

early 1920s in general and 1923 in particularamounted to a vintage sea-

son for intensive reflection on relations between consciousness and soci-

ety."6 The work that they focus upon most extensively from this

tumultuous period immediately following the conclusion of World War I7

is Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness.8 A less well-renowned butnevertheless still significant contribution to social and political theoryfrom this period - in fact this very same year of 1923 - is Schmitt's

Roman Catholicism and Political Form.9 Indeed the relationship between

6. See Aratoand Breines 173.7. See,as one notableaccountof theperiod,DetlevPeukert,The WeimarRepublic:

TheCrisisof ClassicalModernity,rans.R. Deveson(New York:Hill & Wang,1992).8. Lukacs,History and Class Consciousness, rans.Rodney Livingstone(Cam-

bridge:MIT,1988),citedhereafter s HCCparenthetically ithin hetext,andreferredo as

History.I generally ollowLivingstone losely,onlyoccasionallyamendinghis translation.9. RomischerKatholizismusundpolitische Form (Stuttgart:Klett-Cotta,1984),citedhereafteras RCparentheticallyn the text and referred o as Political Form;all ren-

deringsare fromGaryL. Ulmen'stranslationWestport:Greenwood,1997).




the two works and the two authors themselves are generally over-

looked.10 This is surprising, given the fact that both Schmitt and Lukacswere intellectually and personally influenced by the figure of Weber:

Lukacs was a member of Weber's circle from 1911 to 1915, participat-

ing in the sociologist's Sunday afternoon discussion group; Schmitt

attended Weber's famous "Science" and "Politics" addresses in Munich

in the late teens.ll Much of the fury that Schmitt directs at romantics

and Romanticism in his book on that subject of 1919 parallels Weber's

denouncement of the contemporary forces of irrationalism and passivityin the "Vocation" lectures.2 Like Schmitt, Lukacs came to his 1923

collection via the route of socioaesthetic studies of literature.13What is

perhaps most potentially fascinating about a comparison of these two

theorists is 1) the startling similarities, as well as important differences,that it highlights between Schmitt, the great anti-Marxist, and the tradi-

tion of Western Marxism or critical theory inaugurated in no small

degree by Lukaics;2) the theoretical flaws that it magnifies in the neo-

Kantianism of Weber's "liberal"social science; and 3) the-political dan-

gers it exposes in even the most brilliant critiques of Kantian liberalism

that tooreadily

endorsepolitical

action as an alternative. Thelatter two

points may serve alternately as a source of encouragement and a note of

caution to those engaged in similar contemporary critiques.The parallels between Schmitt and Lukacs actually exceed the shared

influence of Weber, however much the latter's intellectual presence

10. An otherwiseexcellentaccountof theyoungLukacs's intellectual ontextdoesnot mentionSchmitt at all: MaryGluck,GeorgLukics and his Generation:1900-1918

(Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1985).Breuerand Ulmenarenotableexceptions n this regard,but see also Agnes Heller, "The Conceptof the Political Revisited,"Political Theory

Today,ed. D. Held (Stanford:StanfordUP, 1991).Hellercompares he Schmittof 1927and after with the Lukacsof this periodleading up to 1923 in such a way as to draw

sharperdistinctions hanwould be renderedby a comparisonof the thinkers n the earlyperiod.Theconnectionbetween SchmittandLukacs's heoreticalprogeny n theFrankfurtSchool has been more widely discussedhowever: see the debate on the topic by Ellen

Kennedy,Ulrich K. PreuB,MartinJay,and Alfons S6llner n Telos71 (Spring1987);andmore recently,see William E. Scheuerman,Between the Exceptionand the Norm: TheFrankfurt chool and theRuleof Law(Cambridge:MIT,1994).

11. Ulmen20-21.12. Schmitt,PoliticalRomanticism,rans.G. Oakes(Cambridge:MIT,1985),here-

after citedas PRparentheticallyn thetext.

13. See Lukacs,Soul andForm,trans.A. Bostock(Cambridge:MIT, 1974),hereaf-tercited as SFparentheticallynthetext;"ZurSoziologiedes modemenDrama,"ArchivfirSozialwissenschaft ndSozialpolitik1914),hereafter itedas "SD" nthetext;andTheoryof theNovel(1916), trans.AnnaBostock(Cambridge:MIT,1971),hereafterTN n the text.




clearly permeates almost all of what concerns the two in this period. For

instance, both detected and sought to better facilitate the opening win-dow of opportunities for elites for which Weber hoped.14 Both adopted

short-lengthed works or collections of essays as their preferred vehicles

of expression rather than the traditionally Germanic volume-lengthtome.15 Both recognized a kernel of truth in Weber's association of mod-

ernization and Protestantism, yet sought to correct its exaggerations and

broaden its scope from the standpointof their own critical, outsider, theo-

logical-political perspectives - political Catholicism for Schmitt and sec-

ularly-messianic Judaism for Lukacs.16 Both began their careers

practicing the methodological neo-Kantianism dominant at the time and

yet both wound up as two of its most radical critics. Neither seemed to be

unconscious of each other's intellectual activities: Schmitt was an admirer

of Lukacs's essay, "Legality and Illegality" included in History,17 and

14. Aratoand BreinescallHistory"anappeal o thecriticalroleof intellectuals"ix).On Schmitt and intellectual-political lites, see McCormick,"Introductiono Schmitt's'TheAge of Neutralizations ndDepoliticizations'," elos96 (Summer1993).

15. Besides the short and forceful thrust of such a medium - which matchesSchmitt's

prose- ReinhardMehring points out how the pamphletexpresses Schmitt's

philosophical uspensionbetween"systemandaphorism,"etween"HegelandNietzsche";see PathetischesDenken: Carl SchmittsDenkweg am LeitfadenHegels: Katholische

Grundstellung ndantimarxistische egelstrategieBerlin:Duncker& Humblot,1989)21.Aratoand Breinesremark n Lukacs'sessayisticapproach: theessay andthe fragment,ntheirbrevityand ncompleteness, emain rue o thelivingrealityof theirobjects.Incompat-ible withintellectual ynthesisandresolution f actualantagonisms,heessayand thefrag-mentare,in anantagonisticworld, hedialectical ormsof expressionparexcellence" 4).

16. RegardingLukacs's "sectarian-Messianic"rientation,see Joseph B. Maier,"GeorgLukacsand the Frankfurt chool:A Caseof SecularMessianism,"GeorgLukacs:

Theory,CultureandPolitics,eds. J. MarcusandZ. Tarr Oxford:Transaction, 989);andAnsonRabinbach,"BetweenEnlightenment ndApocalypse:Benjamin,Bloch and Mod-

em Jewish Messianism,"New GermanCritique34 (Winter 1985). For Lukacs's ownaccountof the relevanceof his Jewishbackgroundo his work, see "GelebtesDenken:Notes Towardan Autobiography,"Recordof a Life:AnAutobiographical ketch,ed. I.

Eorsi,trans.RodneyLivingstone(London:Verso, 1983). Also note the way thatLukacs

along with Ernst Bloch are describedin Weber'sofficial biographyfirst publishedin1926: MarianneWeber,Max Weber:A Biography,rans.H. Zohn(New York:JohnWiley& Sons, 1975)466. On the influenceof Catholicismon Schmitt'searlycareer,consult his

biographies: osephBendersky,Carl Schmitt:Theoristor the Reich(Princeton:Princeton

UP, 1983); and Paul Noack, Carl Schmitt:Eine Biographie(Berlin:Propylaen,1993).Schmittwas still a believingRomanCatholic n the early 1920s,writing requently n theCatholicpressbut neverofficiallyjoiningthe CatholicCenterParty.He becameestranged

from the Church n late 1923 andwas ex-communicatedn 1926because of thecomplexi-ties of his marital ituation.He apparently rewquitebitter oward he Church n the lateWeimarRepublic,publicly feudingwith the more moderateCenterParty.

17. See Ulmen86, 115-24.




Lukacs eventually wrote a serious review of Schmitt's Political Roman-

ticism.18 In fact, long after Lukacs had become a Soviet apologist, hewas careful to distinguish Schmitt's intellectual efforts from those of

other more vulgar Weimar conservatives in his account of German

philosophical irrationalism, The Destruction of Reason: Observing the

"special nuances" of Schmitt's thought, Lukacs remarks that "the

overtly reactionary," yet "superior," Schmitt "perceived in the antithe-

sis of liberalism and democracy an important present day problem."19For Schmitt's part, just a year before he was to become a Nazi activist

he devotes the longest and most substantive footnote in The Concept ofthe Political to Hegel and to Lukacs as the one who has kept the "actu-

ality" of Hegel "most vitally alive.'20

Indeed it is the similar and not so similar relationship to Hegel or at

least the Hegelian method that proves the most interesting cross-com-

parison of Schmitt and Lukacs as theorists of modernity and critics of

rationalization.21 Schmitt once spoke of "a different lineage from

Hegel," alluding of course to the leftist one that can be traced back from

the Frankfurt School through Lukacs and further back through Marx,

and at the same time intimating the existence of another intellectual line

18. See Lukacs,"CarlSchmitt:PolitischeRomantik,"GeorgLukics Werke,Band2:

FrihschriftenII (Berlin:Luchterhand, 964).19. See Lukacs,TheDestructionof Reason(1954), trans.P. Palmer AtlanticHigh-

lands,N. J.:Humanities,1980)652-54. Lukacs s specificallyreferringo Schmitt'sPar-lamentarismus f 1923: see The Crisisof ParliamentaryDemocracy(1926), trans.Ellen

Kennedy (Cambridge:MIT, 1985).Lukacshadwrittenhis own critiqueof liberalparlia-mentarism n 1920: "ZurFragedes Parlamentarismus,"eorg LukdcsWerke,Band 2.Schmitt s still acknowledgedby the left for his theoretical ophistication: eanCohen andAndrewArato,while justifiablycritical of Schmitt,laud his "dialecticalvirtuosity," n

Civil Society and Political Theory(Cambridge:MIT, 1992) 236; and ChantalMouffeidentifiesSchmittas "arigorousandperspicacious pponent"n TheReturnof thePoliti-cal (London:Verso, 1993) 118.

20. See Schmitt,Der Begriff des Politischen: Textvon 1932 mit einem Vorwortund drei Corollarien(Berlin:Duncker& Humblot, 1963) 61-63, n22. UnderNationalSocialism Schmitt eitherrefrained romciting Lukacsaltogetheror denouncedhim as aJew anda Marxist:see "DerStaatals Mechanismusbei Hobbes undDescartes,"Archivfir Rechts-undSozialphilosophie39 (1937). He returnedo moresubstantiveconsider-ations on Lukacs afterthe war: see Verfassungsrechtlicheufsdtzeaus denJahren1924-1954: Materialienzu einer VerfassungslehreBerlin:Duncker& Humblot, 1958) 425-26, 450.

21. On Schmitt'sdebt to Hegel or "Hegelianstrategy" ee Mehring,PathetischesDenken.See Lukacs's own workfrom 1938 on the philosopher,TheYoungHegel, trans.R. Livingstone Cambridge:MIT, 1976);as well as his remarks n the HegelianqualityofHistory n the 1967Preface o the work.



JohnP. McCormick 139

thatcan be tracedback on the right.22Schmitt can be seen as the chief

exampleof whatmightthenbe called the dialecticalright.It is the earlypracticeof dialecticsby Lukacsand Schmittthat at once points out the

deficienciesof a Weberian iberal account of modernityandrationaliza-

tion, but also the dangersof totalitarianism n attemptsto transcend

thosedeficiencies hatarenotthemselvessufficiently"dialectical."

In theircultural-politicalreatisesfrom the late teens andearly 1920s,Lukacs and Schmitt attemptto formulatecritiquesof modernitythat

properlyapprehendrationality'srole within it without either aestheti-

cally valorizingnor fearfully fleeing from it - responsescharacteristic

of most of their contemporaries.23 hey are confrontedwith the prob-lem that modernityseems to have two opposite intellectualpoles: the

one, economic-technical hought,the abstractly ormalrationalityasso-

ciated with economics,technology,andpositivism;the other,the manystrandsof Romanticism,the highly subjectiveand aesthetic enrapturewith specificallyconcreteobjects.For boththeorists, he task of a ratio-

nalitynot beholdento either one of these particular ppositesof moder-

nity would be one that understandsheirinterrelatednessndattempts o

movebeyond

it. Justhow the treatmentof thesepoles changes

at first

reveals theirgreatdebt to Weberandthentheirharsh urnagainsthim.

Accordingto Schmittand Lukacs,just as Kant poses an irresistiblyformal rationality hat remains(despite Herculeanefforts) undisturbed

by the sheersubjectivityof his ethics,Weber'scalls to responsible ndi-

vidual stands in his political tracts remain ineffective vis-a-vis the

objectivelyformal structures f society whose developmenthe so care-

fully delineates n his accountof modernity.This"necessityversusfree-

dom" oppositionis of course completelyconsistent with what is ever

replayedin the more familiar anguageof mainstream ocial science asthe oppositionof "fact and value,"or of "structure nd agency."Per-

hapseven moreproblematics the fact that the normative tatus of these

personalsubjectivestandsremainsultimately ndeterminate s they are

inaccessible to the rationalityof the objective forms from which theyare severed and againstwhich they areposed. A relatedquestionthere-fore regardingWeber's account that proves most pressing for the two

22. See Schmitt,"DieandereHegel-Linie:HansFreyerzum70. Geburtstag,"Christ

und Welt30 (25 July 1957).23. Despitecertain nterpretive eficiencies,JeffreyHerf'sReactionaryModernism:

Technology,Cultureand Politics in Weimar nd the ThirdReich(New York:CambridgeUP, 1984)providesmanyvividexamplesof attitudes owardrationalizationnthis context.




primary subjects of this study is the following: if modernity is a totally

rationalized process, how does Weber account for the subjective irratio-nality which seems to elude this process yet also seems pervasive in

modem societies? Weber's theory generally perceives the elements of

irrationality which inevitably confront his framework in three ways: as

external or prior to the system of rationalism itself - "old gods" who

"ascend from their graves [to] resume their eternal struggle" ("Science"

149); or merely as a "deviation" from the rational (e.g., ES 6); or as

simply "reactions" to the process of rationalization.24

In their earliest literary studies, both Lukacs and Schmitt adoptWeber's theory of modernity as the culmination of a rationalization

process driven forward by modem capitalism. They also reiterate

Weber's frequent laments over the quantitatively impersonal forces that

eradicate what is qualitatively specific about human existence. In these

works from the late teens, briefly examined in the next section, Schmitt

and Lukacs enthusiastically incorporate much of Weber's thesis, while

in their efforts of the early 1920s discussed in subsequent sections theydemonstrate its one-sidedness by illustrating how the supposedly pre-

moder or extrarational irrationality that remains impenetrable toenlightenment rationality is not in fact alien to that rationality but rather

is an inherent part of it. In Weber's (in)famous call to politics (to lead-

ership, to charisma, to elites) as a response to the impact of the ratio-

nalization he had theorized in his social-scientific works and then

applied to the context of post-World War I Germany,25 Schmitt and

Lukacs ultimately observe the romantic counterpart to the bureaucrati-

zation that Weber's prescriptions are intended to solve.26 It is however

a romantic reversion to which their own theories do not prevent them

24. Moder religious rrationalism,orinstance, s conceivedby Weberas analmostmechanicalresponseto secularization: Thisreaction s the stronger he moresystematicthethinkingabout he 'meaning'of theuniversebecomes,the moretheexternalorganiza-tionof the world s rationalized, ndthe moretheconsciousexperienceof theworld'sirra-tionalcontent is sublimated."See, for example,"ReligiousRejectionsof the WorldandTheirDirections,"From Max Weber357. The new emphasison "mysticalexperience,"accordingto Weber,is a backlash o an increasinglydominant"rational ognition andmasteryof nature" "TheSocial Psychologyof the WorldReligions,"FromMax Weber282). See also "Science"143, 154.

25. Cf. "Politics"andthe "ParliamentndGovernment"ectureappended o Econ-

omyandSociety.Hereafter eferred o as ESparentheticallynthe text.26. Forinstance,Webercharacterizesharismaas puresubstance,andcharismatic

authorityas the concreteoppositeof abstractbureaucraticuthorityES 1112, 1116),andhenceanobjectfortheaestheticpreoccupation f themass.




from succumbing in even more fundamentally radical ways.Lukacs's initial theoretical confrontation with

modernityin the stud-

ies of literature and aesthetics, such as Soul and Form, "The Sociologyof Moder Drama," and The Theory of the Novel has been well docu-

mented, and I do not wish to merely recount in an inadequate fashion

here what others have done so well elsewhere.27 Schmitt's almost iden-

tical early approach in his extended essay-length commentary on the

poem "Northern Lights" in 1916,28 followed by another socioliterary

study from 1919, Political Romanticism has not been so extensivelytreated.29 I will not deal with these early works, especially those of

Lukacs, in the same depth as I will their flawed masterpieces of 1923,History and Class Consciousness and Roman Catholicism and Political

Form. But some provisional observations on the former set of texts are

nonetheless warranted.

Neo-Kantianism and Socioliterary Studies

In his study on modem drama which appeared in German in 1914,Lukacs restates Weber's analysis of the increasingly abstract and anony-

mous, that is impersonal and inhuman, characterof industrialcapitalism:

From he individual's tandpointhe modemdivisionof laboressentiallyseparatesabor rom heever rrationalndhencequalitativettributesfthe workersand directs it towardobjective,end-oriented riteria hatremain xternal o and ndependentf theirpersonality.Capitalism's ri-maryeconomictendency s precisely his objectificationf production,and its separationrom hepersonality f theproducer.ntheprocessofthe capitalisteconomy, capital,an objectiveabstraction, ecomestheactualproducer yet it hasno organic elationshipo thosewho in factownit. Whether he owners hemselveshavepersonalities tallbecomesmoreandmore rrelevant considerointstockcompanies.SD 665-66)

27. See the collection,Die Seele unddas Leben:Studienzum riihenLukics, eds.

Agnes Heller et. al. (Frankfurt/Main:uhrkamp,1977) and in English:Lukics Reap-

praised, ed. Agnes Heller (New York:ColumbiaUP, 1983); Lee Congdon,The YoungLukdcs ChapelHill: U of North CarolinaP, 1983);J. M. Berstein, ThePhilosophyof the

Novel: Lukacs,Marxismand the Dialectics of Form (Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP,

1984);Eva L. Corredor,GyorgyLukacsand theLiteraryPretext New York:Lang,1987).G. H. R. Parkinson'sGeorgLukacs London:Routledge& KeganPaul, 1977)nicely inte-

grates he concernsof theearlyaestheticstudiesandthoseof History.28. See Schmitt,TheodorDaublers "Nordlicht":Drei Studienuberdie Elemente,

den Geist und die Aktualitatdes WerkesBerlin:Duncker& Humblot,1991),cited hereaf-terasN parentheticallyn thetext.

29. At least in the Englishliterature;ee in German, or example,Mehring,Pathe-tisches Denken.




In Schmitt's 1916 analysis of the epic poem, "Northern Lights" by

Theodor Daubler,30 he reconstructs the poem in terms of Weber'sobservation that modern rationality provides the radically efficient

means to any given end but no way of morally assessing those ends

("Science" 139-40) - even those that would endanger the very partici-

pants in the production process:

Thisage characterizestself as capitalistic,mechanistic, elativistic;asthe age of commerce,technologyandorganization. n fact the "fac-

tory"appears o give the age its signature.As the impositionof func-tional means toward some wretched or

senseless purpose as theuniversalurgencyof meansoverends,the factoryso nullifies the indi-vidualthatnot once doeshe recognizehis own eradication.N 59)

However Lukacs and Schmitt in these writings not only appropriatethe objective side of Weber's narrative - the "spirit of capitalism" com-

ponent - but the subjective one as well: more specifically, his concern

with personal individual dispositions like the Protestant ethic. Despitetheir own lapses into excesses characteristic of Lebensphilosophie [the

philosophyof

life],both, like Weber, would criticize it in others. There-

fore in Lukaics's case, long before he would make these opposing objec-tive and subjective categories famous in his "Antinomies of Bourgeois

Thought" section of History, he was already juxtaposing these theoreti-

cal moments of modernity in his studies of literature. However, still

within the realm of the neo-Kantianism that he shared with Weber in

these literary analyses of the early teens, Lukacs's orientation toward

these antinomies was different than they would appear in his HegelianMarxist writings of only a few years later.31 In these early works he

still adhered to a method that he would later find itself complicitous inthe ills of modernity he had initially discerned via Weber's thesis.

The crucial opposition of abstract, objective form and concrete sub-

jective content is more or less treated in a way that actually privilegesthe former in Lukacs's early literary works. For instance in Soul and

30. TheodorJohannesAdolf Daubler 1876-1934), bor in Trieste,was knownforhis celebrationof southernEuropean ife and cultureover its northern ounterpart.He

published"Nordlicht"n 1910.31. Weber'scomplicatedrelationshipo Kantianism s examined n ChristianLen-

hardt,"Max Weber andthe Legacyof CriticalIdealism,"TheBarbarismof Reason. OnGermanneo-Kantianismmoregenerally,see ThomasWilley, Back to Kant:The Revival

of Kantianismn German ocialandHistoricalThought,860-1914 Detroit:WayneStateUP, 1978).




Form, he pursuesa marriageof the timeless elements of his collection's

title - "themysticalmomentof the union of internaland external,the

soul andthe form"(SF 8) - but he does so in a way thatprioritizes he

latter,abstract orms over the substantive ontent of soul. Justas Weber

deploys the formal, often transhistoricallyapplied categories of the

"ideal type" to impartmeaning to empiricalreality in his methodol-

ogy,32Lukaics iews literarygenres,for example,as the frameworks hat

allow the substanceof literaryrealityto emerge:"formsets limits rounda substance which otherwise would dissolve like air . ." (SF 7). More-

over, much like Weber's famoussocial-scientificobserver the impar-

tial, neutral, mpersonal ubject who in effect createsmeaningthroughinterpretive nalysisof material ealityby means of the techniquesof the

atemporalformal types, Lukacs's literarycritic likewise draws realityfrom the chaos of literarymaterial:"The criticis one who glimpsesdes-

tiny in forms:whose mostprofoundexperience s the soul-contentwhichforms ndirectlyandunconsciously oncealwithinthemselves."33

In Weber the neutralityand atemporalityof the methodologydoesnot howeverprevent he emergenceof a prejudiceddispositionover his-toricalspecificity:thatis, the melancholyof the conclusionof TheProt-

estant Ethic and the "Science" lecture which fuels the call for

responsible personalstandsin the "Politics"and "Parliament nd Gov-

ernment"ectures.Lukacs'searlywritings betraya similarlamentover,and desire to activelytranscend, he alienationbroughton by a rational-ized modernity. In this regard he frequentlyexhibits an existential

pathos derived often explicitly from Kierkegaard,Nietzsche, and Dos-

toyevsky. The Theory of the Novel, for instance, repeatedly praises the

artistsand thinkersof the Middle Ages for capturingwhat is simulta-

neously transcendentand finite in their world:Giotto, St. Thomas,St.Francis, and most importantly,Dante, are praised for expressing a"wholeness" naccessible to modernity.34Weberlifts from Tolstoy thebiblical image of the contentedAbraham o contrastwith the alienatedcitizen of modernity("Science"140); Lukaics mploys the literaryfig-ure of Cervantes'sDon Quixote o makea moresophisticatedpoint.

32. Cf. in theory:Lukacs,TheMethodologyof the Social Sciences, trans. andeds.G. Roth andC. Wittich New York:Free,1949)90; andin practice:"Typesof LegitimateAuthority,"ES212-301.

33. See Lukacs,Soul and Form 8. For a discussion of the intricaciesof Weber's"ideal ypes"and his "objectivity"hesis, see SusanHekman,"MaxWeberandPost-Posi-tivist SocialTheory,"TheBarbarismof Reason.

34. See Lukacs,Theoryof the Novel 37, 101-02.



144 TranscendingWeber

In Cervantes'snovel, Lukacs finds the last instance when objective

realityand subjective experience,momentsof the eternallyunchangingand the fleetingly ephemeral,coexisted in the West before disintegrat-ing in moder history:

The profoundmelancholyof the historicalprocess,of the passingof

time,speaks hroughhiswork, ellingus thateven a contentandan atti-tude which areeternalmustlose theirmeaningwhen their ime is past:that time brushesasideeven the eternal.Don Quixote s the firstgreatbattleof interiority gainst heprosaicvulgarityof outward ife andthe

only battle n whichinteriorityucceeded,not onlyto emergeunblem-

ishedfrom hefray,but eventransmit ome of the radiance f its trium-phant, houghadmittedly elf-ironising, oetry o itsopponent.TN104)

After Cervantes,Lukacs laments that the relationshipof subjectivedispositionand objectivereality,correlates o what he had theorizedas"soul and form,"is fractured, eaving individualconsciousnessalien-ated from the outside world and condemned o an "all-devouring on-

centrationon a single point of existence,"a "narrowing f their souls"

(TN 106). This is the frivolousenrapturewith internalmoods character-

istic of Romanticism ndLebensphilosophie.In Soul andForm,Lukacshad criticizedmodernaesthetics,particularly

as manifestedby Romanticism, s the appropriatexpressionof capital-ism despiteits often self-understoodpposition o it. Romanticspromotean "aesthetic ulture"whose passivityconformsperfectlywith the help-lessnessof thebourgeoisandthe unreflective ctivityof industrial roduc-tion thatfor all its frenzyis still deemedpassiveby Lukacs(SF 107-08).Less well known is Schmitt'sdelineation f this observed nterrelatednessin "Northern

ights"and

Political Romanticism nd his attempt o workthrough he oppositionof objectiveform and subjectivecontent that hetoo inherits o some extent fromtheneo-Kantianism f Weber.

In his analysisof "Northern ights,"Schmitt, ike Lukacs,contrasts hesocial position of art in modernity o that in the Middle Ages. He toocites Dante's Commediaand St. Thomas'sSummaas "fruits"of their

age. And despitehis sympathywith Diubler's ratherWeberian iterarydepictionof the effects of rationalization,chmittcriticizes he poem fornot being in fact a true expressionof its own age, but insteadonly an

insufficient"negation" f it. Schmitt indsit quiteunderstandablehatthecrisis of modernity houldbe put in terms of "theoppositionof mechan-ics andsoul"- the lifelesslyanonymousormsandthe concrete ife that




rebels againstthem, as it is by Daubler n "NorthernLights."But there

are theoreticalproblems

with thisposition

thatpertain

o thevery possi-bility of makingsuch an assertionor actingto address t, accordingto

Schmitt.As in the gnosticview of the world,which sees the earthonlyas "thecompletework of the devil, in which eternalspiritlessness s tri-

umphantover spirit," n the "mechanics ersus soul" worldviewthere is

no room for humanactivityor reflectionthat is then free of such con-

demnation N 63). In such a scenario,"we would be beyond help; we

must at least see out of ourprisonto escape, so as to save the soul"(N

64). According o Schmitt,"dualisms" uch as the one between soul and

soullessness left as suchwill do nothingto help one theoreticallyappre-hendtheage forwhatit is, oractivelychange t (N 70).

Despite his repeatedlyexpressedadmirationand respect for the poetDaubler,"who graspsand portrays he presentmore comprehensivelythan a criticalhistorian,"Schmittultimately inds his worktheoretically

lackingbecause"a critical-historicaltandpoint annot be foundpresentin 'NorthernLights"'(N 66). Because Daublerrelies so heavilyon dual-isms such as the mechanical world versus living soul and spirit, his

work can be little more than "a compensation o the age of spiritless-ness ... a counterweight to a mechanistic age" (N 64). It is a negationof the age - perhaps "the last and most universal negation" - but not

a real critiqueof modernitybecause it cannotitself transcend he dual-ism of soul versus soullessness which is itself characteristic f the age(N 65). Likewise, in his study of Romanticism,Schmittacknowledgesthat the movement has legitimate complaints against capitalism, sci-

ence, andtechnologybutultimately s only a complementarylement to

them in an overarching tructure.Schmittexplicitly employs the Webe-

rian methodof "idealtypes"(PR 57) andsubtlydrawsuponthe recentlydelivered"Vocation" ectures in carryingout his analysis.He does not

yet in Political Romanticism,as he laterwill, expressly situate Weber

withinthe theoretical omplexof rationalization nd Romanticism.

Schmitt traces this oppositionalstructureparticipatedn by Daublerand romantics o the very foundationsof moder thought:earlymoder

rationalismhad alreadycompromiseda unifyingvision of the world inthe split between abstractscientific thinking,characteristic f Coperi-cus's objective approach,and the inward, individualisticrationality

characteristicof Descartes's subjective approach PR 52). This culmi-nates in the formalrationalityof Kantthat in orderto maintain ts uni-

versalismmustimputean inaccessible rrationalityo concretereality




the world only exists as the productof humansenses, as a collectionof

things-in-themselveswhose quality is derived solely from the observ-ing subjectand not from orby themselves:

NaturalScience ceased to be geocentricand sought its focal pointbeyondthe earth.Philosophybecameegocentricandsoughtits focal

point in itself. Modem philosophyis governedby a schismbetween

thoughtandbeing, conceptandreality,mind andnature,subjectand

object,thatwas noteliminated venby Kant'stranscendentalolution.Kant's solutiondid not restore he realityof the externalworldto the

thinkingmind. That s becauseforKant, heobjectivityof thought ies

in the consideration hat thoughtmoves in objectivelyvalid forms.The essence of empiricalreality,the thing in itself, is not a possibleobject of comprehensionat all. Post-Kantianphilosophy,however,made a deliberate ttempt o grasp his essence of the world in order o

putanendto the inexplicability ndirrationalityf realbeing.35

Accordingto Schmitt,Hegel is the only thinker o nearlyresolve this

"dualityof abstract onceptand concretebeing characteristic f abstract

rationality,"his "mechanisticworldview"most vigorouslypracticedbyDescartes, Hobbes, and Kant

(PR 53-54).As Schmittremarks,"The

Romanticswere incapableof this sort of philosophical nsight" PR 82).The Romantics either accelerated the moment of subjective ego orrelated the two phenomenato each other in a purely literaryway.Because the very structureof moder thoughtrendersconcreterealityirrational,he unrestrainedubjectiveego picks out variousinstancesofit and impartsmeaningto it; however this meaning,freedas it is fromthe confinementof culturalor religious prohibitions hat obtain in the

West beforemodernity, s derivednot fromany rational houghtprocess

but only arbitrarywhim. Harmlessobjects such as a jewel, a book, alock of hair becomeobjectsof intensesubjectiveaestheticization, ut so

too do political-philosophicalonceptssuch as "humanity" y the revo-

lutionaryleft, or "history"by the conservativeright (PR 59-60), witheach sideaccusing he otherof romanticismPR25).

InPolitical Romanticism chmitt dentifies he romantic'sarbitraryon-

crete ascriptionof qualityto objects- "romanticproducts" s he calls

them- as encouragingn fact a commensurabilityf objects:"There sno possibility of distinguishingone romanticobject from the another

35. Schmitt,Political Romanticism52. See Robert B. Pippin, Kants Theory ofForm:AnEssayon theCritique f PureReason NewHaven:YaleUP, 1982)for an excel-lentexplicationandinterrogationf the formalismof Kantian ranscendentalhilosophy.




object - the Queen, the state, the beloved, the Madonna - preciselybecausethereareno

longerobjectsbut

onlyoccasiones"

PR 84-85,trans-

lationamended) "occasions"orthe subject o expresshim or herself

Every particularnstance of the sensual world becomes ultimatelythesame because the individual'swhim is the determiningactor n defining

realitysuchthat"formswithoutsubstancecan be related o any content.

In the normative narchy, veryonecan formhis own world,elevateeveryword and every soundto a vessel of infinitepossibilities,andtransform

everysituationandeveryeventin a romantic ashion" PR 76-77). There-fore activitythatdrainsconcretespecificityfrom the actualworld so that

it may manipulatets components, ationalization,s mirroredby activitythat endlessly imputesa randomconcretespecificityto aspects of thatworld n a subjective chemeof manipulation, omanticism.

No matter how devoted they may seem to the object of their atten-

tions, whether he affection of a beloved,the preservation f traditionorthe emancipationof the people, romanticsare in the end "alwaysoccu-

pied with themselves"(PR 75). Romantics are incapableof substan-

tially interactingwith others or the world because of their fundamental

self-absorption.The romantic's own emotions or affectations and the

intensitythereof are all thatgive importance o the objectsthat arouse,or serve as "occasions" or such responses(PR 94, 100). The object infact ideally ought not protrudeanythingof itself into the enrapturedtrance of the romantic,"who has no interest in really changing the

world, [and] regardsit as good if it does not disturbhim in his illu-sions" (PR 98). The essence of Romanticism,and political Romanti-

cism, especially, is hence passivity(PR 115), despiteits feigned intense

engagement with the world: it is "the unconditionalpassivism that

destroys all activity"(PR 116). Schmitt thus thoroughlycriticizes thesame interiorityand subjectivepreoccupationhat fosters social passiv-ity identifiedby Lukacs n his own literary tudies.

Accordingto Schmitt f romanticsattemptat all to go beyondthe rhe-

torical "thunder" f theirposed oppositions(PR 104), they often do so

by appealing o a "higher hird" PR 66, 85): "the occasionalistdoes not

explain a dualism,but rather ets it stand. He makes it illusory, how-

ever, by shifting into a comprehensive hird sphere"(PR 87). Adjec-tives like "true,""real,"and "genuine"are often attached o one of the

entitiesopposedto one anotheras a substitution or resolution(PR 92):e. g., "realsoul" is meantto incorporate verything hat is contrastedbythe terms"bodyand soul." Suchmaneuvers,while appearingprofound,




serve to "conceal the simple structureof the romanticmode of being"

(PR 91, translation amended - JM). While carefully exposing theromantic'sineptitude n dealingwith these oppositions,and suggestingthatone mustaddress hemon the contrarywith "mediation ndinterac-tion"(PR 88), Schmittdoes not actuallydo so in the main text of Polit-ical Romanticism.He writes briefly in the Introduction bout the need"to ascertainwhat is systematicallyessentialby means of a consciousdelineation to a specific historical complex" (PR 31, translationamended- JM). Yet each time he seems poised to undertake uch ahistoricization he cites

yetanother

exampleof romantic

deficiencyagainstwhich he himselfproceeds o polemicize(PR 91).It is howeverespeciallythepassivityencouragedby Romanticism hat

particularly ouses Schmitt's ire. EchoingWeber's"warringgods" for-

mulation,Schmittclaims that "the essential featureof the intellectualsituationof the romantic s that in the struggleof the deitieshe does notcommit himself and his subjectivepersonality" PR 64). The romanticshirks the responsibilityof engagingin the struggleof ideologiesthat is

modernityand of choosingbetweenrightandwrong.FollowingWeber

closely here in 1919 while he was still alive, the essence of non-roman-tic activity according o Schmitt s normativelyresponsible,as opposedto aestheticallywhimsical,decision:"it shouldnot be difficultto differ-entiate [romantic] organic passivity from the restraintsof an activestatesman hat resultfrompoliticalexperienceandobjectives.The crite-rion is whetherthe abilityto makea decisionbetweenrightandwrongis present"(PR 116). Romanticsshy away from politics which means

makingvaluejudgmentswhich cannotbe deferred nto the quest for an

ephemeral"higher hird" PR 117).The modem literary igurethataccording o Schmittescapes the pas-

sivity of the romanticindividual is in fact the same as identifiedbyLukacs:Don Quixote.Thisnecessityof decidingandactinguponwhat is

rightandwrong leads Schmittto the ratherbizarrepositionof employ-ing Quixote as the model of political activity: Quixote is superiortoromantics uch as AdamMiillerandFriedrichSchlegelbecause"hewas

capableof seeing the differencebetweenrightandwrongandof makinga decision in favorof what seemedrightto him"even if he was driven

"to a senseless disregardof externalreality."Now violatingrather hanabidingby Weber'sdistinctionof ethics of responsibility ersusethicsofconvictionset forth in the "Politics"essay, Schmittblurs the two such




that "fantasticallyabsurd"activity is considered better by him than

romanticactivity because it is not inherentlypassive and is willing totake actionfor what it perceivesas right.By this standard nly does the

often ecstatic theoreticalefforts of the counter-revolutionariese cites

with favor, EdmundBurke, and especially Juan Donoso Cortes and

Josephde Maistre- effortsthatcould easily be seen as extreme exam-

ples of political Romanticism qualify in Schmitt's account as non-

romanticbecause of the deeply convictedqualityof their conservative

politicalattachments.n fairnessSchmitt s willing to make concessions

to the averagerevolutionarywho himself holds such convictions. What

is clear from Schmitt's account is the extent to which Weberianethicalstands,no matterhow "responsible,"may fosterirrational ctivity by "a

senseless disregardof externalreality" PR 147-48) when thatrealityis

depictedas irresistible,unchangeable nd impenetrable s it often is byWeber.A rationallyustifiablenormative iewpointmaynot remainsuch

within the dynamicthat renders it inherently neffective vis-a-vis the

"realworld."On the otherhand,once SchmittabandonsWeberianneo-

Kantianismbecauseof its depictionof reality,it is questionable o what

extent Schmitthas recourse o the Kantian ategoriesof rightandwrong.Here we may observe that in their early literarystudies Schmitt and

Lukacs focus on how the rationalized spectof modernityabstracts wayfrom all realitysuch that it can manipulatet, renderingall objects the

same and hence meaningless,while interrogatinghe opposite side of

this rationality hatarbitrarilynfuses all objectswith aestheticmeaning

by the subjectsuch that it is equallyirrational.The point of theirearlytheoretical endeavor is to formulatewithin the Weberianframeworka

rationality hat can overcomeboth, but not in the purely rhetoricalor

sentimentalway of the romantics.Commentators ind in the conclusionof Lukacs'sThe Theoryof the Novel a turnfrom Kant to Hegel.36Oth-ers have foundin Schmitt'spost-PoliticalRomanticismwork a dramatic

declarationof independence rom neo-Kantianism.37t is quite likely

36. See Parkinson, ndAratoandBreines.Onthequestionof continuity nd disconti-

nuitybetweenLukacs's iteraryworksandHistory, ee GyorgyMarkus,"Lifeandthe Soul:TheYoungLukacsandthe Problemof Culture," ukdcsReappraised.

37. JacobTaubes,for one, identifiesthe firstchapterof Political Theologyof 1922asjust such a declaration: ee Die PolitischeTheologiedes Paulus(Miinchen:Fink,1993)

141-42. See Political Theology:Four Chapterson the Conceptof Sovereignty 1922),trans.George Schwab(Cambridge:MIT, 1985), hereaftercited as PT parentheticallynthe text. On the trajectoryof Schmitt'searlythought n general,see ReinhardMehring,CarlSchmitt:ZurEinfiihrung Hamburg: unius,1992)55-77.




that the dissatisfactionwith the oppositionof subjectand object eluci-datedin their

earlyworks,its manifestationn the

theoryof their

mentor(individualethic versus societalrationalization),nd its apparentnabil-

ity to be transcended y "bourgeois"houghtandrealitythat fostersthisturn:the transition o politicalperspectives hatexplicitly seek to over-come these impasses,and the writingof the some of the most importantessaysin non- or antiliberalhoughtntendedo foster hisovercoming.

Beyondthe Iron Cage

By 1923, the publicationdatesof the two works thatserve as the cen-

terpieceof this study,bothLukacsandSchmitthadonly recentlyunder-gone conversionsof sorts.Lukacshadjoined the Hungarian ommunist

party by 1919 and Schmitt had shiftedfrom conservativeneo-Kantian-ism to a more radical theoreticalposition of philosophical"decision-ism" by 1922.38 These new theoretical-political rientationsentailed anew evaluationof Weber,the theoristwho so influencedtheirdevelop-ment. This is signaledby a comparisonof the titles of the two worksfrom 1923 (Historyand Class Consciousness;RomanCatholicismandPolitical Form)with that of Weber's earliereffort: TheProtestantEthicand theSpiritof Capitalism.

The significanceof Lukacs'stitle lies in the suggestion hatcapitalismhas not facilitated he once-and-for-allonstructed roncage thatperma-nently arrestshistoricaldevelopment.Rather"history" ontinuesto fos-ter social changebecausethe agentof this changeis not the, in Weber's

estimation,now-exhaustedProtestant ects and theirethic or values,butthe still immanentlyactiveagencyof productiveabornow embodied nthe proletarianlass. Schmitt's itle, on the otherhand,does not so much

refutethe specifics of Weber'shistoricalaccount of modernityas muchas suggesta possible way out of the petrified heoretical-practicalead-end that Weber's thesis, its process, and its agents broughtabout: theresidue of the inwardperspectiveof Protestantismhat had generateda

process of social change throughactivity- the resultsof which it canno longer control- now seeks refugemore and more in types of pri-vacy, aestheticallymanifested n Romanticismandpoliticallyin liberal-ism. Thispassiveandstagnant etreat romthe socialworld is countered

by Schmittwith a Catholicism hatsupposedly ranscendsobjectiveand

38. I will returno thisbelow.Sufficeto say herethatthe termdecisionismempha-sizesthefactualauthority f anact over tsrelativeadherenceo abstractlyational orms.




subjectiveantinomiesrather hanperpetuateshem andwhose public, as

opposedto private, dispositionis manifested n the primacyof politicsratherhana sacreddomesticor economicrealm.39

Both theorists supporttheir new positions by reassessing the form/

content, object/subjectrelationshipthat they tried to navigate within

neo-Kantianismduring Weber's lifetime. Rather than attemptingto

ascertain he liberationof the qualitatively oncreteaspectsof social life

by applyingthe appropriate ormallyabstracta priori categoriesto it,both theorists pursue an approachthat allows qualitative reality to

emergeand itself determineand interactwith the forms of specific con-

crete existence - withoutlapsing into a romanticenrapturewith such

reality that cannot itself apprehend ts qualitativeexistence. To prop-

erly do so the individualistic characteristicsof Weber's subjective

standpoint - political and methodological - must give way to a theo-

rizing of a collective standpoint hat will not participate in a subject/

object dualism,but will itself be the identicalsubject-object hat tran-

scends it philosophicallyandpolitically.At the outset of the centralessay of History,"Reification ndthe Con-

sciousness of the Proletariat,"Lukacs embeds his analysis of modemrationalizationo longer primarilyn termsof Weber'saccountbut now

explicitly in terms of Marx's commodityform: its is the "commoditystructure" f modem capitalism hat facilitates he situationwhere "rela-

tions betweenpeople take on the character f things"(HCC 83) andthe

consequent"progressivelimination f the qualitative, umanand individ-

ual attributes f the worker."The commodity orm,according o Lukacs,is "thecentral, tructuralroblemof capitalist ocietyin all its aspects.'40

Terminology amiliar from Lukacs'searlieranalysesnow take on new

meaning:"With he modem 'psychological'analysisof the work-process(in Taylorism) his rationalmechanization xtendsrightinto the worker's

'soul"'(HCC88). WhatLukacshadpreviously heorizedunder he swayof Weberin his literarystudies as transhistoricalategories form and

soul- arenow treatedas a categorieshistorically pecificto modernityhence the quotationmarksaround"soul"and the practicalgroundingof

"form." n the courseof his essay, Schmitt oo, as we will see, explicitlyrefutes hecategories f his formermaster,wherehe oncehadbeen silent.

39. See Ulmen, Politische Mehrwert179-211, and his "Introduction"o PoliticalForm,forhis own discussionof the significanceof this set of titles.

40. HCC 88. Cf. the first chapterof KarlMarx,Capital:A Critiqueof Political

Economyvol.1, trans.B. Fowkes(London:Vintage,1976).




In both works the phenomenon f rationalizations by no meansaban-

donedas a socialproblem.SchmittandLukacsacknowledgehe obvioushegemonyof abstract-quantitativenalysisin the social sciences and itsties to societal rationalizationwrit large.As Schmitt observes its influ-ence is nearlyall-pervasive:"Inalmostevery discussion one can recog-nize the extentto which the methodologyof thenatural-technicalciencesdominatescontemporaryhinking" RC 21). And Lukacsremarksuponthe infiltrationof thought by the purely technical and the increasing"quantification"f rationality HCC98) in modemsociety:"thedemandthat mathematical nd rationalcategoriesshouldbe appliedto all phe-

nomena ... interacts ruitfullywith a technologybecomingincreasinglymore rationalized. . ." (HCC 113). But again he now attributes the gene-sis of this rationalityo a Marxiancategoryand no longera Weberianone: "The modem modes of thought alreadyeroded by the reifyingeffects of the dominantcommodityform"encouragespurely"quantita-tive"analysesof societyandnot"qualitative"nes(HCC84).

Schmittreiterateshis reservations egardinga mode of productionhatoffers no normativeaccounting or the productsof thatprocesswhether

theybe usedfor

decoration rdeath:

Modemtechnologyeasily becomes the servantof this or that want orneed. In modem economy a completelyirrational onsumptioncon-forms to a totally rationalizedproduction.A marvelouslyrationalmechanismserves one or anotherdemand,alwayswith the same ear-nestnessandprecision,be it for a silkblouse orpoisongas oranythingwhatsoever. RC24-25)

The irresistiblyefficient anduniform ogic of industrialproductionwill

provide whatever is called for by highly subjective consumptivedemands,regardlessof its impacton the very people who make suchdemands.The imperativesof economics and of technology are mereformswhich ignorethe significanceof that substanceuponwhich theyact - humanity (RC 24). Because technology and economics remain

normativelyindifferentto the real nature of the demandsthey serve

(that is, the demands of humanbeings) what is called "rationality"nWeber's scheme, accordingto Schmitt, is a reason become "fantasti-

cally warped":"A mechanismof production ervingthe satisfactionof

arbitrarymaterialneeds is called 'rational'withoutbringinginto ques-tion what is most important the rationalityof the purposewhich canmake use of this supremelyrationalmechanism" RC 26). One of the




main theses of both works is still the fact that human beings them-

selves in their limitless qualitativeuniquenessbecome materialobjectsfor manipulationby an economic-technical ationality.Lukacs remarks

how this rationality mposes upon society "a second nature" hat is "a

moresoulless, impenetrable ature hanfeudalismever was"(HCC 19).While this might sound like Weber's "shell of bondage"(ES 1402),Lukacs and Schmittbothoffer alternativeso this new form of domina-

tionthatare not available o Weberandhis categories.Thetotalcommensurabilityf commoditiesn capitalism the fact that

a silk blouse can beequated unproblematically

withpoison gas

- is

groundedby Lukacs n Marx'sanalysesof the exchange-values nduse-

valuesof the commodity orm:"The ormalact of exchangewhichconsti-

tutes the basic fact for the theoryof marginalutilitylikewise suppressesuse-value as use-value and establishesa relation of concrete equalitybetween concretely unequal and indeed incomparableobjects" (HCC

104). It is the exchangevalue thatconceals what is qualitatively pecificaboutobjects- a reductionof qualitativedifference o the relativequan-titativeamountsof laborhours t tookto produce hem andignoringwhat

is "organic,rrational,ndqualitatively etermined"bout hem.41While both Schmittand Lukacs criticizethe romanticobsession with

concreteparticularity nd its own manipulation f it throughaesthetici-

zation,bothare sensitive to the vulnerabilityof qualitativerealityin the

face of the powerof abstract ationality.According o Lukacs,underthe

imperativeof "technical"and "economicautonomy" n the sphere of

production, "the human qualities and idiosyncrasies of the worker

appearincreasinglyas mere sourcesof errorwhen contrastedwith. ..

abstractspecial

lawsfunctioning

according to rational predictions"

(HCC 89). The principleof rationalization must declarewar" on these

materialmanifestation f the "irrational"HCC 88).But to discerningobservers his is only partof the story:"The ratio-

nalization of the world appears to be complete,"says Lukacs (HCC

101). This only "apparently" mnipotentelementof rationalizations in

fact merelya componentwithin a dualism that itself actuallyobtainsin

reality.It is a dualism,thataccordingto Schmitt,has a structural asis

in fact and takes on many incarnations:"Although t sounds improba-

41. Lukacs,Historyand Class Consciousness88. Fora morecomprehensive naly-sis of the commodityform that howeverdeparts rom Lukacs's approach n importantrespects,see MoishePostone,Time,LaborandSocial Domination:A ReinterpretationfMarxs CriticalTheory New York:CambridgeUP, 1993).




ble [these dualisms]are completely in harmonywith the spirit of our

age because their intellectual structureaccords with a reality. Theirpoint of departures actuallya real cleavageand division: an antithesiswhich calls for a synthesis"(RC 16). The economic-technical ational-

ism of modernity,so entirelydevoid of content,is interrelatedwith the

very oppositeof thatrationalism,hatin its role as oppositehas as littlevalid pretenseto realityas the rationality t opposes.One cannotappre-hend the whole by privilegingone side as the superioror truerrealityover the other. Hence Schmitt's earliersuspicionof Daubler'sabilitytoformulate an articulate rational standpointwhen he opposes a tota-

lyzing rationalitywith anequally otalizedspirituality.Reiterating he argumentsof Political Romanticism,Schmitt sets out

the typology of the "radicaldualism" hatgoverns"everysphereof the

contemporary poch:"

Its commonground s a conceptof nature hathas found tsrealizationin a world transformedby technologyand industry.Natureappearstoday as the polar antithesisof the mechanisticworld of big citieswhose stone, iron andglass structuresie on the face of the earth ike

colossal Cubistcreations.The antithesisof this empireof technologyis natureuntouchedby civilization,wild andbarbarian a reserva-tion into which"manwith his afflictiondoesnot set foot."(RC16-17)

Likewise, Lukacspoints out in Historythat "nature s a social cate-

gory"(HCC 130), remindingus thatthis untouchednature hat suppos-edly exists outside the realm of modem rationalization s itself an

ideological construct hat conformswith rationalization.Schmittpointsout the many variations hat the oppositions,of which the technology/

natureone is just a single example, may take:Classicism/Romanticism,abstract/concrete,orm/content,objective/subjective,rationality/irratio-nality, "mutepracticality"/"rapturously verpoweringmusic", etc."A whole assortment f antitheseswithwhichto play!"(RC39)

In Political RomanticismSchmittobservedhow people latch on toone or another side of these antithesesand come up with "unexpectedandabsurdassociations" PR 6). The association hatSchmittfinds par-ticularlyirksomein both books is the romanticconnection of Catholi-cism with the pole of nature, irrationality,and sentimentality.In

Political RomanticismSchmittexpresses discomfort with the fact thatthe majorexamples of romantics hat he analyzes such as Miiller and

Schlegel all converted to Catholicism(PR 32). He tries to dissociate




them from "active"Catholics ike Bonald,Maistre,Donoso Cortes,andthe

closet-Catholic,Burke.42He

angrilyasserts no such correlation

PR49) and points out how Protestantism s easily as Catholicismcan be

mistakenly dentifiedas an expressionof Romanticism PR 12, 14). Theromanticattempt o associatethe RomanChurchwith the lattersides of

these oppositions,"to makethe Church nto the antagonisticpole of the

mechanisticage," only serves the perpetuationof the first side of theantithesesand the whole of the mechanisticage itself (RC 19). Like

Daiubler's oem, the Churchwould then be a mere"complement"o the

age: "Werethe Church o have rested content with being nothingmore

thanthe soulfulpolarityof soullessness it would have forgotten ts trueself; it would have become the desiredcomplement o capitalism- a

hygienic institution for enduringthe rigors of competition,a Sundayoutingor a summer ojournof big-citydwellers" RC 19-20).

Drawing upon the originsof modem philosophicalrationalismmuchas Schmitt did in Political Romanticismand continues to do in Politi-cal Form, Lukacs describes how enlightenmentphilosophyfrom Des-cartes to Kant conceives of the world as the productof the knowingsubjectby means of mathematicsandgeometrywhich are derivedfromthe "formalpresuppositionsof objectivity in general"(HCC 111-12).Unableto account for the thing-in-itself,enlightenment hilosophyturns

increasingly"inwards" o find the subject from which knowledge canbe derived(HCC 122). But Kantianrationality llustratesnot only how

"everyrationalsystem will strike a frontieror barrierof irrationality,"but also because of the penetration f abstract ationalitynto all aspectsof society through he commodificationof everything,why irrationality"erodesanddissolvesthe whole system" HCC114).

Lukacs theorizes economic-technical ationalityand romantic intui-tions as partof the same structurehrough he analysisof the Marxian

categoryof the "fetishcharacter f commodities" hat takes on both "an

objectiveform"and "a subjectivestance" HCC 84). The two poles are

"inextricably nterwoven with each other. For here we can see that'nature'has been heavily markedby the revolutionary truggleof the

bourgeoisie: he 'ordered,'calculable,formal,and abstractcharacter ofnature, n addition o natureas] the repositoryof all the innertendencies

opposingthe growthof mechanization, ehumanization,nd reification"

42. See Schmitt,PoliticalRomanticism2. Schmittgoes so faras to suggestin 1919that hecounter-revolutionariesere"real"Catholics, omethinghe retractsn 1922when he

acknowledgesheapostasy f their nsistence nthe evil of humannature: ee SchmittPT57.




(HCC 136). The non-rationals set forthby the rationalsystem itself:

"Forirrationality,he impossibilityof reducingcontentsto their rationalelements . . . can be seen at its crudest in the question of relating the sen-

suous content to the rationalform.'43Kantianrationality,rather than

increasingrationalization,ctuallyaccentuatesandencourages rrational-

ity because 1) it cannot account for "the whole" - the source of therationalsystem in terms of the system itself; and 2) it cannotfullyabstract romthe concretenessof its objects(HCC 116). The unrational-

ized nature s hence a sourcefor a revival in "ecstasy,""resignation nd

despair,""irrationalmystical experience" "life" in the Nietzschean

sense (HCC 110). In otherwords,thatwhich is not rationalizeds insteadaestheticized.Lukacsspeaksof the resulting"ever-increasingmportanceof aesthetics"n this regardand how this new social development"con-

ferreduponaestheticsanduponconsciousnessof artphilosophicalmpor-tancethatartwasunable o layclaimto inpreviousages" HCC 137).

Typically less economically-sensitivethan his marxist alter ego,Schmitt attributes he relationshipof the poles of the antinomies tomorevoluntaristic ources. He however still emphasizes he importanceof economics and aesthetics.Several

years later,Schmittdescribes how

the nineteenthcentury is "characterized y the seemingly impossiblecombinationof aesthetic-romantic nd economic-technical endencies,"

yet again demonstrateshow in fact the two tendencies are conjoined.Romanticism,according o Schmitt, s

only anintermediary tepof theaestheticsituated n betweenthemor-alism of the eighteenthcenturyand the economismof the nineteenth.It was only a transitionwhichwas affectedeasily andsuccessfullybymeans of the aestheticizationof all intellectual fields. For the pathfrom metaphysicsand moralityto economics proceeds throughtheaesthetic.Thispath, raversinghemost sublimestateof aestheticcon-

sumption and pleasure, is the safest and most comfortablepathtowards a generaleconomizationof the spiritual ife and towardsastate of mind which finds in productionand consumption ts central

categoriesof humanexistence.44

The subjectivemoralityof the eighteenthcentury,a subjectivity reedfrom the constraints f religionanddogma,gives way in the nineteenth-

43. Lukacs,Historyand ClassConsciousness116. Cf. Pippin216-21.44. See Schmitt,"The Age of Neutralizationsand Depoliticizations," rans. M.

KonzettandJohnP. McCormick,Telos96 (Summer1993):133.




century o the subjectiveaestheticappreciation f objects,againa realm

once governedby traditionalrestraints.The romantic,as Schmitthadobserved in Political Romanticism, eeks out objects and situationsas

mere "occasions"for the expressionof his or her subjectivefeelings.Lukacs,followingMarx,attributeshis phenomenono the othermomentof the commodity.Theuse-valueof the commodity s determinedby the

qualitatively pecific andconcretemodes of laborthatproduce t and as

such invites an aestheticabsorptionwith the particularqualitativeand

concreteattributes f things- an arbitrarilyubjectiveascriptionof con-

tent to particularobjects.45Schmittrecognizes,as did Marx and does

Lukacs,thatthis aestheticization unsnot in opposition o a simultaneous

"economization,"ut is ratherts"typicalaccompanying henomena.'46In the portions of Political Romanticismadded to the edition pub-

lished after Political Form, Schmittdescribescertainramificationsofthis subjectivity:"In this society, it is left to the private ndividual o behis own priest. But not only that. Because of the centralsignificanceandconsistencyof the religiousit is also left to him to be his own poet,his own philosopher,his own king, and his own master-buildern the

Cathedralof his personality" PR 20). In otherwords, art,philosophy,politics, psychology, as well as religion become sites of subjective

expression, of personal aestheticization.Anything, the revolution of

1789, or Catholicism tself, can become matter for aestheticconsump-tion (RC 20, 60). As Schmitt remarked n the 1919 text of Political

Romanticism,here is nothingwrongwith aestheticsquaaesthetics,pro-vided it remains in its appropriateield. However thereare certain dis-

quietingramificationsof the modem romantic endencyto aestheticize

anything, ndeedeverything,andwiththis Lukacsfully agrees:

in the aestheticmode, conceived as broadlyas possible, [thecontentsof life] maybe salvagedfromthe deadeningeffects of the mechanismof reification.But only in so far as these contents become aesthetic.That s to say, either heworldmust be aestheticized,which is aneva-sion of the realproblem. .. Orelse, the aestheticprinciplemustbeelevated into the principle by which objective reality is shaped:butthat would be to mythologizehe discoveryof intuitiveunderstanding.(HCC 139-140,emphasisadded JM)

45. Cf. Postone149-54, 168-70.46. Schmitt,"Ageof Neutralizations" 33. Infact,yearslaterLukacscites this pas-

sageof Schmitt'swithapproval: ee Lukacs,TheDestructionof Reason652.




The very real need to find a spherefree of the homogenizingeffects

of economic-technicalrationality

hasinspired

some modemmythswildly attractive to some: Nietzsche's "Antichrist,"Weber's "cha-

risma" or "warringgods," and Heidegger's "historyof Being"47are

striking examples. It remains to be seen whether expressions of

Lukacs's and Schmitt's houghtoughtnot to be included n thisgroup.Lukacs remarksof Romanticism,"what would seem to be the high-

point of the interiorizationof nature [characteristicof Romanticism]

really implies the abandonmentof any true understandingof it. To

make moods into the contentpresupposes he existenceof unpenetrated

and impenetrableobjects (things-in-themselves)ust as much as do thelaws of nature" HCC 214). Agreeing with Schmitt's criticism of the

objects of "romanticproductivity,"Lukaicssees "irrational" esthetic

Romanticism itself as a form of positivism - an unreflected and

mechanicalacceptingof what is given - as much as economic-techni-

cal rationality,as stated previously, is a form of irrationality an

avoidanceof a reality that must be taken into account in any serious

theoreticalendeavor.In such hyper-rationalhinking"thoughtregressesto the level of a naive, dogmaticrationalism: omehow it regardsthe

mere actualityof the irrational ontents of the conceptsas nonexistent.

(This metaphysicsmay also conceal its real naturebehind the formulathatthese contentsare 'irrelevant'o knowledge)"HCC 118).

The persistenceof positivismandRomanticismcreatesa problemformodem ethics and action:

Inthe absenceof areal,concretesolution he dilemmaof freedomand

necessity, of voluntarismand fatalismis simply shunted nto a sideissue. That is to say, in natureand in the "externalworld" laws still

operatewith inexorablenecessity, while freedom and the autonomythat is supposedto result from the discoveryof the ethical worldarereduced o a merepoint of viewfromwhich tojudge internal vents...

[This]duality s itself introduced nto the subject. HCC124-25)

Ethicsfirst becomesdisengaged romthe world and then becomessplitinto either a purely formaltype which purifiesthe discourse of ethics

47. An important,albeit incomplete,analysis of Lukacs and that other importantcentral

Europeanphilosopherwho endorsed

otalitarianism,Martin

Heidegger,s Lucien

Goldmann,Lukacsand Heidegger:Towards New Philosophy, rans. W. Q. Boelhower

(London:Routledge& KeganPaul, 1979).See also Heller,"TheConceptof the PoliticalRevisited"on Schmitt,Lukacs,andHeidegger.




logically, and the substantivekind preoccupiedwith contingency as

manifestedinmortality,contradiction,ndeterminacy

thatis,

liberal

versus existentialethics; Kantianand Kelsenian versus KierkegaardianandDostoyevskianphilosophy.

This Kantiandilemma of a rationality hat divorces ethics from the

world and that generates rrationalitywithinit, as elucidatedby Schmitt

andLukacs husbecomesplayedoutin Weberian ractice.Lukacswrites:

The reified worldappearshenceforthquitedefinitively .. as the onlypossible world, the only conceptually accessible, comprehensibleworld vouchsafed to us humans.Whether his

givesrise to

ecstasy,resignationor despair,whetherwe searchfor a path leadingto "life"via irrationalmystical experience,this will do absolutelynothingto

modifythe situationas it is in fact.(HCC110)

Lukacs does not designatethe irrationalas does Weber as an emo-

tional or psychologicalresponseto rationalization ut ratheras a differ-

ent component of the modem mode of production that itself is

misrecognizedas having only a rationalizing ffect by Weberiancatego-ries: the celebrationof the concretequalitative lementsof modernitybyRomanticismare engenderedby the use-valuemoment of commodifica-tion that,hiddenby the quantifyingmomentof exchange-value, mergesinevitably n a non-rational s opposedto in a rationallymediatedman-ner. However, irrationality'sbasis in a particularhistorical practiceimplies that it can be overcomeby a changein thatpracticeas opposedto being simply willed away by Weber's attemptto ridicule and sup-

press the romanticimpulse in othersand force it to conform with the

objective reality of the times by encouraging only appropriately

"responsible"ubjective tancestoward t. Thisridicule,suppression, ndcompulsion eveal he"rationality"f Weber o be itselflatentlyrrational.

Accordingto Lukacs,the fearof what cannot be apprehendedhroughscientific means in the Weberian paradigm is sublimated into an

increasedreification of those means,which consequentlyascertain essand less, further ntensifying he originalfear anddemandmore confor-

mitywithobjectivereality:

Theattempt o eliminateeveryelementof contentand of the irrational

affects not onlytheobjectbutalso to an increasingextent,the subject.The criticalelucidationof contemplation uts more and moreenergyinto its efforts to weed outruthlessly rom its own outlookevery sub-

jective and irrational lementandeveryanthropomorphicendency; t




striveswith everincreasingvigorto drivea wedgebetween hesubject

of knowledgeand"man," ndto transformheknower nto a pureandpurelyformalsubject. HCC 128)

Schmitt and Lukacs would certainly have most readily recognized this

disposition in Weber. In fact, the "Vocation" lectures make a perfect case

study for this kind of dynamic: the more Weber champions the objectiv-

ity of his scientific method in the "Science" essay, the more he must nec-

essarily point up the drawbacks inherent in it. As a result, as his lecture

continues, the scientific method is defended less as a rational procedure

than as an existential stance. Consequently his attacks on those who heconsiders irrational become more personally polemical and themselves

irrational:that is, "it is weakness not to be able to countenance the stem

seriousness of our fateful times" ("Science" 149, emphasis added -

JM). The result in the "Politics" lecture, the solution to a disenchanted,value-free world is the resolute, but still only subjectively justified, per-sonal stand ("Politics" 127-28). The ethics of responsibility supposedlyentail more appreciation of objective reality than the ethics of con-

science, but Weber gives no evidence of how this slips any lessprecipi-tously into a "warring gods" position. Hence Weber's attempt to purify

his methodological standpoint (value neutrality) serves to intensify the

potential irrationalityof his own political positions (value stances).48The failure of modem rationality to account for concrete reality -

rationalization's reduction of it to quantitative measurements suitable for

technological production and Romanticism's attributionof qualities gen-erated subjectively from the idiosyncrasies of the observer - has ramifi-

cations for action. The only possible resulting activity is technical

manipulation, however impressively carried out by modem machinery,or detached observation, however intensely experienced by the individ-

ual subject. Like Schmitt who asserted that both the commercial activ-

ity of industrialism and the aesthetic activity of Romanticism were

48. Along theselines, see RichardWolin'scriticismof JohnPatrickDiggins's cele-brationof Weber's"liberalism"nMax Weber: olitics:Politics and theSpiritof Tragedy(New York:Basic Books, 1996):Wolin,"Liberalism s a Vocation,"TheNew Republic215. 10 (2 Sept. 1996).The work of StephenHolmesperhapsbestexemplifiescontempo-rary"Weberian"iberalism:Holmes prioritizesas the centraltask of liberalpolitics thecontainmentand redirectionof human

rrationalityn Passions and Constraint:On The

Political TheoryofLiberalDemocracy Chicago:U of ChicagoP, 1995),and heruthlesslyassailsromantically-inclinedriticsof liberalismand theEnlightenmentwho he identifiesas dangerousexpressionsof this irrationalityn TheAnatomyof Antiliberalism Cam-bridge:HarvardUP, 1993).




inherently passive in Political Romanticism, Lukacs also claims that the

Cartesian-Kantian rationality that makes possible the mere manipula-tion of objects stripped of quality is contemplative activity, not practice

(HCC 89). As the worker contributes nothing intelligent to the mode of

production, his or her work is reactive and not creative, conforming

only to pre-existing forms, and hence is inherently passive:

Neitherobjectivelynorin his relation o his work does manappearasthe authenticmasterof theprocess;on the contraryhe is a mechanical

part incorporatednto a mechanicalsystem. He finds it alreadypre-

existingand self-sufficient, t functions

ndependentlyof him and he

has to conform o its laws whetherhe likes it or not. As labour s pro-gressively rationalizedand mechanizedhis lack of will is reinforced

by theway in which his activitybecomes less andless active and moreandmorecontemplative.The contemplative tanceadopted owardsa

process mechanicallyconforming o fixed laws enacted ndependentlyof man's consciousnessandimpervious o human ntervention,. e., a

perfectly closed system, must likewise transformman's immediateattitude o the world.(HCC89)

The idea ofqualitative

realitybeing

realized in the apriori

Kantian

forms is abandoned here as a pacifying rather than realizing process:"the abstract, quantitative mode of calculability shows itself here in its

purest form: the reified mind necessarily sees it as the form in which its

own authentic immediacy becomes manifest and - as reified con-

sciousness - does not even attempt to transcend it" (HCC 93). The

"iron cage" is hence a misrecognition of the role of production in

modernity. The predictability of the rationalization process narrows

human activity to that which is already pre-ordained, blinding it to the

fact that it could in fact actively change the process itself.49 How toovercome this passivity engendered by the ostensible cleavage of what

Schmitt identifies as "totally rationalized production" and "completelyirrational consumption" becomes increasingly a political as much as

theoretical question in these works under consideration.

The Pope and the PartyIn Political Form, Schmitt engages head on Weber's now chauvinis-

tic, now repentant attributingto Protestantism the glories and horrors of

moder rationality and poses a particular cultural-political alternative that

49. Cf. Feenberg95, 104-05.




will transcend he ossified contradictions nd the entrenchedpassivityof

the rationalizationhesis:politicalCatholicism.Economic-technicalatio-nality usheredin by Protestantismmaintainsrules which pertainnot to

peopleas such,but rather o objects n a scheme of production, onsump-tion, andefficiency- mere"matter." chmittasserts hat Catholicratio-

nalism,on the otherhand,is not indifferent o whatpersonsare or what

they do, as are the "laws" of the marketand of science. For Schmitt,thereis a differencebetweenrulesthatgovernhumanbehaviorand those

that deal with the inanimate thatwhichis without ife. Schmitt,still in

1923 a believingCatholic,claims that in the valuelessrationality f eco-

nomic-technicalhought s foundthe "fundamental ntithesis o the polit-ical idea of Catholicism"RC 23). He assertsthat the rationalityof theRomanChurch,despiteits universalism,has actuallydefended ocal par-ticularitiesof manysorts even when theirenemywas not necessarilyan

enemy of the Church(RC 11). Schmitt finds it ironic that Protestant

opponentsof Catholicismwould identify it as a mechanicalforce, "a

papalmachine,""a monstroushierarchical ower apparatus"RC 6; seeES 809). AppropriatingWeber nto his apologia,Schmittdeclares hat it

is of courseProtestantism nd itsaccompanying ationality

hatactuallylevels all theparticularitiesf naturemechanically:

The Huguenotandthe Puritanhas a strengthandpridethat is ofteninhuman.He is capableof livingon anysoil. But it would be wrongto

say he finds roots on every soil. He can build his industryfar and

wide, makeall soil the servantof his skilled laborand"inner-worldlyasceticism,"andin the end have a comfortablehome;all this becausehe makes himself master of natureand harnesses t to his will. His

type of domination emains naccessibleto the Roman-Catholic on-

ceptof nature. RC 17-18)

Catholicismaccommodatesand maintainsall sorts of concretepartic-ularities, in spite of, or because of, its impressiveuniversalism.TheProtestants sought subjective substance when rebelling against the

Church,whose dogma they deemedtoo formalistic.But it is the resultof theirasceticism thatthreatens he existenceof concrete difference inthe moder world fromwhichtheythemselvesnow shrinkback:

It is astriking

contradiction...thatone of thestrongest

Protestanter-ceptions finds in Roman Catholicism a debasementand misuse of

Christianitybecause it mechanizesreligioninto a soulless formality,while at the same time Protestants eturn n romanticflight to the




CatholicChurch eekingsalvation romthe soullessnesof arationalis-tic and mechanisticage. (RC19)

The Church s neitherthe mechanically ormalisticentity scornedbyProtestantsnor the haven of unconquerednature and irrationalexpres-sion laudedby Romantics.Accordingto Schmitt,it stands above such

antinomies, absorbs, maintains,and transcends them: "The Catholic

Churchis a complex of opposites,a complexio oppositorum.There is

apparentlyno antitheses that it does not embrace"(RC 12). Roman

Catholicismis a form not indifferent o content,nor is it an irrational

elevation of content o an exalted evel, according o Schmitt:

Fromthe standpoint f thepoliticalidea of Catholicism he essence ofthe Roman-Catholic omplexiooppositorumies in a specific, formal

superiorityover the matterof human ife in a way no other mperiumhas everknown. It has succeeded n constitutinga sustainingconfigu-rationof historicalandsocial realitythatdespiteits formalcharacter,retains its concrete existence at once vital andyet rational o the nth

degree.This formal character f Roman Catholicism s based on thestrict realizationof the principleof representation.n its particularity

this becomes most clear in its antithesisto the economic-technicalthinkingdominantoday.(RC 14)

Unlike the quantitativemethods of representing n moder politicsand economics, Catholicism does not proceed by countingor measur-

ing the numerical indications of its objects of concern, but rather

emphasizes precisely that there is a qualityinherent n them that tran-scends mere materiality:"Economicthinkingknows only one type of

form,namelytechnicalprecision,andnothingcould be further romthe

idea of representation.The associationof the economic with the techni-cal. . . requiresthe actualpresenceof things"(RC 15). Criticizingthe

kind of MarxismthatLukacs was tryingto elevate beyond crude mate-

rialist dogma at that very moment,Schmitt mentionsthe Soviets' con-

ception of representationwhich seeks to eliminate the "idea"lurkingwithin traditional ubstantiveheories:

Inthespringtideof socialismyoungBolsheviksturned hestruggle oreconomic-technical hinking into a struggle against the idea, even

againsteveryidea. So

longas even the

ghostof an idea exists so also

does the notionthatsomethingpreceded he given realityof material

things- thatthereis something ranscendent and this alwaysmeansan authority"from above." To a type of thinkingwhich derives its




norms fromthe economic-technical pherethis appearsas an outside

interference, disturbance f theself-propellingmachine. RC45)

The Soviets' positivistic fear that materialrealitymay be more than

just thatis arousedby a Catholicism,according o Schmitt,which is the

only institution eft thatmaintains he positionwithin a rationalschemethat there is more to materialrealitythan what is positively apparent.For Schmitt,Catholicrepresentations able to maintain he claim thatmaterialreality, especially as manifested in humanlife, is more than

quantitativelyapprehendedmaterial,without at the same time slipping

into the romantic and irrationalist andomascriptionof transcendentmeaning o particular bjects.

Now rebellingagainstthe ideal types thathe once employedhimself,Schmittcriticizeswhat Max Weber calls "disenchantment" ithout ini-

tially revertingto a notion of enchantment.Througha "juridical,"or"institutional"ationality, he Churchasserts that life is not mere mat-ter while at the same time "knowinglyandmagnificentlysucceedingin

overcoming Dionysiancults, ecstasies, [etc.]."This "juridical"ational-

ity thatnavigatesbetweenpositivismandirrationalitys exemplified bythe Catholic nstitutionof offices:

ThePopeis nottheProphetbutthe Vicarof Christ.Such a ceremonialfunctionprecludesall the fanaticalexcesses of an unbridledprophet-ism.Thefact thattheoffice is madeindependent f charisma ignifiesthatthepriestupholdsa positionwhichappears o be completelyapartfrom his concretepersonality.Neverthelesshe is not the functionaryand commissarof republicanhinking. RC23-24)

Weber hadrecognized

that the offices of the CatholicChurchwerenot sources of what Schmitt calls "thefanaticalexcess" associatedwith

charisma:"thebishop,the priestandthe preacherare in fact no longer,as in early Christiantimes, carriers of a purely personal charisma,which offers other-worldly acredvalues underthe personalmandateofa master"(ES 1141). But Weber went on to write that "they havebecome officials in the service of a functionalpurpose,a purposewhichin the presentday 'church'appearsat once impersonalized nd ideolog-ically sanctified" ES 959). In response,Schmittwantsto maintain hat

the Catholic'juridical" heoryof offices falls betweenthe poles of irra-tional devotion to the concretepersonality of the priest, on the one

hand,andthe recognitionof the purely ormalfunction of the office, on




the other.Suchan office is not impersonalizedn the hyper-rationalway

that Weberclaims, yet nor is it an expressionof irrationality.Catholicreality- transcendingorm/content ppositionsas it does in Schmitt's

theorization eludes Weber'scategories.Priestlyoffice is not purelyformalor functionalpreciselybecause of its connectionto what mightbe seen, according o Schmitt,as a reason that human ife can neverbe

deemed "mere matter":"God become man in historicalreality"(RC

32). As Schmittwrites,"Incontradistinctiono the modem official [the

priest's] position is not impersonalbecause his office is part of an

unbrokenchain linked with the personalmandateand concreteperson

of Christ"(RC 24). Jesus Christ is the symbol of the divinity withinhumanity, he "dignity" hat transcendsbiology. Thus, for Schmitt,the

representative uthorityof Catholicism s a form thatbearsthe qualita-tive substance that transhistoricallymakes humanitymore than mere

matter- materialized divinity:

Thepoliticalpowerof Catholicism ests neitheron economicnor mil-

itarymeans but ratheron the absolute realizationof authority.TheChurch s a 'juridicalperson,' thoughnot in the samesense as ajoint-

stock company.The typical productof the age of production s amethodof accounting,whereas he Church s a concretepersonalrep-resentation f a concretepersonality. RC 22)

Using the "ProtestantEthic" thesis against Weber's own position,Schmitt assertsthat it is Protestantismhatprivatizespolitics and hence

extracts he concreterepresentativelementfrompolitics:

Historicallyconsidered"privatization"as its origin in religion.Thefirstrightof the individual n the sense of the bourgeoissocial order

was freedomof religion.Inthe historicalevolutionof the catalogueofliberties- freedom of belief and conscience, freedom of associationandassembly,freedomof tradeand commerce it is the fountainheadand firstprinciple.But whateverplace is assigned o religionit alwaysandeverywheremanifests ts capacity o absorband absolutize. f reli-

gion is aprivatematter t also follows thatprivacy s revered.Thetwoareinseparable.Privatepropertys thus reveredpreciselybecause it isa privatematter. RC47-48)

The sacralizationf privacy nhibits he practiceof displayingpublicly

thatwhich is of importance nddepreciateshe publicspherewhich wasonce anarena ortherepresentationf whatis mostimportant. hemodem

public sphere s a collectionof privateproperty wnersvying to promote




their own material nterests.Thus theseparticipantsreno longer"repre-

sentatives"n any real sense. The result is a society devoid of fully sub-stantive igures;rolesbecomeeconomic-technicalunctions RC32, 47).The representationalquality of Catholicism, on the other hand,

expressesitself in "public"and especially "juridical"ermsfor Schmitt:the Church s "the trueheir of Romanjurisprudence"nd the embodi-

ment of "Christbecome man in historicalreality"(RC 23). In HistoryLukacsalso addresseshis analysisto the positionof law in modemsoci-

ety without the Catholicdogma,butperhapsprologuinghis own shift toa kind of theology.He drawsuponWeber'ssociologyof law (ES, chap.

8) to again emphasizethe correlationbetween modem rationalityandirrationality:he law becomesincreasingly uspendedbetween a positionrepresented y the "critical"Lukacs'sown often ironicquotationmarks)

legal theoristHansKelsen,who theorizes aw as a "gapless" ystemthat

is mechanicallyappliedby jurists(HCC 95-97) or, on the otherhand,a

positionthat theorizes the judge as an arbitraryegislatoracting differ-

ently case to case (HCC 108)- thatis., purelyformally-derivedersus

purelycontent-deriveddjudication:In urisprudence.. the questionof

whetherthequalitative

content can be understoodby

means of a ratio-

nal, calculatingapproachs [seen] as a questionof form versuscontent"

(HCC 107), and it is here that the antinomiesperhapsmost starklyrevealthemselves ncapableof dissolutionby "bourgeois hought:"

Such a synthesiswould only be possible if philosophywere able to

change ts approach adicallyand concentrate n the concretematerial

totalityof what can andshouldbe known.Onlythen would it be ableto break hrough he barriers rectedby a formalism hathas degener-ated into a state of completefragmentation. ut thiswouldpresuppose

an awarenessof the causes,the genesis and the necessityof this for-malism; moreover,it would not be enoughto unite the special sci-ences mechanically: hey would have to be transformednwardlybyan inwardlysynthesizingphilosophicalmethod.It is evident thatthe

philosophy of bourgeois society is incapableof this. Not that thedesire for synthesis is absent;nor can it be maintained hat the best

peoplehavewelcomed withopenarmsa mechanicalexistencehostileto life and a scientific formalismalien to it. But a radicalchange inoutlook s not feasible on the soil of bourgeoissociety. (HCC 109-10)

Schmitt, a lawyer by trainingand profession,also broughtWeber'sframeworko bearuponhis legal work before the 1920s.50In fact theseearliestlegal treatisescan be readas an attempt o carve out a place for




the judge akin to Weber's sociological observer and Lukacs's critic, and

one that takes care that the judge neither degenerates into an "automa-ton" nor an unrestrained "legislator" - that is, one who is neither slave

to the objective formalism of the law, nor one who reigns as the all-pow-erful subjective creator of it. In these early formulations, the judge only"creates" the law to the extent that he or she imparts some of their sub-

jective personality to each concretely specific case, with attention to the

forms of the law and the practice of other judges. But the inability to

definitively solve the automaton versus legislator paradigm of Weber's

formulation and its neo-Kantian methodology ignites a radically new

methodology in his 1922 Political Theology. In this work originally writ-

ten for inclusion in a volume dedicated to Weber,51 Schmitt explodes the

Weberian dichotomy with its first sentence: "Sovereign is he who

decides the exception" (PT 5). Reframing the methodology to give pre-eminence not to the a priori forms but rather to the concrete case which

in its persistent novelty is ever an exception, Schmitt initiates a method

where qualitative existence takes precedence over mechanically lifeless

forms that Schmitt now deems wholly "torpid" PT 15).52

In addition Schmitt criticizes the neo-Kantian jurist Kelsen even moreharshly than does Lukaicsas the foremost advocate of the excessive for-

malism that banishes the personal element from the law: "The objectivitythat he claimed for himself amounted to no more than avoiding every-

thing personalistic and tracing the legal order back to the impersonal

validity of an impersonal norm" (PT 29). Schmitt also accuses Kelsen,

50. See Gesetz und Urteil: Eine Untersuchung um Problem der Rechtspraxis([1912] Muinchen: eck, 1969);and Der Wertdes Staates und die Bedeutungdes Einzel-nen (Tiibingen:Mohr[Siebeck], 1914).Ulmen discussesthe impactof Weber'sthoughton these works: 108-10. See McCormick,CarlSchmitt5Critiqueof Liberalism,Chap.5,foranaccountof Schmitt's egaltheory.

51. See Schwab,"Introduction"o Political Theologyxv n 11.52. Manyhave henceinterpretedhis as a wholesaleregression ntoirrationalismn

the partof Schmitt,but the subsequent ppearance f Political Form exhibitsthe norma-tive frameworkhat Schmittstill maintained t this time. Rather han a totallyunencum-bered official or judge dictating solely in accordwith the irregularities f a particularexceptional nstance,RichardThomahadit more correctwhen he observed hat Schmitt'sultimateaimwas morelikely:"Analliancebetweena nationalisticdictatorand the Catho-lic Churchhatcould be thereal solution[tocontemporary roblems]andachievea defini-tive restoration f order,discipline,andhierarchy""On he Ideologyof Parliamentarism"

[1925], trans.by EllenKennedyandincludedas anAppendix o her editionof Parlamen-tarismus82). For a plausible nterpretationf the relationship f Schmitt'sCatholicism ohis political orientation n this period,see RenatoCristi,"Carl Schmitt on Liberalism,

DemocracyandCatholicism,"Historyof Political ThoughtXIV.2(Summer1993).




the hyper-rationalist, of fostering precisely an irrationalism in adjudica-

tion and application by purging everything but the most formal require-ments from legal consideration (cf. PT 30). The formalist jurisprudence

marginalizes so much concrete content from its supposedly purified

legal system that this allows for it to reemerge as irrational content in

unprincipled state activity at the non-juridical level.53

Having traced out the existence and effects of the dualisms or antino-

mies in almost every facet of modem life (economy, philosophy, ethics,

aesthetics, and the law) both authors approach a breaking point when it

becomes clear that the transcending of these oppositions, for which they

have consistently called, can no longer be avoided. This point is reached

when the topic of leadership emerges. For the most important result of

the ossified dualities of modernity is that they have fostered a vacuum of

leadership, at precisely the moment when it appears that global domina-

tion by the bourgeoisie has been achieved. As Lukacs declares: "On the

one hand, [the bourgeoisie] acquires increasing control over the details

of its social existence, subjecting them to its needs. On the other hand it

loses - likewise progressively - the possibility of gaining intellectual

control of society as a whole and with that it loses its own qualifica-tions for leadership" (HCC 121). Kantianism has taken the antinomies,dualisms - contradictions - of bourgeois society as far as it can go"on the plane of philosophy. . . in thought" (HCC 121). Someone else

must do so in action. Because of the inherent passivity of the kind of

activity of the bourgeoisie - the technological transformation of the

nature, the formal manipulation of matter, or the aesthetic enrapturewith

it - the most obvious manifestations of their thinking is positivism and

Romanticism. The former position abstracts away too distantly from

concrete reality, the other fixates upon it in its own subjective mannerwhile not apprehending its concrete reality any better. The qualitativemoments of modernity hence remain inaccessible to the bourgeoismindset and meaningful praxis beyond its ability:

53. InretrospectLukacsremarks hatSchmitt"wasentirely n therightabout iberalneo-Kantianism,s indeedhe was in his sometimes ngeniouspolemic against iberalsoci-

ology.... He often saw clear through he unsubstantiatedogmatismmasquerading sstrictepistemologyby whichneo-Kantiansonvertedusticeinto anautonomous,elf-legit-imizingarea,on the patternof its epistemologyor aesthetics"TheDestructionof Reason

652-54). On Germanneo-Kantian, r "positivist,"urisprudencen general,see Peter CarlCaldwell,"LegalPositivismand WeimarDemocracy,"American ournalofJurisprudence39.1 (Spring 1995);on Schmittand Kelsen, see David Dyzenhaus,"'Now the MachineRuns Itself: CarlSchmitton HobbesandKelsen,"CardozoLawReview 16.1(Aug. 1994).




In order o overcome the questionof the irrationality f the thing-in-itself it is not enough hatthe attempt houldbe made to transcend he

contemplativeattitude.When the questionis formulatedmore con-cretelyit turnsout that the essence of praxisconsistsin annulling hat

indiferenceofformtowards ontent hatwe found n theproblemof the

thing-in-itself.Thuspraxiscan only be really establishedas a philo-sophicalprinciple f, at the same time, a conceptionof form can befound whose basis andvalidityno longerrest on thatpurerationalityand thatfreedom romeverydefinitionof content. nso far as theprin-cipleof praxis s theprescriptionorchanging eality, tmustbe tailoredto the concretematerial ubstratum f action f it is to impingeupon t to

any effect.... Theoryandpraxis n fact referto the sameobjects,for

every objectexists as an immediate nseparable omplexof form andcontent.... Theverymomentwhen ... the indissoluble inks thatbindthe contemplative ttitudeof the subject o thepurelyformalcharacterof theobjectof knowledgebecomeconscious, t is inevitable ither hatthe attempt o find a solution o theproblemof irrationality.. shouldbe abandoned r that t shouldbe sought npraxis. HCC125-26)

Since this "material ubstratum"s where all real activityand changeoccurs the bourgeoisieabdicatetheirposition of leadershipby ceasingto act

uponit, or rather nteractwith it, in a substantivemanner. We

know from the titles of their works, who, Lukacs and Schmittrespec-

tively, thinkis necessarilypoisedto fill this vacuum: he proletariat nd

the Catholic Church. Lukacs wishes to appropriatehe leadershipof

society through class conflict; Schmitt, the leadership of the state with

Churchlyauthority, nitially,and,as will be explained,nationalist con-

flict, ultimately.How is the reactionaryaction of the Church and the

revolutionary ction of the Proletariato be facilitated?

Justa few pages before embarkingupon "TheStandpointof the Pro-

letariat"section of History, Lukacs states that "in the case of almostevery insolubleproblemwe perceivethatthe searchfor a solution leadsus to history"(HCC 143). Accordingto Lukacs,history points the wayto the overcomingof form and content, sheer rationalityand aestheti-cized whim: "It is only in history,in the historicalprocess, in the unin-

terruptedoutpouringof what is qualitativelynew that the requisiteparadigmatic rder can be foundin the realmof things"(HCC 144). A

quantitative ationality uch as that manifested n at least certainaspectsof Weber's methodology projects what is linearly derived into the

future and cannot see qualitativechange - hence the fatalism of his"ironcage"thesis. But qualitative ealitymakes itself known to those ofa moredialectical heoreticalorientation.




At times presented as thoroughly overwhelmed by abstractly formal

and quantitative methodology, Lukaics declares that ultimately it is theawakening qualitatively concrete that will actually take vengeance on

the abstract: "Since the method, having become abstract and contempla-

tive, now as a result falsifies and does violence to history, it follows

that history will gain its revenge and violate the method which has

failed to integrate it, tearing it to pieces" (HCC 148). This is reminis-

cent of Schmitt's account of how the political exception strikes back at

a liberalism which had hitherto ignored or repressed it: "In the excep-

tion, the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that

has become torpid by repetition" (PT 15). In fact Lukacs's descriptionof the economic crisis - the self-assertion of concrete life - functions

in the same way towards the reputed "regularity"of the capitalist econ-

omy as Schmitt's exception functions regarding liberalism:

The disregardof the concreteaspectsof the subjectmatterof theselaws is based,makes tself felt in the incoherenceof thesystemin fact.Thisincoherencebecomesparticularly gregious n periodsof crisis... In moments of crisis the qualitativeexistence of the 'things' that

lead their lives beyondthe purviewof economics as misunderstoodandneglectedthings-in-themselves, s use-values,suddenlybecomesthe decisive factor. HCC101, 105)

"Things," once just relative amounts of labor time in a smoothly run-

ning economy, become very real in times of economic "bust." Sud-

denly they become an abundance of chairs, refrigerators, canned goods,etc. that suddenly are scarce or conversely overabundant. The most

important object "thingified" by capitalism, the worker, also emerges as

him or herself in a time of crisis and claims their right as producer andhuman being - the nexus where form and content/object and subjectand historical change coincide:

For the unityof the subjectandobject,of thoughtandexistencewhichthe "action" ndertooko proveandto exhibitfinds both its fulfillmentand its substratumn the unityof the genesis of the determinants f

thoughtandof thehistoryof theevolutionof reality.But to comprehendthisunity t is necessarybothto discover hesite fromwhich to resolveall theseproblemsand also to exhibitconcretely he "we"which is the

subjectof history, hat"we"whoseaction s in facthistory. HCC145)

The proletariats who exist at the site of qualitative production -




indeed are the actors of qualitative production - and whose concrete

specificity is most dramatically converted into abstract quantity by capi-talism, become conscious of these realities and therewith take their

place as knowing agents of historical change, the "we" of history:

The social existenceof theproletariats far morepowerfullyaffected

by the dialecticalcharacter f the historicalprocess.... For theprole-tariatto become awareof the dialecticalnatureof its existence is amatterof life and death.... The quantitative ifferences n exploita-tion which appear o the capitalist n the formof quantitative etermi-nantsof theobjectsof his calculation,mustappear o the workeras the

decisive, qualitativecategories of his whole physical, mental, andmoralexistence.(HCC 164, 166)

When the workerknows himself as a commodityhis knowledge is

practical.That is to say, this knowledge brings about an objectivestructuralchange in the object of knowledge.In this consciousnessandthrough t the specialobjectivecharacter f laboras a commodity,its "use-value".. which like everyuse-value s submergedwithoutatrace n the quantitative xchangecategoriesof capitalism,now awak-ens and becomes social reality.... The specificnatureof this kind of

commodityhad consisted n thefact thatbeneath he cloak of the thinglay a relationamongmen,thatbeneath he quantifying rust herewasa qualitative, ivingcore.(HCC 169)

When this "social reality" becomes apparent to the proletariat it is left

for them to - perhaps violently - seize the reins of leadership from the

now historically obsolete bourgeoisie:

The instant that this consciousness arises and goes beyond what is

immediatelygivenwe find in concentrated ormthe basic issue of the

class struggle:the problemofforce. For this is the point where the"eternal aws" of capitalisteconomicsfail and become dialecticalandarethuscompelled o surrenderhe decisionsregardinghe fate of his-

toryto the conscious actionsof men.(HCC178)

Schmitt's depiction of Catholicism in Political Form, oppressively

frightening even at first glance, becomes even more so when

Schmitt's own polemical strategy becomes clear. Catholicism, which

in Schmitt's estimation in Political Form is a perfect marriage of form

and content, a "complex of opposites," by its nature makes frequentalliances with the most varied political entities - hence the constant

charges of political opportunism leveled against it (RC 5-6). But




knowing who to make one's friend entails knowing who to make

one'senemy,

the formercategory having

nomeaning in Schmitt'sworld-view without the latter.54Schmitt concludes the work with an

exhortationto the now leaderless forces of Europe- liberal, social-

ist, or conservative; Catholic, Protestant,or Jew - to unite underthebannerof Catholicism in a cultural-political rusadeagainstthe "athe-istic-anarchistic"spirit of soviet Russia (RC 64). As Schmitt's rela-

tionship with the church deteriorates over the complexities of hismarital situation not long after the appearanceof Political Form, he

replaces the religiously organized,pan-Europeanvision of the work

with a more nationalisticallydriven one in the conclusion of the 1923edition of Parlamentarismus.The Russianenemyremains he same.55

Both authors thus perceive a dramaticstructural ransformation n

European society that most liberals - to some extent Weberincluded56 sought to ignore. Recognizing that abstractand formaltheories of society and politics were obsolete in the contemporaryincipient welfare-state fusing of state and society,57 Lukacs andSchmitt sought to formulatetheories that let concrete manifestationsof social existence - substances whose actualities were occluded

bythe generalized categories of the nineteenthcentury - exert them-selves in the context of the emerging primacy of the political.Schmitt's solution58 s a top-down lending of substance to the previ-ously "neutral" tate - be it throughclerical sanction or nationalistfervor. Lukacs's solution is bottom-up,"truly"deliveringto the prole-tariat- the content that transcends form and content oppositions

54. Schmittis perhapsmost famousfor the friend/enemy hesis that he explicitly

elaborated n 1927. See the full lengthversionof Der Begriffdes Politischenfrom 1932(note 21). A new Englisheditionof the GeorgeSchwabtranslation,TheConceptof thePolitical, hasbeenpublishedby the U of ChicagoP.

55. For an account of the developmentof Schmitt's conflict theory against theSoviet Union,andits Nietzscheanundertones, ee McCormick,"Dangersof Mythologyz-ing Technology and Politics: Nietzsche, Schmitt and the Antichrist"Philosophy andSocial Criticism21.4 (July1995).

56. See HerbertMarcuse,"IndustrializationndCapitalism,"Max Weber ndSoci-

ology Today.57. See especially chap.5 of AratoandCohenforan accountof thistransformation.58. On Schmitt'sstatetheoryin the secondcrisisperiodof Weimar 1929-33) and

beyond,see McCormick,"Fear,Technologyand the State:CarlSchmitt,Leo Straussandthe Revivalof Hobbes in WeimarandNationalSocialistGermany," olitical Theory22.4(Nov. 1994); and "PoliticalTheoryand PoliticalTheology:The Second Wave of CarlSchmitt n English,"Political Theory26.5 (Dec. 1998).




the whole of society. Irrespectiveof the directionof the impetus, the

place for elites such as Lukacs and Schmittthemselves is essential tothese scenarios.Shut out by the laissez-faireand self-regulatingideol-

ogies of the nineteenthcenturythe place is now assured for intellec-

tual-politicalelites to facilitate the aforementioned ransformation: ne

a fascist fantasy,the other a communistone.

Thus history is the facilitatorof Schmitt's super-political heory and

Lukacs's super-socialtheory,althoughSchmittand Lukacs understand

"history"quite differently. Lukacs views this historical process as

authoredby humans,but withouttheirknowledge. Schmitt came more

and more to abandonWeber's account of rationalizationas a spilloverof Protestantanxietyand instead attribute t to the conscious choice of

elites.59 Recall that Schmittattributes he developmentof the "duali-

ties" of modernityto the efforts of Copernicus,Descartes, and Kant;Lukacs treatsthem as subtle reflections of a socioeconomic structure.

For Schmittmodernity s the productof conscious decision on the partof elites who sought to free themselves from the sanction of tradi-

tional authority. Having renderedthemselves superfluousin the self-

regulating societyof the nineteenth

centurythat

theythemselves

helped construct,they now have the opportunity o intervene- again

consciously and decisively - to reassert their role. Lukacs under-

stands history as labor coming-to-realize tself as the primaryhuman

condition soon to be consummated.But the process of reification that

makes all qualitative entities appear as quantitativeones blinds the

proletariat o its own proximityto this qualitativelypreeminentactiv-

ity hence necessitating a vanguardparty to spark their awareness.60

Nevertheless this difference may account for the greater extent of

Schmitt's complicity with National Socialism a decade later thanLukacs's with Lenin and then Stalin: Lukacs's task was merely to

push the process of class consciousness - no doubt with the indis-

pensablehelp of the Communistparty- while Schmitt'swas to aid in

59. Cf. Schmitt,"TheAge of Neutralizations" 32-39.60. Lukacs'partyelitism is expressedmoreexplicitly in Tacticsand Ethics(1919-

21), trans.M. McColgan,ed. R. Livingstone New York:Harper& Row, 1972)andLenin:A Studyof the Unityof his Thought 1924), trans.N. Jacobs(Cambridge:MIT, 1971).On

Lukacs'sadvocacyof partydiscipline,see AratoandBreines107, 140,and Breuer74-76.For a differentview, see Andrew Feenberg,"Post-UtopianMarxism:Lukacs and theDilemmas of Organization,"n Essays in Twentieth-CentutyermanPolitical and Social

Thought, d. by JohnP. McCormickDurham:DukeUP, forthcoming).




a total elite-driven reconfiguration of state and society. It is the differ-

ence between awakening a will and generating it oneself.61Both theorists necessarily promote conflict in their depiction of the cri-

sis between the abstract and the concrete and their identification of the

respective poles with specific social entities. Schmitt's conflict is nation-

ally-culturally centered, Lukacs's class-centered; Schmitt's anti-Russia,Lukacs's decidedly pro-Russia.62 Therefore besides supplying the meth-

odological-political framework that Lukacs and Schmitt sought to over-

come, Weber also provides the sociocultural agenda that both would use

in that attempt at overcoming. Weber, as is well known, suggested that

meaning was derived only through conflict, ultimately violent conflict;63less widely discussed is his fairly serious obsession with Russia.64

Lukacs adopts Weber's conflict theory and positively valorizes Weber's

intensely ambivalent attitude toward Russia; Schmitt adopts the conflict

theory and valorizes the attitude negatively. Many commentators have

remarked how both take far too literally Weber's claim that politicsinvolves the choice between "God" and "the devil" ("Science" 148), as

well as the likelihood of "contractingwith diabolical powers" ("Politics"

123). Unfortunately, few, however, especially in Schmitt's case, havebothered to interrogate how seriously they attempted to escape such ten-

dencies before eventually accelerating them in theory and practice.65To what extent then is Weber culpable in the behavior of his proteges

by most clearly setting out the categories that they sought to overcome

but only radicalized? Despite the long history of debates over this issue,it is still unclear whether Weber's irrationaltehdencies can be identified

as the source of the persistence of myth, explicit and implicit, in his stu-

dents thought. As early as Political Romanticism, Schmitt reveals his

proclivity toward myth by his exclusion of it from the structure of thedualisms he elucidates. Myth according to Schmitt, is not an example of

61. Foran accountof Lukacs'scommunist areer,his fall from favorsoon afterthe

publicationof History, and his continued faithfulnessto the party, see Kadarkay.OnSchmitt's Weimarsupport or right-wingauthoritarians, is enrollment n the NationalSocialistpartywhen it came to powerin 1933,andhis own fall fromgracein 1936, con-sultBendersky,as well as BemdRiithers,CarlSchmitt mDrittenReich:Wissenschaft ls

Zeitgeist-Verstarkung?Munich:Beck, 1989).62. On Lukacs's ifelongattachmento "thingsRussian," ee Congdon82-89.63. See Weber,ES 1399;as well as Weber,"ReligiousRejectionsof the Worldand

TheirDirections"335.64. See Weber'sBiography327, 636; Weberfrequentlyattacked"Bakuninism"

(e.g., ES988).65. See, for instance,Mommsen.




the randompassiveaestheticizationharacteristic f Romanticism,but is

in fact a legitimate component of political action: romantic passiveaction"is not the irrationality f myth.Thatis because the creationof a

political or historicalmyth arises frompoliticalactivity,and the fabric

of reasons,which mythcannotforegoeither,is the emanationof politi-cal energy.A myth arises only in the real war"(PR 160).66Moreover

even the most sympatheticcommentatorsnote the latent attraction o

mythology that remainedin Lukacs's thought even after his turn to

Hegelianism.67Lukacs'sfascinationwith the "miracle,"he "accident,"the "marvel," hat disruptsthe orderof every day life as far back as

Soul and Form (e.g. 71, 153) was not sufficientlypurgedfrom his the-ory, as his expositionof "crisis"and the proletariatllustrates.All in allit would seem as thoughthe activity of Don Quixote, so important o

both of their earlyaccounts of modernity,while haplessly tragicwithina Kantian-weberianramework n which the objectiveworld could not

be changed by a subjective stance is renderedpotentially radicallydestructive n the new paradigmsof the authors,when it appearsthatsucha changeis in factpossible.

Schmitt andLukacs,

for theirpart,

were not themselveswilling

toabsolve theirteacherof responsibility or generating he moder irratio-

nality that they themselves would put into practice. Long after hisWeimarcareer,his subsequentaffiliation with National Socialism, andtowardthe end of his lifelongbanishment rom the academy n the Fed-eralRepublicof Germany,Schmittwould offer a critiqueof the irratio-nalism that, according to him, necessarily erupts within Weber'srationalizationhesis:

Thepurely subjectivefreedomof value-determinationeads ... to aneternalstruggleof values andworld-views,to a war of all againstall,an eternal bellum omniumcontra omnes which is truly idyllic in

comparisonwith the old bellumomniumcontraomnes andeven thelethal stateof natureof ThomasHobbes's statetheory.The old godsrise fromtheirgravesandfight their old battlesonce again,butnowdisenchantedandnow, as shouldbe added,with new means of strug-gle which areno longermereweaponsbut terrifyingmeans of anni-hilation and extermination dreadfulproductsof value-free scienceandthe industrialismandtechnologythat it serves. What is for one

66. On Schmitt'suse of myth,see the lastchapterof Parlamentarismus,s well asMcCormick,"Dangersof MythologyzingTechnologyand Politics."

67. Cf. AratoandBreines121, 143.




the devil is for the otherthe god ... Thatthe old gods have becomedisenchantedand become merelyacceptedvalues makes the conflict

specter-like and the antagonists hopelessly polemical. This is the

nightmareMax Weber'sdepictionpresents o us.68

After World War II Lukacs, remaining behind the Iron Curtain, would

also criticize his former mentor, who, in struggling against irrational-

ism, only "provided a bridge to a higher stage of it:"

Max Weberbanished rrationalismromhis methodologyandanalysisof isolatedfactsonly in order o introduce t as thephilosophicalbasis

of his worldview with a firmnesshithertounknown in Germany.Granted, ven this eliminationof irrationalismrom the methodologywas not total. Justas Weberrelativizedeverything n sociology intorationalypes,so likewisehis typeof non-hereditaryeaderwho attainsoffice as a result of "charisma" as purelyirrationalistic. hataside,however, mperialist eo-Kantianismeallycrossed hebridge nto irra-tionalistexistentialism or the first ime in [the"Vocation"ectures].69

Schmitt and Lukacs had indeed effectively shown how Weber's stand

of "ethical responsibility" was untenable in the face of his own rational-

ization thesis. It is still an open question whether this gives them licenseto tacitly attribute to the "sins of the father" their own contributions to

the "nightmare" of "irrationalist existentialism" that was twentieth-cen-

tury totalitarianism, and thereby effectively forsake their own "responsi-

bility" for such contributions.

Conclusion

I have examined the efforts of two engaged intellectuals coming to

terms with themethodological-political

framework of weberian social

science in the midst of a radical transition in the relationship of state

and society in early twentieth century central Europe. In the present sec-

ond crisis of the state in this century - this moment of decline in

national sovereignty and increased globalization of economic powerthe tension between the "subjective" and "objective" poles in culture

and philosophy is again becoming acute and the need to overcome it

urgent. Now reigning in the fields of the human sciences are the all too

familiar debates, for instance, in law between formalism and antiformal-

68. "Die Tyranneider Werte,"Der Tyranneider Werte, ds. Carl Schmitt et. al.

(Hamburg:Lutherisches,1979)35.69. Lukacs,TheDestructionof Reason614, 619.




ism, in ethics between transcendental nd immanentmoralities,in the

social sciences between positivistand interpretavist pproaches,and inpolitical theory between universalist and particularistconceptions of

justice. We may also observe in popularand political culture in theUnited States and abroad an intensifying fundamentalism, n some

respects frighteninglyreminiscent of Schmitt's fascism: attempts tostake securepositions againstthe rapidlychangingsocioeconomicland-

scape in the supposedlytimeless entities of family, nation, and faith.Another side of popular and political culture seems occupied byprojectsnot unlike that of Lukacs- a desperatesearch for the margin-alized concrete, qualitativeessence from whose standpoint (of race,

gender, ethnicity, etc.) the very real metaphysicalaporiaiof liberal the-

ory and the even more real injusticesof liberal-democraticociety canbe overcome.One of the tasks of social andpolitical studiestoday,onethatwould escape the drawbacksof weberian social science, as well asthe dangersexhibitedby the work of its most radical discontentedprac-titioners, should be an attemptto understand he relationshipamongstthe transformation,he academic debates, and the culturalstands, as

well as the persistenceof the oppositions,the antinomies, he dualismsexplicatedabove, within them. It would certainlynot be to attachone-self aesthetically o any particular spectof this constellation,placing aratherheavy wager that it will serve as the door to a new conscious-ness. What should be clear after an examinationof the efforts of themost brilliantcritics of the Weberianworld-view is that it is only afterthe most careful theorizationof contemporary ontradictions hat pro-gressive praxis is really possible. As Hegel has so famously stated inThePhenomenlogyof Mind/Spirit,"Totranscendsuch ossified antithe-

ses is the sole concernof reason."70

transcending webers categories of modernity the early lukács and schmitt on the rationalisation...

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