Conclusion—Rousseau’s paradox

This chapter binds the book together, recapitulating its general argument, and offering pointers as to how the study relates to some contemporary questions of political theory. It suggests that a classification that distinguishes between Weber the ‘liberal’, Schmitt the ‘conservative’ and Neumann the ‘social democrat’, cannot provide an adequate understanding of this episode in the history of political thought. Nor indeed can it do so for other periods. In this book, one part of the development of their ideas has focused on the relationship between state and politics. By learning from their examples, people continue their own search for an acceptable balance between the freedom of the individual and the claims of the political community.

Das Rätsel der Persönlichkeit—Max Weber’s Kulturkritik

In discussing the notion of ‘personality’ in the work of Max Weber, this chapter suggests that he developed a language of the worthwhile modern personality influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche. It argues that Weber's ‘central question’ was indeed a political one, concerned with the tense relationship between the life-conduct of the modern personality and the particular ‘orders of life’ into which individuals are placed. As an account of the nature of modernity, this is of special importance when linked to Weber's discussion of the specific requirements of the political personality capable of providing leadership in the modern state. The chapter reconstructs a guiding political theme within Weber's oeuvre, and focuses less on the state and a state ‘tradition’ than the other discussions in the book.

Introduction—from Staatsrechtslehre to Behemoth

This is a book about how conceptions of the modern state, politics and the political were understood, developed and modified by Max Weber (1864–1920), Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) and Franz Neumann (1900–1954) during the period 1890 to 1945 in Germany. It is an attempt to outline their criticisms and modifications of a broad, peculiarly German tradition of Staatsrechtslehre, or state-legal theorizing. The predominantly legalistic nature of this type of thinking forms both the background to, and the bases of, the understandings of the modern state and politics found in their writings. Yet, all three writers argued that such thinking could not adequately adapt to the problems raised by an era of mass-based politics. Tracing the reasoning behind their movement away from this broad tradition of Staatsrechtslehre therefore provides an overarching context for this work.

In search of the Katechon? Carl Schmitt and the problem of political order

This chapter focuses on the work of Carl Schmitt during the Weimar Republic, though the limiting of focus to this period requires a few preliminary words. Chronologically, the movement from Imperial Germany to the Weimar Republic roughly coincides with Weber's untimely death in 1920. Schmitt's rapid rise to prominence within the academy and ‘high society’ during the second half of the 1920s, up to his famous role in the Preiβenshclag of 1932, provides one reason for concentrating on his writings in this period. Furthermore, the discussion suggests that the case that his Weimar writings bear the closest resemblance to Weber's thought.

Unmasking the ‘personality’ of the state—Max Weber, Staatsrechtslehre, and the modern state

This chapter examines Max Weber's rejection of an idea central to nineteenth-century Staatsrechtslehre. This is the notion that the state itself is a ‘personality’. After outlining some of the main tenets of this tradition, the chapter seeks to show how Weber, borrowing from the work of Georg Jellinek in particular, retains a conceptual understanding of the state that stresses its position at the apex of political life. He nevertheless rejected the formalism of Jellinek's modified legal-positivist argument, which had resulted in his famous two-sided (one legal, the other political-sociological) account of the state. Weber insisted that the state could only be properly discussed as a relationship of domination, and in an empirical-sociological and comparative manner at that.

Rethinking Franz Neumann’s route to Behemoth

This chapter discusses the thought of Franz Neumann, up to and including the publication of his famous work Behemoth in 1942. It shows how Neumann's legal and constitutional ideas developed largely from Schmitt's terms of reference, and how his account of rationality and the modern state drew upon Weber. This cross-fertilization of conceptual ideas, coupled with his own political sympathy for a socialist state under a fully democratized Weimar Constitution, offers an intriguing context within which to explore his route to Behemoth. This chapter also presents a detailed assessment of his analysis of National Socialism.