Schmitt, Hobbes, Hegel

Carl Schmitt occupied a central intellectual and political role in the constitutional crisis of the Weimar Republic, which contributed to the erosion of its democratic institutions. In the republic’s final years, authoritarian liberalism emerged as a powerful ideological challenge to democracy. Alongside German neoliberals such as Wilhelm Röpke, Schmitt argued that a strong state was the necessary precondition for a free economy. To trace the intellectual roots of Schmitt’s political and constitutional thought, this study begins with Thomas Hobbes. For Hobbes, market morality and the web of social relations that depend upon it are viable only insofar as the sovereign guarantees the security necessary for the freedom of contract. The study then examines G. W. F. Hegel, who situates market morality within civil society while likewise maintaining that a strong state, headed by a decisionist monarch, is necessary to preserve contractual freedom. At the same time, Hegel introduces ethical dispositions (Sittlichkeit) as a way to transcend the limitations of market morality.