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surrogacy plows new legal ground within contract law was rejected. The courtsuggested that the ex parte order granting custody to the Sterns during the trialwas probably erroneous and recommended that surrogate mothers be able tokeep their children pending legal decisions, unless found unfit That White-head's emotional unraveling was due in large part to this court order was notedwith sympathy by the court. "We do not know of, and cannot conceive of, anyother case where a perfectly fit mother was expected to surrender her newlyborn infant, perhaps forever, and was then told she was a bad mother becauseshe did not. We know of no authority suggesting that the moral quality of heract in those circumstances should be judged by referring to a contract made be-fore she became pregnant." The case was settled on die old grounds of custodywith the child's best interest as decisive. Though the trial court's bias for dieYuppie features of die Stem's lifestyle was chided, custody was granted to diosewho had cared for die child over a year and a half.

The Hastings Center multinational survey on bioediics reveals a strong con-sensus against surrogacy (June, 1987). Of 15 statements, only Ontario, Holland,and die American Fertility Society supported surrogacy widi payment. Widioutlegislative action, the domestic surrogacy business (12 centers in die US) may bedying. Technological, radier dian legal innovations, may continue as die favoredform of infertility treatment.

Reading and Misreading Schmitt:An Exchange

To die Editors:I must be doing somediing right. In Telos 71 your reviewer attacks Reactionary

Modernism as a liberal rehash dial fails to live up to Leftist insights. In Tebs 72 diesame work is again attacked for rehashing liberal conventional wisdom by anendiusiast of Carl Schmitt. Who would have diought diat Tebs would become ameeting place of Right and Left against die middle? The issue devoted to CarlSchmitt is a sad event in die history of Telos. It suggests diat die deepest currentin die journal diat has done so much to help our generation diink its way out ofdie Leftist attack on liberalism is radier distrust and rejection of liberalism.

Contrary to die claims of Joseph Bendersky, Carl Schmitt deserves recogni-tion as an important contributor to die conservative revolution, if we defineWeimar's conservative revolution as die intellectual vanguard diat attacked die

134 HERF, PICCONE AND ULMEN

Weimar Republic and sought an audioritarian solution to its problems. My owninterpretation in Reactionary Modernism does indeed share the assessments ofGeorge Mosse, Gordon Craig, Hans-Jiirgen Puhle, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Mar-tin Greiffenhagen, Christian Graf von Krockow, and Kurt Sontheimer. Neither Inor any of these odier interpreters have called Schmitt a Nazi ideologue, avolkisch or anti-Semitic thinker. I did describe Schmitt as "die most widely readand respected political scientist of his day . . . ," one who argued matemergencies obviated the need for normative law. I noted diat he joined theNazi Party in 1933 because he saw in it the realization of his dieory ofdecisionism. I examined those aspects of his work that touch on the dieme ofspecial concern to me, that is, how he reconciled illiberalism widi enthusiasmfor modem technology. His understanding of romanticism focused on the roleof making decisions and taking actions regardless of the values on which thosedecisions rest. He was a critic of liberalism because it eroded the primacy of thedeciding and decisive political actor in favor of parliamentary discussion, "ethi-cal padios and materialist-economic sobriety." He attacked Marxism as an ex-tension of bourgeois and liberal materialism which denied the primacy of poli-tics. Schmitt belongs in what I called the reactionary modernist tradition be-cause he recast romanticism away from its anti-industrial overtones and towardsa decisionist or existentialist stress on decision, and because he saw in technolo-gy an "activistic metaphysic" that was distinct from positivism.

Bendersky, in a statement of shocking naivete from the pen of a historian ofmodem European intellectual history, writes that "such (critical) descriptions (ofSchmitt) surely leave the reader wondering why and how a figure with diis al-leged brutal, irrational preoccupation widi action could ever become aninternationally respected legal scholar"(29). Does Bendersky really mean to sug-gest diat die history of diis terrible century is a simple morality play of intelli-gence united to virtue, and stupidity allied widi evil? The list of distinguished"internationally respected" academics and intellectuals who were drawn to fas-cism, and to National Socialism, is depressingly long (Paul de Man is only dielatest to join die dishonor roll), not to mention die list of distinguished intellec-tuals drawn to communism. If only die undistinguished had succumbed to dietotalitarian temptation, perhaps much less blood would have been shed! Itshould be obvious to students of modem intellectual history that intellectualdistinction has nodiing whatsoever to do widi good political or moral judgment.Carl Schmitt, however, was a political dieorist, so his bad political judgment atcrucial moments cannot be separated from his dieoretical work.

Wherever intellectuals come to despise liberal democratic institutions — inWeimar Germany, in die postwar Italy of left-wing terrorism, or apparendy indie United States now — diere Carl Schmitt and his illiberal message will findwarm admirers. Wherever people conclude diat, as Paul Hirst suggests, enemieshave nodiing to talk to one another about, and diat parliamentarism and diplo-macy are simply ruses for a struggle for power, diere Schmitt will find supporters.

NOTES 135

Paul Piccone and G. L. Ulmen, in search of a "Leftist Realpolitik," argue thatSchmitt asked questions that have been neglected by Leftists. This is certainlythe case. I am no longer interested in developing a Leftist Realpolitik because Iam no longer a Leftist. But if I were still on the Left, I would focus my attentionon a host of authors with impeccably liberal, democratic and humane creden-tials. But their "no-nonsense" approach to the study of international politics hasyet to enter the pages of Telos. To neglea them and to plunge into the swamp ofthe anti-democratic thought of the Weimar Republic is to fall victim to die er-satz realism of a Schmitt, one which assumes that it is only die illiberal Left andilliberal Right diat is realistic, while die liberal center of democracies is popu-lated by sentimentalists and Utopians. This was nonsense when first articulatedin the 1920s, and it is nonsense today.

Why, for example, has there been no special issue of Tebs on Raymond Aron,who is die first 20di-century diinker to integrate sociological theory, liberal phi-losophy, and strategic realism? What of die British tradition of liberal Realpolitikevident in die work of Hedley Bull (an Australian who also taught in Britain),Michael Howard, and Martin Wight, not to mention die work of die greatestdemocratic statesman of die century, Winston Churchill. If one were looking forconservatives to learn from, why look to Schmitt before Churchill? If GeorgeOrwell in the 1930s and 1940s could appreciate Churchill, why can't die criticalLeft in die 1980s do die same? Why so little discussion of Stanley Hoffmann'sefforts over die last diirty years to blend a liberal sensibility and realism? Radierdian repeat Leftist platitudes about former West German Chancellor HelmutSchmidt die technocrat, why not actually read and diink about Schmidt'sspeeches, essays and several books, which display an acute blend of KarlPopper, Kant, and Max Weber with a firm grasp of force and statecraft? In WestGermany today, Hans-Peter Schwarz' recent essay, Die gezahmten Deutschen (TheParalyzed Germans), presents a trenchant critique of Leftist moralism in interna-tional politics and argues for a revival of realist diought on die basis of liberalprinciples. Henry Kissinger, from his first work on Metternich and Casdereaghto his efforts at detente, was always seeking to blend realism widi some notion oflegitimate international order. Michael Smidi's recent study, Realism from Weber toKissinger, diough highly critical of Kissinger, seeks room for bodi moral concernand a grasp of die cold monsters of international politics.

Why not look at American practitioners of liberal values and Realpolitik? Alex-ander Hamilton and James Madison in die Federalist Papers made numerous ar-guments about die dilemmas of reconciling executive power and democratic in-stitutions. Abraham Lincoln used diose powers and expanded die powers of dieAmerican Presidency in die one great war of die 19di century to combine liber-alism and nationalism. Yet who would diink of doing somediing so quaint asreading and diinking about Abraham Lincoln? After all, he only saved dieunion and abolished slavery! And why, when seeking ways to combine moralpurpose and Realpolitik, should diose seeking a leftist Realpolitik turn to Carl

136 HERF, PICCONE AND ULMEN

Schmitt before thinking about Franklin D. Roosevelt, who overcame Americanisolationists to massively intervene to defeat Nazism; or Harry Truman, whocontained Stalin, initiated the Marshall Plan and NATO, and recognized thestate of Israel? Carl Schmitt, on die odier hand, was a real "no-nonsense" intel-lectual, unlike all those flabby liberals. He had some real accomplishments tohis credit. He helped destroy the Weimar Republic, and thereby helped bringHider to power!

For diose of us who had our anti-intellectual fling in die late 1960s, diis talkabout realism and no-nonsense approaches to politics has a disturbingly famil-iar ring. Are we now to go in search of "tough Germans" like Carl Schmitt tocounterbalance die Habermasian softies who talk too much about talking? Thegreat falsehood of anti-liberal diought in die last century was diat commitmentto individual liberty, social equality, freedom of speech, and political democracywere somehow more Utopian and less realistic dian die audioritarian and totali-tarian solutions of die Right and Left. Though he had somediing else in mind— actually much too often he had liberals in mind — C. Wright Mills' phrase,"crackpot realism" applies well to Schmitt's views no less dian to Lukacs'defense of Stalinism, while it is diose who are often derided as sentimentalists,such as FDR, Churchill, or Lincoln, whose grasp of force and statecraft wasmost realistic.

The editors of Telos who have been around since its beginning know what po-litical disasters result from attacks on liberalism. It is not inevitable diat diedeepest impulse of die ex-New Left generation be antipadiy to liberalism. Ondie contrary, a significant portion of die contributions of Telos over die past 15years suggest diat a liberal turn is required. Odiers would argue diat die strengdiof Tibs lay in its uncompromising illiberalism. I diink diat is a partial reading atbest. It is a disturbing betrayal of its earlier promise, diat die editor and his cur-rent colleagues continue to resist die obvious implication of so much of die pro-ductive rethinking diat has appeared in die pages of the journal, while repeatingdie now very stale cliches about die inadequacies of liberal democracies and lib-eral democratic dieory.

Sincerely,Jeffrey Herf

Dear Jeffrey Herf:Your reaction to bodi Eley's and Bendersky's not altogedier flattering evalua-

tions of your book is certainly understandable. Unfortunately, however, diis co-incidental double-barreled criticism does not provide any evidence for your de-duction diat you must be doing somediing right {coincidental is emphasized sincedie two criticisms have nodiing to do with any collectively-shared "official" Telosview vis-a-vis your book — in fact, odier editors have privately expressed muchmore positive views, aldiough diey never got around to putting diem down on

NOTES 137

paper). At any rate, your self-defense is for from convincing, your subsequentcriticism of what you perceive to be the direction of die journal even less so.

Consider your retort to Bendersky. Instead of confronting his careful demon-stration of the misstatements circulated about Schmitt by odierwise eminentscholars, all you do is trot out a half-baked argument from audiority — one ofthe weakest forms of argument. So what if your mistakes have also been madeby Mosse, Craig, Puhle, Bracher, Greiffenhagen, Krockow, and Sondieimer.Bendersky has convincingly shown mat diey were also off die mark. All youprove is not mat you were originally right, but diat, at best, you were in goodcompany in being wrong.

Worse yet, you bodier neidier to consult me relevant texts in question nor toconfront Bendersky's and Eley's objections. Instead, you continue relying ondie mistaken conventional wisdom concerning Schmitt You write: "Schmitt de-serves recognition as an important contributor to the conservative revolution, ifwe define Weimar's conservative revolution as the intellectual vanguard that attacked theWeimar Republic and sought an authoritarian solution to its problems (italics added)." Butprecisely in terms of this definition, Schmitt was not a member of die conserva-tive revolution because he was not part of die intellectual vanguard diat attackeddie Weimar Republic. Radier, he was one of diose intellectuals who sought tosave it. He argued mat die Weimar Constitution, or for diat matter any constitu-tion, should not provide die means for its own destruction. Owing to just such apossibility in Art. 48, he sought an "audioritarian" solution to guard against itsdestruction by totalitarian movements such as Nazism and communism. More-over, diis solution was dearly meant to be temporary, since Schmitt had nothought of restoring die audioritarian state he knew was a diing of die past. Herecognized mat Germany had reached mat stage of die democratic revolutionalready foreseen by Tocqueville. like Weber, he understood a dear-cut distinc-tion between liberalism and democracy, and diat liberalism direatens democ-racy, as democracy direatens liberalism. Again like Weber, he was not a demo-crat by instinct or will, but he was aware of die irreversibility of die new politicalsituation. Anyway, Schmitt certainly saw democracy as preferable to die alterna-tives on bodi die Left and die Right.

Your retort gets worse: widiout providing any pertinent textual evidence, yourepeat die totally ungrounded daim diat Schmitt "joined die Nazi Party in 1933because he saw in it die realization of his dieory of dedsionism." But hadSchmitt seen die Nazi Party in diis light he would have joined it long before andnot fought it so vehemendy during die Weimar Republic. He joined it only afterdie Enabling Act, which he saw as die deadi of die Weimar Constitution and diecreation of a new political situation. Reliable witnesses such as Ludwig M.Lachmann, who were in Schmitt's seminar from die middle of 1932 to March1933, have reported diat, predictably on die basis of what he had written,Schmitt did not welcome Hider's assumption of power. Moreover, nowhere inhis writings does Schmitt attempt to reconcile what you characterize as

138 HERF, PICCONE AND ULMEN

"illiberalism with enthusiasm for modem technology." Given the role you at-tribute to the conservative appropriation of technology in your definition of "re-actionary modernism," that claim fits Ernst Jiinger but not Schmitt. At any rate,Schmitt was certainly no romantic. His understanding of romanticism — politi-cal romanticism — is not "focused on the role of making decisions and takingactions regardless of the values on which those decisions rest" Schmitt attackedromanticism and its aesthetidzation of all spheres of culture. More generally, hefaulted the European bourgeoisie as a dass which embraced romantidsm andthereby depolitidzed the sorial order by transforming political debate into anendless conversation in which the pursuit of amusement and self-indulgencerendered genuine political dedsions impossible. In Schmitt's view, romantidsmcan never reach a dedsion: "Political romantidsm ends where political actionbegins." Far from being representative of what you call "reactionary modem-ism," Schmitt may instead be dassified as one of the first genuinely post-mod-em diinkers. In his 1929 essay on what he calls "the age of neutralizations anddepolitidzations," he makes dear that a process which has lasted for threecenturies has "drawn to its dose," that the movement in which the modemmind has attained its maximum effectiveness, liberalism, is characterized by thisprocess, which is not the chance result of modern development but its originaland essential goal: the striving for a neutral sphere free of all antagonistic rela-tions.

Schmitt's critique of liberalism is not accompanied by an illiberal answer butleaves open the question of an alternative. To characterize Schmitt's vindicationof the political dimension as "illiberalism" is dius to misunderstand both its in-tent and its content. He argues that liberalism has failed to negate the politicaldimension and succeeded only in obscuring it in non-political language. Never-theless, he acknowledges that "the astoundingly consistent system of liberalthought, . . . in spite of all defects, is even today in Europe not replaced by anyother system." For this reason, as Leo Strauss observed in his essay on The Con-cept of the Political, Schmitt's critique of liberalism proceeds within the horizon ofliberalism and can only be completed when we succeed in gaining a perspectivebeyond liberalism. The fact that Schmitt was forced to make use of liberal ele-ments explains the provisional character of his assertions. Recognizing this situ-ation, Schmitt's dedared intention was to do no more than provide "a theoreti-cal framework for an immense problem." Spedfically, he suggested that The Con-cept of the Political was "to be thought of as a starting point for objective discussion."

According to Schmitt, the 19th century ushered in an apparently hybrid andimpossible joining of aesthetic-romantic and economic-technical tendendes.Romantidsm was an "intermediate stage of the aesthetic" between the mora-lism of the 18th and the economism of the 19th century. As he observed: "The20th century appeared at the start to be not only the age of technology but alsoof a religious belief in technology. Indeed, it has often been called the age oftechnology. But this is only a provisional understanding of the total situation.

NOTES 139

The question of the significance of overwhelming technicity should for now beleft open, because the belief in technology is in fact only the result of the particu-lar shift in the direction of the central sphere." For Schmitt, technology and allsimilar spheres, including the intellect, are multifaceted and can only beunderstood in concrete political terms. Technology at first appeared as absolute-ly neutral. But precisely because it serves all equally, it is not neutral: "Out of theimminence of the technical there is no human or intellectual decision, least ofall to neutrality." Technology is always an instrument for any type of culture orpeople. Schmitt's argument is that technology is "culturally blind," which ishardly consistent with "reactionary modernism."

So much for the homework you do not seem to have spent sufficient time do-ing, preferring to rely instead on die superficial cliches usually dished out in"Intellectual History 101." The situation is no better when you politicize the is-sue by defining it in terms of an unholy coalition of "Right and Left against themiddle." Neither is Bendersky right-wing, nor is Eley particularly left-wing.Bendersky simply points out obviously inaccurate readings that you still insiston defending by refusing to consult die sources, while Eley focuses on die con-ventionality of your account and your confusion of today's widi yesterday'smeanings in interpreting die past. Eley expressly wrote diat he was not question-ing "die attractions of [your] list of Uberal desiderata . . . as a set of abstract politicalvalues" but rather your projection backwards of "a set of later 20di centurymeanings into a 19di century context whose liberalism was very differendyformed." His critique is historical, not political. This critique becomespoliticized only when it is misperceived as a "Leftist attack on liberalism."

In trying to diink your way out of die Left, it is understandable how a smite ofparanoia may have sneaked in to make you feel under attack from bodi die Leftand die Right. But diese old categories today no longer make much sense: dieyhave become two ideological ghosts occluding rather man clarifying actual polit-ical realities. Liberalism has long ceased to be liberal in any traditional sense. Indie attempt to escape from your radical frying pan, you have chosen to fall intoa liberal fire which has long since died out. What does it mean to be a liberal to-day? Does it entail defending liberalism against every conceivable attack? Is lib-eralism that perfect?

In your uncompromising efforts to pass for a liberal at all costs, you seem toforget diat the strength of die New Left always derived from its demonstrationsof die patent contradictions between liberal dieory and liberal practice. In diissense, die New Left was always more liberal dian liberals diemselves. Thecharge, then and now, remains mat liberals have compromised far too muchfor the sake of expediency. Under die pretense of defending the form of liberalinstitutions, diey have thoroughly destroyed dieir content. The question hasnodiing to do widi defending or attacking liberal institutions or liberalism,but of understanding how and why liberal institutions have become mechanismsof manipulation and domination, dius subverting die liberal values they were

140 HERF, PICCONE AND ULMEN

meant to uphold; and why liberals have become neo-conservarive New Classideologues, successfully subverting democratic values even more effectively thanany Right or Left challenge. Liberal institutions that have become unaccounta-ble, unresponsive and terminally bureaucratized have to be subjected to a thor-ough criticism precisely from the viewpoint of a commitment to democraticvalues. From this it does not follow that one necessarily falls into the trap of ei-ther Left or Right authoritarian alternatives — all die more so, since both ofthese traditional poles have become politically meaningless. Only a weak andthreatened liberalism will be afraid to confront on their own terms leadingdiinkers from either camp.

You diink that the Schmitt issue is "a sad event in the history of Telos." Why?Because, for a few years, Schmitt opportunistically capitulated to Nazism andbecame one of its most prominent apologists — to the point of deploying anti-Semitic rhetoric to ingratiate himself with the Nazi power-structure? You do notseriously think that Telos would for a moment buy into that nonsense. That pointwas repeatedly driven home both in the introduction as well as in the rest of theissue. What you suggest is that we should have refused to consider Schmitt's die-oretical work because of his political activities in die 1930s. To recycle a well-worn anecdote, when Paul Tillich heard a student at Harvard claim that, sinceHeidegger had been a Nazi collaborator one should not study his philosophicalwritings, Tillich responded that if one were to use diat criterion one would alsohave to reject the writings of Plato, who at one time served die tyrant at Syracuse.Following diis logic, one would also have to reject die writings of other "classi-cal" political diinkers such as Hobbes and Machiavelli. It is strange to see com-mitment to liberalism used as a defense of what is ultimately an unwillingness toconfront different ideas. This is what die obscurantism of die Right used to beabout

As an alternative to Schmitt, you dig up a whole series of personalities, someof which are only remotely related to political theory. The point is not so muchtheir theoretical relevance, but die limitations and casuistry of what can be pub-lished by a small independent journal. Our task is not to belabor die obvious bydoing, as you suggest widi a straight face, a special issue on Churchill or anyoneelse widi presumably impeccable liberal credentials. Radier, outside die main-stream and free from die pressures and corruption diat inevitably goes widi it,we focus on diose issues and diinkers which, for whatever reasons, have been re-pressed, ignored, or passed over. Carl Schmitt is a case in point. We will contin-ue to follow diis policy and hope diat our efforts will not lend themselves to "il-liberal," audioritarian, or odier misreadings. After all, liberals should try tohang on to at least one of dieir old values: to keep an open mind.

Sincerely,Paul Piccone and G. L. Ulmen