The Dangerous Human: Schmitt, Strauss, and the Limits of Liberal Hope
A weaving of different arguments that concern the political implications of a fundamental anthropology of human kind.
Rereading Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political and Leo Strauss's Critique
This past weekend, I revisited Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political (1927-32), which inevitably led me back to Leo Strauss’s critical notes on the work and, ultimately, to the relevant chapters of Heinrich Meier’s brilliant The Hidden Dialogue: Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, a book I’ve recommended several times. Meier reconstructs the intellectual dialogue between Schmitt and Strauss based on the marginal notes Strauss sent to Schmitt following the book’s initial publication in 1927. By the time of the 1930s editions, Schmitt had revised key sections in direct response to Strauss’s critiques. In the final edition, perhaps out of intellectual frustration or respect, Schmitt included Strauss’s comments as an appendix.
Each time I return to this dialogue, new insights emerge. This time, I found myself particularly drawn to one of Schmitt’s arguments concerning the anthropological presuppositions underlying political theories—a point Strauss critiques with illuminating precision.
Schmitt’s Anthropological Presuppositions
Schmitt argues that every political theory implicitly or explicitly rests on certain anthropological assumptions. He posits a fundamental dichotomy, borrowing (in an idiosyncratic way) from Catholic notions of good and evil: Are humans inherently dangerous or not? Classical political theorists like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel, and Nietzsche viewed humans as fundamentally dangerous. By contrast, classical liberal theorists assumed that humans are essentially good—or at least non-threatening—and that it is the state that poses the real danger, necessitating its limitation to allow human goodness to flourish unimpeded.
Interestingly, Schmitt acknowledges a particular strand of liberal thought—those we might now call libertarians or classical liberals (think Thomas Paine or Joshua Tucker). Schmitt credits them with holding a more robust political theory than bourgeois liberals. They assume methodologically that humans are rational and persuadable but classify anyone who denies this as inherently dangerous, thereby asserting their own authority. This argument seems eerily relevant to today’s political landscape—a point Strauss would turn back on Schmitt himself.
Strauss’s Critique
For Schmitt, humans are dangerous by nature, and the essence of the political lies in the ever-present possibility of conflict with an existential enemy. Strauss presses Schmitt on an unresolved tension: Schmitt repeatedly claims that he does not know whether a state of universal peace is possible but assumes it might be. He further speculates that in such a scenario, human nature could change fundamentally, rendering his political theory obsolete.
Strauss insightfully points out that if this is the case, Schmitt’s definition of human nature is tautological: humans are dangerous as long as they are dangerous. For Schmitt's theory to hold real explanatory power, it must assert a substantive claim about whether humans can reach a state of universal peace. Otherwise, Schmitt’s argument collapses into Nietzschean disdain for a hypothetical peaceful humanity he imagines as petty and servile.
A Different Anthropological Premise
Strauss himself proposes a more measured anthropological view. He shares Schmitt’s Nietzschean concern about a dehumanizing universal peace but insists that humans must continually ask what the right thing to do is. A peaceful world might indeed stifle this ethical questioning, but Strauss stops short of seeing this as reason enough to reject the possibility of peace outright. For Strauss, it remains conceivable—if perhaps unlikely—that humans could achieve peace without abandoning the pursuit of what is morally right.
This line of thought led me back to John Rawls. Unlike many political theorists, Rawls does engage with a philosophical anthropology. His original position is a reimagining of the social contract, assuming that behind a veil of ignorance, humans would choose principles of justice because they are rational and capable of recognizing each other's intrinsic worth. Schmitt might accuse Rawls of committing the same anthropological tautology he ascribes to libertarians: assuming human goodness methodologically to derive principles that confirm this assumption.
Rawls vs. Hobbes: A Key Difference
Yet Rawls also differs crucially from Hobbes, whose bleak view of human nature as driven by fear of violent death leads him to argue that humans ultimately seek personal security above all else. In contrast, Rawls assumes that humans have "non-negotiable" higher goals—principles they would refuse to abandon even at great personal cost. This, of course, raises the question of why Hobbes dismisses courage as a virtue while Rawls’s humans behind the veil of ignorance may be willing to sacrifice themselves for justice.
This divergence seems worth exploring further: Why does Hobbes think humans prioritize security, while Rawls assumes they might risk even their lives for certain moral principles? This difference, subtle but profound, might illuminate broader tensions between classical and modern political theories—and between their competing anthropological assumptions.