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| The Strauss-Schmitt Correspondence |
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There are three extant letters from Leo Strauss to “Professor” Carl Schmitt, without any record of Schmitt's reply. What is evident from these short letters, however, is that Strauss relied on Nazi jurist Schmitt's recommendation--even after Schmitt had publicly come forward to defend Hitler's emergency rule--to gain and extend his Rockefeller Fellowship to study Thomas Hobbes.
Letter One, dated March 13, 1932, is simply an expression of thanks for Schmitt's recommendation, which helped him get his Rockefeller Foundation fellowship. The only substantive letter of the three, number two, dated Sept. 4, 1932, is instructive, in that it contains Strauss's comments on Schmitt's Concept of the Political. In that letter, Strauss summarizes his understanding of Schmitt's view, based on what he calls “oral exchange,” and gives the clear implication of his agreement with this view. The relevant section goes as follows: “The ultimate foundation of the Right is the principle of the natural evil of man; because man is by nature evil, he therefore needs dominion. But dominion can be established, that is, men can be unified, only in a unity against--against other men. Every association of men is necessarily a separation from other men. The tendency to separate (and therewith the grouping of humanity into friends and enemies) is given with human nature; it is in this sense destiny, period.” The third letter, dated July 10, 1933, thanks Schmitt again for his help, in that Strauss had just received his Rockefeller Fellowship for a second year, due to Schmitt's approval of his study on Hobbes. -- 30 -- |